The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Our considerations will begin with the so-called Pentecost event. In the first lecture I indicated that our investigation can at least begin with this event. For this event presents itself to clairvoyance as a kind of awakening which the personalities on a certain day, Pentecost, experienced—the personalities normally called the apostles or disciples of Christ Jesus. It is not easy to evoke an exact perception of all those extraordinary events, and we will have to recall – from the depths of our souls, so to speak – much of what we have already gained from our anthroposophical considerations if we want to combine exact perceptions with all which our lecture cycle has to say about this subject.

The apostles felt like awakened individuals who had lived for a long time in an unusual state of consciousness. It was really like a kind of awakening from a deep sleep, from a strange, dream-filled sleep, in which one carries out the everyday tasks of life as reasonable people do, so that others do not notice that one is in a different state of consciousness. Then came the moment when it seemed to the apostles that they had lived through a long time as in a dream from which they awoke with the Pentecost event. And they experienced this awakening in an extraordinary way: they really felt as though something we can only call the substance of all-encompassing love had descended on them from out of the universe. The apostles felt impregnated by all-encompassing love and awakened from the described dream-like state. As though they had been awakened by all that which as the source of the power of love pervades and warms the universe, as though this source of the power of love had penetrated the soul of each one of them. They seemed very strange to the others who heard how they talked. Those others knew that they had previously led very simple lives, but some of them had been acting strangely in the previous days, as though lost in dreams. Now, however, they were as transformed: like people who had achieved a new state of mind or soul disposition, like people who had lost all the narrow restrictions, all the egotism of life, who had gained an infinitely wide heart and all-embracing tolerance, a deeply heartfelt understanding of all that is human on earth. They could also express themselves so that everyone present could understand them. One felt also that they could see into each heart and soul and clarify the secrets of the soul, so they could comfort the other, could tell him exactly what he needed.

It was of course astonishing that such a transformation could happen to a number of people. But those people who experienced the transformation, who had been awakened by the cosmic spirit of love, those people felt in themselves a new understanding for what had acted in common in their souls, but which they had until then not understood. Now, in that instant, understanding of what actually happened on Golgotha appeared before their minds' eye. And if we look into the soul of one of those apostles, the one usually called Peter in the other gospels, clairvoyant observation sees his normal consciousness as having been completely obliterated from the moment the gospels usually call the denial. He looked back to the denial scene, when he was asked if he had a connection to the Galilean, and he knew now that he denied it because his consciousness had begun to fade and an abnormal state to take its place, a kind of dream state, which meant removal into a completely different world. For him it was like a person who upon waking in the morning remembers the last events before going to sleep the night before; that's how Peter remembered what is called the denial, the triple denial before the cock crowed twice. And then the intermediate state of Peter's consciousness unfurled. It wasn't filled with mere dream-images, but with images presented by a kind of higher state of consciousness, which presented an experience of purely spiritual matters. And everything that happened, that Peter had slept through since that time, appeared before his soul as a clairvoyant dream. Above all he learned to see the event, about which one can truly say he slept through, because for a full understanding of that event the fecundation by all-encompassing love was necessary. Now the images of the mystery of Golgotha appeared before his eyes in a way similar to how we can recall them with clairvoyant vision if we establish the necessary conditions.

Frankly, it is with a unique feeling that one decides to put into words what is revealed when looking into the consciousness of Peter and the others who were gathered on that Pentecost day. One can only bring one's self to speak of these things with a holy awe. One could even say that he is almost overcome with awareness that he is treading on the holy ground of human esteem when expressing what is revealed to the soul's vision. However, it seems to him necessary, due to certain spiritual considerations, to speak of these things in our times; with full knowledge that other times will come in which these things will meet with more understanding than is the case now. For in order to understand much of what will be said at this opportunity, the human soul must free itself of quite a few things which are necessary to it during this cultural period.

First of all, something which is offensive to contemporary natural scientific consciousness appears to clairvoyant vision. Nevertheless, I feel myself obliged to express in words as well as I can what appears to the soul's vision. I can't do anything about it if what I must say is communicated to less prepared minds and souls and the whole thing is exaggeratedly described as something which cannot stand up to the scientific concepts which dominate the present time.

The clairvoyant glance first falls on an image that depicts a reality which is also indicated in other gospels, but which presents a very special view when selected from the fullness of views which clairvoyant observation can receive when looking back in time. Clairvoyant observation is drawn to a kind of darkening of the earth. And one feels, as in an imagination, the meaningful moment when for hours the physical sun is darkened over the land of Palestine, over the site of Golgotha, like an eclipse of the sun.

One has the impression that spiritual-scientifically trained observation can now verify if a physical eclipse of the sun really occurred over that land: that for this observation the whole human environment takes on a completely different aspect. I would like to put aside what human technology has to say about a solar eclipse. A strong mind and the conviction that all had to happen as it did are necessary in order to withstand the demonic powers which arise during a solar eclipse. But I prefer not to go into that further, only to bring to your attention the fact that during such a moment what otherwise can only be obtained through difficult meditation appears light-filled. One sees plants and animals differently, every butterfly looks different. It is something which in the deepest sense can bring forth the conviction of how in the cosmos a certain spiritual life – which belongs to the sun and what one sees in the sun also as its physical life – is connected to life on the earth. And how when the physical glow is drastically darkened by the covering moon, it is different from when the sun simply doesn't glow during the night. The appearance of the earth around us is quite different during a solar eclipse than when it is night. One feels the group-souls of the plants and animals arise during a solar eclipse. One feels a dimming of the corporality of plants and animals and a brightening of their group-souls.

This experience is especially strong for clairvoyant observation when directed towards the moment in earthly evolution which we call the Mystery of Golgotha. And then one learns what this notable natural phenomenon means. I really can't help it if I am obliged to read in the occult text about a natural phenomenon as it occurred exactly at that point in the earth's evolution – as it has of course also earlier and later occurred – in contradiction to contemporary materialistic thinking. When one opens a book and reads the text, one has the impression that what one should read comes forth from the letters. Thus also from the cosmic letters comes forth the necessity of reading something which humanity should learn. It appears as a word written in the cosmos, as a cosmic phonetic symbol.

And what does one read when he opens his soul to it? Yesterday I pointed out that during Greek times humanity had developed to the point in which through Plato and Aristotle it rose to a very high level of learning, of intellectuality. In many respects the knowledge achieved by Plato and Aristotle could not be superseded in later times, for the summit of human intellectuality had already been reached. And when we consider that this intellectual knowledge was made extremely popular in the Greek and Italian peninsulas by wandering preachers during the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, when we consider how this knowledge was spread in a way which we cannot understand, then one has the possibility of an impression of reading the letters of the occult cosmic text. When one has attained to clairvoyant consciousness he can say: everything which humanity had gathered as knowledge in pre-Christian times comes under the sign of the moon, which from the viewpoint of the earth travels through space, and it is the moon because for higher human perception this knowledge had not enlightened, had not solved riddles, but for higher perception was darkening, as the moon darkens the sun during an eclipse. That is what one reads.

So at that time knowledge was not enlightening, but acted as a darkening of the riddle of the world, and one feels as a clairvoyant the darkening of the higher, spiritual regions of the world through the knowledge of ancient times, which acted in respect to higher knowledge as the moon acts during a solar eclipse. And this external event is an expression of man having achieved a stage in which man's self-created knowledge was placed in front of higher knowledge as the moon stands before the sun during an eclipse. In that solar eclipse one feels humanity's darkening of the sun within the earth's evolution written in an awesome sign of the cosmic occult text. I said that contemporary consciousness can consider this offensive because it has no understanding of the spiritual power in the universe. I do not wish to speak of miracles in the usual sense, of the breaking of natural laws, but I can do no other than inform you how one can read that solar eclipse – how one can do no other than position one's soul before that solar eclipse as though reading what that natural event signifies: With moon-knowledge an eclipse of the higher solar message occurred.

And then one's clairvoyant consciousness perceives the raised cross on Golgotha on which the body of Jesus hangs between the two thieves. Then the removal from the cross and the burial appears – and I might add that the more one tries to avoid this image the stronger it appears. Now a second powerful sign appears which must be read in order to understand it as a symbol of what has happened in the evolution of humanity: One follows the image of Jesus taken down from the cross and laid in the tomb, and one is thoroughly shaken by an earthquake which went through the area.

Perhaps the relation between that solar eclipse and the earthquake will someday be better understood scientifically, for certain teachings which are prevalent today but incoherent, indicate a relation between solar eclipses and earthquakes and even firedamps in mines. That earthquake was a consequence of the solar eclipse. That earthquake shook the tomb in which Jesus' body lay – and the stone which had been placed before the tomb was ripped away and a crevice opened in the ground and the body fell onto the crevice. Further vibrations caused the ground to close over the crevice. And when the people came in the morning the tomb was empty, for the earth had received Jesus' body; the stone, however, remained apart from the tomb.

Let us follow the sequence of images! Jesus dies on the cross. Darkness suddenly covers the earth. Jesus' body is laid in the tomb. An earthquake opens the earth's crust and Jesus' body is received by the earth. The crevice caused by the quake closes. The stone is thrown aside. These are all factual events; I can do naught else but describe them as such. May those who wish to approach these things from a natural scientific viewpoint judge as they wish and use every possible argument against them. What clairvoyant observation sees is as I have described it. And if someone wishes to say that such things cannot happen, that a symbol is placed in the cosmos as a powerful sign-language to indicate that something new has occurred in human evolution; when someone wishes to say that the divine powers do not write about what happens on the earth with such sign-language as a solar eclipse and an earthquake, I can only reply: All respect to your belief that it can not be so. But it happened anyway! I can imagine that an Ernest Renan, who wrote the peculiar “Life of Jesus” would come and say: One does not believe such things, for one only believes what can be duplicated by experiment. But that argument is unfeasible, for would a Renan not believe in the ice age although it is impossible to reproduce it by experiment? It is of course impossible to reproduce the ice age, and nevertheless all scientific investigators believe in it. It is also impossible to reproduce that once-occurring cosmic sign. Nevertheless, it happened.

We can only approach these events if we clairvoyantly take the path which I have indicated, if we first examine Peter's or one of the other apostle's souls, who felt themselves fecundated by all-encompassing cosmic love. Only if we look into their souls and see how they experienced things do we find via this detour the ability to observe the raised cross on Golgotha, the darkening of the earth and the earthquake which followed it. That the eclipse and the quake were normal natural events is not denied; but he who follows these events clairvoyantly reads them as I have described, insofar as he has created the necessary conditions in his soul. For in fact what I have described was for Peter's consciousness something which had crystallized from the basis of the long sleep. From the many images which crossed through Peter's consciousness the following were emphasized: The cross raised on Golgotha, the eclipse and the quake. Those were for Peter the first fruits of the fecundation by all-encompassing love at the Pentecost event. And now he knew something which he had not previously known: that the event of Golgotha really took place, and that the body which hung on the cross was the same body with which he had often wandered in life. Now he knew that Jesus died on the cross, that this death was really a birth, the birth of that spirit who as all-encompassing love exuded in the souls of the apostles gathered at Pentecost. Peter sensed it as a ray of the infinite, aeonic love. He sensed it as what was born as Jesus died on the cross. An awesome truth penetrated Peter's soul: a death only seemed to have taken place on the cross.

In reality that death, preceded by infinite suffering, was the birth of what entered his soul like a ray. With the death of Jesus something entered the earth which had previously existed only externally: all-encompassing cosmic love. That's easy to say abstractly. But one must penetrate the Peter-soul for a moment to imagine how it felt: In the instant that Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross at Golgotha, something had been born to the earth which previously only existed in the cosmos. The death of Jesus of Nazareth was the birth of cosmic love within the earth's sphere.

That is the first insight which we can gather from what we call the Fifth Gospel. With what is called in the New Testament the arrival, the pouring out of the spirit, begins with what I have now described. The apostles, due to their soul constitution, were not able to accompany the death of Jesus of Nazareth except with an anomalous consciousness.

Peter, also John and James, recollected still another moment in his life, which can only be revealed to us in all its grandeur through the Fifth Gospel. He with whom they wandered led them to the mount and said: Stand guard! And they fell asleep. Their souls were already being gradually overtaken by the sleeping state. Their normal consciousness sank into a sleep which lasted through the event of Golgotha, and out of which beamed what I have been trying to describe in stammering words. And Peter, John and James had to recall how they fell into that state and how now, as they looked back, the great events dawned on them which had to do with the physical body of him with whom they had wandered. And gradually, as dreams emerge in human consciousness, in human souls, the previous days emerged in the apostles' consciousness. What emerged was the whole time which they had experienced from the Mystery of Golgotha to Pentecost, which had remained hidden in their subconscious. Especially the ten days between the so-called Ascension until the Pentecost event seemed to be a period of deep sleep. Looking back, however, the time between the Mystery of Golgotha and the Ascension of Christ Jesus emerged day by day. They had experienced it, but it only emerged now, and in a remarkable way.

Excuse me if I add a personal comment. I must admit that I was astonished when I became aware of how what they experienced between the Mystery of Golgotha and the so-called Ascension emerged in the apostles' souls. Images like these: Yes, you were together with him who was born on the cross, you encountered him – like when one wakes up in the morning and it seems like out of a dream emerges: you were with someone during the night. But it was peculiar how the individual events emerged in the apostles' souls. They had to ask themselves: Who was it with whom we were together? And they didn't recognize him again and again. They knew: We certainly wandered around with him – but they didn't recognize him in the form in which he then stood before them, and which now appeared in images as they received fecundation by all-encompassing love. They saw themselves wandering after the Mystery of Golgotha with him whom we call Christ. And they saw how he had really taught them about the kingdom of the spirit. And they were able to understand how they had wandered with the being who was born on the cross, how this being – the all-encompassing love born from the cosmos – was their teacher, how they were not mature enough to understand what this being had to say, how they had to receive it with the subconscious powers of their souls and couldn't receive what this being had to give with normal reason, how they went like sleepwalkers alongside Christ during those forty days and couldn't understand with normal reason what he had to give them. He appeared to them as their spiritual teacher and instructed them in secrets which they could only understand when he transferred them to a completely different consciousness. And now they realized that they had been with the Christ, had walked with the resurrected Christ. Now they realized what had happened to him. But how did they recognize that he was really the same one with whom they had traveled with love before the Mystery of Golgotha? That happened as follows.

Let us imagine that such an image appeared before the soul of one of the apostles after Pentecost. He saw that he had walked with the resurrected one. But he didn't recognize him. He saw a heavenly spiritual being, but he didn't recognize him. Another image, which showed that the apostles had really been with Christ Jesus before the Mystery of Golgotha, interfered with the purely spiritual one. There was a scene in which they felt they were instructed in the secrets of the spirit by Christ Jesus. But they didn't recognize him, they saw themselves standing before this spiritual being. And in order to recognize him, this image was transformed into the image of the Last Supper, which they had experienced together with Christ Jesus. Just imagine that the apostle had before him the super-sensible experience of the resurrected one and, as though hovering in the background, the image of the Last Supper. Then they recognized that the one with whom they had wandered with love was the same as the one who now taught them, in a completely different form, which he had taken on after the Mystery of Golgotha. It was a flowing together of the memories from the sleeping consciousness with the memories which preceded it. They experienced two images: one image of the occurrences after the Mystery of Golgotha, and one of the occurrences before their consciousness had been dimmed. They therefore realized that the two beings belong together: the resurrected one and he with whom they had lovingly wandered a relatively short time ago. And they thought: Before we were awakened through the fecundation by all-encompassing love, our normal consciousness was taken away. And Christ, the resurrected one, was with us. He had taken us into his kingdom without our knowing it; he wandered with us and revealed to us the secrets of his kingdom, which now, after the Pentecost-Mystery, emerge as having been experienced in a dream.

This is what causes such astonishment: the coinciding of an image of an apostle's experience with the Christ after the Mystery of Golgotha with an image before the Mystery of Golgotha, which they experienced in the physical body in a normal state of consciousness.

We have begun to indicate what can be read in the so-called Fifth Gospel, and I would like to say a few words to you at the end of this report as an aside. I feel myself obliged to speak of these things now. What I would like to say though, is the following. I know very well that we live in a time in which much is being prepared for the earthly future of humanity, and that we within our – now Anthroposophical – Society, should realize that something must be prepared for the future in human souls. I know that the time will come when one will be able to speak of such things in a different way than is allowed in our times. For we are all children of our time. But a near future will come in which one can speak more precisely, in which perhaps much of what can be perceived today only by way of indication will be much more precisely perceived in the spiritual Script of Becoming. Such times will come, even though it seems so improbable to the people of today. Nevertheless, it is just for this reason that a certain obligation exists to speak of these things today as a kind of preparation. And although I had to overcome a certain resistance to speak on this theme, the obligation for preparation in these our times outweighed the resistance. That led to my speaking to you for the first time about these things.

When I say “overcoming”, please understand the word as it is meant. I explicitly request that what I have to say on this occasion be understood as a stimulation, as something which in the future will be explained much better and more precisely. And you will understand the word “overcoming” better if you allow me to make a personal remark. It is completely clear to me that for the spiritual investigation to which I have devoted myself, it is at first extremely difficult to extract many things from the Script of the World – especially things of this nature! And I would not be surprised if the word “indication”, which I used, may have a more difficult and broader meaning than it normally has. I can not at all say that I am able today to say precisely what is in the Spiritual Script. For it is very difficult and takes much effort to extract images from the Akasha Record which have to with Christianity. It takes much effort to give these images the necessary condensation, to hold them fast, and I consider it my karma that my duty is to say what I am saying. Without doubt it would cost me less effort if in my early youth I had received a real Christian upbringing. I did not have that; I was brought up in a completely free cultural environment. My education was purely scientific. And for that reason it costs me effort to find these things about which I am obligated to speak.

I make this personal comment for two reasons: because of a peculiar unscrupulousness, a foolish, silly fairy tale about my relationship with certain Catholic currents is being spread about. Not one word of this is true. And what that which is often called Theosophy today has come to may be judged by the fact that such unscrupulous assertions and rumors come from that source. And because we are obliged to tell the truth and not avoid such assertions, this personal remark is made.

On the other hand, due to my lack of contact with Christianity during my youth I feel more objective about Christianity and believe that I have been led to Christianity and to Christ by the spirit. Especially in this area I think I have a certain right to claim objectivity and lack of prejudice. Perhaps one can rely more on the words of a person who comes from a scientific background, who in his youth was distant from Christianity, than one who had a relationship with Christianity from early youth on. But when you hear these words, you may feel an indication of what lives in me when I speak about the secrets which I would like to call the secrets of the so-called Fifth Gospel.

We will begin to-day by turning our thoughts to the event known as Pentecost. I said in the first lecture that clairvoyant research may first of all be directed to this event, for as we look back into the past it presents itself as a kind of awakening, experienced on the day commemorated in the Whitsun Festival, by those who are generally known as the Apostles or Disciples of Christ Jesus. It is not easy to form clear and precise pictures of all these undoubtedly strange phenomena. And if we want to think truly about the matter we shall have to call up from deep down in our souls, many things we have learned from previous studies of Theosophy. It seemed to the Apostles that they were like men who had awakened, feeling at the moment of waking that they had been living for a long time in an unusual state of consciousness. In very truth it was a kind of awakening from a deep sleep, a wonderful, dream-filled sleep ... remember that I am speaking of how it was experienced by the Apostles themselves ... a sleep of such a kind that at the same time a man carries out all the affairs of everyday life and goes about just like a normal person, so that those with whom he comes into contact do not notice at all that he is in a different state of consciousness. The moment came when it seemed to the Apostles as if they had been living for a long time, for many, many days, in a kind of dream from which they woke at this time of Pentecost; and the awakening itself was a strange experience. The Apostles felt as if there had actually descended upon them from the Cosmos, something which could only be called the Substance of the all-prevailing Love. They felt as if they had been quickened from on high by the all-prevailing Love and awakened from the condition of dream into which they had fallen. It seemed to them as if they had been wakened to life by the primal force of Love pervading and warming the Cosmos, as if this primal force of Love had come down into the soul of each one of them. And to others who could observe them and hear how they were speaking now, they seemed altogether strange. The others knew that they were men who until now had lived in extraordinary simplicity, a few of whom had, it is true, behaved somewhat strangely during recent days, as if lost in dream. This they knew. But now it seemed to the people as if these men had been transformed, as if their very souls had been made new; they seemed to have lost all narrowness, all selfishness in life, to have acquired largeness of heart, an all-embracing tolerance and a deep understanding for everything that is human on the earth. Moreover they were able to express themselves in such a way that everyone present could understand them. It was felt that they could look into every heart, could read the deepest, innermost secrets of the soul and so were able to bring consolation to every single individual, to say to him exactly what he needed. It was naturally amazing that such transformation could take place in a number of men. But these men themselves in whom the transformation had come about, who had been awakened by the Spirit of Cosmic Love, now felt within them a new understanding of what had, it is true, come to pass in intimate connection with their own souls, but which they had not previously grasped. Now, at this moment, there dawned in their souls an understanding of what had actually transpired on Golgotha.

And when we look into the innermost soul of one of these Apostles, into the soul of him who is called Peter in the other Gospels, it is revealed to clairvoyant sight as it gazes backwards into the past, that his normal earthly consciousness completely ceased to function from the moment referred to in the other Gospels as the Denial. He beheld this scene of the Denial, how he had been asked whether he knew the Galilean; and now he knew that at that moment he had denied any such connection because his normal consciousness was beginning to fade and an abnormal condition to set in—a kind of dream condition indicating a withdrawal into an altogether different world. Peter's experience was like that of a man who when he wakes in the morning remembers the last events of the previous evening. Thus did Peter remember the scene usually known as the Denial, the triple Denial before the cock had crowed twice. And then, like outspreading night, the intermediate condition came upon his consciousness. But this intermediate condition was filled, not with mere dream-pictures but with pictures representing a kind of higher consciousness, an experience of things belonging to the world of pure Spirit. And all that had happened, all that Peter had as it were slept through since that time arose before his soul like a vision. Above all he was now able to gaze at that event of which it can truly be said that he had slept through it, because for a full understanding of this event the quickening by the all-prevailing Cosmic Love was necessary. Now there came before the eyes of Peter the pictures of the Mystery of Golgotha, as we, looking backwards with clairvoyant consciousness, can again evoke them if the conditions necessary for such vision are induced.

Frankly, it is with a feeling altogether unparalleled that one makes the decision to put into words what is revealed when one gazes into the consciousness of Peter and of the others who had gathered together at that Whitsun Festival. The decision to speak of these things can only be fraught with holy awe. One is almost overpowered by the consciousness of treading on the most sacred soil of human vision when one puts into words what is here revealed to the eyes of the soul. Nevertheless for certain inner reasons it seems necessary to speak of these things in our time, while realising that in ages other than our own and yet to come, they will find more understanding than is possible now. For in order to comprehend many a thing that will have to be said on this occasion, the human soul will have to break free from much that has been and will be instilled into it, quite inevitably, by the culture of the times.

To begin with, there arises before the gaze of clairvoyance something that seems like an affront against the conceptions of modern science. Nevertheless I feel compelled to put into words what presents itself here to the eyes of soul—as far as I am able to do so. I cannot help it if what has to be said finds its way to inadequately prepared hearts and souls and if the whole thing is mooted as untenable in face of the scientific views by which the present age is entirely dominated. The gaze of clairvoyance lights, to begin with, upon a picture that represents an actual happening, one that is hinted at in other Gospels too, but is a particularly striking spectacle when one sees it emerging from the myriad pictures arising before the backward-turned eye of vision. This clairvoyant gaze actually beholds a kind of darkening of the earth. And one feels, as it were in aftermath, that deeply significant moment when, as in a solar eclipse, the physical sun was darkened over the land of Palestine, over the place of Golgotha. And one has the impression, which vision schooled in the sense of Spiritual Science can still confirm when an actual, physical eclipse of the sun casts shadow over the land: that to the eyes of soul the whole environment of man looks quite different during the time of an eclipse. I shall refrain from dealing with the spectacle presented during a solar eclipse and with all those things that are the creations of human artifice and technique. To be able to endure the spectacle of those demonic powers and entities which during an eclipse of the sun rise out of the creations of art-forsaken, technical science, requires great courage and the realisation that all these things were inevitable. I do not propose, however, to go further into this particular matter but merely draw attention to the fact that a vision, at other times only to be reached after very difficult meditation, lights up and reveals that during a solar eclipse all plant-life, all animal life, every butterfly, take on quite a different appearance. It is an experience that in the very deepest sense brings the conviction of how intimately a certain form of cosmic-spiritual life belonging to the sun and having its physical body in the visible sun, is connected with life on the earth. And when the physical radiance is darkened by the intervening moon, this is different from when, during the night, the sun is merely not shining. The spectacle of the earth around us is quite different during an eclipse of the sun from what it is during an ordinary night. During an eclipse of the sun one feels the group-souls of the plants and of the animals lighting up ... all the physical embodiments of the animals and plants seem to pass into shadow, while the group-souls become radiant. All this presents itself very vividly when the backward-turned gaze of seership contemplates that moment in the earth's evolution when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. And then comes an experience which may be described by saying: one learns to read what this remarkable phenomenon of nature perceived in the Cosmos really signifies! I cannot help it if—in defiance of all contemporary materialism—I am obliged to read in the occult script at this particular point in the earth's evolution, a purely natural event, one that has also occurred, of course, both before and since, and to speak of the direct impression it makes. It is like opening a book and reading the script ... one feels when this event is there before one that what one should read comes out of the very script itself. This cosmic script compels one with a kind of necessity to read something that mankind must come to know. It appears before one like a word inscribed in the Cosmos, like a sign in the Cosmos. And when one opens the soul to it, what is it that one reads?

In the lecture yesterday I spoke of how by the time of Greek culture, mankind had evolved to the point where, in Plato and Aristotle, a very high development of the human soul, a very high level of intellectuality had been attained. In many respects the intellectual knowledge attained by Plato or Aristotle has never since been surpassed. Intellectuality in mankind there reached a certain zenith. A vast store of knowledge had been acquired. And if one pictures this intellectual knowledge to which humanity had attained, which at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha had been spread abroad by wandering preachers far and wide over Greece and Italy, if one pictures how this knowledge had spread in a way incomprehensible to-day—then it is possible to receive the impression which seems to be like a reading of that occult script out in the Cosmos. And when clairvoyant consciousness has been mustered, one realises: all this knowledge, gathered and garnered by humanity in pre-Christian times, has its symbol in the moon, as for earthly sight it passes through the Cosmos. The moon is the symbol, because for all higher stages of human cognition this knowledge has acted, not as a light-bringer or solver of riddles, but rather as a bringer of darkness, just as the moon darkens the sun during a solar eclipse. That is what one reads. All the knowledge existing at that time shed darkness, not illumination, upon the riddle of the universe. And as a seer one feels the higher, truly spiritual regions of the world darkened by the intellectual achievements of antiquity which placed themselves like a screen in front of the real knowledge, just as the moon screens the sun during a solar eclipse. And the external event becomes a symbolic expression of the fact that human evolution had reached a stage where the knowledge born of man's own mind placed itself in front of the higher knowledge, like the moon before the sun during an eclipse. In that eclipse of the sun one feels the darkening of the sun of humanity in earthly evolution, engraved into the Cosmos in a stupendous sign of the occult script. I have said that the modern scientific mind may take this as an affront, because it has no understanding of the sovereign power of the Spirit in the universe. I do not want to speak of miracles in the ordinary sense of the word, of any infraction of the laws of nature, but I cannot do otherwise than convey to you how one can read that darkening of the sun—read with the eyes of soul what it is that this happening of nature expresses. With the moon-knowledge, darkness crept over the higher message of the sun.

And then there actually comes before the clairvoyant consciousness, the picture of the Cross raised on Golgotha, of the body of Jesus hanging upon it between the two thieves; the picture, too, of the body being taken down from the Cross and laid in the grave ... And here I will add that the more one tries to prevent it, the more forcibly does it present itself. And now comes a second mighty sign, whereby again there is written into the Cosmos something that one must read in order to discern it as a symbol of what has actually transpired in the evolution of humanity. One contemplates the picture of Jesus taken down from the Cross and laid in the grave, and then, while the gaze of the soul is thus directed, one has the experience of being shaken through and through by an earthquake which spread through that region.

One day, perhaps, people will understand—in the scientific sense too—more about the connection between that darkening of the sun and the earthquake, for certain theories which are already current in the world, but somewhat haphazardly, indicate that there is a connection between solar eclipses and earthquakes, and even fire-damp in mines. That earthquake followed upon the eclipse of the sun. It shook the grave in which the body of Jesus had been laid, and the stone covering it was wrenched away; a fissure was rent in the earth and the corpse was received into it. Another tremor caused the fissure to close again over the corpse. And when the people came in the morning the grave was empty, for the dead body of Jesus had been received into the earth. The stone, however, still lay where it had been hurled.—Once again let us follow the sequence of pictures! Jesus dies on the Cross of Golgotha. Darkness breaks in upon the earth. The corpse of Jesus is laid into the grave. A tremor shakes the land and the corpse is received into the earth. The fissure caused by the tremor closes; the stone is hurled aside. These are all actual happenings. I cannot describe them in any other way. Let those who wish to approach these things from the basis of natural science form what opinion they like, bring forward all kinds of contrary arguments: what the gaze of clairvoyance perceives is as I have described it. And if anyone were to say: it is impossible that from the Cosmos there should be set up, as it were in a mighty language of signs, a symbol of something New having entered into the evolution of mankind; if anyone were to say: the Divine Powers do not write into the earth in such signs a happening like an eclipse of the sun and an earthquake ... then I could only answer: You believe in all sincerity that such things are impossible. Nevertheless they actually happened. I can imagine someone like Ernest Renan, the author of that strange work, The Life of Jesus, saying that such things are incredible, because one only believes in what can at any time be re-confirmed by experiment. But this thought is not tenable ... for would a man like Renan not believe, let us say, in the Ice Age, although that cannot be confirmed by experiment? It is quite impossible to reconstruct the conditions prevailing in the Ice Age and yet all scientists believe in it. Equally impossible is it that this unique cosmic sign can ever appear again to men—yet for all that, the sign was there.

We can only be led to these events when, as seers, we find the way to them as I have indicated, when we sink in deepest contemplation into the soul of Peter or of one of the other Apostles who at the time of Pentecost felt themselves quickened by the all-prevailing Cosmic Love. Only when we contemplate the souls of those men and discern the nature of their experiences, is it possible in this indirect way to gaze at the Cross raised on Golgotha, to behold the darkening of the earth at that time and the subsequent earthquake. It is not denied that in the external sense this darkening and earthquake were ordinary happenings of nature, but one who having induced the requisite conditions in his soul, follows and reads these events with clairvoyant sight, will be emphatic that they were as I have described them. For in the consciousness of Peter, what I have now described was, in very truth, an experience that crystallised out of the long sleep. Among the manifold pictures crossing Peter's consciousness, those of the Cross raised on Golgotha, the darkening and the earthquake, for example, stood out in vivid relief. These experiences were for Peter the first result of the quickening by the Cosmic Love at Pentecost. And he now knew something he had not really known before: that the event of Golgotha had taken place and that the body on the Cross was the very same body with which he had often gone about together in life. Now he knew that Jesus had died on the Cross, that this dying was in reality a birth: the birth of that Spirit outpoured as the all-prevailing Cosmic Love into the souls of the Disciples assembled at Pentecost. Peter felt it as a ray of the primordial, aeonic Love ... born when Jesus died on the Cross. And this stupendous truth sank down into Peter's soul: It is only illusion that on the Cross a death took place. This death, preceded as it had been by infinite suffering, was in truth the birth of the ray now penetrating the soul. The all-prevailing Cosmic Love which had previously been present everywhere outside and around the earth, had, with the death of Jesus, been born into the earth. In the abstract, such words seem facile, but one must for a moment actually be transported into the soul of Peter to realise what he experienced then for the first time: When Jesus of Nazareth died on the Cross, at that moment there was born for the earth something that was previously to be found only in the Cosmos. The death of Jesus of Nazareth was the birth of the Cosmic Love within the sphere of the earth.

This is, so to speak, the first knowledge we are able to read from the Fifth Gospel. What I have now been describing begins with what is called in the New Testament the coming, or the outpouring, of the Spirit. The nature and character of the souls of the Apostles at that time did not make it possible for them to participate in the real sense in this event of the death of Jesus of Nazareth otherwise than in an abnormal state of consciousness.

To Peter, as also to John and James, there came, inevitably, the remembrance of another moment in their lives, the moment that can only be revealed to us in all its majesty by the Fifth Gospel. He with whom they had gone about on earth had led them out to the mount and had bidden them: Watch! And they had fallen asleep. The condition which spread with greater and greater intensity over their souls had already then set in. Their normal consciousness faded, they sank into the sleep which lasted beyond the time of Golgotha; and from this sleep the experiences I have been trying in halting words to describe, shone forth. Peter, John and James were inevitably reminded of how they had fallen into this condition of sleep and now, as they looked back, the vision lit up of the mighty events which had transpired around the earthly body of Him with whom they had gone about together. And gradually ... as submerged dreams rise up into the consciousness of men ... gradually the Apostles became conscious of what had transpired during those past days. During those days they had not experienced these happenings in their normal consciousness. What now came into their ken had lain deep down in their souls, submerged as it were for the whole of the period between the event of Golgotha and Pentecost. This period seemed to them to have been one of deepest sleep—above all through the days between the event known as the Ascension, and Pentecost. As they looked backwards, the whole period—day by day—between the Mystery of Golgotha and the Ascension of Christ Jesus into heaven, came before their souls. They had lived through it all but only now did they become conscious of it—and in a strange and mysterious way. Forgive me if I here interpose a personal remark. I must confess that I myself was amazed in the highest degree when I became aware of the manner in which all that the Apostles had lived through between the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and the Ascension rose up into their consciousness. It is indeed remarkable.

Pictures like these came before the souls of the Apostles: You were together with the Being who has been born on the Cross, you were with Him in very truth ... Just as on waking in the morning the remembrance of a dream might tell one: during the night you were with this or that person! ... But what is so remarkable is how the particular events came up into the Apostles' consciousness. Over and over again they were compelled to ask themselves: Who, then, is that Being with Whom we have been together? And time after time they did not know who He was. They knew with certainty that they had gone about with Him, but they did not recognise Him in the Form which had then been before them and which now, after they had been quickened by the all-prevailing Cosmic Love, appeared to them in a picture. They saw themselves going about after the Mystery of Golgotha with Him whom we call the Christ. And they saw, too, how He had taught and instructed them from the realm of the Spirit. They came to realise that for forty days they had gone about with this Being who upon the Cross had been born, that this Being—the All-prevailing Love itself born out of the Cosmos into the world—had been their Teacher, but that they had not been mature enough to understand His words; they realised that they had been obliged to receive His teachings with the subconscious forces of their souls, that they had gone about with the Christ like sleep-walkers, unable to understand with their ordinary minds what this Being imparted to them. During these forty days they had listened to Him with a kind of consciousness quite unfamiliar to them and which now, at Pentecost, became alive in them for the first time. They had listened to Him like sleep-walkers. This Being had come to them as their spiritual Teacher and had instructed them in mysteries which it was only possible for them to understand because He transported them into quite a different state of consciousness. Therefore not until now did they realise that they had gone about with Christ, with the Risen Christ. It was only now that they recognised what had really happened to them. And how did they recognise that this was the very same Being with whom they had gone about in the body, before the Mystery of Golgotha? This can be described in the following way:—

Let us suppose that now, after the event of Pentecost, a picture of this kind came before the soul of one of the Apostles. He saw how he had gone about with the Risen One. But he did not recognise this Being. Then another picture interposed itself, a picture which, mingling with the purely spiritual picture, represented an experience actually undergone by the Apostles in the presence of Christ Jesus before the Mystery of Golgotha. There was a scene where they felt that they were being taught by Christ Jesus about the Mystery of the Spirit. But they did not recognise Him, they merely saw themselves in the presence of this spiritual Being. And in order that they might recognise Him, this picture, while still intact, merged into the picture of the Last Supper—an experience they had shared with Christ Jesus. Try to envisage in all reality that as the super-sensible experience with the Risen One lit up in the consciousness of an Apostle, there—working as it were in the background—was the picture of the Last Supper. Then the Apostles knew that He with whom they had gone about in the body was the very same Being who was teaching them now—in the quite different Form in which He appeared after the Mystery of Golgotha. Remembrances from the state of consciousness that had been like a sleep were interwoven with the memory-pictures of events preceding the onset of this sleep. The Apostles experienced this as if two pictures were superimposed: one picture was of their experiences after the Mystery of Golgotha and another of the time before their consciousness had clouded. Then they realised that these two Beings belonged together: the Risen One and He with whom, a relatively short time before, they had gone about together in the body. And now they said to themselves: Before we were awakened by the all-prevailing Cosmic Love, we were as if transported from our ordinary consciousness. And Christ, the Risen One, was with us. All unknowing, we were taken up into His Kingdom; He went about with us, revealed to us the mysteries of His Kingdom of which we are now becoming conscious as if we had once experienced them in dream.—That is what causes amazement: the invariable coincidence of one picture of an experience of the Apostles with Christ after the Mystery of Golgotha with a picture of a happening which before the Mystery of Golgotha they had actually lived through in their normal consciousness while together in the physical body with Christ Jesus.

A beginning has thus been made to impart what can be read in the so-called Fifth Gospel. And at the end of this first communication to-day it may be allowable for me to add a few additional and necessary words. In an occult sense I feel it my duty to speak about these things now. What I want to say is the following. I know well that we are living in a time when many things are being prepared for the near future of mankind on earth, and that within our Anthroposophical Society—as it has now become—we must feel ourselves as those in whom an inkling is dawning that something essential for the future has to be made ready in the souls of men. I know that times will come when it will be possible to speak of these matters in a way quite other than present conditions allow. For we are all of us children of the age. But a time will come in the near future when it will be possible to speak with greater precision, when a great deal that can at present only be of the nature of indication may perhaps be discerned with far, far greater exactitude in the spiritual chronicle of World-Becoming. Improbable as it seems to the modern mind, such a time will come. For this reason it is a certain matter of duty to speak about these things to-day by way of preparation. And although I have had to overcome a certain reluctance in speaking as I have done, this was outweighed by the duty to the preparation that must be made in our time. This was what led me to speak on this subject to you here. When I speak of having overcome reluctance, please take this exactly as it is meant. I ask explicitly that what I have to say on this occasion shall be taken merely as a kind of stimulus, as something which in the future it will be possible to express much more adequately and with greater precision. You will better understand what I mean by “overcoming reluctance” if you will allow me not to withhold a personal remark. I know full well that in the spiritual research to which I have devoted myself, many things can only be extracted with the very greatest difficulty and effort from the spiritual record of the world's happenings—particularly things of this nature! And I myself should not be in the least surprised if the word “indication” which I have used in connection with them were to prove to have still weightier and wider implications than need to be attributed to it now. I do not say—most emphatically I do not say—that I am already in a position to say with all precision what presents itself in the spiritual script. For particularly in my own case I am aware of all kinds of difficulties and of the labour required when it is a question of drawing from the Akasha Chronicle pictures relating to Christianity. It costs me great effort to make these pictures sufficiently concrete to be able to fix them and I regard it, so to speak, as my karma that the duty is imposed upon me to say what I have now brought myself to say. For without any doubt it would cost me less effort if, as in the case of many of our contemporaries, circumstances in my early youth had enabled me to have a genuinely Christian education. I had no such education. I grew up in an entirely free-thinking environment. My own education was of a purely scientific character. And that is why it costs me great effort to discover these things of which it is my duty to speak. This personal reference may be justified for two reasons.—One is that with an utter lack of probity, an absurd story [It had been alleged by Annie Besant that Dr. Steiner had been educated by the Jesuits.] has been sent broadcast through the world about my having been connected with certain Catholic influences. There is not a single word of truth in this. And it is easy to judge the pass to which things have come in what calls itself Theosophy nowadays when such dishonest statements and rumours emanate from its soil. As, however, we cannot ignore them but must confront them with the truth, this personal reference is justified. Just because of my remoteness from Christianity when I was young, I feel all the freer from bias in regard to it; I believe that the Spirit has led me to Christianity and to the Christ. Especially in this domain I think I have a certain right to claim freedom from bias and prejudice. Perhaps—in this particular epoch of world-history—more reliance can be placed upon the words of a man who has come from a scientific education, who in his youth stood at a distance from Christianity, than upon the words of someone who has been connected with Christianity since early childhood. If you ponder these words you will realise that they indicate something of what lives within me when I speak of the mysteries which I will designate as the mysteries of the Fifth Gospel.

It is exceedingly difficult for modern consciousness to see any relation between the soul and spirit of man and the purely material, physical world around him; and there is, indeed, some justification for the failure to understand Anthroposophy when it says that the soul and spirit of man—that is to say, the astral body and ego—leave the physical and etheric bodies and continue to exist outside them.

Where, then, are the astral body and ego? This is the question put to us by people who draw their knowledge from the materialistic consciousness of the present day. They naturally cannot conceive that an element of soul may find its place within the bounds of space. At most they can recognise that somewhere or other air exists and that space is pervaded with light—but the idea that soul and spirit exist in space is, for them, beyond the realm of possibility.

This impossibility is but a short way from that other impossibility of conceiving whither the soul and spirit pass when, at the moment of death, they leave the human body. True, modern man says he can “believe” in such things. The moment, however, he begins to make use of his own powers of thought, he finds himself immersed in endless conflicts. These conflicts cease when he strives upwards to Spiritual Science. But the ideas which have then to be assimilated are somewhat strange and unfamiliar to modern man, and he can approach them only slowly and by degrees. At this point let us turn to the consideration of certain facts of spiritual history which today are but little known in the outer world.

We know that the old traditional conceptions, which were incorporated later on into various religions and became matters of faith, may be traced back to primeval wisdom. We know that in ancient times there existed the Mystery centres which really fulfilled the functions alike of churches, places of learning and schools of art. These Mystery centres were the source of all the knowledge which flowed into the masses of the people, and of the impulses determining their activities.

In these centres the initiates dwelt—men who by dint of special training had attained to higher knowledge. As a result of the tests through which they had passed, they had entered into a definite relation with the cosmos—a relation which enabled them to learn, by giving heed to cosmic processes, to the progress of cosmic events, what they wished to know with regard to the world.

It is only the later, more or less corrupt forms of such an understanding that have been preserved for us in external history. You know that in Greek temples, where the oracles were given, certain individuals were wont to pass into a mediumistic condition, and when, at certain times, vapours rose out of the earth, these individuals fell into a state of consciousness which at the present day would be called “trance” by those who persist in maintaining a superficial attitude towards spiritual things. No true knowledge, no knowledge corresponding to reality can ever be attained through trance; everything is a confused jumble and has no foundation in fact. But in times when the old methods of entering into relationship with the cosmos had already deteriorated and become corrupt, people turned to the oracles as a last resource. And all that was revealed from this trance-like consciousness was looked upon as a revelation of the aims of the Divine-Spiritual Beings behind all cosmic processes. Men ordered their lives in accordance with the utterances of these oracles.

Now at the time when men turned to the oracles, they had already lost the faculties which had once been possessed by the initiates in the Mysteries. That was why they relied upon other and more external means for regulating their actions. I shall now try to make clear to you one of the ways by which, in very ancient times, those initiated into the Mysteries penetrated into the secrets of the universe, into secrets which expressed the purposes of the Divine-Spiritual Beings whose mission it is to direct and govern the phenomena of Nature. Such initiates, after they had undergone a long period of preparation during which they so worked upon their whole being that they were able to observe the more subtle life-processes, finally reached a point in their development when, gazing upon the rising sun, they entered into a definite mood. This was a practice to which the old initiate constantly applied himself. He tried to become spiritually receptive to all that took place at daybreak. When the sun was slowly rising above the horizon, a feeling of awe and intense inner devotion was called up in the soul of the initiate. It is difficult today to form any conception of this mood—it was a feeling of the deepest reverence combined with a yearning for knowledge.

A last echo of this mood can, I think, still reach us from the outer world when we read the wonderfully beautiful description of the rising sun by the German poet and writer, Johann Gottfried Herder. This description was, however, written more than a hundred years ago, and it differs from anything that might emanate from some of the insignificant modern poets. For Herder looks upon the sunrise as a symbol of all waking life—not only in Nature, but also in the human soul, in the human heart. The feeling of dawn within the human soul itself, as though the sun were rising from inner depths—this was wonderfully portrayed by Herder when he tried to show how the poetic mood entered into human evolution, and how this poetic feeling had once upon a time been quickened by all that man could experience when he looked at the rising sun.

Still more intensely was the mystery of the sunrise felt by a man such as Jacob Boehme, whose first work was called, as you know, Aurora, or the Coming of Dawn. And the following words from Goethe's Faust: “Up, Scholar, away with weariness—bathe thy breast in the morning red,” are not unconnected with the secrets of the dawn.

The farther we go back in the history of human evolution, the more wonderful do we find the moods that were awakened in the human soul at the moment of sunrise, when the first rays of the morning sun carried down on their waves the pulsating, quickening light of the cosmos. And in the centres of the Mysteries, the old initiates, when they had prepared themselves in a definite way, were able, just at this moment of sunrise, to put their most solemn and sacred questions to the cosmic spirits, and to send these questions, rising from the depths of their hearts, far out into cosmic space.

Such an initiate said to himself: “When the sun sends the first rays of light down upon the earth, that is the best time for man to send his questions out into the wide spaces of the cosmos.” And so the old initiates poured out into cosmic distances the riddles which filled their souls and hearts. They did not, however, look for answers in the trivial way that we are used to in our physical science; they entered into a mood in which they said: “We have now given over our riddles and our questions to universal space. These questions rest now in the cosmos; they have been received by the gods.”

People may think as they like about such things. They were as I have described them; such were the practices in ancient times. Then the initiates waited, and again at night-time they made their hearts ready. But now they did not give themselves up to a questioning mood; they made themselves receptive, and in a devotional mood they stood awaiting the rays of the full moon as it rose above the horizon. They felt that now they would receive an answer from the cosmos. In the older Mysteries this was a very usual procedure. At certain times, questions and riddles were sent out into cosmic space, and the answers were sent back to earth by the gods through the rays of light from the full moon.

In this way man communed with the cosmos. He was not then so proud that he turned over certain questions in his head, as a modern philosopher might do, and then immediately expected an answer. He was not so conceited as to believe that he could sit down with a piece of paper in front of him, and by means of the human brain alone solve the great riddles of existence. Rather did he believe that he must hold counsel with the divine-spiritual powers working and weaving in the cosmos if he were to discover the answers to cosmic riddles. For he knew: “Outside me, in the cosmos, I do not find merely the content of my ordinary sense-perceptions. A spiritual element is everywhere living, working and weaving. And at the moment when the rays of the sun penetrate to me, I can myself send out to meet them the whole content of my will.” This secret has been completely lost to modern research. At one time, however, such things were understood by man and lived in him as true knowledge and wisdom. In Europe, one of the last to reserve this tradition was Julian the Apostate. He was imprudent enough to take these things seriously, and as a result he fell a victim to his enemies.

Nowadays men describe the sun by saying that it sends its rays down upon the earth. The old initiate would have said: “That is only the physical aspect. The spiritual truth is that men live upon the earth and upon the earth they develop their will, and while the rays of the sun pour down from the heavens upon the earth, man can send his will out into the direction of the sun—far out into cosmic space.” On the waves of the will which as it were streams out from the earth towards the sun, the old initiates sent forth their questions into the cosmos. And while a man of today says: “There on the other side is the moon, and the moon sends its rays down upon the earth”—the old initiate said: “That again is only the physical aspect. The truth is that thoughts are brought down to the earth on the waves of the moonlight.” Thus the old initiate entrusted his questions to the rays of will which stream up, from the earth towards the sun, and he received the answers from the rays of thought which come down to the earth from the moon.

Modern science knows only one side of the picture. The scientist sees only the physical properties of sun and moon. The old initiate said: “While the sun continually sends its light down upon the earth, the earth sends its rays of will—the combined will-forces of all the human beings living on earth—into the cosmos. And when man allows the light of the moon to shine upon him, rays of thought are sent down to him from out of the cosmos.”

The human organism has undergone many changes. Anyone, therefore, who is today seeking super-sensible knowledge cannot proceed in the old way. Man's power of understanding is cruder than it was in ancient times. It is true, of course, that even today the rays of his will stream out into the cosmos. But he no longer feels that the rays of his will could carry his questions out into the cosmos; they no longer burn within him, as once they did. He has become too intellectual, and the intellect cools the intensity of all questions. We have very little feeling or the insatiable yearning which once existed in man for knowledge of the most sacred riddles of the universe. We are no longer passionately eager for knowledge; we are merely inquisitive and would like to know everything as quickly as possible without taking the trouble really to understand the world around us.

In our present age only lovers like to dream in the moonlight! Men of learning would deem it frightful superstition if they were asked to believe that answers to the most burning riddles of existence could be brought down to them by the rays of the moon. For modern man, the world is utterly bereft of the spirit, and he understands nothing of the spirit which reveals itself everywhere in the world; or, if he speaks of the spirit he does so in a vague, pantheistic sense, with no concrete knowledge of how, for instance, the rays of the will are related to the rays of the sun, how human forms of thinking are related to the light coming from the moon.

By means of an initiation suited to modern times, however, we are enabled to enter once more into relationship with the cosmos and with the spirit of the universe. The only difference is that the modern intellect has to do it in another way. The preparatory exercises leading to initiation are described in my books, particularly in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment The purpose of such exercises is to bring the man of today to a point at which it is possible for him really to receive answers to his questions—not merely in his modern pride to turn the questions over in his head, and expect answers to arise from his own brain. The latter method may indeed result in exceedingly clever ideas; but mere “cleverness” can never lead to true answers to the riddles of life. This continual turmoil in his head shuts man off from the universe.

The modern initiate must also ask questions, but he must have patience and not expect to receive the answers immediately. The modern initiate gradually reaches a stage in his development at which he no longer merely observes the outer world in order to satisfy his curiosity with the impressions received through his eyes, ears and other senses. True, he receives external impressions by means of his senses, but while he observes just as definitely, just as intimately as others, all that is around him—the flowers, the sun, moon, stars, other human beings, plants and animals—while he turns his senses in all directions, and allows all these external impressions to flow through and into him, he sends out to meet them a current of force from his own being. And it is this force which represents the question he wants to ask.

Such a man looks, maybe, at a beautiful flower. He does not, however, look at it merely passively, but fixes his gaze upon its yellow colour, and allows yellow to make an impression upon him, At the same time he sends his question out towards the yellow of the flower; he plunges the questions and riddles of existence into the colour yellow, or perhaps into the rosy colour of the sunrise or into some other perception. He does not render up all the questions of his heart to one particular impression—as, for example, to the impression of the rising sun—but he pours them out into each and all of his sense-perceptions. Were he now to expect to receive his answers from these sense-perceptions themselves, it would be just as if an old initiate had sent his problems out towards the sunrise and had then expected the answers to come from the sun, instead of waiting, as we know he did, until the time of the full moon. The old initiate had to wait at least fourteen days; for it was at the time of the new moon that he put his questions to the rising sun, and he received his answers only when the moon was full.

A modern philosopher would hardly be prepared to wait as long as fourteen days. By that time he would expect his book to be in the hands of the printers; or, let us say, he would have expected this before it became so difficult to find a publisher! Today, however, he must again learn to have patience. When a man delivers his questions over to the impressions of his senses, when he allows these questions to be plunged in all manner of things, he must not expect that these same sense-impressions will immediately bring him anything in the nature of a revelation. He must wait—and this is easy for him if he has carried out the preparatory exercises for a long enough time—wait often for a long, long while, until at last all that he has rendered up to the world outside rises up within him in the form of an answer. Should you throw out questions at random, in a haphazard kind of way, you might perhaps receive fortuitous answers of a kind—answers which might afford certain people a measure of egotistical satisfaction—but of one thing you may be sure: they would not be real answers. You must cast your problems into flower and ocean, into the great vault of heaven and its stars, into everything which comes to you as an impression from without—and you must then wait until sooner or later the answers emerge from your innermost being. You have not got to wait for exactly fourteen days; it is not for you to determine, as the old initiates were able to do, the duration of the period. You have merely to wait until the right moment comes, the moment when all that was previously external impression becomes inward experience, and the answer rings from your own inner being

The whole art of spiritual investigation, of investigation of the cosmos, consists in being able to wait, in not imagining that answers will be immediately forthcoming. It follows also, as a matter of course, that definite questions must be put if answers are to be obtained. Should you enquire from those who have already obtained true knowledge, as this is understood in the sense of modern initiation, you will hear the same thing from them all. Such a man may perhaps tell you the following story: “When I was thirty-five years old I became aware of this or that great problem of existence, and all that I had experienced in connection with it entered profoundly into my being. At that time I entrusted this problem to some particular impression which came to me from the outer world; and when I was fifty years old the solution to the problem arose from within me.”

In days of old, the initiates placed their questions within the womb of space in order that out of space they might be born again. The solar element passed through a lunar metamorphosis. Today the riddles that man would fain unravel, all that he fain would learn in converse with spiritual Beings, must first be laid by him within the stream of time. The cosmic element must appear once more, born out of the human soul after a period of time determined by the cosmic powers themselves. But it is necessary for man to reach a point where he is able to feel and know when a divine, cosmic answer stirs within him, and to distinguish between such an answer and one that is merely human.

Thus the real content of ancient initiation is still present, but in another form. It is, however, necessary to be quite clear about the following. If a man desires to penetrate into the great mysteries of existence, he must be able to enter into a spiritual relationship with spiritual Beings, with cosmic Beings. He must not remain a hermit in life, he must not try to settle everything to please himself in his own egotistical way. He must be willing to wait until the cosmos gives him the answer to those riddles and problems which he has himself sent out into cosmic space.

It is evident that if a man has once learnt to send the forces of his soul out into the cosmos and to receive cosmic forces into himself he is much better able to understand the mysteries of birth and death than he was before he had attained to such knowledge. When a man has begun to understand how the element of will inherent in the soul streams out towards the rays of the sun, how it streams into all the sense-impressions he receives from the outer world—he also begins to understand how his soul and spirit stream out into the universe on the waves of a spiritual element, of a cosmic element, when his physical body has fallen a victim to the forces of death. Moreover, he learns to understand how spirituality is brought back again to earth by the moon, by the moonlight. He realises that his highest thoughts are given back to him from cosmic space. For although in this present age thoughts rise up from within man's own being, it is, nevertheless, the lunar element in the human organism that generates the thoughts.

In addition to all this, a man who has had these experiences learns to measure the true significance of certain transitory phenomena which stand, as it were, midway between processes regarded as physical and cosmic in their nature, and those which are cosmic and spiritual. The man of today, owing largely to his materialistic education, describes everything from the physical point of view. He says: “An eclipse of the sun is due to the fact that the moon comes between the sun and the earth, cutting off the rays of the sun.” This is a physical explanation, built up from physical observation and as obvious as if we were to say: “Here is a light, and there an eye. If I place my hand in front of the eye, the light will be darkened.” As you see, it is a purely physical, spatial explanation, and that is as far as modern consciousness goes.

We must strive once more for a true knowledge of such phenomena. They are not of everyday occurrence, and on the comparatively rare occasions of their appearance they should be studied not only from their physical but also from their spiritual aspect.

At the time of a solar eclipse, for instance, something totally different takes place in the part of the earth affected from what is happening when there is no eclipse. When we know that on the one hand the rays of the sun penetrate down to the earth and on the other hand the forces or rays of will stream out to meet the sun, it is possible to form some idea of how a solar eclipse can affect these radiations of will which are altogether spiritual in their nature. The sunlight is blocked by the moon; that is a purely physical process. But physical matter—in this case the body of the moon—is no obstacle to the forces streaming out from the will. These forces radiate into the darkness, and there ensues a period of time, short though it may be, in which all that is of the nature of will upon the earth flows out into universal space in an abnormal way. It is different altogether from what takes place when there is no eclipse. Ordinarily, the physical sunlight unites with the radiations of will streaming towards it. When there is an eclipse, the forces of will flow unhindered into cosmic space.

The old initiates knew these things. They saw that at such a moment all the unbridled impulses and instincts of humanity surge out into the cosmos. And they gave their pupils the following explanation. They said: Under normal conditions the evil impulses of will which are sent out into the cosmos by human beings are, as it were, burned up and consumed by the rays of the sun, so that they can injure only man himself, but can do no universal harm. When, however, there is an eclipse of the sun, opportunity is given for the evil which is willed on earth to spread over the cosmos. An eclipse is a physical event behind which there lies a significant spiritual reality.

And again, when there is an eclipse of the moon, the man of today merely says: “Now the earth comes between the sun and the moon; hence we see the shadow cast upon the moon by the earth.” That is the physical explanation. But in this case also the old initiate knew that a spiritual reality was behind the physical fact. He knew that when there is an eclipse of the moon, thoughts stream through darkness down upon the earth; and that such thoughts have a closer relationship with the subconscious life than with the conscious life of the human being. The old initiates often made use of a certain simile when speaking to their pupils. It is, of course, necessary to translate their words into modern language, but this is the gist of what they said: “Visionaries and dreamers love to go for rambles by moonlight, when the moon is full. There are, however, certain people who have no wish to receive the good thoughts coming to them from the cosmos, but who, on the contrary, are desirous of getting hold of evil, diabolical thoughts. Such people will choose the moment of a lunar eclipse for their nocturnal wanderings.”

Here again we approach a spiritual reality in a physical event. Today we must not absorb such teaching in its old form. Were we to do so, we should be led into superstition. But it is very necessary to reach a point at which we are able once more to perceive the spiritual which permeates all cosmic processes. Eclipses of the sun and moon, recurring as they do in the course of every year, may really be looked upon as “safety-valves.” A safety-valve is there to avert danger, to provide an outlet for something or other—steam, for instance—at the right moment. One of the safety-valves which makes its appearance in the cosmos and to which we give the name of a solar eclipse, serves the purpose of carrying out into space in a Luciferic way, the evil that spreads over the earth, in order that evil may work havoc in a wider, less concentrated sphere. The other safety-valve, the lunar eclipse, exists for the purpose of allowing the evil thoughts which are present in the cosmos to approach those human beings who are desirous of being possessed by them. In matters of this kind people do not, as a rule, act in full consciousness, but the facts are nevertheless real—just as real as the attraction of a magnet for small particles of iron. Such are the forces at work, in the cosmos—forces no less potent than the forces we analyse and investigate today in our chemical laboratories.

Man will not be able to free himself from the forces in his being which tend to drag him downwards until he develops in himself a certain feeling for spiritual concepts such as these. Then only will the path leading to a true comprehension of birth and death be opened up to humanity. And such a comprehension and understanding is sorely needed by humanity today, when men are plunged in spiritual darkness. We must learn again what it really signifies when the sun sends its light towards us. When the sunlight streams towards us, the surrounding space is made free for the passage of those souls who must leave their physical bodies and make their way out into universal space. When the sun sends its light down to earth, the earth sends human souls out into cosmic space, where these souls undergo many metamorphoses. Then, in a spiritual form, they approach the earth once more, passing in their descent through the sphere of the moon, and taking possession once again of a physical body which has been prepared for them in the stream of physical heredity. It will not be possible for us to enter into a right relationship with the universe until such time as we begin to feel and experience these things in a real and living way.

Today we learn astronomy, spectroscopy and so on. We learn how the rays of the sun penetrate down to earth, and we fondly imagine that there is nothing more to be said. We learn how the rays of the sun fall upon the moon, and from the moon are reflected back again to earth, and we look upon the moonlight in this way only, taking into consideration merely its physical aspect. By such means the intellect is brought into play. Intellectual knowledge cuts man off from the cosmos and tends to destroy inner activity of soul. This inner life of soul can be reawakened, but man must first win back for himself his spiritual relationship with the cosmos. This he will be able to do only when he is once more to say to himself: “A man has died. His soul is radiating out towards the sun. It streams out into the cosmos, traveling the path made for it by the rays of sunlight, until it comes into a region where space has an end, where one can no longer speak in terms of three dimensions, but where the three dimensions are merged into unity. In this region, beyond space and beyond time, many and various things happen: but later on, from the opposite direction, from the direction of the moon, of the moonlight, the soul returns once more and enters into a physical human body, is born again into earthly life.”

When man learns once more that the souls of the dead go out to meet the light rays of the sun, that the shining beams of the moon draw the young souls back again to earth, when he learns to feel concretely how natural processes and phenomena are everywhere permeated with spirit—then there will arise once more on earth a knowledge which is at the same time religion; a truly devotional knowledge. Knowledge that is based entirely upon materialism can never become religion. And religion that is founded on faith alone, that does not spring from the fountain of knowledge, can never be made to harmonise with all that man sees and observes in the universe around him. Today men still repeat certain prayers from ancient times. And if anyone maintains—as I have done in the booklet entitled “The Lord's Prayer”¹—that deep spiritual truths are concealed in these ancient prayers, the clever modern people say: That is mere visionary dreaming, mere fantasy. But it is not fantasy; it is based on knowledge of the fact that these prayers, which can be traced back to ancient times, and which tradition has preserved for humanity, have been conceived out of a profound understanding of cosmic processes. We must win back for ourselves once more a knowledge and an understanding that will enable us to call up in our souls a feeling akin to religion whenever we are confronted by great cosmic events. We must be able to say, with the men of old: “O sun, thou sendest towards me the rays of thy light. These rays form a pathway to me upon earth—and along this pathway, but moving in the other direction, the souls of human beings, the souls of the dead stream out into cosmic space.” And again: “O moon, thou shinest down with gentle radiance upon the earth from thy place in the heavens. And borne on the waves of thy gentle light from far cosmic spaces, are those souls who are on their way once more into earthly existence.”

That is how we can find again the connection between the light and radiance of the outer world and all that lives and weaves in the inner being of man himself. We shall then no longer say thoughtlessly: “Man is surrounded by the physical universe and he can form no conception of what will become of his soul, when, separated from the body, it passes out into this purely material universe.” On the contrary, we shall know that while the piercing rays of the sun make their way through space, they are all the time working towards the forces streaming out from the human will, and preparing a pathway for them. We shall recognise also that the moon does not shed its gently undulating light over the earth without aim or purpose, but that a spiritual element surges and streams through space, borne on the waves of the moon-beams.

When once perceptions such as these enter into our consciousness, we shall no longer be able to look with indifference on a plant, let us say, when it is bathed in the light of the early morning sun. For at such a moment very special processes are taking place in the plant. It is then that the juices in the plant are carried up by its delicate vessels into blossom and leaf. It is then that the rays of the sun, as they fall upon the plant, make way for the forces of will coming from the earth. And it is not only the juices described by our modern scientists which stream through the plant at such a moment; those forces of will which have their seat in the depths of the earth, stream upwards also from the root of the plant into its flower. And in the evening, when leaves and petals close, when the rays of the sun no longer prepare a pathway for the emanations of will streaming upwards from the earth, the inner activity of the plant ceases for a time, and its life rests.

The plant, however, is also exposed to the gentle light of the moon. The moonlight does not cast its spell on lovers only—it has an influence too on the sleeping plant. Interwoven with the moonlight, cosmic thought streams down into the plant and works within it.

Thus in the plant-world we learn to look for the combined forces of “earthly will” and “cosmic thought.” And we study the form of many different plants in order to discover how far each one is woven out of “cosmic thought” and of “earthly will.” And when we learn how spiritual, healing forces spring up from these cosmic thoughts, and from this earthly will, the healing properties of plants make themselves known to us, and we learn to see in the plant the medicinal herb. But it is only when one has attained to an intimate knowledge of cosmic processes that it becomes possible to recognise the remedial potentialities of the several plants.

We must win this knowledge afresh. We must reach the point, when we can understand how the human head is actually moulded in the image of the earth herself. In the human embryo it is the head which first takes shape. It is moulded in the likeness of the earth, and the rest of the body is joined on to it. When the human head is bathed in light, and the sunlight penetrates it, then that which in the human head is analogous to “earthly” will shines out into the cosmos with a living power.

If, now, we consider a plant whose root contains the forces of “earthly will” in marked degree, we can be sure that the root of such a plant seeks continually to evade the light of the sun; and we can be equally sure that it is specially subject to the influence of the moonlight, which, feebly though its rays seem to us to shine down upon the earth, nevertheless penetrates right through to the roots of the plants.

If, by burning the root of such a plant, we bring to it the element of light, and if we preserve the ashes thus obtained and make a powder out of them, then we have the means to prove how such a powder is able, by virtue of the cosmic processes inherent within it, to work upon the human head, for the forces of will in the head are similar in their nature to the forces of will in the earth. The point is that we should learn to fathom the connection which everywhere exists between matter and spirit—a connection which does not differ whether we are dealing with the smallest particle of matter or the greatest mass. Then we shall be able to do something which at present holds good only for mathematics; we shall be able to apply to the whole realm of nature truths which first come to us as purely spiritual apprehensions.

A cube, we know, is made up of six squares. Such a thing can be spun out of thought; it is a thought-picture. In salt, in ordinary cooking-salt, we find the cube again in nature herself, and here we discover the connection between a spiritual principle—something “thought out”—and a material substance in outer nature. But I ask you:—What does the average man of today know of the degree in which spiritual forces—cosmic forces of thinking, earthly forces of will—are present in the root of any particular plant? And yet the process is the same as that which we carry out today, albeit in the most abstract manner possible, when we first conceive of the cube, and then proceed to find it again in ordinary salt.

What we do today only when we are thinking in terms of mathematics, we must learn to do again with everything that comes within the range of the human soul. The study of mathematics does not, as a rule, give rise to a devout, religious attitude of mind. Such a man as Novalis could, it is true, be rapt in devotion when given up to the study of mathematics. For Novalis, the science of mathematics was a great and beautiful poem. But one comes across few people who enter into a devout mood of soul when studying mathematics!

When, however, we go a step farther, when we conjure up the spirit from the depths of man's being and bear this spirit out into the cosmos, where of course it already is (one merely learns to recognise it again)—then science becomes permeated with religion; harmony between religion and science is once again achieved.

• 1. Anthroposophical Publishing Company. Second English edition.

Before I continue to share some more of the Fifth Gospel with you, please allow me to make a few remarks about the announcement of this Fifth Gospel. The significance of what is to be brought to our time through occultism and spiritual science is by no means fully understood in the broader context of the present day, because there is still far too little inclination in wider circles to deal with those cultural elements of our time, namely the spiritual cultural elements and those that signify an ascent and are, so to speak, the beginning of a renewal of our spiritual life, and which yet can take no other form than that which leads to an acquaintance, however much it may still be frowned upon today, with the facts of concrete occult research.

Above all, I would ask you to bear in mind, in connection with the above, that such communications from concrete occult research must still be treated with a certain reverence today. Our time is not at all inclined to accept such things readily, and only by living with them, by feeling with them from the life impulses that we absorb in our anthroposophical togetherness, do our souls become suited to see these things in the right light. But if they are transferred to the unprepared, then what had to be handed over through the pressure of the public about the two Jesus boys shows how wild even the most well-meaning became. I will completely disregard the numerous foolish attacks that are directed against such things. How wildly and passionately such things have been received! Today it is inconceivable that knowledge can be gained from the spiritual world that is not abstract but is of such a concrete character as the research results communicated the day before yesterday. This is connected with the fact that our contemporary world-view literature has been seized by a superficiality of thinking and imagining.

Not to be unnecessarily critical, I mention one or the other of our branches in particular, but to draw our friends' attention to how miserable the situation is with pure logic of thought in our time. In our time, there is no discernment. More than one might think, especially since people are always complaining about the emancipation from all authority, people accept everything willingly and with pleasure on authority, especially in circles that often consider themselves the most educated today. One experiences such things again and again, which must be mentioned, even if only by taking up time that would otherwise be better used. I experienced something like this in Berlin at a lecture I gave in a worldview about Giordano Bruno, and where I had to mention - it was a long time ago - how little our time is suited to really getting into the thought structure of great personalities like Giordano Bruno. At the time, I drew attention to the aberration of thought, which is connected with an aberration of feeling, in a then famous book, in Harnack's “Essence of Christianity”.

In my public lecture yesterday, I pointed out that when I mention something in order to refute it, I do not mean to imply that the capacity or scientific nature of this personality is to be judged disparagingly. I just want to show how something significant can have a devastating effect through its suggestive power. So it was that in those days one of the most famous theologians of the present time recognized this writing, 'The Essence of Christianity', as something very significant. I will not go into details. For example, this writing defends the view of the resurrection of Christ Jesus, which goes something like this: Whatever may have happened in Palestine at the time, we can no longer know today, so there is no need to reconstruct the concept of resurrection; but the belief in the resurrection originated from this fact in Palestine. This belief is held, regardless of what may have happened that could have led to this belief.

The chairman of this Weltanschauungsbund told me after the lecture that he had read Harnack's “Essence of Christianity” carefully, but that he had not found this passage in the book. That would be a Catholic view. The Catholics say: It does not matter whether it is the Holy Robe in Trier or not, but it is the faith that it is the Robe that counts. He objected to it, but explained that it was not in the book. The next day I wrote him the page where it is of course stated. The learned gentleman simply skims over it. Everything that works as an authority by suggestion is so devastating today that people do not notice it, but those who truly call themselves anthroposophists must notice such things, because it is the most devastating thing in today's spiritual culture.

The name Eucken is known as the restorer of idealism. He has been awarded a famous prize. He should not be envied for that. He wrote a book entitled: “Can We Still Be Christians?” On one page, it says: “We, as educated people of the present, can no longer accept such things, that people speak of demons as they did in the time when Christ walked the earth. No educated person of the present can believe in demons.”

When a “educated” person of the present reads this, he feels very flattered. The man who paid him this compliment is his colleague. Does this educated person realize that a few pages further on in the same book, there is another sentence, “The contact between the divine and the human generates demonic powers”? That is so nicely accepted. If you quote this as nonsense, you hear the answer: He does not mean that in the sense of the demonic. When one hears this answer, one must be particularly saddened, because from this answer it becomes completely clear that today people use words in an unscrupulous way, without thinking about giving them the meaning that they should have. That is the terrible thing.

Therefore, it is only to be expected that such a distressing phenomenon has come to light as the book, which, despite being three thick volumes, is already experiencing a second edition, the book “Kritik der Sprache” by Fritz Mauthner, who, by writing a large philosophical dictionary, has become the man for many. Such phenomena must be discussed today, even if it is not pleasant. The “Critique of Language” is supposed to be the last significant critique of all philosophical worldviews. The book is quite significant in the sense of its external cleverness in the present. It is not disputed that it is an important book, full of witty aperçus. The whole of humanity's past worldviews are being lectured to. In his denunciation of a school of thought, with which I cannot sympathize either, the critic uses the following image in all seriousness: He who speaks of this school of thought is like a clown who climbs a free-standing ladder and then, having reached the top, wants to pull it up to himself. He will tumble down. — But I beg you: How do you do that if you have set up a ladder vertically and climbed up it and then pull it up to you and then tumble down? How do you carry out such a thought without being thoughtless? Most people do not notice this hollow thought because today there is little practice in logic. Otherwise one would notice that today in every second book on every twentieth page such unthoughts are found. This must also be mentioned because it is characteristic of how people think today, how thinking is suggestively influenced. I have given this example not without significance, because for those who can think, the whole book is written with the same logic, but one does not notice it. Many will not even notice the impossibility of this thought, but rather, as intellectual life is now, such a literary phenomenon will be trumpeted as something tremendously significant and many will believe that this is the case, study it, and from the sum of those who can think in such a way, the opponents of spiritual science are recruited.

I find it brutal that I am compelled to say this, but it must be said, because you should not be unaware of what is happening today. Even if not many will read the book, but what comes from it finds its way into many books and lectures and figures as logic. That is why it is so infinitely difficult, in view of the immature thinking of our time, not only to come up with spiritual-scientific thoughts, but also with the positive results of Akasha research, of which I spoke last time. This compelled me to utter the words that have just been used, that our friends should really feel the need to thoroughly and deeply penetrate each other's views – especially when it comes to dealing with things where ordinary thinking can no longer suffice – with the realization of the necessity of a strictly trained thinking. Otherwise it will, of course, take a long time before we can get through to the thinking fog of our time, which behaves so critically, with positive occult research. Of course, this can only be taken up by someone who has first prepared his soul through the results of spiritual science, which can be more deeply imprinted in thought. Only to such people can one speak of things that cannot be reached by mere thought, but which must be related as they result from Akasha research. Not incoherent, although they are only narrations, what I gave as the Fifth Gospel, they are related with what spiritual research has to give in strict thought structure, even if it does not appear so immediately.

The rejection of these concrete research results stems from nothing other than the fact that modern thinking is too dull to really penetrate the results of spiritual research. One should recognize that it is natural that a person who can form such thoughts as they have been mentioned is not at all able to really penetrate spiritual science. This is the guideline we should follow in the face of the many philosophical and ideological works that are currently being published. When dealing with such matters, we must be imbued with the idea that such things must reach at least a few souls in the present time, so that they may gradually find their way into the spiritual life of the present age.

I have often referred to the Mystery of Golgotha, to those moments of it which must be comprehensible to the most rigorous thinking if it is to engage in the contemplation of the historical evolution of humanity. We do not really have a contemplation of the historical evolution of humanity. Today we have no history, no insightful penetration into what has happened. Once we have that, then it will be recognized how, in the time before the Mystery of Golgotha, human development was indeed a descending one, and how through Golgotha an impulse occurred that gave humanity that rejuvenation that influenced the aging cultural forces. Contemplation of the specific events that took place in Palestine does not in fact detract from this general idea, but on the contrary elevates it by recognizing the specific events that took place.

The day before yesterday, I got to the point where Jesus of Nazareth, after the conversation he had with his foster mother and where the ego of Zarathustra had detached itself from the three bodies, which were then in a strange combination without a human earth ego, met the two Essenes. I have endeavored to describe this scene; I have described it up to the point where Jesus, after speaking to them, stood before them as if dissolving, and they beheld him like a mirage, from which the words resounded: “Your striving is in vain because your hearts are empty, because you have filled yourselves with the spirit that deceptively hides pride in the guise of humility.” When they had heard this, these two Essenes, their eyes were clouded for a while. They saw him again only after he had gone some distance. I could ascertain from the Akashic Records that the two Essenes were deeply affected by what they had experienced, and became silent from that day on and told the other Essenes nothing.

As Jesus walked a little further, he encountered a person who appeared to be in the deepest sorrow, oppression and distress. With bowed head and a physically oppressed body, the man approached Jesus. Then he heard the Being, which I characterized the day before yesterday as Jesus at that time, speak words to him that sounded as if they came from the deepest source of that Being. This oppressed man heard Jesus say: Why has your soul led you on this path? I knew you once, thousands and thousands of years ago, you were different then. — This man felt impelled to say certain things to this being, for as earthmen we cannot describe a being such as this, which consisted only of the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body, with the after-effect of the Zarathustra ego in these three bodies. We can only call it an entity. The despairing man felt impelled to say to this entity: 'In my life I have attained high positions and whenever I rose to a new position I felt very much at home in my element and often the feeling came over me: “What an extraordinary person you are, that your fellow human beings hold you in such high regard, that you have been able to achieve so much on earth. What a rare person you are! I was happy about everything. But then it happened quickly that I lost that happiness. One night it happened. And just when I had fallen asleep, a dream came over me that I brought into the dream the feeling that I was ashamed of myself for dreaming something like that. I dreamt that a being stood before me and asked me: Who has made you so great, brought you to such high honors? I was ashamed that such a question could be addressed to me in a dream, because it was so clear to me that I was a rare person and that I had naturally come to these honors through my great virtues. And when the being had spoken to me in this way, I was seized in my dream by an ever-increasing sense of shame before myself, in my dream – so said this despairing man. Then I fled, but no sooner had I escaped than the apparition stood before me again in a changed form and said: I have exalted you, brought you to honor. Then I recognized him as the tempter of whom the Scriptures tell that he was already the tempter in paradise. Then I woke up and since that moment I have had no peace. I left my dignity, my home, everything, and since then I have been wandering around the world without doing anything. And now, as a beggar, I come before you, a wandering man. And at that moment, when the man had spoken – so it says in the Akasha Chronicle – the apparition was before him again, introducing itself as Jesus of Nazareth, who at that moment again disappeared before his eyes. Then the apparition dissolved, and the man was left to his fate.

Jesus continued on his way. He then met a leper and, when the man approached him, had to say the words: “Why has your soul led you this way? I saw you differently thousands and thousands of years ago, many thousands of years ago. Yes, you were different then. The leper said: “Men everywhere have rejected me because of my leprosy. Therefore I had to wander around in the world and no one took me in. I was glad when they threw out scraps at my door or at my window, which gave me meager nourishment. But I could not sit still anywhere; I had to wander from place to place. Once, in the night, I came to a forest. There, as if from afar, a tree, shaped like a flame, glowed towards me. The light attracted me. As I drew nearer and nearer, a figure in the shape of a skeleton emerged from the glowing tree and spoke to me the terrible words: “I am you! I am consuming you. Then I was overcome by the most terrible fear; and since it permeated me so that I felt on me, as the leprosy scabs clashed and crackled together, the being felt what was happening to me and said: Why are you so afraid of me? You have lived many a life before, when you loved the pleasures of life, when many things created desires in your life, which brought you the joys of everyday life, when you revelled in the pleasures of everyday life; then you loved me, you loved me, you loved me deeply. You did not always know it, but you loved me, and because you loved me so, your soul was attracted to my nature. I became you and now may feed on you. - And my fear became even greater. Then the skeleton transformed into a beautiful archangel; I looked at him. Yes, he said, you loved me once. - Then I sank into a deep sleep and in the morning I found myself lying at the tree, awakening, and wandered further in the world, and now I find you. Since this apparition came to me, the leprosy has become ever worse. As he spoke, the skeleton of the dead man stood there again and covered Jesus, who disappeared and had to continue on his way through the urge that ruled in him. The man also had to go on.

After these three encounters – with the two Essenes, with the despairing man and with the leper – which Jesus of Nazareth had in the form of which I told you last time, he continued on his way and came to John at the Jordan. What is known from the other gospels took place: the Christ-being descended from cosmic heights, took possession of the three bodies of Jesus, in which the Christ-being was to remain for three years.

The next thing I have to tell is the story of the temptation. Here the Akasha Chronicle presents the matter in more detail than the other gospels. I must just mention in advance that I shall relate it as it presented itself to me, but that it may very easily be — because it is difficult to investigate such matters and one must be careful — that later on a correction might be necessary to modify the three stages of the temptation that I shall relate. Because the sequence can sometimes be easily mixed up when observing the Akashic Records, and I am not completely sure of the order. I will only tell the story to the extent that I know it exactly.

After Jesus Christ – for now the Christ was in Jesus – had withdrawn into solitude, the first being to approach him was Lucifer, as Jesus immediately sensed, for two important perceptions first played out in his soul. He remembered how Lucifer and Ahriman had fled from the Essene Gate to join the other human beings when he had stepped through the Essene Gate after a conversation with the Essenes. He had to think of that. The second sensation that passed through his soul reminded him of the desperate man he had met on the way to the Jordan, whom this figure hid and forced him, Jesus, to go on. He now knew how to recognize such things in occult perception: it was Lucifer whom I saw fleeing with Ahriman before the Essene gate; Lucifer stood between me and the despairing man; it is he who now stands before me again.

This story can give us an idea of how occult perceptions are made when they relate to the past. They are truly not something that can be received with the same cold objectivity as other things that are told. These things express deep secrets of the world, enter into all the powers of our soul life and touch not only our imagination and ordinary understanding. That is why it is so difficult to put the words at such a distance from the corresponding occult perceptions, from these researches, that one does not need to remain silent, but can still express the shattering result of the research in words of ordinary language. Only when it is necessary to communicate such things are they communicated.

So Lucifer stood before Christ Jesus. What took place can be expressed with the words of the other gospels – they are descriptions of spiritual processes: “If you acknowledge me, I will give you the kingdoms of this world.

Thus spoke Lucifer to Christ Jesus, in whom, to be sure, the divine essence of the Christ was now present, who could understand Lucifer, but in order to understand, had to make use of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, as it had developed through the Zarathustra ego, which had permeated the astral body of Jesus, so that he could use it as a tool. Therefore, he did not hear the words as a god, so to speak, but only as a human being inspired by God: “Do you recognize me, then my angels will guard your every step.

We must now resort to what I once said in a lecture series, which has now also been published in print: that even in the old solar age, Lucifer was a being who, at that time, was equal to the Christ Being, so that So the Christ-being, who had now descended into a human body, had to feel the high cosmic rank that Lucifer had and had to feel him as an equal despite everything that had happened to him until he became the tempter. So that it can already be understood how Lucifer could address the demand to him: Recognize me. — When Lucifer speaks something like this, really says it in such a way that it pours into the human soul through occult channels, then all the forces of pride and arrogance that live in the human soul swell up powerfully. Therefore there is no other means – when the strongest temptation to succumb to feelings of arrogance and hidden pride arises – than to resist it with the most concentrated soul power.

“If you acknowledge me, I will give you all the realms that you now see around me.” These are vast realms of great splendor, these are whole worlds that Lucifer can spread out in such moments. These realms have only this one peculiarity: one can only feel desire for them out of the justified or unjustified arrogance of the soul. And one escapes only in the same way as Christ Jesus escaped in the past: by realizing this. For in that moment one feels nothing but the arrogance and pride that is in the human soul; all other feelings are paralyzed. But Christ Jesus escaped this temptation and pushed Lucifer away.

Then came the second attack. Now there were two of them. Once again, Christ Jesus had the feelings that allowed him to recognize who they were. The sensations arose again, as they had arisen in him at the two fugitives before the gates of the Essenes, and on the way to the Jordan at the appearance in conversation with the desperate and the skeleton image that had turned into the archangel. He knew that he now had the two tempters before him. The challenge, which the other gospels also correctly reproduce, was to him: “Throw yourself down, nothing will happen to you!”

In such temptations, courage that overcomes all fears speaks in a grandiose way in man, which can also make man willful. Christ Jesus was also able to beat back these two tempters.

Then came a third attack. It proceeded from Ahriman alone. He now stood alone before Christ Jesus. And there came the temptation, which can be expressed in turn with the words of the other Gospels: “Make these stones become bread with my power.”

What was to be said in answer to this question of Ahriman – this is what distinguishes the further course of events in the Fifth Gospel from the way it is related in the other Gospels – could not be answered by Christ Jesus. This question remained partly unanswered, remaining as the last unsolved remnant of the temptation. From this arose an impulse that remained effective for the further experience of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The fact that he could not fully answer the last question of Ahriman during the temptation in solitude established the connection between Christ Jesus and the earthly events that are connected with Ahriman.

If you remember how Ahriman is the lord of death, how he spreads materiality before the soul through the kind of deception he creates, so that the soul accepts the material in the deception, if you remember what was said this summer about the deeds of Ahriman in the evolution of the earth, you will find it understandable that the deeds of Ahriman are embedded in the evolution of the earth. And so it happened that a connection was created by the unanswered rest of this question between the earthly walk of Christ Jesus and the whole evolution of the earth. As it were, connected with the evolution of the earth, in so far as Ahriman is interwoven with it, was Christ Jesus through this unanswered question.

Sometimes one has to describe things in trivial terms; but they are not meant to be trivial. Ahriman makes everything appear in the material world and is preserved in it. But the fact that he handles things in this way means that an event such as Christ Jesus turning stones into bread was not possible. Ahrimanic activity prevented it. It is the same phenomenon that makes it necessary for certain stages of earthly development, in so far as they are connected with Ahriman, to be overcome only in the course of time and with the complete penetration of earthly evolution by the Christ.

What is said in the Cosmic Lord's Prayer: “Self-debts incurred by others, experienced in daily bread,” is expressed in the Ahrimanic powers, of which it is said in this Lord's Prayer: “In which heaven's will does not prevail,” but Ahriman's will, so this must be treated within the earthly lawfulness and cannot be treated merely spiritually. These things are connected with this daily bread. In the outer social world this expresses itself in the fact that we actually need material things in the form of money, of mammon, the crudest image of the Ahrimanic fetter, which then prevents stones in the social life from becoming bread, and makes it necessary for man on earth to remain connected with the Ahrimanic, with the material.

You must develop this thought further yourselves: how the injunction 'Turn stones into bread' is connected with the function of money in the social order. But the fact that the Ahrimanic power remained connected with the earthly change of Christ Jesus in this way enabled Ahriman to later flow into the soul of Judas, and to lead indirectly through Judas to the events related in the other Gospels, which then, indirectly through Judas, made Christ Jesus recognizable to his persecutors. Ahriman in Judas actually brought about Christ's death, and the fact that he was able to do so stems from the question at the temptation that was not fully answered.

But now, in order to understand the whole of Christ Jesus' earthly life, one thing must be taken into account. The Christ-being had entered the three bodies, but not in the same way that the Christ-ego is connected to these three bodies as a human ego is connected to them. At the beginning of the three years of earthly life, the Christ-entity was only loosely connected with the three bodies of Jesus, and then it was drawn more and more into the three bodies. The development in the three years consisted in this, that slowly and gradually this Christ-entity, which at first only permeated the Jesus-entity like an aura, was more and more pressed into the three bodies. This Christ-entity was only pressed into the three bodies as tightly as a human ego shortly before His death on the cross. But this pressing in was a continuous sensation of pain throughout the three years. The process of this complete humanization, which lasted three years and led to the Mystery of Golgotha, was this being pressed into the three bodies. It was the pain of God that had to be felt on earth so that what was necessary could happen to introduce the Christ impulse into earthly evolution. What I said about Jesus' pain and suffering in His youth must be added to this.

When one speaks of divine pain, it could easily be that one is poorly understood today. Maeterlinck, for example, who says many a beautiful thing in his book “On Death,” which is sure to become famous, and who, after all, strove to explain things of the spiritual life with the means he had, could say that a disembodied soul cannot have pain, that only the mortal body can feel pain. That is the height of nonsense, for a body feels no pain, any more than a stone does. Pain is felt by the astral body with the I inside the physical body; besides, there are also mental pains and therefore pain does not stop after death. They can only no longer be caused by disturbances in the physical body, but for the soul they need not stop as a result.

What took place when the three bodies of Jesus were forced through with the Christ-Being, that was for the Christ-Being the highest pain. It will gradually become necessary for humanity to understand that in order to continue the evolution of the Earth from Golgotha, this Christ-Essence had to enter the aura of the Earth through pain, and humanity will have to feel its destiny connected with this Christ-pain. The connection of humanity with the Christ-pain will have to become more and more concrete. Only then will one understand how this pain continued to work in the earth aura in rejuvenating forces for the development of the earth since the mystery of Golgotha.

To understand this mystery of Golgotha better and better will be the task of progressive spiritual development. Some things that play a major role in present-day culture will indeed have to be overcome. We are currently facing a crisis in our understanding of Christianity, a real crisis. Of course, I am not talking about what can be said about Christianity by this or that popular theology. I would just like to draw attention to elementary events of incomprehension in the present. At one of those meetings in 1910, where the historical Christ was discussed, a much-talked-about theologian spoke to emphasize that the words of Christ Jesus' teaching were only summarized teachings that had existed before: “I will be grateful to you if I can be shown just one sentence among the sayings of Jesus Christ that was not already there in some form or other.” If a liberal theological investigator can prove today what that person claimed, he is a great man for our contemporaries, because how convincing it must be if one can really prove that all of Christ's sayings were said earlier by others, that they were therefore nothing new. To the one who sees things through, such a saying appears in a different light. Imagine that Goethe had made a poem, not yet written it down, only spoken it, and a child who was listening had shouted: These are all words that I have already heard. The theologian who hears nothing but what he already knows and does not realize what is important, because that stands above the sayings that were there before, as a Goethean poem stands above the individual words that the child has already heard. If one does not know what to consider the main thing, and believes that one is doing real theology today by adhering to words in this way, adhering to what is true, that the sayings have already “been there,” it is implied that we are in a deep crisis with regard to the understanding of Christianity, from which one can already understand that a real understanding of Christ can only come into the world when today's theology, which has the public office of watching over the understanding of Christ, first dies. That is what matters: that one learns to sense the full magnitude of the facts that took place around Golgotha.

The Akasha Chronicle shows us yet more significant things: Since the Christ-Being was not immediately closely connected with the bodies of Jesus, but only loosely and externally, the following could occur in the early days: At times the Christ-entity was externally connected with the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, was in such connection among the disciples and nearest followers, spoke with them. But that was not always necessary. The outer covers could be in any place and the Christ-entity could go away from them; it could then appear as a spiritual entity far away here or there. Many appearances of Christ are such that only the Christ-being appears to the disciples, the followers and also to others. Later, he often walked around the country with the disciples, teaching, speaking, healing. While he was walking with ten or fifteen or even more followers, and the Christ-being pressed more and more into his bodies, another phenomenon emerged. It was repeatedly shown that one or other of the disciples suddenly felt inspired. Then his face changed so that you could see from the outside how he took on a completely different physiognomy. And when something like that happened and he spoke the most glorious words of Christ, the actual outward appearance of Christ Jesus changed so that he looked like the simplest person in the group.

This was repeated over and over again. This is how it appears in the Akashic Records. As a result, the persecutors never knew who in the wandering group was the one they were actually looking for, so they faced the danger of seizing someone who was not the right one. Then the right one would have escaped. That is why the betrayal of Judas was necessary. As it is usually told, it is not very ingeniously told. For if you think about the situation, you ask yourself: Why was Judas' kiss necessary? It was only necessary for the reason I just hinted at.

Much that is mysterious is connected with the Christ's earthly human walk, but what makes the most harrowing impression shows when one turns one's gaze to his death. Here it must be said, and I say it without fear, because it is a fact for occult knowledge, that at the most important points in historical-spiritual events, the moral and physical world orders, which otherwise flow separately, touch each other again. When this was most strongly the case in the evolution of the earth, the Mystery of Golgotha occurred.

When Christ was nailed to the cross, a widespread eclipse occurred. It was not yet possible to determine from the Akasha Chronicle where it had come from, whether it was of earthly or cosmic origin. But it was there, and what such an eclipse means can be observed occultly during a solar eclipse. I do not want to say that it was a solar eclipse at that time; it could also have been a significant cloud eclipse. But it is different when the sun is eclipsed in the sky during the day than when it is simply night. But the effect of such a general eclipse can already be seen in the case of a solar eclipse caused by the moon, for example. During such an event, great occult changes take place in all living beings, humans, animals and plants; the entire structure, for example, between the physical body and the etheric body of plants changes, the whole world looks quite different and with it the earth aura. The last time it happened, it made a particularly moving impression on me when I was able to observe it during a solar eclipse during a short lecture cycle in Stockholm. It is a fact that great changes are taking place in that part of the Earth's aura where the eclipse is at its greatest. And it was through such a part of the Earth's aura that the Christ Impulse flowed into the evolution of the Earth at the time of the death of Christ Jesus on the cross. That is the wonderful, sacred event of the eclipse around the cross on Golgotha.

The other thing is what I already hinted at in Karlsruhe and what is also in the printed cycle of Karlsruhe, which is also shown in the Fifth Gospel, how the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth was, as it were, was absorbed by the physical earth, for when the body was laid in the tomb, an earthquake-like shaking of the earth did indeed take place, combined with a storm, so that a fissure in the earth opened up and received the body. The storm whirled in such a way that the peculiar winding and position of the cloths actually resulted, as described in the Gospel of John. The cleft caused by the earthquake closed up, and so the body could not be found, of course. Only the answer from occult regions could be given to those seeking: “He whom you seek is no longer here.” A similar event occurred later, when many in Europe set out as crusaders to seek the memory of Christ at Golgotha. They too received the answer, albeit not audibly, “He whom you seek is no longer here.”

For the Christ Impulse spiritually permeates the souls of men, and as a fact it also works in those who do not understand it. One should not speak only of the great teacher. What happened works as a fact and gave the great impulses for the further development of humanity. The task of true occult research in this field will be to learn to understand better and better how to seek the Christ differently, so that one would not have to be given the answer: “He whom you seek is no longer here.” But if one wants to seek Him in an ever more spiritual way, one will be able to find the true answer that corresponds to reality.

This is what I wanted to tell you today, and I believe that these communications are of great importance for the description of the mystery of Golgotha in contrast to the abstractions of theologians. The way these facts appear in the Akasha Chronicle shows that something very important happened at that time.

The occultist is convinced of the following: Once the minds of humanity have risen somewhat above all that now dominates souls with so much pride of knowledge and illogicality, as I had to characterize it at the beginning, once the minds of right thinking have become interwoven, then - despite what some might believe: What has thinking to do with receiving such communications and trying to recognize them? — then the mind will prepare itself to truly understand even those things that seemingly have nothing to do with thinking, because it is precisely through true thinking that the soul is imbued with the genuine sense of truth, which does not perceive what is given in these two lectures as ridiculous, but strives to accept it as carefully conducted research from the Akasha Chronicle.

It now falls to me to speak of things that have arisen in the course of our anthroposophical life, of spiritual scientific research gleaned from the Akasha Chronicle and related to the life of Jesus. In Kristiania, I have already compiled some material about the life of Christ Jesus. I have also communicated various things in other cities, and I would like to say a few words to you as well, from certain points of view. In general, I emphasize that it will not be easy to talk about it, because direct results are still quite badly noted in the present, even if it is generally admitted that there is a spirit that one speaks of abstractly. But when one gives concrete messages from the field of the spiritual development of the world, one finds not only well-meaning critics, but also those who have gone wild, as was the case with the message about the two Jesus children, which is very plausible for the objective thinker. Therefore, I ask that today's messages be treated with reverence, because if they are presented outside of our context, they may be misunderstood and experience fierce opposition.

But there are also aspects according to which one feels obliged to communicate these things. One aspect is that in our time there is a real need for a renewal of the understanding of Christ Jesus, a renewed looking into what actually happened in Palestine, what took place as the Mystery on Golgotha. But there is yet another aspect. This is that occult insight is interwoven with the whole attitude that flows from spiritual science, and this brings us the realization of how infinitely healthy and invigorating it is for the human soul when they can often think of what they can consider to be one of the greatest events. It can be a help to these souls to remember the Mystery of Golgotha, to remember the concrete things, to remember what can still be investigated in detail today. And today one can still investigate things with occult insight. So I would like to emphasize the spiritual value of remembering such events and would like to go into some of the things that emerge from the Akasha Chronicle as a kind of gospel, as the Fifth Gospel. The four others were not written simultaneously either; they were written under the inspiration of the Akashic Records. We live today in an age in which the words of Christ Jesus are being fulfilled: “I am with you always.” In special times, he is especially close to us, proclaiming new things that have been fulfilled at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Today I want to speak of what is called the Pentecost event. For me, it was the starting point of the Fifth Gospel. I first turned my gaze to the souls of the apostles and disciples, who were not only gathered according to tradition, but were truly gathered at the time of Pentecost. There one saw that there was something in their souls that they felt like a strange coming to themselves. For they knew something that had happened to them. They said to each other: We have experienced something in a remarkable way. — For they looked back on experiences that they had gone through as in a higher dream, in a different state of consciousness. In a higher sense it was as it is in a lower sense for the individual human being when he has experienced something while dreaming and remembers it and says to himself: I have gone through this dream and now afterwards it becomes clear to me before waking consciousness. - So it was also at the Feast of Pentecost that they said to themselves: It was as if the ordinary consciousness had been put to sleep. The events emerged as if in memory, which they knew they had experienced, but they had not experienced them with their ordinary daily consciousness. They knew that now. So they now remembered: We once walked with him who was so dear, so precious and valuable to us. Then, at a certain point in time, it was as if he had been taken from us. It seemed to them as if the memory of walking with Jesus on the physical plane had been interrupted, and as if they had experienced what followed as if in a dream.

Going back in time, they experienced what is described in the Protestant doctrine as the Ascension, and going back further, they experienced being with Christ Jesus in a certain way. They now knew: We were together, but we were like dreamers back then; only now can we fully know how we were with him. — They experienced the time they had spent with him like dreamers after the resurrection. They now experienced this in their memories. Then they went back and experienced for themselves what the resurrection and death on the cross was. I can say that there is a tremendous, profound impression when one first sees, as at the Feast of Pentecost, the souls of the apostles looking back at the event of Golgotha. And I must confess that at first I had the impression of not looking directly at the Mystery of Golgotha, but of looking into the souls of the Apostles as they had seen it, looking from the Feast of Pentecost: after all, they had not actually experienced it with their physical eyes, had not consciousness, but only afterwards did they realize that the Mystery of Golgotha was there, for their physical consciousness ceased to be aware of it some time before Christ Jesus had to undergo all that is described as flagellation, crowning with thorns and crucifixion. If the expression is not misunderstood because it is relatively trivial, I would still like to use it: the disciples had dozed off and dreamt through what had happened.

It was touching to see how, for example, Peter accomplishes what is described as a denial. He denies Christ, but not out of a moral defect; rather, he is as if in a dream. In fact, in his ordinary consciousness, the connection with Christ does not exist. He is asked: “Do you belong to Christ Jesus?” At that moment he does not know, for his etheric body had undergone such a transformation that he is not aware of the connection at that moment. He endures the whole time and walks with the Risen One. What the Risen One accomplishes in his soul penetrates deeply into his soul, but it only becomes conscious in retrospect at the Feast of Pentecost. Now the meaningful words that Christ Jesus speaks sound differently in the soul, the words that he speaks to Peter and James as he takes them with him up the mountain: “Watch and pray!” And indeed they fell into a kind of different state of consciousness, into a kind of dream trance.

When they were together and in consultation, Christ Jesus was also among them in the etheric body, without them knowing it, and He spoke with them and they with Him, but for them it all happened as if in a dream. It only became a conscious event in retrospect at the Feast of Pentecost. First they went with Him, then consciousness disappeared and afterwards they woke up again. They thought: First he went to his death on the cross and died on the cross, then what the resurrection is took place, and he came again in his spiritual body, dealt with us and let the secrets of the world trickle into our souls. Now all this is presented to us, which we have experienced in the other state of consciousness.

Above all, two impressions are deeply significant. There are the hours before death. Of course, it is tempting to make all kinds of scientific objections; but if you imagine that, by directing your gaze to the Akasha Chronicle, the events are objective reality, then you may relate them. First of all, there is one thing that presents itself. Before one's death, one sees an eclipse lasting several hours spreading over the earth, which gives the clairvoyant the impression of a solar eclipse; but it could also have been an eclipse of the clouds. Then one can perceive how, at the moment of dying on the cross, the Christ Impulse, passing through this eclipse, unites with the earth aura. The connection of the cosmic Christ impulse with the earth aura can be seen in this eclipse before his death. Then one has that great, powerful impression, as this entity, which lived in the body of Jesus, now pours itself out over the spiritual-soul aura of the earth, so that the souls of men are now, henceforth, as if drawn into it. To see in spirit the cross on Golgotha, and to see the Christ pour out over earthly life through the darkened earth, is an enormously overwhelming impression; for one sees in the picture that which had to take place for the development of mankind on earth.

And now the Entombment: here one can follow, as I already mentioned in the Karlsruhe cycle, how a natural event presents itself as the outer expression of a spiritual event. When Christ lay in the tomb, a mighty earthquake with a whirlwind came over the earth. It was particularly significant that it turned out, also from the Akasha Chronicle, what we today call the Fifth Gospel: that after the whirlwind the cloths lay in the tomb, as it is faithfully described in the Gospel of John. What I have now described, the apostles experienced as the Mystery of Golgotha when looking back at their own encounters with Christ after the resurrection. At Pentecost, they first experienced for their consciousness what they had gone through as if in a dream. |

Christ Jesus was truly alone when He accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha, for His disciples had not only fled, but their consciousness had also fled. They were in a kind of dream state and experienced the events in such a way that it was only at Pentecost that they had a full retrospective in their consciousness. In a peculiar way they experienced this meeting with Christ after the resurrection, so that they saw the following in pictures: Here and there we were with him, he spoke; only now do we realize this. But now they experienced something strange. They saw the pictures of their experiences with Christ as they corresponded to their being together after the resurrection. But to them it was as if another one always showed up in alternation: an image always appeared that reminded them of a physical togetherness that they had experienced as if in a dream trance. But two events always presented themselves to them: a being together after the resurrection and a being together before they had fallen into a trance, when they were still in the physical body with Christ, recognizable to the physical consciousness. The events appeared to them as two superimposed images. One showed a memory of a physical event, the other a reawakening of what they had gone through with Christ in a different state of consciousness. This superimposition of two images made it clear to them what had actually taken place in time. What had taken place for the development on earth was clearly evident to them at the Feast of Pentecost. If one wants to describe what they went through, one is confronted with two grandiose and profound events. What had taken place was evoked by the Pentecost event. But that which had been in the cosmos earlier is now on earth, that is what presented itself to them. All this only becomes clear to us when we see it in the Akasha Chronicle.

Let us start with the experiences that a person has. Before descending to a new earthly incarnation, a person first experiences spiritual facts. He then goes through the state of the germ and birth, passes through the material body into physical life on earth and finally returns to the spiritual world. This is the development of his soul. These stages are different for every being. We will try to apply them to the Christ-being.

Christ passes through his states in a different way. From his baptism to the mystery of Golgotha there is a kind of germinal state. His dying on the cross is his birth, his life with the apostles after his resurrection is a wandering on earth. The transition into the earth aura is what the transition into the spiritual world is for the human soul. Exactly the opposite occurs for Christ. He seeks the opposite for his destiny. The human soul goes from the earth into the spiritual world, the Christ goes from the spiritual world into the earthly sphere, unites with the earth in order to pass over into the earth aura through the great sacrifice. This is the transition of the Christ to Devachan. And now in the earth aura, the Christ lives his self-chosen Devachan. Man ascends from earth to heaven; the Christ, conversely, descends from heaven to earth to live with men. This is his Devachan.

The fact that the God has thus entered into His earthly existence, appeared to the minds of the Apostles and disciples at Pentecost, in the image of the Ascension, actually of the descent to earth, as one of the last events. Thus it was clear to their feelings what had happened, what fate had befallen the evolution of the earth. At Pentecost, the Apostles felt transformed and filled with a new awareness: that was the descent of the Spirit, the inner illumination of a spirit-filled realization.

Of course, when recounting these events, one can appear to people to be a dreamer or a fantasist, but on the other hand it is understandable that the great events that have taken place in earthly life cannot be expressed in ordinary terms. Then the disciples saw, looking back, only now understanding, the three-year life of Christ Jesus from the baptism of John to the mystery of Golgotha. I would like to make a few remarks about this life.

I would like to start with a description of the events as they present themselves to the observer of the Akashic Records. Before the baptism of John in the Jordan, the spiritual gaze falls on an event of a very special kind in the life of Jesus, into which the Christ had not yet poured himself. At that time, Jesus, in his thirtieth year, had a conversation with his stepmother or foster mother. From the age of twelve, he was not with his biological mother, but an ever deeper bond had developed between Jesus and his stepmother. I have already related the experiences of Jesus from the age of twelve to eighteen, to twenty-four, to thirty. These were profound events. Here I would like to tie in with an event that took place before the baptism of John. It is a conversation with the foster mother. It was a conversation in which Jesus of Nazareth let his soul pass before his mother, everything he had experienced since the age of twelve. There he was able to tell her, so that his words were imbued with deep, powerful feelings, what he had actually experienced in his soul, more or less alone. He told her vividly and forcefully. He spoke of how, during these years, from his twelfth to his eighteenth, the high teachings of God, once revealed to the Hebrew prophets, had come as an illumination to his soul. For that is what had come to Jesus as an inspiration during the period from his twelfth to his eighteenth year. It had begun when he had been in the temple among the scribes. It was an inspiration, as it was once revealed to the prophets in the great, ancient times. It happened that he had to suffer pain under the impression of these inner realizations. It had become deeply ingrained in his soul: the old truths were given to the Hebrew people at a time when their bodies were such that they could understand them. But now their bodies were no longer suited to receive it, as they were in the time of the old prophets.

A word must be pronounced that characterizes the tremendously painful experience in the life of Jesus; in the abstract, one must say it, although it is an enormously incisive word. There was a language in the Hebrew period that came down from the spiritual-divine realm. Now the old language rose up again, shining forth from the soul, but there was no one to understand it. One would preach to deaf ears when speaking of the greatest teachings. This was Jesus' greatest sorrow; he described it to his stepmother.

Then he described a second event that he had experienced on his travels during his eighteenth to twenty-fourth year in the regions of Palestine where pagans lived. He traveled around and worked as a carpenter. In the evening he sat with the people. It was a gathering that people did not experience with anyone else. Through the great pain, something had developed in him that finally transformed into the magic of love that flowed through every word. This magic of words worked in conversation with people. What had such a great effect was that something like a mysterious power was poured out between his words. It was so significant that long after he had left, the people sat together again in the evening and it seemed to them as if he were still there, more than just physically. They sat together and had the impression, had the shared vision, as if he were reappearing. So he remained alive among the people in numerous places, he was spiritually present.

Once he arrived at a place where there was an old pagan cult altar. The sacrificial altar had fallen into disrepair. The priests had left because a terrible disease had taken hold of the people there. When Jesus came there, people gathered. Jesus announced himself through the impression he created as something special. The gentile people had rushed there and gathered around the altar, expecting a priest to offer a sacrifice. Jesus told his stepmother this. He saw clearly what had become of the gentile sacrificial service. He saw, as he looked over the people, what had gradually become of the gentile gods: evil, demonic entities, that is what he saw at that time. Then he fell down and now, in a different state of consciousness, he experienced what happened during the pagan sacrifices. The old gods were no longer there, as they had been in earlier times, but demonic entities appeared, feeding on the people and making them ill.

He had experienced this in a different state of consciousness after he had fallen. Now he told all this, and also how the people had fled, but also how he saw the demons withdraw. Theoretically, one can determine that the old paganism had declined and no longer contained the great wisdom of the past. But Jesus experienced this in direct vision. Now he could tell his mother: If the voice of heaven were to come down to the Hebrews again, as it once came to the prophets, there would be no one to understand it; but the pagan gods no longer come either. Demons have taken their place. Today, even the pagan revelations find no one who could receive them. — That was the second great pain.

In moving words, he described to his mother the third great sorrow he had experienced, when he was allowed to join the Essene community. These people wanted to work their way up to seeing by perfecting the individual human soul, and thus to learn from the divine worlds what would otherwise be impossible for Jews and Gentiles to perceive. But only a few people could experience this, and that could be achieved through the way of life that had become established among the Essenes. Yet Jesus had united with the occult community of the Essenes for a time. When he left them, he saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing from the Essene gate into the rest of the world. He had also had a visionary conversation with Buddha within the Essene enclosure. And now he knew: there is a way to ascend to where one unites with the Divine-Spiritual, but only a few can reach it. If everyone wanted to achieve it, everyone would have to renounce it. Only a few can achieve it at the expense of the many, by freeing themselves from Lucifer and Ahriman; but then Lucifer and Ahriman go to the other humanity. It was not possible, either according to the Jewish or the Gentile or Essene tradition, to open up the essential connection with the divine spiritual world to humanity in general.

During this conversation, Jesus' whole soul was united with all the pain. All the strength of his ego lay in these words. Something passed from him to his adoptive mother, so strongly was he connected with what he was saying. His being passed over to his mother with his words, so that he was as if outside of his ego, had stepped out of his ego. The mother became something completely different as a result. While something had gone out of him, the mother had received a new self that had sunk into her, she had become a new personality.

If one now investigates and tries to find out what this process consisted of, a strange thing emerges: the physical mother of this Jesus, who had been in the spiritual world since he was twelve, had now descended with her soul and completely spiritualized and filled the soul of the adoptive mother so that she became another. But he felt as if his ego had left him: the Zarathustra ego had passed over into the spiritual world. Driven by the urge to do something, Jesus now went to the Jordan, impelled by inner necessity, to John the Baptist, the Essene. And John performed the “baptism in the Jordan. The Zarathustra-I had gone out and the Christ-Being descended: He had been imbued with the Christ-Essence. The adoptive mother had been imbued with the soul of that mother who had dwelt in the spiritual world. But He now walked on earth in the bodies of Jesus, He, the Christ. This connection was not immediately and completely established; both happened gradually.

I will tell the individual events from which it can be seen how the Christ was initially only loosely connected to the body of Jesus and gradually became more and more firmly connected to it. Once you have become acquainted with the suffering and pain of Jesus from the age of twelve to thirty, you are only now becoming acquainted with the tremendous increase in this pain of Jesus, now that in the following three years God connected more and more with man. This continuous, ever more intense connection of the God with the human being was an equally intense increase of pain. That unspeakable thing had to happen to make it possible for humanity to ascend to the spiritual powers of origin, that is shown by the suffering of the God during the three years that he stayed on earth.

It is not to be expected that there will be much understanding for these events in the present time. There is a book that should be read because of its paradox: 'Death', by Maurice Maeterlinck. This book says that the spirit cannot suffer, only the body can suffer. In fact, the physical body can suffer no more than a stone. Physical pain is mental pain. Only that which is spiritual, which has an astral body, can suffer. That is why a God can suffer much more than a human being. The Christ experienced sufferings unto death, the most intense of which occurred when the Christ united with the presence of Jesus. He conquered death by merging with the earth aura.

Earlier I described in a more abstract way how the Christ event stands at the center of the evolution of the earth. This most important event loses nothing when it is considered in its concrete reality. Everything comes to life when all the facts are described, but it must be seen correctly. Once the Fifth Gospel is available – humanity will need it, perhaps only after a long time – people will look at this most important event in a different way. The Fifth Gospel will be a source of comfort and health, a book of strength. At the end of the fourth gospel there are words that indicate that more will come: the world would not be able to grasp the books that would have to be written. - This is a true word. One can take courage in another way when new facts about Palestine come to light, because the four gospels actually came about in the same way as the fifth, except that this fifth will appear two thousand years later.

Once the Fifth Gospel is here, it will be no different from the others in the way it came about. But there will be people who will not recognize it because the human soul is selfish. Suppose Shakespeare's work “Hamlet” was unknown and “Hamlet” appeared today: today people would scold him. And so the Fifth Gospel will have to struggle through. People need something that those who want to understand will really understand. It will only be necessary to acknowledge that, as in the past, revelations can only come from the spirit. But the means and ways to do so are different. In this respect, our time has special tasks.

In what period did what I have described take place? It could only take place in the same period as the one in which it occurred: the fourth post-Atlantean period. If it had occurred in the third or second period, for example, there would have been numerous people who were familiar with the ancient wisdom of the Indians, for whom the wisdom would have been self-evident. Christ would have been less understood in the Persian and still less in the Egyptian period. But understanding was completely lost in the fourth period. Therefore, the teaching could only penetrate minds as a matter of faith. It was the worst time for understanding, which people were furthest from. But the effects of Christ do not depend on what people can understand. For Christ was not a teacher of the world, but He Who, as a spiritual Entity, had accomplished something, Who had descended into the aura of the Earth in order to live among men. This can be symbolized in the soul when the women came to the tomb and the spiritual Being said to them: “He whom you seek is not here!”

This was repeated when a large group of Europeans went on a crusade to the Holy Sepulchre. There people went to the physical sites of Golgotha. They were also told: “He whom you seek is no longer here! for he had gone to Europe. While the pilgrims were drawn to Asia by their hearts, Europe began to awaken intellectually, but the understanding of Christ was on the wane. It was only in the 12th century that the demand for proofs of God's existence arose. What does this tell us about more recent times? Do you ever need to prove who the thief is when you catch him in your garden? You only need proof if you do not know him. People sought proof of God when they had lost their understanding; because what you know, you do not need to prove.

Christ was there, permeating the souls. Everything that has happened historically has happened under the influence of the Christ, because the souls lived in the Christ impulse. Now humanity must enter into a conscious grasp of the events of the time. Therefore, humanity must get to know the Christ even better. Linked to this is the realization of the man Jesus of Nazareth. This will become more and more necessary. It is not easy to speak about this, but in a certain respect it is something that presents itself as a higher duty in the present time: to speak to a few souls about the man Jesus of Nazareth, to speak about what we can call the Fifth Gospel.

Cologne, 18 December, 1913

Before continuing with the study of the life of Jesus Christ, I would like to mention some indications about the way such things are found. With few words such a comprehensive subject can of course only be characterized. But I want you to have an idea of what we can call occult research, at the stage where one can penetrate to such concrete facts as those which, for example, we considered here yesterday.

To begin with, we can say that this research rests on a study of the Akasha Chronicle. In general terms, I described how such reading in the Akasha Chronical is to be understood in articles in the magazine “Lucifer-Gnosis” which appeared under the title “From the Akasha Chronicle”. It should be clear that different facts about cosmic events and cosmic being must be researched in different ways, so now I would like to be more specific about what has already been said.

Basically in the universe there is nothing but consciousness. Except for consciousness, everything else belongs in the domain of maya, or the great illusion. You can find these facts in two places—in others as well—but especially in the description of the evolution of the earth from ancient Saturn to Vulcan in An Outline Of Occult Science, where the evolution from ancient Saturn to ancient Sun, from Sun to ancient Moon, from Moon to Earth, and so on, are described as stages of consciousness. This means that if one wants to reach these important facts, he must ascend to a stage of cosmic events where they consist of stages of consciousness. Therefore, if we are describing realities we can only describe various stages of consciousness. It is also included in another book published this summer: The Threshold of the Spiritual World. Shown there is how through a gradual ascension of the seer's vision it rises from the objects and processes around us, which disappear into nothingness, melt away so to speak, and finally reaches the region where there are only beings in various stages of consciousness. So the true realities of the world are beings in the various stages of consciousness. Due to the fact that we live in the human stage of consciousness, and in this stage of consciousness have no complete overview of the realities involved, the effect is that what is unreal appears to us as real.

You have only to ask yourselves the following question. Is a human strand of hair a reality, even in a narrow sense? Does it have an independent existence? It would be nonsense to say that a human strand of hair has an independent existence. It does make sense to consider it as growing from the human body, otherwise it is not possible for it to exist on its own. Everyone would agree that it is nonsense to speak of a strand of hair as having an independent existence. A plant is often seen as an individual being, but is no more an individual being than is a strand of hair. For what the strand of hair is to the head, the plant is to the earth organism, and it makes no sense to consider the plant in isolation. We must think of the earth as analogous to man and all plants on the earth as belonging to the earth, as does the hair on one's head. It is no more possible for a plant to exist as an independent being outside the earth organism than it is for hair to exist without a head to grow on. It is important to know when to cease considering something as an autonomous being. But everything which the human being can attain to which does not have its roots in consciousness is not an independent being. Everything is rooted in consciousness, only in different ways.

Let us take thought, that is, what we as humans think. At first these thoughts are in our consciousness, but not merely in our consciousness. At the same time they are in the consciousness of the beings of the next higher hierarchy, the angeloi, the angels. But whereas we may have one thought, all our thoughts are the angels' thoughts. The angels think our consciousness. Thus you can see that when we ascend to clairvoyance, we must develop a different feeling towards perceiving the beings of the higher worlds than is the case in ordinary reality. If we thinks as we do in the physical-sensory earthly existence, we cannot achieve higher clairvoyance. One must not merely think, one must also be thought, and be aware that one is being thought. It is not easy—for human words have not yet been devised to describe what the feeling about this perceiving is. But to use a comparison: we make all kinds of movements and if we don't observe these movements in ourselves, but in the eyes of another and see there the reflection of our own movements we say to ourselves: by observing in this way we know that we are doing this or that with our hands or with our facial expressions. One already has this feeling at the next stage of clairvoyance. We know in general that we are thinking, but we see ourselves [doing it] in the consciousness of the beings of the next higher hierarchy. We let the angels think our thoughts. We must realize that we are not conducting our thoughts, but that the beings of the next hierarchy are conducting them. We must feel the interweaving, undulating consciousness of the angels. We then receive information about the continuous impulse of evolution, for example about the truth of the Christ-impulse, how it continues to be active now. The angels can think this impulse; we humans can also think and describe it, if we devote our thoughts to the angels so they think in us. We can achieve this by continuous practice, as I described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. From a certain moment on we connect a feeling, a sensation with the words: “Your soul doesn't think any more, it is a thought which the angels think”. And when this becomes a truth for the individual human experience, we experience the thoughts about the truths of the Christ-impulse, also other thoughts about the wise guidance of earth evolution.

Those things related to the epochs of the earth's evolution—the ancient Indian epoch, the ancient Persian epoch and so forth—are thought by the archangels. By means of further [meditative] practice we are able not only to be thought by the angels, but to be experienced by the archangels. You must then come to the point where you know that you are delivering your life to the life of the archangels. In The Threshold of the Spiritual World I go into this in more detail: how you have the feeling, when you continue the exercises—I also spoke about this in Munich, using a grotesque example—as if you were to stick your head in an anthill, and the ants are the thoughts in movement. Whereas in ordinary life we think that we think our thoughts, through practice we realize that the thoughts think in us, because the angels think in us. And continuing with practice we arrive at the feeling that we are brought to various regions of the world by the archangels and thus learn about those regions. To correctly describe the [ancient] Indian or Egyptian cultures one must understand the meaning of: “Your soul has been brought to this or that time by an archangel”. It is as though our life body fluids knew that they support the life process and are carried through the organism as the blood is. Thus the seer knows that he is conducted through the life process of the world by the archangels. But where individual experiences of the soul are concerned, they can only be investigated if the soul gives meaning to the words: The soul delivers itself as food to the Archai, the spirits of personality.

What I just said sounds grotesque, but it is nevertheless true that one cannot investigate such concrete facts as the life of Jesus of Nazareth before one gives meaning to the words: One is eaten as spiritual food and thus serves the Spirits of Personality. Obviously this sounds like madness to people who live in the outer world. Of course it does! Nevertheless it is just as true as the piece of bread that enters our stomachs becomes our food, and if it could think it would know that its existence has meaning and purpose in that we make it our food. It is just as true that we humans have the purpose of serving the Archai as food. While we walk around here on earth we are at the same time beings who are continually consumed, eaten by the Archai. You will not deny that people in ordinary life don't know this, and that they would call it madness if someone told them something like this. Man is for the Archai what a grain of wheat is for you as a physical human being. Don't only know this theoretically, but live in respect to the Archai as a grain of wheat would live were it to be ground to porridge by our teeth and pass through our pallets and stomach with the awareness: I am human food. Therefore also know: I am the Archai's food, I am digested by the Archai; that is their life, which I live in them. To vividly know this means to enter the consciousness of the Spirits of Personality, the Archai. Just as what it means to enter the consciousness of the Archangels when one knows: Your soul is brought to this or that epoch by the Archangels; and what it means to enter the consciousness of the Angels when one knows: My thoughts are thought by the angels. If we wish to enter the higher worlds, the conditions of experience must be different. It is necessary to be knowingly consumed by the Spirits of Personality if concrete facts such as the life of Jesus of Nazareth in human evolution are to be investigated.

Perhaps what I have said will serve to show that this occult research is completely different from research in the outer world. If you can think the analogies through, they provide the correct hints: You can imagine yourselves as the grains of wheat ground into porridge by your teeth in order to have a mental image, which is an analogy for reading in the consciousness of the Archai. One must be mentally ground up and feel it. It means that higher research is not possible without inner pain and suffering. If it is so abstract that it doesn't hurt, as is research in the physical world, then research in the higher worlds cannot be achieved if it is to be more than complete fantasy.

Therefore my efforts yesterday in describing the life of Jesus to separate it from abstract concepts and descriptions. Remember what I said in an attempt to point out what is important. I said: this was the life of Jesus of Nazareth from his twelfth, eighteenth and up to his thirtieth year. What I described is less important than having a vivid feeling of what Jesus' soul went through, to feel the pain of loneliness, the endless pain of having to stand alone with the untruths about which there were many ears to hear. I wanted to point out Jesus of Nazareth's feelings. His great threefold compassion for humanity from his twelfth to his thirtieth year. Not by describing the events to yourselves or to others, will you know something about the meaning of Jesus' experience as preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather that by conceiving of an idea—a mental picture—which shocks and moves your souls, a picture of what that man Jesus of Nazareth had to suffer before the Mystery of Golgotha in order that the Christ-impulse could stream into the earth's evolution.

In this way a vivid idea of the Christ-impulse is brought about in that the suffering is reawakened, so that one must describe these facts which are related to such things by trying to bring to mind feelings. You can see this in how I tried to characterize in few words what Akasha research is. The more you are able to feel in yourselves the billowing, undulating feelings in a being such as Jesus of Nazareth was, the more you fathom such mysteries.

I have often spoken about what happened then—that through the baptism in the Jordan, after Jesus of Nazareth's three bodies [physical, etheric, astral] were spiritualized by the Zarathustra-I in them, the Christ-being entered them, that is, a being from the realm of the spiritual world descended whose destiny was to live bound in a human body for three years. It is important to understand what that fact means. Because this fact is fundamentally different from all other facts in the earth's evolution. Here we are entering into something which is not merely a human event in the earth's evolution. This must by clear.

We can consider this from a human standpoint. Then we say: “Once there was a man as we have described him. He received the Christ-being, the Christ-impulse”. But we can also consider it differently, although the considerations are rather skimpy on representations, that's doesn't matter. By means of our spiritual-scientific preparation, we will be able to make something of them.

Imagine that we are sitting in a council considering the Mystery of Golgotha not as men, but in a council of the higher hierarchies as the beings of the higher hierarchies are considering the Mystery of Golgotha. In a spiritual sense this change in viewpoint is possible. A comparison could be: We have a mountain before us and halfway up is a town. We can see the town from below, but it can also be observed from the summit. Naturally we mostly observe the Mystery of Golgotha from a human point of view. But we could also climb up to the sphere of the higher hierarchies. How then would we speak of the Mystery of Golgotha? We would have to say: When the earth's evolution began, the beings of the higher hierarchies had certain intentions for humanity. They wanted to guide the earth's evolution in a certain way. But Lucifer inserted himself into this intended guidance of humanity's earthly affairs. So if we are looking down at earth evolution as a being of the higher hierarchies, we see that Lucifer changed the direction of this evolution from our original intention.

And we say: Not everything that happens down there happens through us. Lucifer is continually intervening. Due to Lucifer's intervention, and later Ahriman's, a foreign element is present in human evolution. It could be expressed in such a way that the beings of the higher hierarchies say: “To a certain extent the sphere of the earth has been lost to us. There are forces there which distance the earth with its humanity from us”.

Guidance by the higher hierarchies is gradual; each participates according to its powers, first of all the lowest. All the hierarchies participate in earth's evolution, up to highest, but these latter leave certain tasks to their subordinates—to the Angels, Archangels and Archai. So they are the first to be active in the evolutionary process.

We transfer ourselves—in all humility of course—to the council of the higher hierarchies, not the council of men. Then we can say: “Our messengers, the Angels, Archangels and Archai are there; they could carry out our orders very well if foreign powers were not present in the sphere of earth”. So the great council decides something like the following: "Since we were not able to prevent Lucifer and Ahriman from interfering in the earth's evolution, our subordinates, the Angles, Archangels and Archai, have lost the ability, from a certain point in time, to do for humanity what had to be done according to our intentions." And this point in time was when the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

As this point in time approached, the gods of the higher hierarchies had to say: “We are losing the possibility for our subordinates to intervene in human souls. Because we could not deter Lucifer and Ahriman, we have only been able to act through our subordinates until this point in time. Thus forces arise in human souls, which can no longer be conducted by the Angels, Archangels and Archai. The human beings are turning away from us through the powers of Lucifer and Ahriman”.

That was really—if I may express it so—the mood in heaven as the point in time approached which was calculated to be the beginning of the new era. Because their subordinates could no longer sufficiently care for humanity from a certain point in time, it became the “angst” of the gods. You will not misunderstand this, for you are prepared by spiritual science to understand that expressions have a different sense and feeling value when used to characterize the higher worlds.

This divine anxiety grew, ever more tantalizing, ever more worryingly—if I may say so—in the heavens. So the decision was made to send the Sun Spirit down, to sacrifice him by deciding: “He shall choose a different lot from now on than that of sitting in the council of the gods: he shall enter the arena where human souls live. We sacrifice this Son Spirit to them. Until now he has lived among us, in the spheres of the higher hierarchies; now he will enter the earth aura through the portal of Jesus”.

That's how it looked from above in the council of the gods as the Mystery of Golgotha approached. It was an affair of the gods who guide the earth, not merely a human affair. It can be understood as not merely asking: What must be done so humanity is not lost on its precipitous path? Rather the question: What should we gods do in order to create a counterbalance for what has happened because we had to allow Lucifer and Ahriman into earth evolution?

And one can then create a feeling that the Mystery of Golgotha is other than a mere earthly affair, that it is an affair of the gods, an event of the world of the gods. Truly, it was more important for the gods that they had to give up Christ to the earth than it was for humanity to receive Christ.

And what is knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha more than recognizing it as earth's central event? That when one observes the Mystery of Golgotha it is seen as an affair of the gods, that the gods opened a window to heaven, that the gods revealed their affairs to human eyes for a while and that men could observe these godly affairs! One must learn to feel this observing the Mystery of Golgotha by imagining that if one were to pass by the closed house of heaven, one could look through that window and see what otherwise is invisible behind the walls of the domicile of the gods.

The person with reverent feelings about the occult nature of the Mystery of Golgotha is like someone who walks silently around a house that is always closed, only suspecting what is happening inside. At one point there is a window through which he can witness a small part of what is happening inside. For humanity the Mystery of Golgotha is such a window to the spiritual world. Therefore we must feel what happened as the Christ-being descended into the body—or rather the three bodies—of Jesus of Nazareth. We should absorb this idea ever deeper, that we are witnesses to a godly affair through the Mystery of Golgotha.

When we speak of such things words must be used in a different way than in ordinary life. One must speak about such things as the gods' “angst” and “fear” before the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. One must use words about the spiritual affairs of humanity in a different way. It is very easy for those who are all too ready to denigrate what is meant in the most sacred sense—whether from stupidity, frivolousness, pride or other reasons. All they have to do is twist the meaning of words into how they are used in exoteric life. In that way it is possible to turn them into the opposite of what is meant, even though they come from the need to announce the truths of the spiritual world which are so difficult to wring from the soul. Their meanings are reversed, thereby making them sound ridiculous or satanic.

This is all too widespread in our times. And those who should be protecting the treasure of the sacred-spiritual truths, which are so necessary for human souls just in these times, are not wakeful enough.

How great is the comfort with which we like to feed our spirit! How often must we see lamentable things! If when speaking of the spirit one goes even a little beyond materialism, people declare themselves satisfied because that way they don't have to strain themselves, in particular they don't have to strain their sensibilities. What we must feel is that because we are taking part in a consideration of the most sacred developments in earthly evolution, we have a responsibility toward the treasures of knowledge relating to the spiritual world. There is great frivolity in our times about such things, and people tend to take it all lightly. You will notice it popping up here and there, but will only recognize its abominable nature if you're alert enough and your hearts are kindled enough for the most sacred of the spiritual truths. Perhaps then you can assess the value of the spiritual treasures and become their good guardians, for we are all called to guard them together.

Perhaps the easiest way to speak of something so important is: that the Mystery of Golgotha is not merely a human affair, but also an affair of the gods, and that we can observe this affair of the gods. But the way this is described will be distorted in such a way that I hesitate to even mention it. The time will perhaps come when it will be realized that we must reformulate the words of the sensible world when we use them for the super-sensible world, and that it is easy to insinuate other meanings to them.

Popular Christianity says what I have just indicated with the words: “The Father sacrificed his son for humanity”. These words describe what is felt by human hearts in a popular sense, though the true meaning is: The Mystery of Golgotha is an affair of the gods.

And if we consider all of what I have said, we can have an idea of what happened during the event which we call the baptism by John in the Jordan. The temptation, which is also described in the Gospels, followed. From the viewpoint of the Akasha Chronicle we would say: After Jesus of Nazareth took the Christ-being into himself he had to go into the wilderness. There he had clairvoyant visions, which are described fairly accurately by the words of the clairvoyant Gospel writers. It could also be said that now the Christ-being was really bound to the three bodies of Jesus. That means that he descended from the spiritual world and became limited to the capacities of the three bodies. Therefore it would be false to think that Christ, because he belonged to a higher world from which he had descended, could now immediately envision that higher world. That is not the case. Whoever finds this incomprehensible should think again about what it means to be clairvoyant. You are all clairvoyant! All! There is not one here who is not clairvoyant. So why don't you all see clairvoyantly? Because you haven't developed the organs in order to use the forces which reside in all humans. It is not a question of having the capacities, but rather of being able to use them.

The Christ-being had all possible capacities, but in the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth he only had the capacities which corresponded to those three bodies. That is why they had to be prepared in such a complicated manner, for the capacities of these three bodies were indeed high capacities, greater than the corresponding capacities of all the other people on the earth. But Christ was bound to them just as your clairvoyant capacities are bound to the organs which you have, only cannot yet use. It was possible through the capacities which the Zarathustra-soul had left behind in Jesus of Nazareth's three bodies, the remnants of which now served Christ to confront a being who could arouse all the pride and arrogance that a human soul is capable of. This being confronted the Christ Jesus.

At that moment he sensed what that being was attempting in the language of visions—what the Bible describes with the words: “All the kingdoms you see before you”—kingdoms of the spiritual world—“can be yours if you recognize me as the lord of this world.” If one is full of pride and arrogance and brings it into the spiritual world, one can own this world's kingdom of Lucifer because arrogance submerges everything else if everything except arrogance is left behind. But man is not prepared for that; it would mean confronting a terrible destiny.

The Christ Jesus faced this possibility. Then two images appeared before his soul. The first was of his experience on the way to the Jordan river, which I described yesterday as having met the despairing man. And once again the figure which had appeared to that despairing man in a dream stood before Jesus of Nazareth's soul, who now said: “Recognize me as lord of the world”. Then he recognized that figure as the one he had seen at the gates of the Essenes: Lucifer! Therefore he knew that now Lucifer was speaking to him, and he repulsed the attack. He defeated Lucifer.

Then two beings came to attack him, and he had the impression which was more or less what the Bible describes. They said to him: “Show all your fearlessness, your strength, show what you can do as a man by throwing yourself from the heights and not fear being injured”. In such a case consciousness of strength and courage should awaken in the human soul, but it can also make him a sensualist. Two figures stood before him. Because Jesus had had the impression that it was Lucifer and Ahriman who had flown away from the Essene gates, he now had the impression that within one of them was the same being whom the leper had encountered and who had presented himself as death. Because of these experiences he recognized Lucifer and Ahriman. Thus he relived what he had experienced on the road to the Jordan. He also repulsed this attack. He defeated both Lucifer and Ahriman.

Then Ahriman came again. A kind of temptation ensued. He said to Christ Jesus something similar to what the Bible describes: “Make these stones into bread to show your power.” But now Jesus could not give a complete answer to what Ahriman demanded. He was able to repulse the first and the second attacks: the attack by Lucifer alone and the attack of both together. But now he could not repulse Ahriman's attack. The fact that he could not totally repulse Ahriman's attack had meaning for the effectiveness of the Christ-impulse on earth.

I must characterize what this mean in a popular, almost frivolous way: Make these stones into bread, so they become food for humanity. The higher hierarchies were not able to completely eliminate Ahriman from the field of the earth's evolution until the Vulcan epoch. It will never be possible through purely spiritual efforts to defeat Ahriman's inner temptations: the desires, cravings and lusts which arise from within, and what arises as arrogance and sensuality. When Lucifer attacks men alone he can be defeated by spirituality. Also when Lucifer and Ahriman attack together from within, they can be defeated through spiritual means. But when Ahriman is alone, he engulfs his effectiveness in the material events of earth evolution. That cannot be completely fended off.

Ahriman, Mephisto, Mammon—they mean the same. They are immersed in money and in everything connected with human egotism. The fact that it is necessary for human life to be commingled with materialistic things means that humanity must reckon with Ahriman. If Christ was to help earthly humanity in the right way he had to allow Ahriman to act. Ahriman, the material, must be active until the end of the earth's evolution. His work had to remain undefeated by Christ, not completely overcome. The Christ must accept the struggle with Ahriman until the end of earth evolution. Ahriman had to remain.

We as humans can overcome the attacks of Lucifer and the attacks of Lucifer and Ahriman together. The struggle in the material outer world must be fought out until the end of the earth's evolution. Therefore Christ had to hold Ahriman in check, but allow him to stand alongside him. For this reason Ahriman remained active during the three years that Christ worked in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and he entered the soul of Judas and was decisive in the betrayal of Jesus. What happened through Judas is related to the temptation in the desert after the baptism in the Jordan.

Slowly and gradually the Christ-being united with the three bodies of Jesus. It took three years. At the beginning the bond was loose, and then it gradually pressed into the three bodies. Only when death approached were the three bodies truly permeated with the Christ-being. And all the suffering and pain experienced during the three stages of his development was immeasurably increased as he gradually was able to completely immerse himself in the three human bodies. It was a continual pain, but a pain which was transformed into love—and love—and love.

And then the following happened. When we consider how the Christ Jesus lived during the first, second and third years he spent with his closest disciples, we find it to be different in each year. In the first year Christ was, as I said, only loosely bound to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. So there were moments when the physical body was in one place or another and the Christ-being was elsewhere. The other Gospels report that the lord appeared to his disciples when his physical body was somewhere else—meaning that Christ wandered about the land in spirit.

That was in the beginning. Then the Christ-being bound himself more and more to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Later, when Christ was with the circle of his closest disciples, they were so intimately united with him that he was never separated from them. The more he lived into his body, the more he lived in the inner being of his disciples. He traveled about the land with his disciples. He would speak through one of them, then through another disciple of the inner group, so that as they went about the land it was no longer only Christ Jesus who spoke, but one of the disciples; but Christ spoke through them. He lived in the disciples with such power that the facial expressions of a disciple through whom Christ spoke changed so much that the people who heard him had the feeling that he was the master. Another, though, who was really Christ, was so modest that he looked ordinary. In this way he spoke through one then another throughout the land. That was the secret of his effectiveness during the last of the three years.

As he went about with his disciples in this way and he seemed ever more dangerous to his enemies, they wondered: “How can we hunt him down? We can't arrest the whole bunch. For we can never know when we grab the one who is speaking if he's the right or the wrong one. If we grab the wrong one, the right one escapes.” That was their greatest fear. They knew that one spoke and then a different one did. And the right one was unrecognizable, for he took on the ordinary form of another.

There was something wonderful about that group. Therefore a betrayal was needed. The way this is usually described is mistaken. What is it supposed to mean that Judas had to kiss the right one? According to the usual accounts it should not have been difficult to trap Jesus of Nazareth. So the kiss would make no sense if someone who knew which was the right one had to point him out to those who could already have known anyway. But because of the reasons I have related, the enemies did not know who the right one was.

Only when the great suffering—the Mystery of Golgotha—was before him was the total union of the Christ-being with the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth accomplished. What happened then is beautifully described in the other Gospels. For the seer who reads in the Akasha Chronicle about what happened, it is a fact that while Christ was hanging on the cross something like an eclipse of the sun took place in the area around Golgotha. I can't say if it was an eclipse of the sun or a powerful darkening of the clouds, but a darkening like what can be observed during an eclipse of the sun took place in the area around the event of the Mystery of Golgotha.

When occult vision observes life on earth during such a darkening, all living things are shown to him differently than when there is no such darkening. In plants the connection of the etheric body and the physical body is different; and also in animals the astral body and the etheric appear completely different. During an eclipse of the sun it is different on the earth from when the sun is simply missing in the night. Of course this is not the case when in the ordinary sense the sky is covered with clouds; only when an especially thick darkening occurs. And such a darkening took place then. As I said, I cannot yet tell if it was an eclipse of the sun, but what can be seen was like an eclipse of the sun. While this transformation of the earth was taking place, also in the physical sense, he whom we call the Christ-being went over into the earth's living aura. Through the death of Christ Jesus the earth received the Christ impulse.

The greatest event to occur on earth must be described in such simple, stammering words, because it is impossible to even approximate this greatness with human words.

When the body of Jesus was taken down and placed in a tomb, a natural event occurred. A whirlwind arose, then the earth split open and the body of Jesus was taken into it as the shrouds were blown away from the body. It is awesome to see that the arrangement of the shrouds described in the Gospel of John coincides with this vision.

These two events: the darkening of the earth, the earthquake and the powerful whirlwind show at one point in the earth's evolution how natural events coincide with spiritual events. Otherwise such things only occur with living beings as, for example, when thinking and a decision of the will precede a hand's movement. In ordinary life we are only concerned with such mechanical phenomena. Only at a very special moment did a spiritual and two physical phenomena coincide—also in other earthly phenomena, but most especially with this one.

I don't think that the consideration of these concrete facts, which it is now possible to describe to a small number of people as a kind of Fifth Gospel, can detract from the grand ideas we have more theoretically worked through about the Mystery of Golgotha. On the contrary, I believe that if we try to let these concrete facts work on us more and more deeply we will feel what was previously presented more theoretically, more abstractly, strengthened. We will realize through these facts that in this our own time in earthly evolution important events will take place.

By means of these concrete facts you will perhaps be able to achieve the right feelings and nuance of soul about the Mystery of Golgotha, and it is this nuance of feeling that I wished to present to your souls with what I have related from the Fifth Gospel. Perhaps some of you will be able to attend other lectures on the Mystery of Golgotha, or we may be able to continue here in Cologne. For we must say: Regardless of the fact that people nowadays show so little interest in hearing about the facts we have spoken about today, there is a great necessity for such facts to flow into human evolution, especially now. Therefore they have been disclosed, although it is quite difficult to speak of these things. Nevertheless, although I may be inclined not to speak of them, I do so from a sense of inner responsibility, as long as there are people to hear them. They will be needed in humanity's evolution. Those who are hearing them now will surely need them for the spiritual work they are doing for further human development.

You see, gradually we are learning through our considerations what should arise in our souls in order to be useful members of advancing human evolution. That is the meaning of human development on earth—that human souls be more aware of their tasks.

The Christ has come. His impulse is working. For a long time he could act only in the unconscious; then he had to act through what was understood until that time. But it will be ever more necessary for man to learn to understand him, the Christ, who through the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth has entered the earth's aura and humanity's development.

The essential part of our present study is to recognise how the two streams of the world's history, the heathen stream and the Christian stream, meet in our life, how they work into one another and are connected with the events in the whole Universe. In order to search more closely into this, we must first consider the following. It is essential that we should discriminate as exactly as possible wherein the heathen world-conception, taking it in the widest sense (for indeed, it is still and must remain at the basis of our modern conception of the Universe)—wherein this heathen world-conception differs from the Christian, which has only in a very small degree, in its full reality, passed into the minds of men. The point is, as I have often pointed out, that we have now come to a time when what we may call the cosmogony of Natural Science, and what we call the Moral Order of the Universe—to which of course, also belongs the religious view of the world—stand side by side, utterly unconnected. For the man of today, more than he is aware of, the occurrences belonging to natural and moral happenings are two things wholly apart, which he cannot at all unite if he wishes honestly to hold the position of modern cosmogony. That is why the greatest part of the advanced theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries actually has no Christology. I have often remarked on the existence of such books as Adolf Harnack's The Nature of Christianity, in which there is no reason whatever why the name of Christ should be mentioned; for what appears therein as ‘Christ’ is no other than the Deity met with in the Old Testament as the God Jehovah. There is really no actual difference between Harnack's ‘Christ’ and the God Jehovah—that is, there is no difference between what is said of the Christ-Being and what followers of the Old Testament view of the Universe said of their Jehovah. If we take the idea of Christ held today by many persons and compare it with what they have otherwise as their view of life, there is no reason whatever why they should speak of Christ and Christianity, for to speak of Christ and Christianity—and Nationalism, for example—as many do today is an absolute contradiction. These things only escape notice because people today avoid courageously drawing the logical conclusion of what they see before them. The widest rift however, the widest gulf, exists between the view of things held by natural science and what is held by Christianity; and the most important task of our time is to build a bridge over the gulf. The conception of the Universe held by natural science is absolutely the off-spring of the nineteenth century; and it is well not always to describe these things in the abstract, but to look into them a little in a concrete way.

I have often mentioned the name of a prominent personality of the nineteenth century, one who directs our attention directly to the conception of the Universe held by natural science—I refer to Julius Robert Mayer, whom we must associate with the nineteenth century view although in his case it leads to some misunderstanding. You know how in a popular way it has been said that the assertion of the law of the conservation of force originated with him—or, to speak more accurately, the law that the Universe contains a constant sum of forces which can be neither increased nor lessened, and can only be changed into one another. Heat, mechanical force, electricity, chemical force, all change one into the other; yet the quantity of the force existing in the Universe remains always the same. Every modern physicist holds this view. Although in popular consciousness men are not aware of this law of the conservation of force and energy, they think of natural phenomena in a way that they can only be thought of when one is under the influence of this law. I want you clearly to understand what I mean. There may be something in the action of a being that corresponds to a certain principle, even when that being is not in a position to understand that principle. Suppose, for instance, that one wished to make a dog understand that a double quantity of meat means that a single quantity has been taken twice over; it could not be done. The dog could not take that in consciously, but practically he will act according to this principle; for if he has the chance of snapping at a small piece or at one twice the size, he will as a rule, seize the larger, other conditions being equal. And a man can stand under the influence of a principle without explaining it to himself in abstract form as such. Thus we may say: Certainly most people do not think of the law of conservation of force, but they do picture the whole of Nature in a way that is in accordance with the law, because what they were taught in school was taught on the assumption that the law of conservation of force exists. It is interesting to see how Mayer's line of thought expressed itself when he had to put it clearly to others who did not as yet think along the same lines.

Julius Robert Mayer had a friend who kept a record of many of their conversations. He relates many interesting facts, facts by which one can examine thoroughly the mode of thought of the nineteenth century. In the first place, to give something quite external, I will choose the following. Julius Robert Mayer was so thoroughly steeped in the whole mode of ideas leading to that of the conservation of force, of the mere transmutation of one force into another, that as a rule, whenever he met a friend in the street he could not help calling to him from a distance: ‘Out of nothing, nothing comes!’ Visiting his friend one day—Rümelin was the friend's name—knocking at the door and opening it, these were his first words, even before greeting his friend: ‘Out of nothing, nothing comes.’ So deeply was this saying rooted in Mayer's consciousness.

Rümelin tells of a very interesting discussion in which he, not as yet knowing very much of the law of the conservation of force, wished to have its nature explained. Julius Robert Mayer, who came from Heilbronn—(his monument stands there)—said ‘If two horses are drawing a carriage and they go for some distance, what will happen?’—‘Well’, said Rümelin, ‘the travelers in the carriage will arrive at Ohringen.’—‘But if they turn and go back without having done anything in Ohringen, and return to Heilbronn?’ ‘Well,’ replied Rümelin, ‘in that case the one journey has so to speak cancelled the other, so that there is apparently no result; yet there is the actual effect that the travelers came and went between Heilbronn and Ohringen.’ ‘No’, said Mayer, ‘that is only a secondary effect; it has nothing to do with what actually happened. The outcome of the expenditure of force on the part of the horses, that is something quite different. Through this expenditure of force, first the horses themselves grew hotter, secondly the axles of the carriage round which the wheels moved became hotter, and thirdly if we were to gauge with a delicate thermometer the grooves made by the wheels in the road, we should find that the warmth within them was greater than at the sides. That is the actual result. In the horses themselves, matter was also consumed through the transmutation of substance. All this is the actual effect. The other effect, that the people traveled backwards and forwards between Heilbronn and Ohringen is a secondary effect, but not the actual physical occurrence. The actual physical occurrence was the spent force of the horses, the transmutation into increased heat of the horses, the increased heat in the axles, the heat-consumption of cart-grease through friction in the wheels, the warming of the tracks on the road, and so forth.’ When one measures—as Mayer then did and specified the corresponding amount—one finds that the whole of the force which the horses exerted passed without remainder into heat. The rest is all a secondary matter, a side issue.

This has of course a certain influence on our conception of things, and the ultimate result is that we must say: ‘Well, we must free natural occurrences from everything that is a side issue in the sense of strict scientific thought, for side issues have nothing to do with scientific thought in the sense it is understood in the nineteenth century. The secondary effect is right outside the bounds of the events of natural science.’ If, however, we ask: How does what we may call natural moral law come to expression? In what are human worth and human dignity expressed? Certainly not in the fact that the force (energy) of the horses is transmuted into the heat of the carriage axles; no, in this case the secondary effect is the chief point! Let us reflect however, how in all that is considered in natural science, this secondary effect is wholly omitted. The men of the nineteenth century, and even Kant in the eighteenth, formed their view of the origin of the Universe simply out of the principles which Julius Robert Mayer so sharply defined, when he separated out what belongs to nature alone from all that was for him merely secondary effect.

If we bear this clearly in mind, we are obliged to say: The Universe must thus be constructed from the principle we recognise as Nature-Principle; all that has taken place through Christianity, for instance, is just a secondary effect, like the fact of the persons journeying by coach from Heilbronn to Ohringen, for what they had to do there does not come into consideration in the view of Natural Science. Yet, do these two streams not cross in some way or other?

Let us suppose Rümelin had not been satisfied, but had raised the following objection—I know it does not hold good for the physicist of today, but it is applicable to the construction of a general view of the Universe—suppose the following was said: If the people who were traveling from Heilbronn to Ohringen had chosen not to do so, the horses would not have expended their force, the transmutation into heat would not have taken place, or it would have happened at a different place and under different conditions. Thus in our consideration of what happened in accordance with natural science, we are limited to that part of the event which does not lead us to the ultimate cause. The event would never have taken place if the travelers had not supposed they had something to do in Ohringen. Thus what natural science must regard as a side-issue enters notwithstanding into natural occurrences. Or, suppose that the travelers had something to do in Ohringen at a definite hour. Suppose the carriage axles not only became hot, but that one of them broke—in that case they could not have continued their journey. What happened, the breaking of the axle, would then of course be explicable scientifically, but what occurred through this natural phenomenon—namely, that something planned could not be carried out—might, as can easily be imagined, have tremendously far-reaching consequences, leading moreover to other natural processes, which would in their turn have led to further consequences.

Thus we see that even when one stands on purely logical grounds very significant and grave questions arise. We must at once say, that these cannot be answered by the conception of the Universe arising from the hypothesis of our modern training; they cannot be answered without Spiritual Science. They can in no wise be answered without it; for before the tendency to the natural-scientific mode of thought arose, which was first brought to such exactness by Julius Robert Mayer, there was not that sharp line of division between the natural-scientific mode of thought and moral thought. If we consider the twelfth or thirteenth century, we find that what people had then to say of the moral order and the physical order always harmonised. Today people no longer read seriously; but if you read such works—I might say, there are not many things left from olden times which have come down to our days quite unadulterated—but if you take works which are like stragglers of the old cosmic conceptions, you will discover many things that prove how in earlier times the Moral was carried into the Physical, and the Physical raised to the Moral. Read one of these—now already somewhat falsified yet still fairly readable—read one of the writings of Basil Valentine. When you read there about metals, planets, medicinal drugs, in almost every line you will come across adjectives applied to the metals—good, bad, sagacious metals, and the like; which show that even in this domain some moral thinking was introduced. That of course could not be done today. Abstraction has gone so far that natural phenomena have been severed from all the secondary effects, as we may see in Julius Robert Mayer; one cannot say that it was the kindness of the horses' feet which moved them to use up the axle-grease by the warmth produced by their movement! It is not possible in this scientific connection to bring in any kind of moral category. There are two domains, the natural and the moral, and these stand quite definitely side by side. If the world-happenings were as shown by that kind of presentation, man could not exist at all in our world, he would not be there—for what is the reason for the present physical form of man?

When I speak here of the physical form of man, I must ask you to take the word ‘form’ seriously. The natural philosophers of today do not take the expression ‘human form’ seriously. What do they do? Like Huxley and others, they count the bones of man and of the higher animals, and from the number of these they draw the conclusion that Man is only a more highly evolved stage of the animal. Or they count the muscles and so forth. We have repeatedly had to point out that the essential point is that the line of the animal spine is horizontal, while the human spine is vertical; and although certain animals raise themselves, the position with them is not characteristic, what is characteristic of the animal is the horizontal line of the spine. Upon this depends the whole formation. Thus I ask you to take seriously what I wish to express by the word ‘form’.

This form of man; where must we look for its origin, its primary physical origin, in a spiritual way in the Universe? I have already touched on this point in these lectures, I have pointed to the starry heavens which move—whether apparently or actually is immaterial at the moment—round the Earth; the Sun also. Thus the Sun takes the same way; but if we take into consideration what we now know, namely that the Sun shifts its point of departure every Spring, remaining behind a little in relation to the stars, we come to a specially important fact. The change in position of the Vernal Point can be seen in the fact that the constellation in the following year rises earlier than the Sun and sets earlier, showing us that the Sun remains behind. I have pointed out that even the old Egyptians knew that if the circle is divided into 360 degrees, the Sun remains one day behind in 72 years. That is, in 360 times 72 years, or 25,920 years, it remains the whole circle behind, and returns to the star from which it started 25,920 years before.

Thus we have the fact that in the Universe the stars travel round, and the Sun goes round—I will not go into the question as to whether this revolution is only apparent or not, the important point under consideration is that the Sun travels more slowly, remaining behind one degree of the cosmic circle in 72 years; and 72 years, as I have already indicated, is the normal maximum duration of a man's life. Man lives 72 years, exactly the period the Sun remains one degree behind the other stars.

We have lost the right feeling for these things. Even as late as in the Hebraic Mysteries, the teacher still impressed very strongly upon his scholars that it is Jehovah who brings it about that the sun lingers behind the stars and, with the force which the Sun thus kept back, He fashioned the human form, which is His earthly image. Thus, mark well, the stars run their course quickly, the Sun more slowly, and so a slight difference arises which, according to these ancient Mysteries, was that which produced the human form. Man is born out of time, he is so born that he owes his existence to the difference in velocity between the cosmic day of the stars and the cosmic day of the Sun. In modern parlance we should say: If the Sun were not in the Universe as it is, if it were just a star like other stars, having the same velocity as other stars, what would be the consequence? It would be that the Luciferic powers alone would rule. That this is not so, that man is able to withhold himself from the Luciferic powers with the whole of his being, is due to the circumstance that the Sun does not share in the velocity of the stars but lags behind them, not developing the Luciferic velocity but the velocity of Jehovah. Again, if there were only the Sun velocity and not that of the stars, man would not be able to run on in front of the rest of his development with his mental powers, as he does at present. Such a condition would not fit well into his whole evolution. In our time this is very striking. If we have studied Spiritual Science seriously, we know that a man of 36, for instance, understands things he could not at 25. Experience is necessary for the comprehension of certain things. This is not admitted today, for a man of 25 feels himself complete. He is only complete as regards mental powers, but not in experience, for experience is gained more slowly than understanding. If this were taken into account, we should not find that the young people of today have already formed their point of view, for they would know that they could not do so before acquiring a certain amount of experience. Understanding travels with the stars, experience with the Sun. Assuming that human life is 72 years (unless events of Nature intervene causing Man to die older or younger), we say that it lasts the time the Sun takes to retrograde one degree. Why is this? The reason lies in a certain fine adjustment in the Cosmos. Our preliminary study obliges me to ask you to follow me for a little while into this domain.

If we consider a lunar eclipse occurring in a certain year, then there will be a certain date when the eclipse can occur. The lunar eclipse occurs on the same date about every 18 years, and in the same constellation. There is a periodical rhythm in the lunar eclipse, a rhythm of 18 years. That is just a quarter of a cosmic day and just a quarter of a man's life. Man, if I may so express it, endures four such periods of darkness. Why? Because in the Universe everything is in numerical harmony. On the average, Man has in accordance with the rhythmic activity of his heart, not only 72 years of life, but 72 pulse beats, and approximately 18 respirations—again the quarter—in the minute. This numerical accord is expressed in the Universe by the rhythm between the 18 years—the Chaldean Saros period, so-called because the Chaldeans first discovered it—and the Solar period; and it is the same rhythm as is also to be found in man in the inner mobility between his respiration and his pulse-beats. Plato said, not without reason: ‘God geometrises, arithmetises’ ... Thus our 72 years of life, to which is co-ordinated also our heart and pulse activity, goes through the Saros period four times; because in our heart and pulse activity we have our breathing activity, as it were, four times over. Our whole human organism is constructed on the lines of the Universe, but we only see into its significance when we bear in mind another connection.

As I said in one of the foregoing lectures, we only gauge correctly the movement of the Moon, its revolution round its axis, when we connect its revolution not with the day of the Sun, but with the day of the stars. If we have the solar time in view, we must consider a shorter time, 27.5 days for the revolution of the lunar day. I have told you that the Moon's revolution is not such as quite to accord with that of the Sun, but with the time of the stars. Hence we only understand our lunar movement aright when we do not think of it as belonging to the solar movement, but to that of the stars. In a certain sense therefore, the solar movement is outside the system to which the Moon and stars belong. Thus we are so situated in the Universe that on the one hand we are co-ordinated to the stellar-lunar system, and on the other to the solar movement.

Here we see the gradual divergence of the solar and the stellar astronomy. As we have seen, if we have one astronomy only, everything falls into confusion. We can only reach a right understanding if, not limited to one astronomy, we say: On the one hand we have the starry system which, in a certain respect, contains within it the Moon; and on the other, the system to which the Sun belongs. They mutually interpenetrate. They work together. But we are wrong if we apply the same law to the two.

When we realise that we have two quite different astronomies, we shall say: The cosmic happenings in which we are involved have two origins, but we are so placed that these two streams flow together in us. They fuse in us human beings. What is it then that takes place in us? Suppose that only what is admitted by the natural scientist took place in us—all sorts of things would take place in the human organism, movements of substances and so forth; these would extend over the whole organism, also to the brain and consequently to the senses. What then would the consequence be if the whole transmutation of substances which goes on in the human organism and which is inserted into the Cosmos as I have explained—if this metabolism were to extend to the brain? We should never be able to have the consciousness that we ourselves think. Oxygen, iron and other substances, carbon and so forth—of these we should say, in their mutual relations, ‘they think in us’. But as a matter of fact we are not conscious of any such thing. There is no question of its being in our consciousness. What we have as a fact of consciousness is the content of our soul-life. That can exist under no other hypothesis than that the whole of this quite material happening is demolished, is annihilated, and that in us there actually is no conservation of force and substance, but room is made by the annihilation of substance, for the development of the thought life. In fact, Man is the one arena in which an actual annihilation of substance takes place. We shall never realise it so long as we are only conscious of what is outside ourselves.

Now, if we start from the assumption that after 72 years the Sun lags one degree behind in the celestial sphere, that there is this difference of velocity between the movement of the stars and that of the Sun (which difference works in us, converges, as it were, in us); and if we then picture to ourselves how the formation of our head comes from the starry heavens, and how when we, according to a very beautiful saying, first ‘see the light’, we become involved in the Sun's movement, then we must say: There is in us a continual tendency to work with a lesser velocity over against the more rapid velocity of the stars. The action of the stars in us is opposed. What is the effect of this opposition? It is the destruction of what the stars bring about in us materially, its destruction; thus, the destruction of the purely material law comes about through the solar activity. Hence we may say: In our progress through the world as human beings, if we kept pace, as it were, with the stars, we should accompany them in such a way as to be subject to the material law of the Universe. But this we are not. The solar laws oppose it, they hold us back. There is something within us which holds us back. The resultant of the two activities in us could be exactly calculated, for instance, in the following case. (The calculation cannot be followed up here, first because it would take too long and secondly because you would not be able to follow it). Here, let us say, a certain movement occurs (arrow pointing downwards), i.e. a flow takes place with a certain velocity; and the stream then fuses with another stream—it must be assumed that the other flow is going not in the same

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but in the opposite direction (arrow upwards). The two streams flow therefore into one another. Or imagine a wind whirling with a certain velocity from above downwards, and another from below upwards, and they whirl into one another. If we take the difference of velocity between the downward and the upward current, relating the latter to the former in such a way that a difference in velocity results bearing the same relationship as the difference in velocity between the stellar time and the solar time, then through the rotation a condensation arises which receives its own distinct form. One whirls downwards, and because the other whirls upwards driving with a greater velocity, the lesser velocity would be that driving downwards, which gives here (see diagram) through the collision, a condensation, a certain figure. This figure, disregarding imperfections, is a silhouette of the human heart.

Thus, through the meeting of the Lucifer stream and the Jehovah stream, it is possible to construct exactly the figure of the human heart. It is constructed simply out of the revelations of the Universe. It is absolutely true; the Sun-movement is an expression of a slower movement which meets a quicker movement, and we are so inserted into the two movements that the silhouette of our heart arises; and on to it the rest of the human form is fitted. We see from this what Mysteries are actually hidden in the Cosmos, for as soon as we admit we have two astronomies, which work together in their results—what is the result? The human heart. The whole outlook of modern natural science is based on the fact that it does not distinguish these two streams from one another. This brings upon it the tragic fate, that the harmonious working is split apart, leaving on the one hand, the events in Nature, as reasoned by Julius Robert Mayer; and on the other hand, the ‘secondary results’, because people are unable to unite cosmically in thought what works together from these two streams. Thus for man's thinking the world falls asunder in two extremes.

Here lies the cosmic aspect of something tremendously significant in regard to the understanding of Man and the Universe. Unless man can renew, on that basis of thought which we are giving today, the knowledge contained in the ancient Mysteries at the time when man was awaiting Christianity—as I have described in the book, Christianity as Mystical Fact—unless we can bring this ancient knowledge to life in a present form, as must be done, all knowledge remains an illusion; for that which comes to expression with such clarity in the human heart is to be found everywhere. Everywhere the events that happen are explainable through the union of two streams, arising from different sources.

In the insertion of the Mystery of Golgotha into the evolution of our Earth, we have to do with an Event of a totally different nature from all the rest of the happenings of Earth-evolution; and this we shall never understand unless we begin by learning to understand the Cosmos itself.

What I have said today is intended as a preparation or groundwork on which we shall be able to build up in our lectures of tomorrow and the day after.

Those members of the audience who wish to analyse from a philosophical point of view my lecture of yesterday might meet perhaps with difficulties, apparent difficulties, because they will have heard in the course of earlier talks on similar themes that the purpose of our entire post-Atlantean epoch and even of the later stages of Atlantean evolution was to develop gradually the human ego and bring it to fuller consciousness. In this context I have indicated that the members of the ancient Indian civilization who had been able in Atlantis to perceive the spiritual world by means of the old clairvoyance still prevalent at that time were in some respects the very first who experienced an immediate transition from this clairvoyant state to a consciousness of the physical world. Their reaction to this physical world was such that the whole of this post-Atlantean age was pervaded by the feeling that true reality was to be found in the spiritual world, whilst the phenomenal world was merely Maya or illusion. Now I pointed out in our last lecture—and the facts confirm this—that the members of this ancient Indian civilization had to some extent undergone a rich soul-development and that they had achieved this high level whilst their ego was more or less asleep, that is to say, that they only awoke to ego consciousness after they had already reached maturity of soul development.

What, then, was the destiny of these Indian peoples meanwhile? For the Indian peoples must have experienced their entire soul-development in a wholly different manner from the European and especially the Germanic peoples who were ego-conscious whilst their capacities were gradually evolving and who were conscious of the divine-spiritual power working into their souls. You may possibly find it difficult to reconcile my statements in yesterday's lecture if you were to reflect upon that lecture philosophically. For those who wish to analyse that lecture, not from a disinterested point of view, but from a philosophical angle, I must add something in parenthesis by way of explanation.

The apparent contradiction will resolve itself at once if you recall that cognition of the ego is totally different from other forms of cognition. If the ego “knows” any other object or other human being distinct from itself, then in the act of cognition one is really dealing with two factors, with the knower, the cognizing agent, and the known. In the formal act of cognition it is irrelevant whether that which is known is human being, animal, tree or stone. But it is a different matter when the ego knows itself, for then the knower and the known are one, subject and object of cognition are the same. It is important to realize that in human evolution, in the development of the individual, these two modes of cognition are distinct. Those who had developed the mature Indian culture in the post-Atlantean epoch, developed the ‘I’ subjectively as the knower, a cognizing agent, and this subjective enhancement of the ‘I’ within the human soul may exist for a long time before man acquires the power to see the ‘I’ objectively as an entity. On the other hand, the European peoples developed comparatively early, whilst they still preserved the old clairvoyance, the power to see the ‘I’ objectively, that is to say, in their clairvoyant field of vision they perceived the ‘I’ as an entity amongst other entities. If you distinguish carefully between these modes of perception your philosophical problems will be solved and those of Spiritual Science too, if you approach them in the right way. If you wish me to express it in philosophical terms: the Indian culture exhibits a soul which reached the full flowering of the subjective ‘I’ long before the objective ‘I’ was developed. The Teutonic peoples developed the perception of the ‘I’ long before they became conscious of the real inner striving towards the ‘I’. Clairvoyantly they saw the dawning of their ego in an imaginative picture. In the astral world around them they had long seen the ‘I’ objectively amongst the other beings whom they perceived clairvoyantly. Thus we must conceive of this antithesis in a purely formal manner; then we shall also comprehend why Europe in particular was destined to associate this ‘I’ of man with the other higher Beings, the Angels and Archangels, in the way I pointed out yesterday in relation to mythology.

If you bear this in mind you will realize that Europe was destined to relate the ego in a multiplicity of ways to the world perceptible to the senses and that the ego, the fundamental essence of the human being, can enter into the most varied relationship with the external world. Formerly, before man was aware of his ego, before he perceived it, these relationships were determined for him by the higher Beings and he himself remained a passive instrument. His relationship to the external world was a purely instinctive one. The decisive factor in the development of the ego is that it should progressively determine its relationship to the external world. Substantially it was the task of the European nations to determine in some way or other this relation of the ‘I’ to the whole world, and the guiding Folk Soul had, and still has the task of directing European man how to bring his ‘I’ into relation with the external world, with other egos and with the world of spiritual Beings, so that on the whole it was within European civilization that one first began to speak of the relationship of the human ego to the surrounding universe. Hence the completely different atmosphere in the old Indian cosmology from that prevailing in the mythological culture of Europe. In the East everything is impersonal, and, above all one is required to adopt a passive attitude towards knowledge, to suppress the ego in order to become merged in Brahma and to find Atman within oneself. In the East, therefore, the primary objective is to lose one's identity and seek union with the Absolute. In Europe this human ‘I’ occupies a central place in human life in accordance with its original innate tendencies and with its progressive development in the course of evolution. In Europe, therefore, particular attention is given to seeing everything in relation to the ‘I’, to showing clairvoyantly the relationship of the ‘I’ to everything that had participated in the development of the ‘I’ in the course of earthly existence.

Now you all know that two opposing forces have participated in the development of terrestrial man who was destined gradually to acquire his ‘I’. Ever since the Lemurian epoch Luciferic forces have imprinted themselves upon the inner being of man, upon his astral body. You know that these forces made man's inner life the focal point of attack by infiltrating into his desires, impulses and passions. In consequence, man benefited in two ways: he was able to become a free and independent being, to be fired with enthusiasm for what he thinks, feels and wills, whereas in relation to his own affairs he was guided by divine spiritual Beings. But on the other hand, through the Luciferic powers, man had to accept the possibility of falling into evil through his passions, emotions and desires. Lucifer, therefore, is omnipresent in our Earth-existence and finds his point of attack in the inner being of man, in the play of the human astral. Where the astral has been integrated with the ego, the ego too has been permeated by the Luciferic power. When therefore we speak of Lucifer, we are speaking of that which has thrust man down deeper into material, sensory existence than would have been the case without that influence. Thus to the Luciferic powers we owe the most precious boon to man, namely, freedom, and, at the same time a dangerous legacy, the possibility of evil.

But we also know that because these Luciferic powers had intervened in the entire constitution of human nature, other powers were able to enter later on, which could not have done so had not Lucifer first invaded the human organism. Man would see the world differently if he had not fallen under the influence of Lucifer and his followers, if he had not been obliged to submit to the influence of another power after he had opened himself to the invasion of a Luciferic power. Ahriman approached from outside and penetrated into the vast arena of the phenomenal world surrounding man, so that the Ahrimanic influence is therefore a consequence of the Luciferic influence. Lucifer, as it were, takes possession of man from within and in consequence he is the victim of Ahriman who works from without.

The spiritual science of all ages that is familiar with the real facts, speaks of both Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. It will seem very remarkable to you that the various peoples who express these views in the form of mythology are not always aware of Lucifer and Ahriman to the same extent. For instance, there is no clear awareness of this in a religious conception built up out of the whole Semitic tradition as embodied in the Old Testament. Only a certain consciousness of the Luciferic influence can be found there. You will find evidence for this in the Old Testament account of the Serpent which is simply a picture of Lucifer. And this shows that there was a clear realization that Lucifer played a part in evolution, a realization that is undeniably present in all traditions associated with the Bible. But they do not betray an awareness of the Ahrimanic influence to the same extent; that is only to be found where spiritual science is taught. Therefore the Gospel writers have taken this into account. You will find—for at the time when the Gospels were written the word ‘devil’ or ‘daemon’ was borrowed from the Greek—that St. Mark's Gospel does not speak of the temptation of Jesus, but of a devil tempting Him; but in all references to Ahriman the word Satan is used. But who notices the important difference between these descriptions in the Gospel of St. Mark and that of St. Matthew? Exoterically these fine distinctions are not heeded at all, nor is this difference noted in external traditions.

This difference is very apparent in the contrast between India and Persia and is strikingly illustrated at a certain moment in history. The Persians were less subject to the Luciferic influence than the Ahrimanic. It was in Persia in particular that men wrestled with the powers which give us an external, false Picture of the world and which surround us with the forces of darkness, i.e. that which is concerned with man's relation to the external world. Ahriman is known chiefly as an opponent of the Good and as an enemy of the Light. What is the explanation of this? The explanation is that in the second post-Atlantean epoch man developed his perception of the external world. Remember that the task of Zoroaster was to reveal the Sun Spirit, the Spirit of Light. He has first to show that this world is compounded of Light and the Spirit of Darkness who dims our consciousness of the external world. The Persian aims primarily at the conquest of Ahriman and strives to unite himself with the Children of Light, the Spirits who are here the dominant Powers. He is organized for activity in the external world; hence he has his Ahuras or Asuras. It is, on the other hand, dangerous for the followers of the Persian religion to look inwards, to follow the inward path. Where the Luciferic powers are lurking he will not allow himself to become aware of the good powers which are present there: he senses danger. He directs his gaze outwards and believes the Asuras of Light to be in opposition to the Asuras of Darkness.

At this time the Indians pursued exactly the opposite course. They lived in a period when they endeavoured to raise themselves into the higher spheres by inner contemplation. They sought salvation by uniting themselves with the forces of inner vision. It was dangerous; they felt, to look out into the external world where they might have to wrestle with Ahriman. They feared the external world and regarded it as dangerous. Whereas the Persians eschewed the Devas, the Indians looked up to them and wanted to work in their domain. But the Persians turned away and avoided the region where the battle against Lucifer had to be fought.

Search as you will through the many different mythologies and conceptions of the world, in none of them will you find such a clear and profound awareness of the fact that there are two influences at work on man as in Teutonic mythology. As Nordic man was still clairvoyant, he really saw these two powers and took up a position midway between them. He said to himself in the course of his evolution man has seen the advent of certain powers which penetrated into his inner being and worked upon his astral body; they operated from without. And because he was destined to develop the ‘I’, to achieve independence, he sensed not merely the possibility of evil, but, in these powers which permeated his astral body in order to bring freedom and independence, he felt above all the aspiration to freedom. He felt, one might say, the rebellious element manifesting itself in these forces. He felt the presence of the Luciferic element in the power which in these Scandinavian and Germanic regions even then still participated in the creation of races, in that it gave man his external form and pigmentation and made him an independent, active being in the world. With his clairvoyance Nordic man felt Lucifer to be primarily that which makes man a free being, one who is not prepared to submit passively to random external powers, but is solid and reliant and is determined to act independently. Nordic man felt this Luciferic influence to be beneficial.

But he now realized that something else stemmed from this influence. Lucifer conceals himself behind the figure of Loki who has a remarkably iridescent form. Because Nordic man could perceive the reality, he saw that the thoughts of the freedom and independence of man could be traced to Loki. Through the old clairvoyance, however, he was also aware that that which repeatedly drags man down through his desires and actions and causes him to suffer a greater deterioration of his whole being than would have befallen him had he devoted himself to Odin and the Aesir, is to be attributed to the influence of Loki. And now he felt the awful grandeur of this Teutonic mythology; he felt with passionate conviction that which will only return gradually to the consciousness of man through Spiritual Science.

How, then, does the Luciferic influence act? It penetrates into the astral body and thus is able to work upon all the three members of man, upon his astral, etheric and physical bodies. At the present day one can only give indications of this Luciferic influence outside the Anthroposophical Society. What you will come to understand more and more clearly is that the Luciferic influence makes itself felt in three different ways: in the astral body, in the etheric body, and in the physical body of man.

It begets in the etheric body the urge to falsehood and lying. Lies and falsehood are not limited to the inner life of man. In the astral body, the vehicle of man's inner life, the self is permeated with a Luciferic influence which takes the form of selfishness. The etheric body is inwardly motivated by the impulse to be untruthful and is thus disposed to lying. In the physical body the Luciferic influence begets sickness and death. Those who were present at my last series of lectures will easily understand that.¹ I should like to emphasize once again that the signs and symptoms of physical death are karmically connected with the Luciferic influence. To recapitulate again briefly: Lucifer begets in the astral body selfishness, in the etheric body lying and falsehood, and in the physical body sickness and death.

Of course the materialists of the present day will be greatly surprised to learn that Spiritual Science attributes sickness and death to a Luciferic influence. But this too is connected with Karma. But for the Luciferic influence man would never have known sickness and death. The karmic effect of this influence is that man is more deeply immersed in corporeality and, on the other hand, the penalty for this is sickness and death.

We may say that when the Luciferic influence entered into man, the physical, etheric and astral bodies became a prey to sickness and death, lying, falsehood and selfishness. I should like to draw your attention to the fact that the materialistic scientists of today assign death in the human being or in the animal or plant to the same cause. They fail to realize that one external appearance may resemble another and yet may originate from totally different causes.

An external situation may arise from a variety of causes. The death of an animal does not supervene from the same cause as the death of a man, although externally it gives the same impression.

It would take too long to provide an epistemological proof of these things. I only wish to state here that the scientific view of causality is sadly mistaken. We meet with mistakes such as these, which arise from muddled thinking, at almost every turn. Imagine the case of a man, who climbs onto a roof, falls down, is mortally injured and is picked up dead. What would be more natural than to say: “The man fell down, was mortally injured and died of his injuries.” But there might have been a totally different explanation. The man might have had a stroke whilst on the roof and have fallen down while already dead. The injuries might have been caused by the fall, so that externally this case might appear the same as the one described before, but death would have supervened from an entirely different cause.

This is a very crude example, but scientists are very frequently guilty of this kind of mistake. Externally the real facts may often be exactly the same: the inner causes may be completely different.

We claim, then, from the results of spiritual-scientific investigation that the Luciferic influence begets in the astral body selfishness, in the etheric body lying and falsehood and in the physical body sickness and death. Now what would the Teutonic mythology have had to say if it had been obliged to ascribe this threefold influence to Loki, to Lucifer? It would have had to say that Loki has three offspring. The first, the one who begets selfishness, is the Midgard Snake through whom is expressed the influence of the Luciferic spirit on the astral body. The second is that which falsifies human knowledge. In man, on the physical plane, this consists in those things of the mind which do not accord with the external world. It is that which has no validity there. To Nordic man who lived more on the astral plane, that which to us is an illusion manifested itself at once as an astral being and lived as such upon the astral plane. The expression for everything that implied darkening of the light of truth, false perspective, was some kind of animal; and here in the North it was chiefly the Fenris Wolf. This second animal is Loki's influence on the etheric body to which man owes his inner inclination to deceive himself, to think incorrectly about things; that is to say, the objects in the external world do not appear to him in true perspective. This was generally expressed in the old Teutonic mythology in the form of a wolf. That is the astral form for lying and falsehood which proceeds from inner impulse.

Where man is related to the external world Lucifer confronts Ahriman, so that the infiltration of error into his knowledge—even into his clairvoyant knowledge—all illusion and maya, is the consequence of the tendency to falsehood which is active there. The Fenris Wolf represents the configuration surrounding man because he does not see things in their true form. Whenever the ancient Teutons experienced the darkening of the light of truth, they spoke of a wolf. This permeates the whole of Nordic consciousness and you will find that this image is used in this sense even in relation to external facts.

When the ancient Teutons wanted to explain what they saw during an eclipse of the Sun—in the epoch of the old clairvoyance of course, man saw very differently from the man of today who uses a telescope—they chose the image of a wolf pursuing the Sun and who, the moment he overtakes it, causes an eclipse. This agrees perfectly with the facts. This terminology is an integral part of the grandeur, that awful grandeur peculiar to Teutonic mythology. I can only give indications here, but if it were possible to speak for weeks on end upon this Teutonic mythology, you would then see how this is universally applied in the representations of Teutonic mythology. This is because Teutonic mythology is a consequence of the old clairvoyance into which the ‘I’ plays everywhere.

Materialists of today will reply that this is pure superstition, that there is no wolf in pursuit of the Sun. The old imaginative Nordic man sees these facts in the form of pictures and I could perhaps enumerate many so-called scientific truths which contain more Ahrimanic influence, a greater degree of error, than the corresponding astral perception which describes the wolf in pursuit of the Sun. That an eclipse occurs because the Moon interposes itself between the Earth and the Sun seems to the occultist to betray a mind that is even more superstitious. From the external point of view the explanation of the eclipse is perfectly correct, just as the case of the wolf is perfectly correct from the astral point of view. In fact the astral view is more correct than the one you will find in modern textbooks, which is even more subject to error. If at some future time man is prepared to accept the real facts instead of this external explanation, he will find that the Teutonic myth is correct. I am aware that I am saying something which is ridiculously absurd in the eyes of contemporary man, but I know too that in anthroposophical circles one is already sufficiently advanced to be in a position to show in which respects the physical view of the world is most influenced by maya, deception or illusion.

Let us now turn to the influence of Loki on the physical body. His third offspring is Hel, who begets sickness and death. Thus the figures Hel, the Fenris Wolf and the Midgard Snake are wonderful representations of the influence of Loki or Lucifer in the form in which his influence was perceived by the old dreamlike clairvoyance. If we were to follow out the whole history of Loki we should everywhere find that these things throw light upon the matter, down to the smallest details. But we must clearly understand that what the clairvoyant sees are not allegories, but real Beings.

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Now Nordic man was not only aware of Loki, of the Luciferic influence, but also of the influence of Ahriman which was the polar opposite, and he knew too that involvement in the Ahrimanic influence was a consequence of the Luciferic influence. If you now look back to the time when man did not apprehend the world through sensory perception but contemplated it with the old clairvoyance, you will find that this myth has been developed in response to this clairvoyance. What does the myth say? Man has succumbed to the influence of Loki, and this is expressed in the activity of the Midgard Snake, the Fenris Wolf and Hel. The effect was such that man's perception, his clear, luminous vision into the spiritual world, became dimmed, because the Luciferic influence increasingly asserted itself. At that time, when this view developed, man alternated between a consciousness that was able to see into the spiritual world and a consciousness that was directed to the physical plane, just as we normally alternate between waking and sleeping. When he gazed into the spiritual world he looked into the world out of which he was born. The essential point is that the myth had its source in the clairvoyant consciousness. But human consciousness consisted in this alteration between insight into, and loss of insight into the spiritual world. When man lived in a condition of dreamlike consciousness he saw into the spiritual world. When in a condition of waking consciousness, he was blind to it. Thus he alternated between the conditions of blindness to, and insight into, the spiritual world. His consciousness alternated just as a certain Cosmic Being alternated between the blind Hödur and the clairvoyant Baldur, who could see into the spiritual world. Thus man was predisposed to receive Baldur's influence and he would have developed in accordance with this influence if he had not been subject to Loki's influence. It was Loki's responsibility, however, that the Hodur nature overcame the Baldur nature. This is expressed by Loki bringing the mistletoe, with which the blind Hodur kills Baldur, the one who sees.

Loki therefore is the destructive power, like Lucifer who drove man into the arms of Ahriman. In so far as man submits to the blind Hodur, the old clairvoyant vision is extinguished. That is the slaying of Baldur. This is felt by Nordic man as the gradual extinction of the Baldur power, the loss of the vision into the spiritual world. Thus, in the loss of clairvoyance, Nordic man felt that by the death of Baldur Loki had extinguished clairvoyance and that henceforth he was powerless to revive this erstwhile clairvoyance. Thus one of the greatest historical events, the gradual loss of the old, unclouded knowledge is expressed in the myth of Baldur, Hödur and Loki. On the one hand, therefore, we have Loki with his kinsmen, the three Beings, and on the other, the tragic slaying of Baldur.

Thus, in Teutonic mythology, is reflected that which we can derive from Spiritual Science: the twofold influence—the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. It is this which Spiritual Science always seeks to present to you as an illustration of the clairvoyant knowledge of ancient times and as a development of the myth out of the old clairvoyance which then gradually began to disappear.

It would take us too far if we were to pursue this subject further. But even in the broad outline I have presented to you, you can feel the awful grandeur of this myth, which is unsurpassed, because no other mythology adheres so closely to the old clairvoyant condition. Greek mythology is only a memory of something experienced in former times, expressed in sculptural form. Greek mythology has no longer that direct association with the facts which one finds in Teutonic mythology. It is more sophisticated, more mature, the figures show more clearly defined, more finished contours, and therefore appear markedly sculptural. They have lost the primitive simplicity of the earliest impressions. The old clairvoyance which had long vanished in the rest of Europe still survived in the North. Only slowly, step by step, has the perspective of man become limited to the picture of the physical world alone. Thus, at the time when Christianity began to spread abroad, that which is expressed in the Baldur myth, in the death of Baldur, had become true for the majority of men. There were, however, still a few who were able to perceive directly what Nordic man experienced clairvoyantly.

Thus for a long time there still existed the direct perception of the spiritual world, and because it was still so elemental and sprang so directly from clairvoyant experience, there still survived, when Christianity began to spread abroad, this conscious awareness of the spiritual world which was more developed in the Teutonic peoples than in any other. Then they felt that their erstwhile experiences of their original spiritual home were vanishing. And these spiritual experiences were lost when Nordic man received the consolations of Christianity. But Christianity did not offer him any direct vision. He had felt the fate of Baldur much too deeply to be able to console himself for this loss by exchanging Baldur for a God who had descended to the physical plane in order that the children of men who could only perceive on the physical plane, may also be allowed to rise to a consciousness of God. Unlike the peoples of the Near East the Northern peoples were unable to respond to the words: “Change your mental attitude, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” In Palestine where Christ was born, there existed only long-lost memories of the fact that once upon a time there had been an old clairvoyance. In the East, the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, had already lasted for three thousand years, when men could no longer see into the spiritual world. But they always yearned for that world and have ever told of a world which man was once able to perceive spiritually. But it was a world which had now vanished from their sight. Hence they had experienced the spiritual world in a much more distant past than the men of the North, and they only knew from memory that the spiritual world had once been within reach. Hence the peoples of Asia Minor could well understand the words: “Change your mental attitude for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” They could understand the words: “The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh unto you even here upon the physical plane. Seek ye therefore the unique figure who will appear in the land of Palestine, seek ye the Messiah, the Incarnation of the Godhead, through whom you too will be able to find your relation to the Divine, even though you cannot raise yourself above the physical plane. Recognize that Figure in Palestine, know the Figure of Christ!” Those were the profound words of John the Baptist.

The Nordic man, of necessity, felt this differently; for a longer period of time he had experienced much more than the mere memory of a vision into the spiritual world. Hence there arose in him a thought of far-reaching importance, namely: this limitation to the outer physical plane, this darkening of spiritual sight, can only be an intermediate time. There must be a period of probation and man will have to discover what the physical world can teach him. This transition is necessary and he must therefore withdraw from the spiritual world. He must undergo the experience of the phenomenal world as a necessary training. But through this period of probation he will find his way back to that world whence he came. The vision of Baldur will be able to ensoul him again. In other words, the great truth which dawned in the course of the evolution of the Teutonic peoples that the world which was lost to clairvoyant vision would again become visible, he owed to the fact that man felt his sojourn on the physical plane to be a time of transition.

The Initiates had taught Nordic man that a change was taking place in the spiritual world during the intermediate time when he had lost the vision of the spiritual world and in consequence it would one day appear transformed. They explained this to him somewhat as follows: “Formerly you looked into the spiritual world and there you saw the Archangel of Speech, the Archangel of the Runes, Odin,² the Archangel of Respiration, and Thor, the Angel of Ego-hood. You were associated with them, and he who is sufficiently prepared will be able to enter the spiritual world again. But it will then appear different; other powers will have been added to it, and the spheres of power and the relationships of power of those old spiritual leaders of the human race will have changed. You will, it is true, see into this world, but you will find it transformed.”

What man will then see, the Initiates described to him as a vision of the future—the Vision that will one day appear to man when he is able to see into the spiritual world again, when he will see what has been the destiny of the old Gods and what was their relation to other powers. They described to him this vision of the future as seen by the Initiates when the Luciferic influence will to some extent override that which comes from the Gods and will, in its turn, be overcome. This was their vision of Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods. And again we shall see that all the events which were portrayed as future events could not, even down to the smallest details, be portrayed better or more aptly, nor in more fitting terminology than in the wonderful picture of the Twilight of the Gods. That is the occult background to the Saga of the Twilight of the Gods.

In what light, then, should man see himself? He should see himself as one who has received all that stems from earlier epochs as the origin and cause of his evolution. He should thoughtfully assimilate what he received as a gift from Odin, whilst feeling that he himself has undergone the ensuing evolution. He should receive into himself the teaching implanted in him by Odin. He should fight the good fight without delay. The Initiate, the Leader of the Esoteric School, makes that clear, particularly to Nordic man, by calling our attention to the divine-spiritual Being who appears to us so mysteriously, who in fact first plays a definite part in the Twilight of the Gods because he overcomes even that power by which Odin is at first overcome. In the Twilight of the Gods the role of Odin's avenger is a special role. When we understand this role we shall then perceive the wonderful connection between the native talents of the Teutonic peoples and our conception of our vision of the future. All this is expressed in a wonderful way, down to the smallest details in the mighty vision of the Twilight of the Gods.

• 1. Manifestations of Karma. Eleven lectures given in Hamburg, May 1910 (Rudolf Steiner Press).
• 2. See Appendix.

As the last time we were able to meet together here, we put forward certain considerations connected mainly with special experiences,¹ we will turn our attention today to a more general outlook of spiritual science. I should like to start from something which you have all known fundamentally for a long time: that all spiritual-scientific observation is won by acquiring knowledge, not with the help of the instrument of the Physical body, but by liberating the soul and spirit from the physical instrument, so that, as soul and spirit they enter into direct union with the spiritual worlds.

Direct union with the spiritual worlds is broken in ordinary life and knowledge, because we must always employ the instrument of our physical body in the waking state whenever we wish to enter into relationship with the world, and in the sleeping state all our will is concentrated on our connection with the body, so that desire for the body spreads like a cloud in our soul and spirit during sleep, and hinders us in this state, and in ordinary life - from experiencing anything in the spiritual worlds, in which we indeed are.

Now it is essential that anyone occupying himself with spiritual science should recognise exactly the value of spiritual scientific activity as such, and its relation to the personal strivings, which through meditation and concentration of thought, feeling, and will-impulses, or in any other manner, lead man into the spiritual world. We must be clear about this above all for it is a deep and significant truth: that the unity which surrounds us in the ordinary world, does not exist in the same way in the spiritual world. I have already pointed out that this unity is founded within the whole structure of the psycho-spiritual human being. How most people strive again and again after this, asking: What is the unity of the world? How they only find satisfaction when they can lead everything back to one Principle!

As a matter of fact, the external world meets us most eminently as a whole, as a unified formation; and those people who to a certain degree are dominated by the ‘craze’ for unity, arrive at all possible abstractions in thought, while seeking the unitary principle of the world.

Such personalities are typical, they are like an old gentleman who met me one evening, and told me with the intense pleasure of a discoverer: At last he had found a unitary principle by which he could explain all the phenomena in the world. He was of the opinion, in his pleasure, that this unitary principle could be uttered in ten to twelve words, and he was so joyful over the matter, that he said: Now I can explain the whole cosmos. He would explain heaven, earth, and hell out of this unitary principle.

A little while ago, I was forced to recall this episode which occurred many years ago, when someone wrote to me urgently requesting a talk with me, because he had made the acquaintance of a man who was able to bring forward another such completely satisfactory view of the world in five minutes. I need hardly mention that a really earnest spiritual movement can have no time for such talks. But people who are thus possessed by this Unity-Demon, which is at the same time a kind of Easy-going Demon, are especially numerous in our day.

Because of this, we must put first, and take in the deepest sense, what is expressed in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: that as soon as we cross the threshold of the spiritual world, we are really led into a threefold experience. I have especially emphasised in this book, that the soul is as if split into three, and when the soul crosses the threshold of the spiritual world, nothing is left which makes it possible for one to believe in this Unity-demon, this comfort-loving Unity-demon.

Indeed, we feel, as soon as the threshold of the spiritual world is crossed, that we really enter with the whole of our being into three worlds. And we must not lose sight of the fact that after crossing this threshold, we have distinctly the experience of three worlds. In reality, we already belong to three worlds through the whole formation of our physical body. I might say that the co-operation of three worlds, which are relatively strongly independent of one another, is necessary for this wonderful structure ‘man’ which we encounter in the physical world. And if we consider the formation of our head, the formation of everything that belongs to the head, we must, even if we are merely speaking of the physical head, be clear that the formative forces of our head, and also the beings active and creative in these formative forces, belong to suite another world from that of the formative forces of our breast, for instance, and the formative forces of everything belonging to our heart, inclusive of the arms and hands. It is to a certain extent as if the formative forces of these material parts of man belonged to quite another world than the formative forces of his head. And again, the organs of the lower body and the legs belong to quite another world than the two other members we have named.

Now you can ask: What significance has all this? It has a great significance, for fundamentally speaking, in our present cycle of humanity, one only gets the pure, true and real results from spiritual science if the soul and spirit-nature is raised out of the head. So that this (c.f. diagram) is to some extent the clairvoyant aspect of a man, which, seen from the spiritual-scientific point of view has to be so regarded, that the spirit-soul part is here seen to be especially lifted out, and is at the same time, joined to the forces of the cosmos, as if by a spiritual electric attraction.

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Thus all the parts a man—the ego and astral body down to the etheric body, must be drawn out. This withdrawal is of course connected with the evolution of the so-called Lotus-flowers. But the forces which set the lotus-flowers in motion lie in this part of the spirit-soul nature of man which is, or can be withdrawn.

The clairvoyance thus attained is a HEAD-CLAIRVOYANCE, and this can be a result of spiritual science in our time, for the revelations of head-clairvoyance are of service to humanity. Of a quite other kind is the clairvoyant results attained by raising the spirit-soul nature of the organ of the heart, arms and hands. This raising or up-lifting of these organs distinguishes itself inwardly and significantly from what takes place through what I might call “HEAD-CLAIRVOYANCE”. The up-lifting of the material heart-organ is brought about more through meditation which is related to the life of will; it is effected through humble surrender to the march of events. Whereas head-clairvoyance is effected more through thoughts, but also through ideas having an imaginative character, tinged with feeling.

It is generally the case that with reference to these two kinds of clairvoyance, the heart—or breast-clairvoyance—develops along with head-clairvoyance in the degree to which it should. Breast-clairvoyance leads more to the development of the will, to a connection with the actions of spiritual beings of the lower hierarchies, such as those incorporated in the various kingdoms of the earth; whereas head-clairvoyance leads more to vision, knowledge, perception in those higher worlds, in the sense that knowledge of these higher powers is necessary for the satisfaction of certain needs of knowledge, which must appear ever more and more in present humanity. The more we approach the future of our evolution on earth, the less will humanity be able to live, without their soul-life drying up, if they do not receive into their cognition the results of this clairvoyance.

Again a third kind of clairvoyance is that which arises, when what we call the spiritual-psychic part of man is loosened, and thus raised out of the rest of his being. Here in the lower part of the diagram I indicate the outward thrusting tendency. Even if the expression is not altogether aesthetic, yet I may perhaps venture to call this kind of clairvoyance, ‘Stomach clairvoyance.’

Whereas head-clairvoyance, for our cycle of humanity, leads in the most eminent sense to the attainment of results independent of man, stomach-clairvoyance leads to results connected especially with What transpires in man himself. That which takes place in man himself must naturally also be an object of investigation. In the sphere of physical investigation, there are also men who occupy themselves with anatomy and physiology. We should not think that this stomach-clairvoyance has not a certain value, in the highest sense of the word. It naturally has a value. But one must realize, that stomach clairvoyance can inform man but little of that which occurs impersonally in cosmic events; but that it informs him essentially about what man is, of what goes on—I might say—inside his skin.

With reference to what is moral and ethical, head-clairvoyance is relatively the most important. Hence I must ever speak of its opposites. Between the two stands breast-clairvoyance; between that of the head and of the stomach. As regards what is ethical, these two can be inwardly quite well distinguished. People who strive to come to a perception of higher worlds, in an impersonal way, as indicated in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, those who are not daunted at traveling this uncomfortable but secure path, will develop something impersonal in themselves, with reference to their clairvoyance, above all they will develop a high interest for objective world-knowledge, for what occurs in the world of cosmic and of historical events.

This head-clairvoyance speaks preferably of man himself, especially in that it draws attention to how he is placed within the process of cosmic and historical development, it notes what man himself is in the entirety of this cosmic process: What arises as head-clairvoyance will always have what I must call a universal scientific character; it will contain information which has importance—I beg you to note this word—for all mankind, not merely for one man or another.

Stomach-clairvoyance will be permeated especially with all kinds of human egoism, and will very easily mislead the clairvoyant in question to occupy himself much with the occult bases of his own destiny, of his personal worth and character. This results as a self-understood tendency from what is called stomach-clairvoyance.

Now a clear distinction has to be made between these two kinds of clairvoyance with reference to their intuitive nature. Whoever strives in the sense of what is given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds to become free in soul and spirit from the perceptive-apparatus of the head, who can thus to a certain extent loosen the spiritual-psychic part of the head from the physical instrument, and is able to place himself with this spiritual-psychic head-part in the spiritual world, will have extreme difficulty in getting beyond shadowy-clairvoyant experiences. Such a passing out from the head is at first bound up with experiences which really have not even the colour, the substantiality of vivid memories, therefore they seem inwardly to be very colourless, and only after one goes ever further and further in the efforts which lie on this path, does the shadowy character of these experiences disappear, and their colourless, shadowy experiences become tinged with colour and sound, for the process carried out is this, that we first move out of our head, and are then really in a world which we have difficulty in perceiving.

For while we gradually and slowly acquire the possibility of living outside our head, these inner forces of life grow stronger, and the consequence is, that the forces streaming in from the whole orbit of the cosmos are drawn together. Picture to yourselves that forces must be drawn together from out the whole orbit of the cosmos—and when we draw together all the forces from the entirety of the orbit of the cosmos, we get that tinging with colour and sound I have mentioned. Think how we might picture this. You have here a surface (a), highly coloured, a spherical surface. Now think of this spherical surface as extended over a larger surface (b.c.). The colour will then become paler—and if we extend it still further, the colour will become ever paler and paler, if we contract this surface, then supposing it to be a pale yellow here (at the extremity,) it would become a strong, saturated yellow, because the colour is then more concentrated.

Now head-clairvoyance confronts the whole cosmos. And, spread out over the whole cosmos is that which man mast first concentrate and unite by means of his life-forces into what he himself is clairvoyantly, as being; so that only by a laborious process of inner development he gradually gives a tinge of colour to the shadowy nature of his experiences. And when for a long, long time he has taken the trouble to experience that general experience which only gives him the sensation of being outside the body; and when he has been aware of this general experience for a long time, and has gained the feeling more and more of a more intense, though not yet a coloured and resounding inner experience, then the regions of the cosmos gradually draw near to this head-clairvoyance.

This is a matter for slow, selfless development. It must be especially stated, that a STUDY OF SPIRITUAL SCIENCE is indispensable to this development. It must be emphasised again and again, that when it is given out, spiritual science, can indeed be understood. It cannot be emphasised often enough that one need not be a clairvoyant to understand spiritual science. One must of course be clairvoyant to arrive at results, but once they are there, one need not be clairvoyant. UNDERSTANDING of spiritual science must precede personal vision. Here one can say: the opposite path is correct to that which is correct in the physical-sensible world. In the physical-sensible world, we first have correct perceptions, then we pass over to a thoughtful consideration of these, and we then form our scientific judgments. This must be reversed in the ascent to the spiritual world. There, we must first develop ideas—we must make every effort to live into spiritual science objectively; otherwise we can never be certain that any observation we make in the spiritual world is interpreted by us in the right sense. Hence knowledge must precede vision, and this is what is so infinitely disagreeable to many; the fact that they have to study spiritual science. Many consider this an incomprehensible demand. For it is relatively easy to have perceptions; but to interpret them aright—for this it is necessary that one enters rightly,—objectively, selflessly—into spiritual science.

Now just the opposite is the case in what we have called: stomach-clairvoyance. In this, we start from that spiritual-psychic principle which first worked on the bodily, physical nature; for spirit lies at the basis of everything that exists in the world. If we have eaten let us say a piece of cabbage—we are mostly vegetarians here—and it is then worked over in our organism, one has then not merely to do with the physical-chemical process, carried out by the stomach with its forces and juices, but behind all these the etheric body, astral body, and ego are active. All these processes have spiritual processes behind them. It would be quite false to believe that any material processes exist which have not a spiritual process behind them. Picture this to yourselves: Suppose you lie down after a more or less opulent mid-day meal, and become clairvoyant, but clairvoyant in such a way, that the spiritual-psychic part of the digestive organs rise up especially out of the organs of digestion. Then, while your stomach and the other organs digest correctly, you live with your spiritual-psychic nature in the spiritual-psychic realm, and whereas you usually remain unconscious of the spiritual process carried out in your etheric body, astral body, and ego, this enters your consciousness if you are clairvoyant and then, because you experience yourself in this spiritual-psychic realm, you can see all this working, constructing, and creating of the spiritual-psychic force during digestion; you see it as it projects itself out into the world, and it appears to you reflected in pictures in the external ether. Then you get the most beautiful clairvoyant forms, because you have not now to draw the colours so much out of the cosmos, but because you have the whole process concentrated within your own skin. So that something wonderful takes place around you in the most glorious most magnificent sequences of colour and form, which need be nothing else than the process of digestion or some other bodily process transpiring in the spiritual organs of man.

This kind of clairvoyance is distinguished from the other, especially through the fact, that whereas the other clairvoyance starts from shadow forms, and only laboriously acquires a tinge of colour and tone, this starts off with the most magnificent grandeur possible. One can equally well express it as a law: if clairvoyance begins with magnificent forms, especially with coloured forms, then it is a clairvoyance that relates to processes which transpire within the personality. I emphasise this, because it can be of value for the investigation of the spiritual world. Just as anatomy and physiology investigate the digestive and other processes, so clairvoyance is also of great value to investigate in this way the spiritual nature standing behind human processes. But it would be bad, if one gave oneself up to any deceptions, if one cherished illusions, and did not interpret things in a right manner.

If one believed that such a clairvoyance, appearing without the necessary preparation, could give more than what takes place in man and is projected into the objective world, if one believed that through such a clairvoyance, one could approach the creative world-powers, the dominant spiritual forces, one would greatly err. Just as little as the riddles of the world can be solved by the investigation of human digestion, just so little can the riddles and secrets of the cosmos be approached by developing this stomach clairvoyance.

Thus you see how much belongs necessarily to our gaining a really right orientation to the world we enter through the freeing of our spiritual-psychic powers. No one need have any aversion to stomach-clairvoyance through the observations which have been made. But each one should be quite clear how such clairvoyance is related to what real spiritual clairvoyance can become, and how one should hold oneself far removed from any over valuation of what is gained through a clairvoyance that can only have a personal content. Only when in things which have a personal content, we look away from what is personal, and observe them in the way the anatomist or physiologist considers, the objects he studies with the help of the microscope, or learns through his investigations,—only then have these things a special value. In any case no religious feelings should be connected with these things even in the remotest degree; they can only be connected with the results of head-clairvoyance. Man becomes ever more correct in regard to the other clairvoyance, the more he fulfills the demand, that it should be dealt with in every case only in an objectively scientific sense, as are the results of anatomy or physiology.

Not everything which is found along the path of clairvoyance, is—I venture to use this radical expression—worthy of veneration; but all is worthy of being learnt. That is what we must keep in mind. I have already said: that for our cycle, it is especially important to incorporate the results of head-clairvoyance with the general spiritual civilisation of man; this is really important. Today, I will mention one side of the matter with reference to this. We are living at a time, in which humanity must prepare gradually to transcend mere philosophical Idealism, and pass on to a true consciousness of the spiritual worlds, of the general spiritual world in which we live just as we live in the physical world.

Now let us start from an experience of head-clairvoyance, which we shall easily understand if we have entered but a little into the things said in the Munich Cycle (footnote, Secrets of the Threshold;) held recently and which were dealt with further in my book The Threshold of the Spiritual World. I especially mentioned there, that our thinking undergoes a transformation the moment we make ourselves free; especially when with reference to our thoughts we free ourselves from the physical instrument of the head. I expressed it grotesquely at the time by saying, if we became free in this manner, our thoughts have no longer the character which they have in ordinary, everyday life. In ordinary, everyday life we must have the feeling—unless we are demented—that we are Master of our thought-world, that if we have two thoughts, it is WE OURSELVES who unite or separate these thoughts.

When we remember something, we are conscious: we pass over with our inner life from a present experience to a past experience. We always have the feeling; it is we ourselves who stand behind the web and woof of our thoughts. ... This ceases the moment we make the spiritual psychic principle free in our head, when we develop a thinking freed from the body. On that occasion, I put it as follows, I said: It is as if we put our head in an ant's nest, and a peculiar whirling then arises. This is how thoughts begin to play one into the other. If in ordinary life, we have two thoughts, and unite them, as for example, the thoughts ‘rose’ and ‘red’, we know that we are master in our own thought-world, able to unite the two ideas: the rose is red. This is not the case when we are outside our bodies. Life enters our thoughts, the thought's own life. Each thought becomes a being. One thought runs towards another, the other runs away from it.

So the thought-world acquires a life of its own. Why does it acquire a life of its own? What we experience in the ordinary thoughts of the everyday are only images, shadows of thoughts. You can read this in my book Theosophy. As soon as we develop body free thoughts, each thought becomes like a husk, and an elemental being slips into the husk. The thought is no longer in our power; we put it out, like a feeler, it goes forth into the world, and an elemental being slips into it ... Our thoughts are filled in this way with elemental beings ... and these whirl and struggle in us. So that we can say: If we stretch the spiritual-psychic part of our head into the spiritual world, (it is outside us only, because we are situated within the physical head), if we thus stretch it into the spiritual world, we no longer experience such thoughts as we experience in the physical world, but we experience the LIFE OF BEINGS. We plunge our head just as I have said into an ant's nest—We experience the life of beings.

This is fundamentally the case right up to the highest hierarchies, and if we wish to experience angel, archangel, or even archai, it must be the same, we must live in our thoughts in the way described and in the beings in them. We send our thoughts out, and a being slips in, and is active in them. If we perceive the beings of Venus, or Saturn, it is as I have said, we let our thoughts slip our, and the Venus, and Saturn beings slip in. We ought not to be the least afraid of having thoughts of the Hierarchies in us, but twist accustom ourselves to live with our heads in the higher Hierarchies. We must say to ourselves: Our thinking ceases, and our head becomes the stage for the activities of the higher hierarchies.

Now, in the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel thought has been developed up to the purest thought-clarity. In this philosophy is really contained that to which thought could rise at the beginning of the 19th Century. The task of raising thought to this height was then fulfilled. The next task is however that man should go beyond this, and really enter into this whirling, weaving life of thought. We are living at a time when man is called to do this: to perceive the higher Hierarchies. We have to be taken up by the world of the higher Hierarchies, and we must strip off the fear of thus living and weaving in the higher Hierarchies.

The life of the 19th Century was quite filled by this fear, this horror of life in the higher Hierarchies. Human beings carried this so far, they did not know it, but fundamentally they carried it so far, that they prayed: O, my dear Ahriman, guard me lest my life in thought is claimed by the activity and life of the higher Hierarchies; otherwise, some devilish Saturn or Sun-being might enter into them:—You say: Surely no one thought like this in the 19th Century; but I can prove to you that people did think like this.

Ludwig Feuerbach, a philosopher of the 19th Century who especially combated the idea of immortality, opposed all belief in a super-sensible world, because he held this to be the belief of phantastic, mystical dreamers, and considered it harmful for the whole of mankind. Ludwig Feuerbach wrote the following sentences; I beg you to inscribe them particularly well in your souls;

“The active man, busy with the affairs of human life, has no time to think of death, and hence, no need for immortality; if he thinks of death, he only sees in it the warning to arrange wisely his allotted span of life, not to waste precious time on unworthy objects, but to apply it to the fulfillment of the tasks he has set himself to do.”—

“If far from the earth in heaven, on Uranus, or Saturn, or elsewhere, man first found his fulfillment, then there would be no science, or philosophy at all. Instead of what is generally deduced, abstract truths and beings would form the content of our spirit, instead of thoughts, cognitions and ideas, these pure spiritual entities and objects which would then inhabit our head would be our heavenly brothers, Saturn and Uranus-beings would then be the inhabitants of our head. Instead of mathematics, logic metaphysics, we should have in us the most exact likeness of these heavenly inhabitants. These heavenly beings would insert themselves especially between us and the subjects of our knowledge and thought, they would obstruct our vision of every object, and bring about an eternal, complete eclipse of the sun in our spirit.”

The ‘Sun’ for Feuerbach is: his thought.

Thus he has a complete picture of what would happen. He has however such an unholy horror of it, that he prays to the good Ahriman to reserve him from Saturn and Uranus dwellers becoming inhabitants of his head.

“They would be nearer and more closely related to us than thoughts, ideas, and concepts, for they are not purely spiritual or abstract entities like these, but sense-like spiritual beings, beings who merely express the nature of the force of imagination. Our whole spirit would then be but a dream, a vision of a more beautiful future. Therefore those whom the gravity of understanding hinders from floating around on the surface of the unlimited ocean of imagination will realise that in the depths of our spirit, the living light of the Angels and of all similar heavenly beings is extinguished, as in an atmosphere, un breathable by them.”

If these beings then were to enter into our thoughts, our spirit would be a dream—thus writes Feuerbach. He only feels secure when in the region of thoughts, and if the life of the Angels, or other heavenly Entities were to enter these thoughts, he would feel insecure. This is the prayer to Ahriman: that he might guard man from a knowledge of the spiritual worlds. This happened in the forties of the nineteenth century through Ludwig Feuerbach, the enemy of any spiritual view of the world. What does this signify? It signifies nothing else than that the time is ripe for us to raise ourselves to the spiritual worlds; we have but to take in earnest what this man puts before us, we have then found the way into the spiritual worlds. We only need not fight it by a union with Ahriman. Thus you see: It is not the fault of heaven that spiritual science has not penetrated the culture of our time, for it has penetrated the heads of its opponents. Spiritual science wants to enter the world; The fault therefore does not lie with the heavens. The Gods are giving wisdom to man: Spiritual science has come. As human beings under the leadership of Ahriman has resisted it, it is now up to us not to resist any longer, but to have the courage to accept spiritual science, with full, true, earnestness.

One must say this to oneself as regards this development of the 19th Century; One must say: It is as if laid down afore time in the spiritual world, that a spiritual age would come after a materialistic age, and it is for humanity now to open its mind, and its feeling, to receive this spiritual world into itself. That point of view which is so eminent a materialistic view and found in Ludwig Feuerbach, its characteristic, clever, and infinitely philosophically-endowed advocate, is like an attack, a revolt against what is to enter humanity. Spiritual forces come down from above, the forces of understanding, of knowledge have really to rise up from below. The expression which Ludwig Feuerbach discovered for himself is a most characteristic one, that: the solar eclipse of the soul would have to follow, if thoughts ceased to be thoughts, if the beings of Uranus, Venus and Saturn, and so on, played into them ... that is if the higher Hierarchies played into them. A solar-eclipse of the spirit would then take place; these people have an unholy fear of this. This solar eclipse of the spirit is not brought about however by heavenly Beings, who desire especially to bring their light to man. The darkness has been caused by human beings, by their uniting with Ahriman; and because they have spread a cloud of fear around them like an aura, they have sought to bring off their attacks against the penetration of the spiritual world. It is clear from this, that the darkening has proceeded from man, and we must acknowledge that darkness has laid hold of humanity more and more—a darkening of a free knowledge, an opposition to the light of the spirit.

This is something humanity has itself prepared, and one can see how in the course of the 19th Century, a certain love of all short-sighted, inconsequent thoughts appeared, and a love for everything that did not have to be thought out to an end. A preference and sympathy arose for all those things for which man will not have finally to give account. People loved ever less and less an unprejudiced, impartial, knowledge and thinking, and it is therefore not surprising when this love of the nebulous, of the unclear, of the unfinished in thought gradually assumed an ever more morally assailable character in public life. In so far as this character was countenanced, sympathy for the life of thought became dull; and then passed over into a general attitude. Through this an opposing force in chief was installed more especially against a spiritual science which strove for clarity on all sides.

Spiritual science has true sympathy and love above all for consequent, finished, thoughts, not for half-thoughts; it never holds with what is unclear and dark, but must ever reach out to that which spreads light widely, not to that which sends an apparent light into narrow places only. In this connection, we have still to fight our way through many things.

These are points I wished to bring forward in our studies today, in order to show how in the course of the century, thoughts through Ahriman gave occasion for the denial of the spiritual worlds, but how these worlds have themselves worked within the thoughts of him who denied them because—the time had come ‘The time has come’: this saying from Goethe's Fairy Tale is here in its right place.

It must be substantiated in the near future.

• 1. “The Problem of Death in Connection with the Artistic grasp of Life” February 5–7, 1915

My dear friends,

The present course of lectures will constitute a kind of continuation of the one given when I was last here. I will begin with those chapters of physics which are of especial importance for laying a satisfactory foundation for a scientific world view, namely the observations of heat relations in the world. Today I will try to lay out for you a kind of introduction to show the extent to which we can create a body of meaningful views of a physical sort within a general world view. This will show further how a foundation may be secured for a pedagogical impulse applicable to the teaching of science. Today we will therefore go as far as we can towards outlining a general introduction.

The theory of heat, so-called, has taken a form during the 19th century which has given a great deal of support to a materialistic view of the world. It has done so because in heat relationships it is very easy to turn one's glance away from the real nature of heat, from its being, and to direct it to the mechanical phenomena arising from heat.

Heat is first known through sensations of cold, warmth, lukewarm, etc. But man soon learns that there appears to be something vague about these sensations, something subjective. A simple experiment which can be made by anyone shows this fact.

Imagine you have a vessel filled with water of a definite temperature, \(t\); on the right of it you have another vessel filled with water of a temperature \(t-t_1\), that is of a temperature distinctly lower than the temperature in the first vessel. In addition, you have a vessel filled with water at a temperature \(t+t_1\). When now, you hold your fingers in the two outer vessels you will note by your sensations the heat conditions in these vessels. You can then plunge your fingers which have been in the outer vessels into the central vessel and you will see that to the finger which has been in the cold water the water in the central vessel will feel warm, while to the finger which has been in the warm water, the water in the central vessel will feel cold. The same temperature therefore is experienced differently according to the temperature to which one has previously been exposed. Everyone knows that when he goes into a cellar, it may feel different in winter from the way it feels in summer. Even though the thermometer stands at the same point circumstances may be such that the cellar feels warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Indeed, the subjective experience of heat is not uniform and it is necessary to set an objective standard by which to measure the heat condition of any object or location. Now, I need not here go into the elementary phenomena or take up the elementary instruments for measuring heat. It must be assumed that you are acquainted with them. I will simply say that when the temperature condition is measured with a thermometer, there is a feeling that since we measure the degree above or below zero, we are getting an objective temperature measurement. In our thinking we consider that there is a fundamental difference between this objective determination in which we have no part and the subjective determination, where our own organization enters into the experience.

For all that the 19th century has striven to attain it may be said that this view on the matter was, from a certain point of view, fruitful and justified by its results. Now, however, we are in a time when people must pay attention to certain other things if they are to advance their way of thinking and their way of life. From science itself must come certain questions simply overlooked in such conclusions as those I have given. One question is this: Is there a difference, a real objective difference, between the determination of temperature by my organism and by a thermometer, or do I deceive myself for the sake of getting useful practical results when I bring such a difference into my ideas and concepts? This whole course will be designed to show why today such questions must be asked. From the principal questions it will be my object to proceed to those important considerations which have been overlooked owing to exclusive attention to the practical life. How they have been lost for us on account of the attention to technology you will see. I would like to impress you with the fact that we have completely lost our feeling for the real being of heat under the influence of certain ideas to be described presently. And, along with this loss, has gone the possibility of bringing this being of heat into relation with the human organism itself, a relation which must be all means be established in certain aspects of our life. To indicate to you in a merely preliminary way the bearing of these things on the human organism, I may call your attention to the fact that in many cases we are obliged today to measure the temperature of this organism, as for instance, when it is in a feverish condition. This will show you that the relation of the unknown being of heat to the human organism has considerable importance. Those extreme conditions as met with in chemical and technical processes will be dealt with subsequently. A proper attitude toward the relation of the unknown being of heat to the human organism has considerable importance. Those extreme conditions as met with in chemical and technical processes will be dealt with subsequently. A proper attitude toward the relation of the heat-being to the human organism cannot, however, be attained on the basis of a mechanical view of heat. The reason is, that in so doing, one neglects the fact that the various organs are quite different in their sensitiveness to this heat-being, that the heart, the liver, the lungs differ greatly in their capacity to react to the being of heat. Through the purely physical view of heat no foundation is laid for the real study of certain symptoms of disease, since the varying capacity to react to heat of the several organs of the body escapes attention. Today we are in no position to apply to the organic world the physical views built up in the course of the 19th century on the nature of heat. This is obvious to anyone who has an eye to see the harm done by modern physical research, so-called, in dealing with what might be designated the higher branches of knowledge of the living being. Certain questions must be asked, questions that call above everything for clear, lucid ideas. In the so-called “exact science,” nothing has done more harm than the introduction of confused ideas.

What then does it really mean when I say, if I put my fingers in the right and left hand vessels and then into a vessel with a liquid of an intermediate temperature, I get different sensations? Is there really something in the conceptual realm that is different from the so-called objective determination with the thermometer? Consider now, suppose you put thermometers in these two vessels in place of your fingers. You will then get different readings depending on whether you observe the thermometer in the one vessel or the other. If then you place the two thermometers instead of your fingers into the middle vessel, the mercury will act differently on the two. In the one it will rise; in the other it will fall. You see the thermometer does not behave differently from your sensations. For the setting up of a view of the phenomenon, there is no distinction between the two thermometers and the sensation from your finger. In both cases exactly the same thing occurs, namely a difference is shown from the immediately preceding conditions. And the thing our sensation depends on is that we do not within ourselves have any zero or reference point. If we had such a reference point then we would establish not merely the immediate sensation but would have apparatus to relate the temperature subjectively perceived, to such a reference point. We would then attach to the phenomenon just as we do with the thermometers something which really is not inherent in it, namely the variation from the reference point. You see, for the construction of our concept of the process there is no difference.

It is such questions as these that must be raised today if we are to clarify our ideas, or all the present ideas on these things are really confused. Do not imagine for a moment that this is of no consequence. Our whole life process is bound up with this fact that we have in us no temperature reference point. If we could establish such a reference point within ourselves, it would necessitate an entirely different state of consciousness, a different soul life. It is precisely because the reference point is hidden for us that we lead the kind of life we do.

You see, many things in life, in human life and in the animal organism, too, depend on the fact that we do not perceive certain processes. Think what you would have to do if you were obliged to experience subjectively everything that goes on in your organism. Suppose you had to be aware of all the details of the digestive process. A great deal pertaining to our condition of life rests on this fact that we do not bring into our consciousness certain things that take place in our organism. Among these things is that we do not carry within us a temperature reference point—we are not thermometers. A subjective-objective distinction such as is usually made is not therefore adequate for a comprehensive grasp of the physical.

It is this which has been the uncertain point in human thinking since the time of ancient Greeks. It had to be so, but it cannot remain so in the future. For the old Grecian philosophers, Zeno in particular, had already orientated human thinking about certain processes in a manner strikingly opposed to outer reality. I must call your attention to these things even at the risk of seeming pedantic. Let me recall to you the problem of Achilles and the tortoise, a problem I have often spoken about.

Let us assume we have the distance traveled by Achilles in a certain time \(a\). This represents the rate at which he can travel. And here we have the tortoise \(s\), who has a start on Achilles. Let us take the moment when Achilles gets to the point marked \(1\). The tortoise is ahead of him. Since the problem stated that Achilles has to cover every point covered by the tortoise, the tortoise will always be a little ahead and Achilles can never catch up. But, the way people would consider it is this. You would say, yes, I understand the problem all right, but Achilles would soon catch the tortoise. The whole thing is absurd. But if we reason that Achilles must cover the same path as the tortoise and the tortoise is ahead, he will never catch the tortoise. Although people would say this is absurd, nevertheless the conclusion is absolutely necessary and nothing can be urged against it. It is not foolish to come to this conclusion but on the other hand, it is remarkably clever considering only the logic of the matter. It is a necessary conclusion and cannot be avoided. Now what does all this depend on? It depends on this: that as long as you think, you cannot think otherwise than the premise requires. As a matter of fact, you do not depend on thinking strictly, but instead you look at the reality and you realize that it is obvious that Achilles will soon catch the tortoise. And in doing this you uproot thinking by means of reality and abandon the pure thought process. There is no point in admitting the premises and then saying, “Anyone who thinks this way is stupid.” Through thinking alone we can get nothing out of the proposition but that Achilles will never catch the tortoise. And why not? Because when we apply our thinking absolutely to reality, then our conclusions are not in accord with the facts. They cannot be. When we turn our rationalistic thought on reality it does not help us at all that we establish so-called truths which turn out not to be true. For we must conclude if Achilles follows the tortoise that he passes through each point that the tortoise passes through. Ideally this is so; in reality he does nothing of the kind. His stride is greater than that of the tortoise. He does not pass through each point of the path of the tortoise. We must, therefore, consider what Achilles really does, and not simply limit ourselves to mere thinking. Then we come to a different result. People do not bother their heads about these things but in reality they are extraordinarily important. Today especially, in our present scientific development, they are extremely important. For only when we understand that much of our thinking misses the phenomena of nature if we go from observation to so-called explanation, only in this case will we get the proper attitude toward these things.

The observable, however, is something which only needs to be described. That I can do the following for instance, calls simply for a description: here I have a ball which will pass through this opening. We will now warm the ball slightly. Now you see it does not go through. It will only go through when it has cooled sufficiently. As soon as I cool it by pouring this cold water on it, the ball goes through again. This is the observation, and it is this observation that I need only describe. Let us suppose, however, that I begin to theorize. I will do so in a sketchy way with the object merely of introducing the matter. Here is the ball; it consists of a certain number of small parts—molecules, atoms, if you like. This is not observation, but something added to observation in theory. At this moment, I have left the observed and in doing so I assume an extremely tragic role. Only those who are in a position to have insight into these things can realize this tragedy. For you see, if you investigate whether Achilles can catch the tortoise, you may indeed begin by thinking “Achilles must pass over every point covered by the tortoise and can never catch it.” This may be strictly demonstrated. Then you can make an experiment. You place the tortoise ahead and Achilles or some other who does not run even so fast as Achilles, in the rear. And at any time you can show that observation furnishes the opposite of what you conclude from reasoning. The tortoise is soon caught.

When, however, you theorize about the sphere, as to how its atoms and molecules are arranged, and when you abandon the possibility of observation, you cannot in such a case look into the matter and investigate it—you can only theorize. And in this realm you will do no better than you did when you applied your thinking to the course of Achilles. That is to say, you carry the whole incompleteness of your logic into your thinking about something which cannot be made the object of observation. This is the tragedy. We build explanation upon explanation while at the same time we abandon observation, and think we have explained things simply because we have erected hypotheses and theories. And the consequence of this course of forced reliance on our mere thinking is that this same thinking fails us the moment we are able to observe. It no longer agrees with the observation.

You will remember I already pointed out this distinction in the previous course when I indicated the boundary between kinematics and mechanics. Kinematics describes mere motion phenomena or phenomena as expressed by equations, but it is restricted to verifying the data of observation.

The moment we pass over from kinematics to mechanics where force and mass concepts are brought in, at this moment, we cannot rely on thinking alone, but we begin simply to read off what is given from observation of the phenomena. With unaided thought we are not able to deal adequately even with the simplest physical process where mass plays a role. All the 19th century theories, abandoned now to a greater or lesser extent, are of such a nature that in order to verify them it would be necessary to make experiments with atoms and molecules. The fact that they have been shown to have a practical application in limited fields makes no difference. The principle applies to the small as well as to the large. You remember how I have often in my lectures called attention to something which enters into our considerations now wearing a scientific aspect. I have often said: From what the physicists have theorized about heat relations and from related things they get certain notions about the sun. They describe what they call the “physical conditions” on the sun and make certain claims that the facts support the description. Now I have often told you, the physicists would be tremendously surprised if they could really take a trip to the sun and could see that none of their theorizing based on terrestrial conditions agreed with the realities as found on the sun. These things have a very practical value at the present, a value for the development of science in our time. Just recently news has gone forth to the world that after infinite pains the findings of certain English investigators in regard to the bending of starlight in cosmic space have been confirmed and could now be presented before a learned society in Berlin. It was rightly stated there “the investigations of Einstein and others on the theory of relativity have received a certain amount of confirmation. But final confirmation could be secured only when sufficient progress had been made to make spectrum analysis showing the behavior of the light at the time of an eclipse of the sun. Then it would be possible to see what the instruments available at present failed to determine.” This was the information given at the last meeting of the Berlin Physical Society. It is remarkably interesting. Naturally the next step is to seek a way really to investigate the light of the sun by spectrum analysis. The method is to be by means of instruments not available today. Then certain things already deduced from modern scientific ideas may simply be confirmed. As you know it is thus with many things which have come along from time to time and been later clarified by physical experiments. But, people will learn to recognize the fact that it is simply impossible for men to carry over to conditions on the sun or to the cosmic spaces what may be calculated from those heat phenomena available to observation in the terrestrial sphere. It will be understood that the sun's corona and similar phenomena have antecedents not included in the observations made under terrestrial conditions. Just as our speculations lead us astray when we abandon observation and theorize our way through a world of atoms and molecules, so we fall into error when we go out into the macrocosm and carry over to the sun what we have determined from observations under earth conditions. Such a method has led to the belief that the sun is a kind of glowing gas ball, but the sun is not a glowing ball of gas by any means. Consider a moment, you have matter here on the earth. All matter on the earth has a certain degree of intensity in its action. This may be measured in one way or another, be density or the like, in any way you wish, it has a definite intensity of action. This may become zero. In other words, we may have empty space. But the end is not yet. That empty space is not the ultimate condition I may illustrate to you by the following: Assume to yourselves that you had a boy and that you said, “He is a rattle-brained fellow. I have made over a small property to him but he has begun to squander it. He cannot have less than zero. He may finally have nothing, but I comfort myself with the thought that he cannot go any further once he gets to zero!” But you may now have a disillusionment. The fellow begins to get into debt. Then he does not stop at zero; the thing gets worse than zero. It has a very real meaning. As his father, you really have less if he gets into debt than if he stopped when he had nothing.

The same sort of thing, now, applies to the condition on the sun. It is not usually considered as empty space but the greatest possible rarefaction is thought of and a rarefied glowing gas is postulated. But what we must do is to go to a condition of emptiness and then go beyond this. It is in a condition of negative material intensity. In the spot where the sun is will be found a hole in space. There is less there than empty space. Therefore all the effects to be observed in the sun must be considered as attractive forces not as pressures of the like. The sun's corona, for instance, must not be thought of as it is considered by the modern physicist. It must be considered in such a way that we have the consciousness not of forces radiating outward as appearances would indicate, but of attractive force from the hole in space, from the negation of matter. Here our logic fails us. Our thinking is not valid here, for the receptive organ or the sense organ through which we perceive it is our entire body. Our whole body corresponds in this sensation to the eye in the case of light. There is no isolated organ, we respond with our whole body to the heat conditions. The fact that we may use our finger to perceive a heat condition, for instance, does not militate against this fact. The finger corresponds to a portion of the eye. While the eye therefore is an isolated organ and functions as such to objectify the world of light as color, this is not the case for heat. We are heat organs in our entirety. On this account, however, the external condition that gives rise to heat does not come to us in so isolated a form as does the condition which gives rise to light. Our eye is objectified within our organism. We cannot perceive heat in an analogous manner to light because we are one with the heat. Imagine that you could not see colors with your eye but only different degrees of brightness, and that the colors as such remained entirely subjective, were only feelings. You would never see colors; you would speak of light and dark, but the colors would evoke in you no response and it is thus with the perception of heat. Those differences which you perceive in the case of light on account of the fact that your eye is an isolated organ, such differences you do not perceive at all in the case of heat. They live in you. Thus when you speak of blue and red, these colors are considered as objective. When the analogous phenomenon is met in the case of heat, that which corresponds to the blue and the red is within you. It is you yourself. Therefore you do not define it. This requires us to adopt an entirely different method for the observation of the objective being of heat from the method we use of the objective being of light. Nothing had so great a misleading effect on the observers of the 19th century as this general tendency to unify things schematically. You find everywhere in physiologies a “sense physiology.” Just as though there were such a thing! As though there were something of which it could be said, in general, “it holds for the ear as for the eye, or even for the sense of feeling or for the sense of heat. It is an absurdity to speak of a sense physiology and to say that a sense perception is this or that. It is possible only to speak of the perception of the eye by itself, or the perception of the ear by itself and likewise of our entire organism as heat sense organ, etc. They are very different things. Only meaningless abstractions result from a general consideration of the senses. But you find everywhere the tendency towards such a generalizing of these things. Conclusions result that would be humorous were they not so harmful to our whole life. If someone says—Here is a boy, another boy has given him a thrashing. Also then it is asserted—Yesterday he was whipped by his teacher; his teacher gave him a thrashing. In both cases there is a thrashing given; there is no difference. Am I to conclude from this that the bad boy who dealt out today's whipping and the teacher who administered yesterday's are moved by the same inner motives? That would be an absurdity; it would be impossible. But now, the following experiment is carried out: it is known that when light rays are allowed to fall on a concave mirror, under proper conditions they become parallel. When these are picked up by another concave mirror distant form the first they are concentrated and focused so that an intensified light appears at the focus. The same experiment is made with so-called heat rays. Again it may be demonstrated that these too can be focused—a thermometer will show it—and there is a point of high heat intensity produced. Here we have the same process as in the case of the light; therefore heat and light are fundamentally the same sort of thing. The thrashing of yesterday and the one of today are the same sort of thing. If a person came to such a conclusion in practical life, he would be considered a fool. In science, however, as it is pursued today, he is no fool, but a highly respected individual.

It is on account of things like this that we should strive for clear and lucid concepts, and without these we will not progress. Without them physics cannot contribute to a general world view. In the realm of physics especially it is necessary to attain to these obvious ideas.

You know quite well from what was made clear to you, at least to a certain extent, in my last course, that in the case of the phenomena of light, Goethe brought some degree of order into the physics of that particular class of facts, but no recognition has been given to him.

In the field of heat the difficulties that confront us are especially great. This is because in the time since Goethe the whole physical consideration of heat has been plunged into a chaos of theoretical considerations. In the 19th century the mechanical theory of heat as it is called has resulted in error upon error. It has applied concepts verifiable only by observation to a realm not accessible to observation. Everyone who believes himself able to think, but who in reality may not be able to do so, can propose theories. Such a one is the following: a gas enclosed in a vessel consists of particles. These particles are not at rest but in a state of continuous motion. Since these particles are in continuous motion and are small and conceived of as separated by relatively great distance, they do not collide with each other often but only occasionally. When they do so they rebound. Their motion is changed by this mutual bombardment. Now when one sums up all the various slight impacts there comes about a pressure on the wall of the vessel and through this pressure one can measure how great the temperature is. It is then asserted, “the gas particles in the vessel are in a certain state of motion, bombarding each other. The whole mass is in rapid motion, the particles bombarding each other and striking the wall. This gives rise to heat.” They may move faster and faster, strike the wall harder. Then it may be asked, what is heat? It is motion of these small particles. It is quite certain that under the influence of the facts such ideas have been fruitful, but only superficially. The entire method of thinking rests on one foundation. A great deal of pride is taken in this so-called “mechanical theory of heat,” for it seems to explain many things. For instance, it explains how when I rub my finger over a surface the effort I put forth, the pressure or work, is transformed into heat. I can turn heat back into work, in the steam engine for instance, where I secure motion by means of heat. A very convenient working concept has been built up along these lines. It is said that when we observe these things objectively going on in space, they are mechanical processes. The locomotive and the cars all move forward etc. When now, through some sort of work, I produce heat, what has really happened is that the outer observable motion has been transformed into motion of the ultimate particles. This is a convenient theory. It can be said that everything in the world is dependent on motion and we have merely transformation of observable motion into motion not observable. This latter we perceive as heat. But heat is in reality nothing but the impact and collision of the little gas particles striking each other and the walls of the vessel. The change into heat is as though the people in this whole audience suddenly began to move and collided with each other and with the walls etc. This is the Clausius theory of what goes on in a gas-filled space. This is the theory that has resulted from applying the method of the Achilles proposition to something not accessible to observation. It is not noticed that the same impossible grounds are taken as in the reasoning about Achilles and the tortoise. It is simply not as it is thought to be. Within a gas-filled space things are quite otherwise than we imagine them to be when we carry over the observable into the realm of the unobservable. My purpose today is to present this idea to you in an introductory way. From this consideration you can see that the fundamental method of thinking originated during the 19th century, begins to fail. For a large part of the method rests on the principle of calculating from observed facts by means of the differential concept. When the observed conditions in a gas-filled space are set down as differentials in accordance with the idea that we are dealing with the movements of ultimate particles, then the belief follows that by integrating something real is evolved. What must be understood is this: when we go from ordinary reckoning methods to differential equations, it is not possible to integrate forthwith without losing all contact with reality. This false notion of the relation of the integral to the differential has led the physics of the 19th century into wrong ideas of reality. It must be made clear that in certain instances one can set up differentials but what is obtained as a differential cannot be thought of as integrable without leading us into the realm of the ideal as opposed to the real. The understanding of this is of great importance in our relation to nature.

For you see, when I carry out a certain transformation period, I say that work is performed, heat produced and from this heat, work can again be secured by reversal of this process. But the processes of the organic cannot be reversed immediately. I will subsequently show the extent to which this reversal applies to the inorganic in the realm of heat in particular. There are also great inorganic processes that are not reversible, such as the plant processes. We cannot imagine a reversal of the process that goes on in the plant from the formation of roots, through the flower and fruit formation. The process takes its course from the seed to the setting of the fruit. It cannot be turned backwards like an inorganic process. This fact does not enter into our calculations. Even when we remain in the inorganic, there are certain macrocosmic processes for which our reckoning is not valid. Suppose you were able to set down a formula for the growth of a plant. It would be very complicated, but assume that you have such a formula. Certain terms in it could never be made negative because to do so would be to disagree with reality. In the face of the great phenomena of the world I cannot reverse reality. This does not apply, however, to reckoning. If I have today an eclipse of the moon I can simply calculate how in time past in the period of Thales, for instance, there was an eclipse of the moon. That is, in calculation only I can reverse the process, but in reality the process is not reversible. We cannot pass from the present state of the earth to former states—to an eclipse of the moon at the time of Thales, for instance, simply by reversing the process in calculation. A calculation may be made forward or backward, but usually reality does not agree with the calculation. The latter passes over reality. It must be defined to what extent our concepts and calculations are only conceptual in their content. In spite of the fact that they are reversible, there are no reversible processes in reality. This is important since we will see that the whole theory of heat is built on questions of the following sort: to what extent within nature are heat processes reversible and to what extent are they irreversible?