The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Yesterday's lecture will have enabled you to see what I meant when I said at the outset of this course that the Greeks thought of the whole of Nature as permeated by Spirit; they had no such conception of nature as we have today. You will have realised this from the way I tried to show the position of the three great gods, Zeus, Poseidon and Pluto in Greek spiritual life. We see that we have to think of the microcosmic forces found in man's astral body as transplanted into cosmic space. If we think of the sovereign ruler of these powers, their controlling centre, as superpersonal, superhuman, we have what Greek feeling associated with the name Zeus. Similarly, if we think of the forces of our ether bodies transplanted into cosmic space, we have what the Greeks associated with Poseidon; if we think of the forces of our physical bodies as transplanted into space, we have what the Greeks associated with Pluto.

Now it will certainly occur to you to ask: ‘What about the fourth member of our human being?’ For in our time we have of course to regard the whole man as consisting of physical, etheric, astral, and also of the ego or the ego-bearer. Now it is obvious that because this ego is in such a peculiar position in relation to the other members of the human being, the forces of the universe corresponding to the ego must also be in a peculiar position. One can say of the forces of the physical body that transplanted into the world of space they are governed by the central power of Pluto; similarly the forces of the ether body come into the sphere of Poseidon, and the forces of the astral body into the sphere of Zeus. But when we consider the ego itself, we find that it is closely bound up with all that is happening around us. Indeed with our egos we are right inside the world. Upon what goes on in the world around us our whole destiny, our happiness or unhappiness, depends. Very little reflection upon the matter leads us to feel that the forces of our ego must be very different from the forces of Pluto around us in space. Just as the destiny of the ego is closely connected with the environment, so too we must think of the forces of this ego as also connected with the divine-spiritual forces outside in space which are their counterpart, just as the other divine-spiritual forces correspond to soul-forces within us. Think how closely the experiences of our ego are bound up with our environment! How different our ego feels if we raise our eyes and allow it to plunge into the star-strewn heavens, or to gaze, at dawn or dusk, upon the rising or the setting sun! How little can we detach our egos from all this! How intimately we are bound up with the macrocosm out there! With our egos we are as if emptied out into our environment. What radiates into us from without, the golden rays of the sun, the majestic world of the stars, at one moment is something objective outside in the macrocosm, at another, an idea within the human soul, within the microcosm; in actual life we can scarcely distinguish between the two, they merge into one another. From the way the Greek had of experiencing the world and its wonders directly, we may expect him to think of the divinity who represented to him the ego-forces holding sway outside in space as far more closely related, far more closely bound up with the human being than the other gods—whom he really thought of as quite remote from human nature. Hence we find, as the representative of the ego-forces in the world outside, a divine figure with a certain affinity with human nature, so to say, one whose destiny, whose whole life, seems in a way quite human. That god is Dionysos. Just as we have to look upon Pluto as representing the forces of the physical body, Poseidon as representing the forces of the ether body, and Zeus as representing the forces of the astral body, transplanted into the universe, so we have to regard Dionysos as the macrocosmic representative of the soul-forces which live in our ego. The way in which the Greeks looked upon Dionysos, that figure which stands before our ego at last in such a remarkable way in the Mystery of Eleusis, will only become fully clear to us if first we learn a little about the way spiritual powers and spiritual beings in general work into our earthly existence, into the wonders which constitute our own human existence.

Much of what I am now about to say by way of parenthesis you will find in the little book I have just completed and which in essentials reproduces lectures that I gave a short time ago in Copenhagen. It is called The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind. I shall have to refer to certain passages in this little book which have a bearing upon our purpose in these lectures. First we have to reflect that humanity, as it evolves on the earth, determining its own destiny, little by little shaping the epochs of its own civilisation, is guided by Beings whom we must call super-human, Beings not accessible to human sense-perception, but to be found in the main in a super-sensible world, and attainable only to clairvoyant sight. If we turn to the category of Beings concerned with the guidance of mankind which is nearest to man, we find those who in eastern mysticism are called Dhyani, in Christian terminology Angels, Angeloi. We have often spoken of these superhuman Beings of the first category, and you know the relationship in which they stand to us. We know that, under quite different conditions of life, they too were once human; that was during the Moon evolution, at the time when our present Earth was passing through its previous embodiment. At that time these Angel Beings, who today take part in the guidance of humanity, were themselves passing through their human stage; thus at the commencement of the present evolution of the Earth they had got so far that today they stand one stage higher than humanity; at the end of Earth evolution that part of humanity which reaches the goal of the present Earth evolution will be as far advanced as the Angels were at the end of the Moon evolution. Hence these Beings are particularly fitted to be responsible for this guidance at the point where it is nearest to man. They are at work within our human evolution.

Now we invariably find in evolution that one thing, one epoch, is never exactly like another, and when we say that the Angels were the leaders nearest to men, that is not to be taken as of universal application. Thus no one should say, ‘then Angels were leaders of humanity in the first postAtlantean culture-epoch, in the Persian epoch, in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, and so on.’ To do so would be to think in a very abstract way. Things are not like that in the real world; there are all sorts of distinctions. As a matter of fact, there are only two post-Atlantean epochs in which the Angels have the direct and in a way, independent guidance of humanity—the third, the Egypto-Chaldean, and our own, the fifth epoch. In the Egypto-Chaldean epoch it was Angels who were the actual leaders of the epoch. How did they carry out their leadership?

On this point we may quote the Greek historian Herodotus. Once when the ancient Egyptians were asked who were their great leaders they answered, ‘the gods’. In the language of olden time ‘the gods’ meant these Angelic Beings, and the ancient Egyptians who were instructed in such things said quite seriously that at that time those who were the leaders of mankind were not normal men, but Beings of a superhuman nature, Beings who had already completed their human stage during the Moon evolution. But these leaders of humanity in the Egypto-Chaldean culture-epoch were unable to appear directly in human bodies. The physical bodies which we men have are an Earth product, wholly dependent upon earthly conditions of existence; and only beings who are going through their human evolution on the Earth—that is to say, only men—have a constitution of soul able to live out their lives in this sheath of the human physical body. Because the Angels went through their human stage on the Moon, it is impossible for them to clothe themselves in such a sheath as the human physical body. Thus they could not descend into incarnation in physical, fleshly bodies. These leaders of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch did not tread the Earth in human form. There were however men gifted with clairvoyance who were susceptible to inspiration from the spiritual worlds. In moments when they were specially open to these inspirations they were able to see before them those guiding Beings and to permeate themselves with their substance. These old clairvoyants offered up their bodies to the guiding Beings, they said to them, as it were, ‘Behold my body; enter into it, permeate it with spirit, inspire it.’ Thus in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch there walked on Earth an ordinary man, but one who was clairvoyant; what he said and did and what he taught was spoken and enacted in him and through him as the instrument of a higher Being, one who had completed his human development on the Moon. This was how the Egypto-Chaldean epoch was guided, and this guidance endeavoured above all to direct humanity along the straight line of evolution, to further its unfettered development towards the goal of the Earth. Thus Angels—Angeloi—who had completed their human stage on the Moon, inspired the loftiest seers of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, and through their instrumentality became kings and priests, the leading personalities of the period.

Side by side with these individualities there were yet others. One would have sought in vain for the leading individualities in human bodies. But there were others in a different position. They were Angel Beings in the lowest stage of Luciferic development, Angel Beings who had not completed their evolution on the Moon, who had not attained the goal of lunar humanity, thus Beings who, when the Earth evolution began, were themselves not so far advanced as men will be at the end of Earth evolution, if they reach their full development. These Beings too instilled their forces into the Egypto-Chaldean civilisation; but just because they had not fully completed their human stage, they were able to tread the Earth in human fleshly bodies. They incarnated in human bodies and mixed with the rest as real men. Legends are to be found among all peoples of such individualities, not only in Chaldea and Egypt, but among all the peoples of that time; they tell us of men who dwelt on Earth, but who were really in their inner soul-nature backward Angel Beings from the Moon. It was these individualities that the Greeks were referring to, when they spoke of their Heroes—for example, Cecrops and Cadmos. None of the great leaders of civilisation were actually men (I am not now speaking of the ones who only inspired men, but of those who really dwelt among men in physical bodies); their human form was maya, they were in truth backward Moon Beings. These individualities were the Heroes, superhuman Beings who were in the lowest of the Luciferic ranks. What then was the actual task of these Beings? It is wisely decreed in the plan of universal evolution that not only those Beings who guide evolution along its line of direct advance have legitimate tasks; if man were only subject to the spiritual guidance of those normally developed Beings, he would push forward in his evolution too swiftly, with too little weight, too little gravity. Evolution has need of hindrances in order that the right tempo can be maintained. Evolution needs a certain weight. The progressive forces gain strength only by meeting with resistance. Those Beings who by the wise guidance of the world lagged behind during the Moon evolution have the task of imparting weight to evolution.

I said that it would be wrong if one were to apply what I have just described for the Egypto-Chaldean epoch to all the culture-epochs. Things were different in the Persian epoch. There it was not the Angels who played the outstanding part in the guidance of humanity; there humanity was much more directly subject to the Archangels or Archangeloi. One may say that the Persian, the Zarathustra culture, was guided by Archangels just as the Egypto-Chaldean culture was under the direct guidance of Angels. And just as the Egyptian clairvoyant kings and priests were inspired by Angels, so Zarathustra and his pupils were inspired by Archangels, Amshaspands. If we go right back to the first post-Atlantean epoch, to the civilisation of which we still get a faint echo in the Vedas, we come to the great teachers of India, who are called the Holy Rishis. The Holy Rishis were inspired by a still higher hierarchy, they were inspired by the Spirits of Personality, the Principalities, the Archai, who of course used the Archangels and the Angels as their instruments, but who at that time intervened far more directly than they did later.

Thus we have to record a continuous progress of humanity from the first post-Atlantean epoch through the succeeding epochs, inasmuch as ever lower ranks of hierarchies intervene in the spiritual guidance of mankind. First in the Indian epoch the highest rank, the Archai or Spirits of Personality, then in the Persian epoch the next lower hierarchy, the Archangels, and in the Egyptian epoch the Beings who are next above man, the Angels. In the Greek period quite special conditions prevailed. At that time the leaders of humanity were the Beings who, of all superhuman Beings, had the greatest need themselves, so that those leaders of the Greco-Latin time gave men the greatest independence and freedom; for they were hoping to attain as much for themselves through their leadership as man could attain through them. Hence in Greco-Latin times we have the remarkable phenomenon that mankind seems to be thrown upon its own resources, seems to be self-sufficient. There has been no epoch of civilisation since the Atlantean catastrophe during which man was thrown so entirely on his own resources, or in which so much depended upon his expressing his own peculiar self as in the Greco-Latin time. Hence we see too how everything in this epoch tends to bring to expression in its purest form the human individuality. It could be said that this was so because the guiding hierarchies slackened the reins, because at this time men were most left to themselves.

In our own epoch, which follows the Greco-Latin time, we again find something very distinctive. Hence the same Beings who were the leaders of humanity in the Egypto-Chaldean time intervene again. If in clairvoyant consciousness we lift ourselves into the presence of the leaders of humanity, the same Beings appear to us as our spiritual leaders who were the leaders of the Egypto-Chaldean time, both those who at that time only inspired men, those Angels who had reached their full goal on the Moon, and also the Heroes, the leaders who took on fleshly form, that is to say, those who had not reached their full development on the Moon, the Luciferic Beings. They all appear again. But we must bear in mind that they have all undergone a further development of their own. Just as man today is at another stage than he was in the ancient Egyptian time, so also with these Angels and Luciferic Angels. Their achievement in guiding humanity in the EgyptoChaldean epoch raised them to a higher stage of evolution. If we turn with the eye of seership to the Akasha Chronicle and see how these leading Beings looked during the EgyptoChaldean epoch, we find that at that time they had reached a certain level of development. Now they emerge again from the twilight of existence and intervene anew in human evolution, having meanwhile reached a greater degree of perfection. But there is one difference.

Let us for a moment ignore the Beings who at that time were Luciferic Angels, and turn our attention to the normal Angels, those who during the Egypto-Chaldean epoch directed evolution in the straight line of advance. During that epoch some of them reached the normal goal of their own development, but there were also among them a number who lagged behind. Thus there are some who, although they had attained their normal development on the Moon and thus entered into the evolution of our present Earth as Angels, nevertheless, during the Egypto-Chaldean epoch failed to achieve all that they could have achieved on Earth. At that point they lagged behind. Thus among those Beings who were still in the line of normal development during the Egypto-Chaldean time there arose once more two classes, and there is really an enormous difference between these two classes of Angels. This difference has to do with the loftiest mystery of human evolution, and it is of paramount importance that we should understand it. I have already referred to it in the book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind. In order to give an account of this difference we have to introduce the name of Christ, the Christ who is so very closely bound up with the whole range of Earth evolution.

We know that as far as concerns Earth-development on the physical plane Christ was incarnated for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. We know that that incarnation took place once for all, that there had been no previous incarnation, and that there will be no other like it. What the Christ did by dwelling for three years in a human body was necessary for human beings on the Earth, it was necessary for men as earthly beings of sense to have the Christ also among them once as an earthly being of sense. But in His essential nature the Christ is not restricted to His life for three years in the sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth; He is also the leader of all the Beings of the higher hierarchies. He is an all-embracing, cosmic, universal Being. Just as through the Mystery of Golgotha He entered into human evolution, so for the Beings of the higher hierarchies corresponding events took place. That means that as time went on Christ brought something about for all these Beings of the higher hierarchies. How did this happen?

During the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, as I have already said, the Angels went through an evolution which has enabled them to take over the leadership of mankind today as more highly developed Beings. What made it possible for them to reach a higher stage of evolution? It was because they themselves, while they were guiding human souls in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, became pupils of Christ in the spiritual, super-sensible world. During the Egypto-Chaldean epoch Christ was the teacher of the Angels. His impulse flowed into them during that epoch, and it is because of this, because they have meanwhile been permeated by Christ that they now appear at a higher stage of development. Thus if at the time when the Greco-Latin age begins we were to look at those Beings who had been the spiritual leaders of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, we should say that by the beginning of the Greco-Latin age the most highly developed of them, those who were the best prepared to play a leading part in our fifth epoch, had received into themselves the Christ Impulse, which formerly they did not have, and that as Christ-filled Beings they now influence mankind from the higher worlds. In the same way the Archangels, who when they acted as the inspirers of Zarathustra and his pupils had not yet been ‘Christ-ened’, have meanwhile absorbed the Christ Impulse, and in the sixth culture-epoch, the epoch following our own, they will be the spiritual leaders of mankind. But in contradistinction to what they were in the Persian epoch, in the sixth epoch they will appear as Christ-filled Beings. The Archai, the Spirits of Personality, who were the inspirers of the Holy Rishis in the Indian epoch, have also meanwhile absorbed the Christ Impulse, and they will be the spiritual leaders of the seventh post-Atlantean epoch. Then everything which was once proclaimed to mankind by the voice of the Holy Rishis will come to pass in great glory and majesty; but in the most advanced men of the seventh culture-epoch it will all be illuminated, inflamed, set on fire by the Christ Impulse. The Holy Rishis will rise again in the splendour of the Christ Sun in the seventh culture-epoch of post-Atlantean humanity.Thus we see that for the Beings of these four hierarchies—not only for man, but also for Angels, Archangels and Archai—the Christ-event signifies the very highest experience of which we in our cosmic evolution can speak.

Why was it that certain Beings lagged behind? It was because they rejected the Christ Impulse. Thus we now have one class, one category, of guiding Beings who have accepted the Christ, but in the action upon our own epoch of another category, the backward Angelic Beings, there is no trace of the Christ Impulse to be found. They have not been ‘Christened’. Whereas the Angels who since Egypto-Chaldean times have been filled with the Christ Impulse now imbue human evolution with forces which lead them upwards to a spiritual life, the other Beings, those who rejected the Christ Impulse, seek to give to humanity for their inspiration everything which we can call materialistic culture and materialistic science. Hence the confusion prevailing in our time between the inspiration derived from the purest Christ Impulse, which should guide humanity upwards to spirituality—and it is to this which we devote ourselves when we follow strictly the goal of Spiritual Science—and the other inspirers who have turned away from the Christ and are concerned to introduce the material element into human civilisation. These two tendencies intermingle in our time. We can only understand our own epoch if we are aware that these two currents of spiritual leadership dominate it. So long as we cannot distinguish between them, and so long as we fanatically uphold one or the other of them, we are not in a position to understand clearly the course of our civilisation. Today under the guidance of the Angels who have rejected the Christ Impulse we have a science which is quite abstract, entirely unspiritual. We have the urge to rise to spirituality because the other Angels whom I have described are gaining an ever stronger hold upon the guidance of humanity. All the great spiritual Beings who lead humanity forwards, whether as Angels, Archangels or Archai, have at some time since Atlantis been open to the Christ Impulse, just as at the lowest level man was open to it through the Mystery of Golgotha. That is what the intervention of the Christ Impulse means in human evolution.

Of course we have to be quite clear that the Beings who were pressing forward towards spirituality with the greatest intensity could not become incarnated in human physical bodies even in the Egypt-Chaldean epoch. Even less so can this happen in our own time. Even today we have to seek for the outstanding spiritual leaders of humanity in the spiritual world through the eye of seership, through spiritual-scientific knowledge; to expect to find the highest leaders of humanity, the really progressive authoritative leaders, incarnated in human bodies would be quite wrong. From the universal rule that the real, guiding individualities do not incarnate during Earth evolution in human bodies, the Christ in a certain respect forms an exception, since He was incarnated for three years in a human body. What is the reason for this? It is because the Christ Being in all His forces, in all His impulses, is an essentially higher Being than any of the individualities of the hierarchies we have described—an Individuality even higher than the Archangels and the Archai, a Being of whose full greatness we can only be dimly aware. These stronger forces and impulses enabled this Individuality to fulfil a purpose that we shall come to understand more closely; they enabled Him to assume a human fleshly sheath as a sacrifice for three years. But something else is connected with this assumption of human bodily sheaths by the Christ which then led to the Mystery of Golgotha—something which it is important for us to understand.

It is only when we reflect upon this other factor that we are able to grasp not only the nature of Christ Himself, but also the nature of another figure, of whom we know that he plays a very considerable role in human evolution, a figure of whom we have already often treated in our lectures, but who can only gradually be fully characterised—I mean Lucifer. Let us consider these two individualities, Christ on the one hand and Lucifer on the other, and let us take to begin with only one characteristic of the Christ—that He once descended to Earth so far as to incarnate in a human physical body, that He dwelt for three years in such a body. What then is the consequence of the event which culminated on the physical plane in the Mystery of Golgotha?

The consequence was that now the etheric and astral spheres of the Earth became substantially permeated by the Christ Being. Whereas previously the Being whom we know as Christ was not there, now the etheric and astral spheres have become permeated through and through by Him. This is hinted in the words spoken by Theodora in my Mystery Play The Portal of Initiation. Anyone who becomes clairvoyant in the manner of St. Paul sees into the etheric sphere of the Earth and perceives there the Christ—something which at an earlier time was not possible even for the most advanced clairvoyant, something which was first made possible by the Mystery of Golgotha. You know that it is actually in the twentieth century, actually in our own time that a number of men will repeat this event of Damascus and recognise the Christ. Through their further development men will raise themselves ever more and more to a recognition of the etheric Christ. This shows you that it is an essential feature of the evolution of Christ that after the Mystery of Golgotha, search as we may in the physical realm, we shall not find the Christ substance as such incarnated there. Nevertheless the Earth is saturated by the Christ substance, because it reaches right down to the etheric sphere of the Earth, and will be able to be found there for all time, though it could never condense to the physical in a body of flesh. Today what is physical upon Earth is like a snail shell, which one day when the Earth has reached the goal of its evolution will fall away from the totality of human souls, just as the physical body now falls away from the individual soul at death. There will be a death of the Earth when it has reached the goal of its evolution. Just as today the individual soul throws off the physical body and enters a spiritual realm when man passes through the gate of death, so at the death of the Earth the totality of human souls will pass over into a spiritual sphere, and will cast off as dross, as husk, what today constitutes the physical element of the Earth. Where will be the Christ-substance when the Earth has undergone its earthly death? It will permeate the totality of human souls, who will rise out of the corpse of the Earth, out of the earthly dross. The Christ Being, together with the totality of human souls, ascends further into the spiritual realms, in order later to come to the next incorporation of the Earth, which in Spiritual Science we call Jupiter. That is the essence of the Christ Being, that in a wholly spiritualised form He continues to lead mankind in its development; He does not enter into any kind of physical manifestation, but for the time being remains close to the physical, but only until the death of the Earth; He remains close to the physical inasmuch as it is permeated by the etheric, but when the Earth has reached the goal of its evolution, the physical will be cast off as a corpse. Since the Mystery of Golgotha the Christ has retained absolutely nothing which could arouse in Him a desire to assume any kind of physical body. His renunciation of all physical substance is absolute.

That is the great secret connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, that by the sacrifice of His three years passed in a physical body, the Christ Being brought it about that nothing of Him will be left behind in the Earth-husk which will fall away at the death of the Earth. Because, though the Christ does indeed permeate the Earth's physical substances, He does not since the Mystery of Golgotha unite Himself with them, nothing remains in His nature which could look back with longing towards the cast-off husk at the death of the Earth. This husk will be cast off, it will shine from afar like a star. It will be seen by Beings then dwelling upon the outer planets as they gaze outwards into the heavenly spaces.

Will not only the Christ and those belonging to Him, but all other Beings, cease to have any connection with this star which will be cast off as dross at the death of the Earth? Not at all. I have just been speaking, for instance, of those Beings who rejected the Christ Impulse in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch. Some of them will go on rejecting Him. In certain circumstances even in time to come these Beings may incarnate in physical bodies and walk the Earth as men. They will be the ones who will yearn in a way after the star cast off at the death of the Earth, which will radiate in splendour out there in space. After the death of the Earth all those souls who belong to the Christ will in the future admire this star, but they will not hanker after it, they will not say, ‘That star is our home’. Neither these souls nor the souls of the Beings of the higher hierarchies will yearn after this star, any more than souls on the Earth hanker after Mars. They raise their eyes to Mars, receive its beneficent influence, but they do not yearn after it.

What then would have happened if the Christ Being had not entered into Earth evolution? There would have been a tremendous difference in the destiny of humanity. Suppose for a moment that the Christ had not entered human evolution; the Earth would still undergo death, human beings and the higher hierarchies would still continue their development in the spiritual worlds, but they would carry into those worlds the perpetual longing for that star which, as the husk of the Earth, would radiate with wondrous brilliance into the universe. Human beings without the Christ would look down from Jupiter with tragic longing towards the star formed of earthly dross, and not only would they admire it, but longingly they would say: ‘That is our home, it is grievous that we have to be here, grievous that we cannot be in our true home upon that star.’ That is the difference it would have made in the course of evolution if the Christ Impulse had not united itself with the Earth. To liberate men from the Earth, to make them free and independent for evolution that is to come in the future, that was the mission of Christ upon Earth. We see the immensity of the Christ-event, we see that it is because Christ has dwelt upon the Earth that humanity will become mature enough to evolve towards the future structure of our planet.

Is there any instance of Beings working on another planet who yearn after some other heavenly body as if it were their own true home? Yes, there are such cases; let us take one of them and compare him with the Christ. During the Moon evolution there were powerful Beings, exalted Beings, who however in a certain respect did not reach the goal of their Moon evolution. Among these exalted Beings was a host under its own leader which, when the Moon evolution came to an end and the evolution of the Earth began, had not attained the goal of its own evolution. Now this host of Beings entered into Earth evolution, and participated in the guidance of humanity, but always with this tragic longing for a cosmic star which had been cast out of the Moon evolution in the way I have described in the book Occult Science. Within the spiritual evolution of the Earth are mighty, highly significant Beings, with their leader, who, because they had to quit the Moon and go on to the Earth without having reached their full development, really feel this yearning for a star outside in the cosmos which they regard as their true home, but to which they cannot attain. These hosts are the hosts of Lucifer. Lucifer himself takes part in Earth evolution with the perpetual longing within him for his true home, for the star Venus outside in the cosmos. That is the salient feature of the Luciferic nature seen from the cosmic aspect. Clairvoyant consciousness comes to know just what the star of Venus is by entering into the soul of Lucifer, thus experiencing from the Earth Lucifer's tragic longing, like a wonderful cosmic nostalgia, for the star Phosphorus, Lucifer or Venus. For what Lucifer cast off as a husk, what at the death of the Moon was cast out of the Luciferic beings, as the physical body is cast off by the human soul at death, shines down from heaven as Venus.

I have now put before you from the cosmic aspect something about our Earth and about its neighbouring planet Venus. This was of course not experienced by the Greeks quite in the way I have expressed it, but it nevertheless lived in their sensations and feelings. When a Greek turned to the stars, especially when he turned to Venus, he sensed in his soul the inner connection between such a star and certain beings who inflame and inspire the earthly realm. When the ancient Greek felt what Lucifer was to the Earth, when he said to himself, as it were ‘The Luciferic principle wafts through our earthly existence’, he looked up to the star Venus and said: ‘There is the wandering point in the heavenly spaces towards which Lucifer's longings perpetually tend’.

This gives you the Greek sense of one of the ‘wonders of the world’, and it brings out very clearly that the Greek was far from gazing into space as do our modern astronomers, describing Venus as a purely physical globe. What then was Venus to the Greek soul? It was that region of space which he came to identify by observing clairvoyantly the spiritual content of Lucifer's soul; for in the soul of Lucifer he detected the great longing which reaches out as a living bridge from the Earth to Venus. This longing which the Greek soul recognised as being Lucifer's, he also felt to belong to the substance of Venus. The Greek did not see just the physical planet, he saw something which had been severed from the Luciferic Being, just as the physical body is severed from man when he goes through the gate of death, and as the corpse of the Earth will be severed when the Earth has reached the goal of her evolution. But there is this difference. The physical body of man is destined to disintegrate, whereas the body of a Lucifer is destined, when it falls away from the being of soul, to shine as a star in the heavenly spaces. In what I have just said about Venus, I have at the same time described what in the spiritual sense stars are. What are they to a quickened insight—those wonders of the world, those wonders of Nature—but the bodies of gods? What has gone forth into space from the bodies of the gods has become star. Looking up into the starry worlds, this is how the Greek saw the planets and the fixed stars. He said to himself: ‘The spiritual beings whom we revere as gods were once upon a time out there in space. They have undergone development. When they reached that point which for them corresponds with what for man during earthly existence is death, then their physical substance left them and became star.’

Stars are the bodies of gods, gods whose souls work on in the world in another way, independently of those bodies—just as Lucifer became independent of his body and continues to work in our Earth evolution. To grasp this is to have a spiritualised conception of nature and of the world. This of course has nothing in common with the wishy-washy pantheism which gives out that all Nature is permeated with a uniform divinity. Such a statement is inadequate; stars cannot simply be defined in this abstract way, as bodies through which the gods manifest themselves; when one looks up to those far-distant worlds one has to understand that the stars are bodies which the gods have abandoned, having progressed to other stages of evolution. But in this we find the difference between all the planetary gods and the Christ. As I have explained, the Christ leaves no such physical star at the death of the Earth, no residue still unspiritualised, but passes over entirely into the spiritual world, and as spirit goes over with the human soul into the Jupiter existence. That is one of the essential differences between the planetary spirits and the Christ-Spirit. It is of supreme importance to bear this distinction in mind for it shows that the whole meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha would be lost if, after that event, He whom we rightly call the Christ could once more incarnate in a physical body. For if, after the Mystery of Golgotha, the Spirit to whom we rightly give the name of Christ were again to incarnate in a physical body, this physical substance would furnish the first germ to which other substance would attach itself to form a star which in the future would remain behind, and the profound significance, the profound purpose of the Mystery of Golgotha would fail to be attained. The Christ would only have to incarnate in some physical body to belie Himself, and to annul the Mystery of Golgotha. He would then create a point of attraction of a material nature to which other material would attach itself. There would then have to be other incarnations of the same Being. In this way a star would be created towards which man would yearn for all time. Such a nostalgia may not be brought about by the Christ Being. Hence, after the Mystery of Golgotha, no one is justified in associating any incarnation in a body of flesh with the name of Christ. To do so implies either an abuse of the name of Christ, or a complete lack of comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha.

It is extremely important that these things should be understood. For only so is it possible to bring the universal nature of the Christ into a right relationship to human evolution. The forces which will be produced in a part of the human soul through the obliteration of the longing for the Earth, these forces, like all others, have to be strengthened by opposition. Hence it must necessarily be brought about by the wise guidance of the world that again Beings are left behind who, as was the case with the leading Angels of the Egypto-Chaldean time, with the Archangels of the Persian epoch, and the leading Archai of the Indian epoch, do not permeate themselves with the Christ Impulse, and therefore will continue to guide evolution without it. In future evolution they will be the element through which there will still admittedly be a certain longing and even a certain union with what as planetary residuum, as stars, will be out there in the universe and will be seen from Jupiter, just as our Venus, our Mars and our Jupiter are seen from the Earth. Thus it is really a different stream of humanity and a different stream of the higher hierarchies which will continue to hanker after the influence exerted upon the humanity of Jupiter from its future planetary neighbours. One must clearly distinguish these two things, then the greatest truth will throw light upon the lesser ones. Everywhere these two streams intermingle. Everywhere we see the progressing Christ Being, Who will guide men upwards to a higher vision of Himself; on the other hand we see the forces of hindrance, to which we must not give the name of the Christ, forces which even incarnate in human bodies; they too can acquire knowledge of the Christ, but they cannot acquire a Christ Impulse such as have the Angels who completed their evolution in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch; they are Beings who even in future times will be able to descend to fleshly embodiment.

We must clearly distinguish the one from the other. All the materialistic thought of our time comes from the Spirits who hinder, who hold progress back. To expect the salvation of mankind solely from individualities who could in the future incarnate in the flesh is a thought which comes from these Spirits of hindrance, for it is a materialistic principle. It deflects men from their upward course towards the vision of the spiritual. It concentrates their attention upon individualities incarnated in physical bodies upon whom they rely just because they can be seen by the physical senses.

Pre-Christian Greece had no clear insight into all that I have been saying about the Christ, because the Mystery of Golgotha had not yet taken place; but it had a spiritual perception of Lucifer and of his connection with the planet Venus, and of the connection of other gods with other stars. All these sensations and feelings which the Greeks derived from an archetypal wisdom, are a preparation for the ideas, the feelings, the impulses of soul which awoke in the informed Greek when the name Dionysos was spoken. Hence what has been said today has been a necessary preparation to enable us tomorrow to enter into those wonders of the world, those marvels of Nature, of which the Greeks thought when they spoke of Dionysos. This will serve to build a bridge to something which concerns man more closely, this will lead us to his inner nature, to the ordeals of his soul.

Let us first send our thoughts to those who are outside on the battlefields, where the great events of the present are taking place, to those who must stand for these serious events with their life, body and soul:

Geister ihrer Seelen, wirkende Wächter!
Eure Schwingen mögen bringen
Unserer Seelen bittende Liebe
Eurer Hut vertrauten Erdenmenschen,
Dass, mit Eurer Macht geeint,
Unsre Bitte helfend strahle
Den Seelen, die sie liebend sucht!

(TRANSLATION)

Spirits of their Souls, working Guardians!
May your pinions bring
Our souls' beseeching love
To the human beings on this earth, entrusted to your care,
That, united with your might,
Our prayer may helpfully ray out
To the souls whom it lovingly seeks!

And let us remember those who have already passed through the portal of death, as a result of these events:

Geister ihrer Seelen, wirkende Wächter!
Eure Schwingen mögen bringen
Unsrer Seelen bittende Liebe
Eurer Hut vertrauten Sphärenmenschen,
Dass, mit Eurer Macht geeint,
Unsre Bitte helfend strahle
Den Seelen, die sie liebend sucht.

(TRANSLATION)

Spirits of their Souls, working Guardians!
May your pinions bring
Our souls' beseeching love
To the human beings of the spheres, entrusted to your care,
That, united with your might,
Our prayer may helpfully ray out
To the souls whom it lovingly seeks!

And the Spirit Whom we seek through our spiritual-scientific endeavours, the Spirit Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha for the welfare of the earth and for mankind's freedom and progress, may He be with you and with your difficult tasks!

The time in which we live, reminds us daily and hourly of death, this significant event in human life, it reminds us of man's passage through the portal of death. For only in the light of spiritual science, death becomes a real event, in the true meaning of the word, because spiritual science shows us the eternal forces that are active within us, that pass through births and deaths and take on a special form of existence between birth and death, in order to assume another form of existence after their passage through the portal of death. In the light of spiritual science, death becomes an event, instead of being merely the abstract end of life (only a materialistic world-conception can look upon death as the end of life), it becomes a deep and serious event within the whole compass of human life. Even from our own ranks, dear friends of ours have left us in order to pass through the portal of death, chiefly as a result of the present historical events, but also for other reasons, and so it may perhaps be particularly appropriate just now to say a few things on death, on this great event, and on the facts of human life that are connected with it.

Explanations have often been given in our spiritual-scientific lectures on the life between death and a new birth, so that we were able to gain many essential facts, particularly in regard to this subject. The course which spiritual science has followed up to now, will have shown you that in every single case it can only speak of things from one definite standpoint, so that a more accurate knowledge can gradually be acquired by speaking of things repeatedly and throwing light upon them from many points of view. To-day I shall therefore add to the facts that you already know in connection with this subject, a few things that may be useful to our comprehension of the world as a whole.

Through spiritual science, we consider, to begin with (and that is a good thing) the human being such as he stands before us, here, in the physical world as an expression of his whole being. We must depart first of all from the manner in which the human being presents himself to us in the physical world, and for this reason, I have frequently pointed out that we obtain, as it were, a general view of man's whole being if we contemplate him so that we first take, as a foundation, his physical body, which we learn to know externally in the physical world through our senses and the scientific-dissection of what we perceive through the senses. We then proceed, by studying that form of organisation which we designate as our etheric body: this already possesses a super-sensible character and cannot, therefore, be contemplated with the aid of the ordinary intellect, which is bound to the brain, and is consequently also inaccessible to our ordinary science. The etheric body is an organism having super-sensible character, concerning which we may say that it was already known to men such as Immanuel Hermann Fichte, son of the great thinker Johann Gottlieb Fichte, to Troxler and others. Indeed, man's etheric body can only be grasped through imaginative knowledge owing to its super-sensible character, but as far as imaginative knowledge is concerned, it can be contemplated externally, just as the physical-sensory body can be contemplated externally through our ordinary sensory knowledge.

We then ascend in our contemplation to the astral body. The astral body in man cannot be contemplated in an external-sensory manner, in the same way in which we contemplate the physical body through our external senses, or in the same way in which we contemplate our etheric body through our inner sense; the astral body is something that can only be experienced inwardly. We must experience it inwardly and in order to experience it, we must be within it. The same thing applies to the fourth member which must be grasped in the physical world, to the Ego. With these four members of human nature, we build up our whole being.

Past lectures showed us that what we designate as man's physical body is a very complicated structure, formed during long periods of development that passed through the stages of Saturn, the Sun and the Moon¹ also the evolution of the earth contributed to this development of the physical body, from the very beginning of earthly existence up to our time. A complicated process of development therefore built up our physical body.

That form of contemplation which is, to begin with, accessible to us in the physical world, merely sees the external aspect of everything that lives within the physical body. Even ordinary science merely sees this external aspect. We might say: Our ordinary physical contemplation and ordinary science, in the form in which it now lives in the world, merely know of the physical body as much as we would know of a house, if we would only go round it outside, without ever going inside, so that we would never learn to know what it is like inside, nor what people live in it.

Of course, those who stand upon the foundation of ordinary science, in the usual materialistic meaning, will argue: “We are thoroughly acquainted with the interior of the physical body! We know what it is like, because we have frequently studied the brain inside the skull, when dissecting corpses; we have frequently studied the stomach and the heart.” This interior, however, that can thus be studied from outside, this spatial interior is not what I mean when I speak of man's inner being. Even this spatial interior is nothing but an external thing. Indeed, in the case of the physical body, this spatial interior is far more external than the real spatial exterior.

This must sound strange. But our sense-organs—you know this from other descriptions contained in our spiritual science—were formed already during the Saturn period and we carry them on the surface of our body. Spatially speaking, they are outside. Nevertheless, they were built by forces that are far more spiritual than those that formed our stomach, or everything that exists, spatially speaking, inside our body. What is inside our body, is built up by the least spiritual of forces. Strange though it may sound, I must nevertheless point out that we really speak of ourselves in an entirely mistaken manner—upside down, we might say. Since we live on the physical plane, it is natural to speak in that way; nevertheless the way in which we speak of ourselves is quite wrong. We should really designate the skin of our face as our interior, and the stomach as our exterior. This would lead us far closer to the truth! It would lead us closer to the real truth if we were to say: We eat in such a way that we send the food out of us; when we send food into our stomach, we really send it out, we do not send it into our body, as we generally say at the present time. The more our organs lie on the surface, the more spiritual are the forces from which they come; and the more they lie inside our body, the less spiritual are the forces that gave rise to them,

The descriptions that were given so far in our spiritual science enable you to grasp this with a certain ease. If you carefully remember the descriptions of spiritual science, you will no doubt remember what it says in regard to the Moon stage of development, namely, that something split off during the Moon stage of development, and that something also split off during the Earth-development; it went out into the world's spaces from the Saturn, Sun and Moon stages of development. A very strange thing is connected with this splitting-off process: namely, we were turned inside out! Our inside became our outside, and our outside became our inside. During the Saturn and Sun periods, our human countenance, that is now turned towards the outer world, was really turned towards our inner being. Of course, this was only the case during the early stages of development; but even during a part of the Moon period, during the Moon existence, the foundation of the inner organs which we now possess was still formed from outside. Since that time, we have really been turned inside out, like an overcoat that can be turned. We should bear in mind that many super-sensible facts are connected with our physical body; its whole structure is super-sensible; the super-sensible world has formed it, and when we look upon the physical body as a whole, it merely shows us its external aspect,

If we now come to the etheric body, we shall find that it is neither visible nor accessible to the physical-sensory contemplation. But when the human being passes through the portal of death, it becomes all the more important. The time through which the human being now passes, the first days after his death, are particularly important as far as the etheric body is concerned. But we must learn to think differently, even in regard to the physical body, if we wish to grasp in the right way all that we encounter after our passage through the portal of death.

You already know (for you can observe this even in the physical world) that when we pass through the portal of death, we lay aside our physical body, as we generally say. We lay aside our physical body. Through decomposition or cremation (the only difference between these two processes lies in the length of time that they take up) the physical body is handed over to the elements of the earth. Now we might think that the physical body simply ceases to exist for those who have passed through the portal of death. But this is not the case, in this meaning. For we can hand over to the earth only those parts of our physical body that come from the earth itself. We cannot, however, hand over to the earth that part of our physical body that comes from the ancient Moon existence, nor that part which comes from the ancient Sun existence, or from the ancient Saturn existence. For those parts that come from the ancient Saturn existence, from the Sun existence, from the Moon existence, and even from a great portion of the Earth existence, are super-sensible forces. These super-sensible forces contained in our physical body, of which only the external part is accessible to our sensory contemplation, as explained just now,—where do these super-sensible forces go to, after we have passed through the portal of death? As stated, we hand over to the earth, we return to the earth, only that part of our physical body, of that most wonderful structure which exists in the world, to begin with, as a form,—we return to the earth only what the earth itself has given to the physical body. And where is the other part, when we have passed through the portal of death? The other part withdraws from the one that sinks down into the earth, as it were, through the process of decomposition or cremation; the other part is taken up by the whole universe.

If you now think of everything you can at all imagine in the environment of the earth, including the planets and the fixed stars, if you imagine this in the most spiritual form, this spiritually conceived idea would give you the place where the spiritual part of our physical body abides after death. Only a portion of this spiritual part, a portion contained in the element of heat, separates and remains with the earth. But every other spiritual part of our physical body is borne out into the spaces of the universe, into the whole cosmos.

Where do we go to, when we abandon our physical body? Where do we dive down? Through our death, we dive down with lightning speed into that which forms our physical body, from out [of] all the super-sensible forces. Imagine that all the constructive forces that have worked upon your physical body, ever since the time of Saturn, were to stretch themselves into infinity, in order to prepare the place in which you live between death and a new birth. Between birth and death, all this is drawn together, I might say, within the space enclosed by your skin; it is merely drawn together.

When we are outside our physical body, we experience something that is of utmost importance for the whole subsequent life between death and a new birth. I have often mentioned this. This experience is of opposite character to the corresponding experience during our life here, upon the physical plane. During our life upon the physical plane, we cannot look back as far as the hour of our birth; we cannot look back upon it with the aid of our ordinary cognitive power. There is not one person who can remember his own birth, nor look back upon it. The only thing we know, is that we were born; in the first place, because we have been told so by others, and in the second place, because all the other human beings that came to the earth after us, were also born, so that we infer from this that we too, were born. But we cannot pass through the real experience of our own birth.

Exactly the opposite is the case with the corresponding experience after death. Whereas, during our physical life, the immediate contemplation of our birth can never rise up before our soul, the moment of death stands before our soul throughout our life between death and a new birth, if we only look upon it spiritually. We must realise that we then look upon the moment of death from the other side. Here, on earth, death has a terrifying aspect only because we look upon it as a kind of dissolution, as an end. But when we look back upon the moment of death from the other side, from the spiritual side, then death continually appears to us as a victory of the spirit, as the spirit that is extricating itself from the physical. It then appears as the greatest, most beautiful and significant event. Moreover, this experience kindles that which constitutes our Ego-consciousness after death. Throughout the time between death and a new birth, we have an Ego-consciousness that not only resembles but far exceeds that which we have here, during our physical life. We would not have this Ego-consciousness, if we could not look back incessantly, if we would not always see—but from the other side, from the spiritual side—that moment in which our spiritual part extricated itself from the physical. We know that we are an Ego only because we know that we have died, that our spiritual has freed itself from our physical part. When we cannot contemplate the moment of death, beyond the portal of death, then our Ego-consciousness after death is in the same case as our physical Ego-consciousness here upon the earth, when we are asleep. Just as we know nothing of our physical Ego-consciousness when we are asleep, so we know nothing concerning ourselves after death, if we do not constantly have before us the moment of death. It stands before us as one of the most beautiful and loftiest moments.

You see, even in this case we must set about thinking in an entirely different way of the spiritual world, than of the sensory-physical world. If we indolently remain by the thoughts which we have in connection with the physical-sensory world, it will be impossible for us to grasp the spiritual in any way more precisely. For the most important thing after death is that the moment of death is viewed from the other side. This kindles our Ego-consciousness on the other side. Here, in the physical world, we have, as it were, one side of Ego-consciousness; after death, we have the other side of Ego-consciousness. I explained just now where we should look for the super-sensible part of our physical body after death. We should seek this physical body in the shape of a relation of forces, of an organism of forces, as a cosmos of forces, within the whole world. This physical essence prepares the place through which we must pass between death and a new birth.

Within our physical body, which is so small in comparison to the whole world, our skin really encloses a microcosm, something that is, in reality, a whole world. Trivially speaking, I might say that this world is merely rolled together and that afterwards it unrolls again and fills out the universe, with the exception of one tiny space, that always remains empty.

Between death and a new birth, we really exist everywhere in the world; we live in it with that part which, here on earth, lies at the foundation of our physical body in the form of super-sensible forces. We are everywhere, except in that one place. This remains empty. It is the space enclosed by our skin, the space which we take up in the physical world. This remains empty.

Yet we constantly look upon this empty space. That is to say, we look upon our own self, from outside; we look into a concavity. This remains empty. It remains empty to such an extent that a fundamental feeling rises up in connection with it. Namely, we do not contemplate things in an abstract manner, we do not simply stare at them, but our contemplation is connected with a powerful inner life-experience, with a mighty experience. It is connected with the fact that when we contemplate this emptiness, a feeling rises up in us, a feeling that accompanies us throughout our life between death and a new birth and constitutes a great deal of what we generally designate as our life beyond. It is the feeling, that there is something in the world which must again and again be filled out by us. And then we acquire the feeling: “I exist in the world for a definite purpose, which I, alone, can fulfil.” Thus we learn to know our place within the world. We feel that we are building stones, without which the world could not exist. This is what arises through the contemplation of that empty space. When we gaze at it, we are overcome by a feeling telling us that we stand within the world as something that forms part of it.

All this is connected with the further development of our physical body. The more elementary forms of description only enable us to explain schematically as it were, a reality of the spiritual world that really requires to be explained in the form of images. In order to rise gradually to those concepts which penetrate more deeply into the reality of the spiritual world, we must first have those images.

We know that our next experience is a kind of retrospective memory, that lasts for days. But this retrospective memory is inappropriately designated (but nevertheless with a certain right) as a retrospective memory, for we have before us now, for a few days, something that resembles a tableau, or a panorama, woven out of all we have experienced during our past life. It does not, however, rise up in the same way in which an ordinary memory rises up in our physical body. You see, the memories that live in our physical body are of such a kind that we draw them out of our memory. Memory is a force that is connected with our physical body. Our recollections rise up in the form of thoughts; through the power of memory, we draw them out successively, within the stream of time. But the retrospective memory after death is of such a kind that everything that occurred during our earthly life, now surrounds us simultaneously, as if it were a panorama. Our life-experiences now rise up in the form of imaginations. We can only say that we now live, for whole days, within our experiences. What we experienced just before death, and what we experienced during our childhood, stands before us simultaneously, in powerful pictures. A panorama of our life, a life-picture stands before us and it reveals, simultaneously, in a woof woven out of the ether, what normally occurs successively, within the stream of time. Everything that we now see before us, lives in the ether.

We feel, above all, that we are now surrounded by something that is alive. Everything within it lives and weaves. And then we experience that it resounds spiritually, that it shines forth spiritually and gives warmth spiritually.

We know that this life-tableau disappears after a few days. What makes it cease and what is the essence of this life-tableau?

If we study the true essence of this life-tableau, we must really say: Everything that we have experienced during our life, is woven into it. How did we experience these things?—In the form of thoughts, connected with our experiences. Everything that we experienced in the form of thoughts and concepts is contained in this picture of our life.

In order to grasp this concretely, let us now say: During our earthly life, we lived together with another human being, we spoke with him and in speaking with him, his thoughts communicated with our thoughts. We received love from him, we allowed his soul to influence us and experienced all this inwardly. In this manner, we shared the experiences of the person we lived with. He lived and we lived, and through him we experienced something. What we experienced through him, now appears to us woven into this etheric life-tableau. It is the same thing that constitutes our memories. Think, for instance, of the moment, ten or twenty years ago, when you first met him and experienced something through him. Imagine that this memory now rises up before you, but that you do not remember it in the same way in which you would remember things during your ordinary life. The ordinary memories are grey and faded, but now you remember things in such a way that they rise up within you as LIVING memories; you see your friend standing before you in exactly the same way in which he stood before you during the real experience.

Here, on earth, we are often very dreamy and what we experience upon the physical plane in a living and hearty manner, becomes dulled and loses its vitality. But when we pass through the portal of death, when our experiences rise up before us in the life-tableau, they are no longer dull and lifeless, but exist there, in the original freshness and vitality which they possessed when we passed through them, during our earthly life. In this form they become inwoven with our life-tableau; in this form we experience them after death, for whole days.

In regard to the physical world, we have the impression that our physical body falls away from us when we die; in a similar way we now have the impression that also our etheric body falls away from us after a certain number of days, but it does not fall away from us in the same way in which our physical body falls away, for it becomes inwoven with the whole universe, with the whole world. It lives in the world and stamps its impressions upon the whole world, while we are experiencing our life-tableau. What we thus have before us in the form of a life-tableau, has now been handed over to the external world: it lives in our surroundings and has been taken over by the world.

During those days, we have an important and impressive experience in this connection. For, after death, our experiences do not merely resemble the memories which we have during our earthly life, but they are in every way substance for new experiences. Even the manner in which we grasp our Ego, through the fact that we constantly look back upon our death, is a new experience, for our earthly senses do not enable us to experience anything similar. This can only be grasped through the knowledge of initiation. But even what we experience during the days in which we are surrounded by this life-tableau, by this etheric life that frees itself from us and becomes inwoven with the universe, even what we experience in this manner, is impressive and lofty, it is an overwhelming and powerful experience for the human soul.

You see, during our physical life on earth, we face the world: we face the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdom. It enables us to experience what our senses are able to experience, what our intellect, that is bound to the brain, obtains through the sense-experiences, what are our feelings, that are connected with our vascular system, experience: we experience all these things, here on earth.

But in reality, and from a loftier standpoint, we human beings are extremely great dunces (excuse this expression!), gigantic dunces between birth and death. In regard to the wisdom of the great world, we are fearfully stupid if we believe that here on earth, when we experience something in the manner described and bear it along in the form of memories, everything is finished; we are fearfully stupid if we think that our experiences are finished, when we take them up in this manner, as human beings. For while we experience things, while we form concepts and feelings rise up in our experiences, the whole world of the Hierarchies is active within this process through which we acquire our experiences; the Hierarchies live and weave in it.

When we face a human being and, look into his eyes, then the Spirits of the Hierarchies, the Hierarchies themselves, the work of the Hierarchies, live in our gaze and in what is sent towards us through the gaze of the other human being. Our experience merely shows us the external aspect of things, for, in reality, the Gods work within our experiences. We think, that we only live for our own sake; yet the Gods work out something through our experiences; they obtain from them something that they can weave into the world. We form ideas, we have feeling experiences; the Gods take them up and communicate them to their world. And when we die, we know that the purpose of our life is to give the Gods the opportunity to spin out of our life this woof coming from our etheric body and to hand it over to the whole universe. The Gods gave us the chance to live, in order that they might spin out something for themselves, thus enriching the world.

This is an overwhelming thought. Every one of our strides is the external expression of an event connected with the Gods; it forms part of that woof which the Gods use for their plan of the world and which they leave to us only until we pass through the portal of death. After our death, they take it away from us and incorporate with the universe these, our human destinies. Our human destinies are, at the same time, the deeds of Gods, and the form in which they appear to us human beings is merely their outward aspect. This is the significant, important and essential fact which we should bear in mind.

What we acquire inwardly, during our earthly life, through the fact that we can think and have feelings, whom does this belong to, after our death? Whom does it now belong to? After our death, it belongs to the universe. We look back upon our death, and in the same way we now look back with that part which remains to us, namely, with our astral body and our Ego, upon that which has become inwoven with the universe, with the world. During our earthly life, we bear within us what thus becomes inwoven with the universe after our death; we bear it within us, as our etheric body. But now it is spun up and becomes inwoven with the world. And we now look upon it, we contemplate it. After our death, we look upon it in the same way in which we experienced it inwardly, here on earth. It now lives in the world outside. Just as here on earth we see stars, mountains, rivers, so after our death, we see, in addition to what our physical body has become with lightning speed, also that part of our own experiences which has become inwoven with the universe. That part of our own experiences which now incorporates with the whole world-structure, is reflected in those members which we still possess, in our astral body and in our Ego; it is reflected in the same way in which the external world is reflected, here on earth, in our physical organs and through our physical being.

While this is reflected in us, we acquire something that we cannot acquire during our earthly life, something that we shall only acquire later on, during the Jupiter period, in the form of a more external, physical impression. Now we acquire it spiritually, through the fact that our etheric being, outside makes an impression upon us. The impression which is thus made upon us, is, to begin with, a spiritual one; it is made in the form of images; in its image-character it is, however, the prototype of what we shall one day possess upon Jupiter: namely, the Spirit-Self.

A Spirit-Self is therefore born to us, through the fact that our etheric part becomes inwoven with the universe; this Spirit-Self comes to birth spiritually, not in the form in which we shall have it later on, upon Jupiter.

The etheric body has now detached itself, so that we now have the astral body, the Ego and the Spirit-Self.

The astral body and the Ego therefore remain to us from our earthly life.

You already know that our astral body, in the earthly form in which it was subjected to us, remains with as for a long time after death. The astral body remains with us, because it is permeated with all those things that only pertain to the earthly-human life, and because it cannot immediately expel this. We now pass through a time during which we can only cast off little by little what has become of our astral body as a result of our earthly life.

You see, here on earth, we can only experience, in regard to the astral body, one half at the most of everything through which we pass. We really experience only half of what takes place in every one of our experiences. Let us take an example: Imagine—this applies, both to good and to evil thoughts and actions—but let us take as an example an evil action: Imagine that you say something bad to another person and that your words hurt him. When we say something unkind, we only experience that part which concerns us personally; we only experience the feelings that prompted us to say those evil words: This is the soul-impression which we gather when we say bad and unkind things. But the other person to whom we addressed our unkind words, has an entirely different impression; he has, as it were, the other half of the impression and feels hurt. The second half of the impression lives in him. What we ourselves experience during our physical life on earth is one thing, and what the other person experiences is another thing.

Now imagine the following: After our death, when we pass retrogradely through our life, we must once more live through everything that other people, outside, have experienced through us. As we go backwards through our life, we experience the effects of our thoughts and actions. Between death and a new birth, we therefore pass through our life by going through it retrogradely. And when we have gone back as far as our birth, we are ripe for the moment when also that part of our astral body may be cast off, which is permeated with earthly things. It abandons us, and a new state of-existence begins for us when we have cast off our astral body.

The astral body always kept us connected, I might say, with the earth; it maintained this connection in all our experiences. When we pass through our astral body—not in a dreamy condition, but by living through our earthly experiences backwards—we are still connected with our earthly life; we still stand within our earthly existence. Now that we have cast off—but this is not the right expression; it is, however, impossible to use another one—now that we have cast off our astral body, we are quite free of all that pertains to the earth, and we live in the real spiritual world.

A new experience now sets in. This casting-off of the astral body is, again, merely one aspect of the whole experience; the other aspect is an entirely different one. When we have passed through our earthly experiences and no longer have our astral body, we feel, as it were, inwardly filled and permeated with—we cannot say with material—but with Spirit; then we really feel that we are in the spiritual world and the spiritual world rises up within us. In former times, it rose up before us in the outer world when we contemplated the universe and saw our own etheric body inwoven with the universe. But now it rises up within us; we now experience it inwardly. And our Ego rises up within us, as a prototype of what we shall possess physically only upon Venus; our Ego rises up as a prototype of the Life-Spirit.

We now consist of Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Ego.

Just as here on earth, we live in a rather dreamy state from our birth until that moment of our childhood in which we acquire self-consciousness, which is the earliest moment of life that we can recall, so we now lead a form of life that is fully conscious, indeed more conscious and higher than our earthly life. However, we experience a purely spiritual life, only when we have detached ourselves from our astral body, from our astral life, retaining only that part of our astral which permeates us inwardly. Consequently, we are, from that time onwards, Spirits among Spirits.

Now another important and essential experience rises up. During our life in the physical world, we carry on our work, do this or that thing and [have] experiences in connection with all these things. (We just spoke of this). Our experiences are, however, not limited to the physical world; simultaneously and in connection with them, we also experience something else. Although the expression which I shall now use for these simultaneous experiences is just an ordinary, more general expression, let me nevertheless use this word: while we experience these things, we grow tired, we get used up. This is constantly the case: we grow tired. Although our weariness is eliminated for our next state of consciousness through the fact that we sleep, or rather, through the fact that we rest during our sleep, this elimination, or adjustment, is nevertheless only a partial one, for we know, of course, that during our life we gradually become used up, we grow older, and our strength gradually dwindles. Consequently, we also grow tired in a wider sense. When we grow older, we know that we cannot adjust everything by sleeping. Thus we wear out our strength, we grow tired, during our life on earth.

Indeed, we are now able to view this problem from another aspect. After our preceding explanation, we can now advance this problem in a different way; we can ask: Why do the Gods allow us to grow weary? The fact that here on earth we get tired and wear out our strength, gives us something that is really most significant for our whole life. Let us, however, grasp the idea that we get tired, in a wider sense than the usual one. Let us place it clearly before our soul.

You will grasp it best of all if you imagine it in the following way: Ask any one of those present: Do you know anything concerning the interior of your head?—Probably only a person who is suffering from headache would answer that at the present moment he does know something concerning the interior of his head. He alone would feel what the inside of his head is like; all the others would not feel it.

We can feel our organs only when they are not quite in order; we are then to some extent aware of their existence through our feelings. As a rule, we only have a more general feeling of our physical body, and this feeling increases when anything is out of order. But when we only have this general feeling, we know very little concerning the interior of our body. Those who suffer from bad headaches know a little more concerning the inside of their head than an anatomist, who is merely acquainted with the head's vessels. I explained this just now. In growing more and more tired, during the course of our life, we acquire an ever stronger feeling in regard to the body's interior, its spatial interior.

Consider the fact that the more weary we grow, the more the infirmities of life arise, for instance the infirmities of old age. Our life consists therein that we gradually begin to feel and to sense our physical body. We learn to sense this physical part of our being, because it becomes hardened within us and because it pushes itself, as it were, into our being. Just because it develops so slowly, we regard it, I might say, as an insignificant feeling. Its real significance could be gauged, if we could feel (excuse this trivial expression, but it conveys what I wish to say) in the pink of health, like an exuberantly healthy child, and immediately afterwards, for the sake of comparison, like an old man of 80 or 85, whose limbs have grown fragile. This would enable us to experience that feeling more strongly; simply because it develops so slowly and little by little, we do not notice the fact that we gradually spin ourselves into the feeling experience of our physical part, while we grow weary; we do not notice this feeling simply because it develops so slowly. Yet growing weary is a real process. At first, it does not exist at all, for a child is full of exuberant vitality. But later on, fatigue gradually begins to drown the vital forces, and then the process of getting tired breaks through. We have the possibility of growing weary, and during this process (even though it only gives us, let us say, a dim feeling of our body's inner structure), during this process, something takes place within us, something really takes place within us.

Our life in the physical world only shows us the outer aspect of deep, significant and lofty mysteries. The fact that this dim, insignificant feeling of growing weary accompanies us throughout our life, so that we are able to feel the inner structure of our body, is merely the outer aspect of something that becomes inwoven with us; it is wonderfully woven out of pure wisdom, a complete woof of pure wisdom.

While we thus grow weary during our life and begin to experience ourselves inwardly, a delicate knowledge becomes inwoven with us, a knowledge of the wonderful constitution of our organs, of our inner organs. Our heart grows tired, yet this weariness means that a knowledge of the heart's structure becomes inwoven with us, a knowledge of how the heart is built from out the universe. Our stomach gets tired—most of all, when we spoil it by eating too much—yet during this process that tires the stomach, an image of wisdom from out the cosmos is woven into us, and this image shows us how the stomach is built up.

The lofty, wonderful structure of our organism, of this great work of art, arises within us in the form of an image. But this image only comes to life when we cast off that part of our astral body which is bound to the earth. What now lives within us, what now fills us as LIFE-SPIRIT, is the wisdom connected with our own being, it is the wisdom connected with the wonderful structure of our inner being and this wisdom now lives in us.

Now begins a time in which we compare, as it were, what fills us in the form of Life-Spirit from out the wisdom of our inner being, with the etheric woof that has already been woven into the universe. Our task is now to compare how one thing fits in with the other, and we then build up, in the form of an image, our inner being; we give it the shape which it should have during our next incarnation.

This is how we begin, but little by little our life approaches the World-Midnight, which you will find described in one of the Mystery Plays, in “The Souls' Awakening”. Particularly after the World-Midnight, we are engaged in a work that consists therein that we now participate in the world's creative work; we call into life what we afterwards enjoy here, DURING OUR LIFE BETWEEN DEATH AND A NEW BIRTH, WE SHARE IN THE WORK, WE PARTICIPATE IN THE WEAVING OF THE GODS' IMAGES. We have the privilege of sharing in a divine task, in what the Gods aimed at, when they placed man into the world. We are allowed to prepare our next incarnation.

Of course, this is not only connected with processes that exclusively and egoistically concern our own being, for all manner of other processes take place as well. This may be evident particularly from the following:

If we gradually succeed in experiencing, in spiritual contemplation, this wonderful process—which is, above all, far higher than the one which takes place on earth, when summer and winter alternate, or when the sun rises and sets—and when all that takes place which occurs in the form of earthly work, then something occurs in the spiritual world finally leading to our earthly incarnation, to human existence. This is a lofty, heavenly process, which has not only an external significance, but a deep significance for the whole world.

We also encounter something else, when we contemplate this process. It may sound strange to say this, but you see, the higher mysteries at first necessarily appear strange in the light of a physical-Sensory contemplation. What rises up before our soul in connection with these mysteries must move us. The more it moves us, the better it is, for these things, the very nature of these things, should not approach our soul so that we remain dry and indifferent. They should not be taken up in such a way that we remain indifferent, dry and cool; but they should, instead, give us a soul-impression of the loftiness and greatness of the divine spiritual world.

We can say: If anybody would undertake to present spiritual science in such a dry way that it does not take hold of our WHOLE being, and so that we do not gain an impression of the loftiness and greatness of the divine-spiritual that pulses and weaves through the world—if, after all these descriptions, we would live on indifferently and dryly, then we would be born without heads, in accordance with the present conditions of the world and in spite of everything we know! We would be born without heads! The structure of our head is something that we are unable to build. In its whole structure, the human head is such a lofty image of the universe, that the human being would be unable to form it, even with the aid of that life-wisdom which is woven into him; he would be unable to prepare it for the next incarnation. All the divine Hierarchies must cooperate in this work. Your head, this slightly irregular and somewhat transformed sphere, is a real microcosm, a true image of the great world-sphere. Within it lives, within it is collected everything that exists outside, in the universe. All the forces that are active in the different Hierarchies cooperate in order to produce the head. And when we begin to shape our next incarnation, from out [of] the wisdom, which we collected during the process of growing weary, all the Hierarchies cooperate and influence this activity, in order to embody in us, as an image of the whole wisdom of the Gods, what afterwards becomes our head!

While all this occurs, our physical, hereditary stream is being prepared generations ahead, here upon the earth. Just as after our death we can only hand over to the earth what comes from the earth, so our parents and grand-parents only give us that part of our being which pertains to the earth. Our earthly part is merely our exterior, it is merely the external expression within this earthly part. Woven into it, is, in the first place, everything that we ourselves are able to weave in the manner described, and what all the Hierarchies of the Gods weave, before we gain a connection (through conception) with that which enwraps us and clothes us about, when we enter the physical plane.

I explained to you, that the more of this lofty knowledge we take up in our feelings, the better it will be for us. Just consider the fact: We use our head. In so far as we live in materialism, we generally have not the slightest idea that whole Hierarchies of Gods are at work in order to produce our head, in order to mould that which lies, spiritually, at the foundation of our head, so that we are able to live. If we grasp this, in the meaning of a spiritual-scientific knowledge, it will spontaneously be filled with feelings of gratitude and thankfulness towards the whole universe.

Consequently, what we acquire through spiritual science, should incessantly continue to increase and raise our feelings. In the sphere of spiritual science, our sentient life should more and more hold pace with our cognitive work. It is not good to remain behind with our feelings. Whenever we learn to know a new and higher portion of spiritual science, we should be able to unfold, I might say, more and more reverent feelings towards the world's mysteries, which finally lead to the mysteries of man. A true progress in spiritual science really lies in this purifying, spiritual, warmth of our feelings.

Let me mention one more thing because it completes all that we have contemplated in this lecture. Here, in the physical world, we gradually grow accustomed to life by having, to begin with, the dull consciousness of childhood. At first, we only recognise our mother and little by little we learn to know other people. As we grow accustomed to life in the physical world, we believe that we are constantly coming across new people. As far as our physical consciousness is concerned, this is, in fact, true. But when we pass through the portal of death, we have a real, true connection with all the souls that we encountered during our earthly life. They rise up again before our spiritual eye. The souls with whom we were connected during our earthly life and that crossed the portal of death before us, we find these souls, as it were. The word “to find” really applies to physical conditions, but we may use it here, to define that living way in which souls approach other souls. This “finding” of the souls that crossed the portal of death before us, should, however, be imagined in such a way that we approach them, as it were, in an opposite manner from the one in which we approach human beings, here on the physical plane.

On the physical plane we encounter human beings so that we first approach them physically, and then we gradually become acquainted with their inner being. Their inner being unfolds only when we penetrate into their inner life. Hence, what we experience inwardly in connection with a human being, is the result of that which develops from out [of] our own inner life. When we ourselves have crossed the portal of death and encounter the souls that have passed through the portal of death before us, we know to begin with: There is that particular soul. We can feel it, we know that it is there. Now we must, however, surrender our whole inner being to the first impression that arises, to the first most abstract impression. Here on earth we should allow other human beings to exercise their influence upon us; but in the spiritual world we must SURRENDER OUR INNER BEING and we must now build up the image, the imagination, ourselves. The imaginative element, what we can look upon, this we must gradually build up. You may have an idea of the soul's experiences after death if you imagine that you do not see it, but that you TAKE HOLD of it ... and as you gradually ENCOMPASS IT WITH YOUR GRASP, you, form an image: you build up an image for yourself. You must therefore build up in inner activity the image of the soul whom you encounter. You realise, as it were: “I am now facing a soul ... What soul is it? It is the soul ...”, and this knowledge rises out of your own soul ... “towards whom I had the feelings of a son towards his mother.” And you begin to feel: “I experience myself together with this soul”. Now you begin to build its spiritual form. You must be active within it, and then it develops into an image. Through the fact that you build this image together with the other soul, you are united with that dead person, even before you begin, to form its spiritual shape. In this manner you are united with everything with which you were united during your earthly life; that is to say, you now experience these things in their own world. You must discover them, by awakening within you the power of vision, so that you may look upon yourself, but this requires activity on your part.

It is not the same with souls that still dwell in their physical body, with souls that are still alive when we die. Even here on earth, we encounter them in the form of images. Thus we look down upon the earth, and do not need to build up their image, for they already face us as images. Of course, we may weave into these images something that can become spiritual warmth and nourishment for the dead, namely the image which we are able to form through our thoughts for the dead, through our lasting love and memory, or—we know this, as spiritual scientists—by reading something to them.

You see, all this extends the human gaze, so that it penetrates, really penetrates into the real world. If this rises up before our soul, we begin to realise how little we know of the spiritual world. This was not always the case. Only the completely materialistic people of modern times boast of the great extent of their knowledge. But we know that in the past the human beings were clairvoyant and that this ancient, atavistic clairvoyance was lost only because certain qualities had to be acquired, which disappeared in the midst of an existence connected with a materialistic world. If a real materialist, a thoroughly materialistic thinker, approaches us, he will, of course, say: “It is nonsense to speak of an ancient clairvoyance, or that people had a special knowledge in the past”. But if we would only open our physical eyes a little as we pass through the world, we would very soon discover the confutation of such an argument! It is not even so long ago, that people used to know more than they do at the present time.

You know, for we have often considered this matter—but let me mention it again at the conclusion of this lecture—that Lucifer and Ahriman have a share in our spiritual existence. We also know that in the Bible Lucifer is symbolized as a Serpent, as the Serpent on the Tree. The physical serpent, such as we see it to-day, and as modern painters always paint it when they depict the Paradise Scene, is not a real Lucifer; it is only his outer image, his physical image. The real Lucifer is a Being that remained behind during the Moon-stage of evolution. He cannot be seen upon the earth, among physical objects. If a painter wishes to paint Lucifer's real aspect he would have to paint him so that he can be grasped as an etheric form, through a kind of inner clairvoyant form of contemplation. He would then appear in the shape in which he works upon us; he would show that he is not connected with our head or with our organism in so far as these are exclusively formed by the earth, but that he is connected with the continuation of our head, with the spinal cord. A painter who knows something through spiritual science, would therefore paint Adam and Eve, the Tree, and on the Tree the Serpent, but this serpent would only be a symbol and it would have a human head. If we would come across such a painting to-day, we would assume that the painter has, of course, been able to paint this picture through spiritual science,

Probably such a painting may even be found here in Leipzig; but people do not go about with open eyes, they go through the world with bandaged eyes. In the Art Gallery of Hamburg there is a painting of the Middle Ages by, Master Bertram, setting forth the Paradise Scene. In that painting, the Serpent on the Tree is painted correctly, as described just now. That picture can be seen there. But other painters have also painted the Paradise Scene in that way. What may we gather from this? That in the Middle Ages, people still knew this, they knew it to the extent of being able to paint it. In other words: It is not so long ago, that human beings were pushed completely on to the physical plane.

The course of man's spiritual history, as related by materialistic thinkers, is, after all, nothing but an outer deception, because they think that man always had the aspect which he assumed in the course of the past few centuries, whereas it is not so long ago that he used to look into the spiritual world with the aid of his ancient clairvoyance. He had to abandon the spiritual world, because he was not free, and in order to acquire full freedom and his Ego-consciousness, it was necessary that he should leave the spiritual world. Now he must once more find his way into the spiritual world.

Spiritual science therefore prepares something very important and essential: namely, that we may once more penetrate livingly into the spiritual world. Again and again let us conjure up in our soul the necessity of feeling that this small number of men that is now living in the very midst of a materialistic world and is led through its Karma to the possibility of grasping mankind's most important task for the future, that this small number of men is called upon to fulfil important, most important tasks, through its soul-life. We should realise without any pride, we should realise modestly and humbly the great difference between a soul that is gradually finding its way into the spiritual world, and all the people outside, who have not the slightest idea of this, who are, above all, NOT WILLING to have any idea of it. This fact should not merely arouse in us discouraging and painful feelings, but produce feelings that incite us to continue our work with increasing energy and to work faithfully within the stream of spiritual science, to which we were led through our Karma.

When we were together last, I also mentioned that when a human being passes through the portal of death before having lived through the whole of his life, then that part which is given to him in the form of an etheric body has not been used up completely. When a human being passes through the portal of death in his youth, then his etheric body might still have worked for years upon his physical body. But these forces do not go lost; they are still there. I also mentioned that in the present time, through the fact that every day and every hour death so numerously approaches mankind, many, many etheric bodies that might still have worked for a long time upon their physical body, here on the physical plane, are handed over to the spiritual-etheric world and hover in it. The forces that might, for decades, have provided for the physical body, become spiritual forces, that cooperate in the spiritual development of humanity. Thus a time will come, when these forces that constitute these etheric bodies, can be used for the spiritual progress of humanity; but this time will only come, if here on earth there will be human souls who are able to understand this.

When the terrible events of the present shall have passed over the earth and there will be peace once more, then the souls of those who are still living on the earth in human bodies, will have the possibility of grasping something of the fact that all those who have gone into the spiritual world before their time have their etheric bodies in that world and that they can ray their forces into the earth. It will be necessary that this fact be grasped by these souls. These souls can then cooperate in that spiritual progress which is rendered possible particularly through the many deaths of self-sacrifice.

Imagine what it would mean if spiritual science were to disappear, and if no one were to have any comprehension for all that is being prepared in the spiritual world through these deaths of self-sacrifice! Imagine what this would mean! In that case, all those forces would become the property of Beings who would use them for other purposes than those for which they should be used, in accordance with the plan and resolution of the Gods who follow the right course of development.

This is an admonishment that also comes from the events of our time, an admonishment to the effect that we should stand fully within all that which constitutes the spiritual world. For even these events of our time have their spiritual aspect. What they reveal outwardly, in the form of blood, death and sacrifices, is the external expression of an inner spiritual course of events, which should, however, be grasped in the right spirit.

Of this I wish to remind you again and again, with the words that conclude our present considerations:

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

(TRANSLATION)

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the sufferings of the abandoned,
From the nation's deeds of sacrifice,
Shall grow out a spiritual fruit,
If souls lead, in Spirit-consciousness,
Their heart and mind into the Spirit-realm.

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner's An Outline of Occult Science

To turn our minds to thoughts connected with the Whitsun festival seems to me less appropriate during these grave days¹ than would have been the case in earlier years. For mankind is passing through fateful ordeals and at such times it is not really fitting to call up feelings of inner warmth and exhilaration. If our feelings are right and true we can never for a single moment forget the suffering that is now so universal, and in a certain sense it is actually selfish to wish to forget it in order to give ourselves up to thoughts that warm and uplift the soul. It will therefore be more fitting to-day to speak of certain matters bearing on the needs of the age, for our recent studies have shown very clearly that many of the reasons for the sufferings of the present time lie in the prevailing attitude to the spiritual, and that it is vitally urgent to work for the development of the human soul in order that mankind may go forward to better days. Nevertheless I want at least to start with thoughts which will bring home to us the meaning of a festival such as Whitsun.

There are three festivals of main importance in the course of the year: Christmas, Easter, Whitsun. Everyone who has not become indifferent, as is the case with the majority of our contemporaries, to the significance of such festivals in the evolution of the world and of humanity will at once perceive the contrasts between these three festivals, for the difference in the kind of experiences associated with each is expressed in their outer symbolism. Christmas is a festival connected above all with the joys of childhood, a festival in which a part is usually, if not always, played by the Christmas Tree brought into the house from snow-clad nature outside. Our thought also turns to the Christmas Plays so often performed among us and which for centuries have brought uplift to the simplest human hearts at this season by reminding them of the great and unique event in earth-evolution when Jesus of Nazareth, or, to be quite exact, Jesus who came from Nazareth, was born in Bethlehem. The festival of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth is a festival connected with a world of feeling engendered by the Gospel of St. Luke, by those parts of the Gospel which make the most general appeal to simple hearts and are the easiest to understand. It is therefore a festival of universal humanity, intelligible, to a certain extent at least, even to the child and to men who have preserved a childlike quality of heart and mind. Yet it brings to such childlike hearts something great and mighty which then becomes part of their consciousness.

The Easter festival, although it is celebrated during the season when nature is waking to life, leads our minds to the portal of death. By contrast with the tenderness and universal appeal of the Christmas festival, the festival of Easter contains something infinitely sublime. If human souls are able to celebrate the Easter festival truly, they cannot fail to be aware of its transcendent majesty. It brings the sublime conception of the Divine Being who descended into a human body and passed through death. The whole riddle of death and the preservation in death itself of the eternal life of the soul—this is the great vista presented by the Easter festival.

These times of festival can be experienced in their depths only when we recall many things made real to us by Spiritual Science. Think only of how closely connected with all the festivals celebrated in the world in commemoration of the births of saviours are the thoughts arising from the Christmas festival. We are reminded, for example, of the Mithras festival celebrating the birth of Mithras in a cave. All these things are evidence of an intimate connection with nature. That Christmas is a festival linked with nature is symbolised in the Christmas Tree, and the birth, too, leads our minds to the workings and powers of nature. But because the birth of which Spiritual Science has so many things to say is that of Jesus of Nazareth, it is a birth fraught with infinite significance. And remembering that the Spirit of the earth wakens in winter, is most active during the season when outer nature appears to lie sleeping in a mantle of ice and snow, we can feel that the Christmas festival leads us into elemental nature herself, and that the lighting of the Christmas candles is a symbol of how the Spirit is awakening in the wintry darkness of nature.

If we would relate the Christmas festival to the life and being of man, we can do so by remembering that man is also connected with nature when he has separated from her spiritually, as he does in sleep, when in his ego and astral body he has gone into the spiritual world. His etheric body remains bound, supersensibly, to the physical body, and represents the part of man's being which belongs to elemental nature, to that elemental nature which wakens to life within the earth when the earth is shrouded in the ice of winter. It is far more than an analogy, indeed it is a profound truth to say that in addition to everything else, the Christmas festival is a token that man has in his being an etheric, elemental principle, an etheric body through which he is linked with elemental nature.

If you think, now, of all that has been said in the course of many years about the gradual darkening and decline of man's forces, you will realise how closely all the forces in the human astral body are connected with the death-bringing processes. The fact that we have to develop the astral body during our life, and that in the astral body we have to receive the spiritual, means that, in doing so, we bring the seeds of death into our being. It is quite incorrect to believe that death is connected with life in an external sense only, for the connection is most inward and fundamental. Our life is as it is only because we are able to die in the way we do. But this is bound up with the whole development of man's astral body. Again it is more than an analogy when we say: The Easter festival is a symbol for everything that has to do with the astral nature of man, with that principle of his being which, whenever he sleeps, leaves the physical body together with him and enters the spiritual world whence descended that Divine-Spiritual Being Who in Jesus of Nazareth actually passed through death. If one were speaking in an age more alive to the spiritual than is our own, what I have just said would be recognised as reality, whereas in our days it is taken merely as symbolism. It would then be realised that the purpose of instituting the Christmas and Easter festivals was to provide man with tokens of remembrance that he is connected with spiritual nature, with that nature that brings death to the physical, and to provide him with tokens reminding him that in his etheric body and astral body he is himself a bearer of the spiritual.—In our days these things have been forgotten. They will come to light again when humanity has the will to acquire understanding of spiritual truths such as these.

But now, besides the etheric body and the astral body, we bear within us as that which is supremely spiritual, our Ego. We know something of the complex nature of the Ego. We know especially that it is the Ego which passes from incarnation to incarnation, that the inner forces of the Ego build themselves up and shape themselves to that form which we carry forward into our being in each new incarnation. In the Ego we rise again from death to prepare for a new incarnation. It is by virtue of the Ego that we are individuals. If we can say that the etheric body represents in a certain sense that which is akin to birth and is connected with the elemental forces of nature, that the astral body symbolises the death-bringing principle that is connected with the higher spirituality, so we can say that the Ego represents our continual rising again in the spirit, our resurrection into the spiritual realm which is neither nature nor the world of stars, but pervades them all. And just as the Christmas festival can be connected with the etheric body and the Easter festival with the astral body, so the Whitsun festival can be connected with the Ego. This is the festival which, representing the immortality of the Ego, is a token of the fact that we, as men, do not share only in the universal life of nature, do not merely undergo death, but that we are individual immortal beings, rising ever and again from death.

And how beautifully this comes to expression when the Christmas thought, the Easter thought and the Whitsun thought are carried further! The Christmas festival is directly connected with earthly happenings, with the winter solstice, the time when the earth is shrouded in deepest darkness. In celebrating the Christmas festival we follow as it were the law by which earth-existence itself is governed; when the nights are longest and the days shortest, when the earth is frost-bound, we withdraw into ourselves and seek for the spiritual that is now alive within the earth. The Christmas festival is linked with the Spirit of the earth; it reminds us ever and again that we belong to the earth, that the Spirit had perforce to come down from cosmic heights and take earthly form in order to be a child of earth among the children of earth.

The Easter festival has a different setting. You know well that Easter is determined by the relation of the sun to the moon on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring, the first full moon after the 21st March. The Easter festival, therefore, is fixed according to the relative position of the sun to the moon. In a wonderful way, then, the Christmas festival is linked with the earth, and the Easter festival with the cosmos. At Christmas we are reminded of what is most holy in the earth, at Easter of what is most holy in the heavens. But the thought underlying the Christian festival of Whitsun is associated in a most beautiful way with what is even above the stars—the universal, spiritual, cosmic fire which individualises and in the fiery tongues descends upon the Apostles. It is the fire that is neither heavenly alone nor earthly alone; it is the all-pervading fire which individualises and passes into each single human being. In very truth the Whitsun festival is linked with the whole universe. Just as the Christmas festival is connected with the earth and the Easter festival with the stars, so is the Whitsun festival directly connected with man, with individual man, inasmuch as he receives the spark of spiritual life out of the whole universe. What is bestowed upon mankind in general through the descent to the earth of the Being who was both God and Man, is made ready for every individual human being in the fiery tongues of Pentecost. These fiery tongues represent what lives alike in man, in the stars, in the world.

And so for those who are seeking for the spiritual, this festival of Whitsun has a meaning and content of special profundity, calling ever and again for perpetual renewal of the spiritual quest.

In our days it is necessary that these thoughts of the festival should be taken in a deeper sense than at other times. For how we shall emerge from the grievous events of this age will depend very largely upon how deeply men are able to experience these thoughts. That souls will have themselves to work their way out of the present catastrophic conditions is already beginning to be realised here and there. And those who have come to Spiritual Science should feel with even greater intensity the need of the age for new strength to be infused into the spiritual life, the need to surmount materialism. This victory over materialism will only be possible if men have the will to kindle the spiritual world into living activity within them, to celebrate the Whitsun festival inwardly and with true earnestness.

• 1. Berlin, 1916.

Especially this year as Christmas approaches, we must think of the kind of feelings that unite us with these words and their deep and universal meaning—that deep meaning for the world experienced by countless people in such a way that the word peace resounds through it, the word peace in a time when peace is utterly absent in the widest circles of humanity. How do we think of these Christmas words in this time?

Nevertheless, it is a thought that, perhaps in connection with these words resounding through the world, touches us ever more deeply in the present than in other times. One thought! Nations confront one another full of animosity. Blood, so much blood saturates our earth. We have witnessed and must feel countless deaths around us in this time. Infinite suffering weaves around our inner atmosphere of feeling. Hate and antipathy race through spiritual space and can easily show how far human beings in our time still are from that love spoken about by the One whose birth is celebrated at Christmas. One thought, however, is especially predominant. We think how enemy stands against enemy, opponent against opponent, how human beings can bring death to each other and how they then can go through the same portal of death with the thought of the divine leader of light, the Christ Jesus. We think of how, all over the earth, where there is war and pain and discord, those who are otherwise in such discord can be united. Within their deepest hearts they carry their connection with Him who entered the world on the day we celebrate at Christmas.

We think how through all animosity, through all antipathy, through all hate, a feeling can impress itself into all human souls everywhere in these times, can impress itself in the midst of blood and hate: the thought of the innermost link with the One, with Him who thereby united hearts through something higher than what is able to separate human beings on earth. And so it is nevertheless a thought of infinite greatness, a thought of infinite depth of feeling, this thought of the Christ Jesus who harmonizes human beings no matter what their discord might be, no matter what goes on in the world.

If we take hold of the thought in this way, we will want to grasp it even more intensely, especially in our time. Then we will have an intimation of how strongly this thought is connected with what must become great and strong and powerful within human evolution. If this were to happen, much that must still be fought for in such a bloody way at this time could be achieved in another way by human hearts, by human soul.

That He makes us strong, that He strengthens us, that He teaches us all over the earth really to feel in the truest sense of the word the Christmas verse, transcending everything that separates us: those who truly feel themselves connected with the Christ Jesus must promise this to themselves on Christmas night again and again.

There is a tradition within the history of Christianity that arose repeatedly in later times and was a custom in certain Christian regions over many centuries. Already in far distant times in various regions, mostly emerging from Christian churches, there were presentations for believers of the mystery of Christmas night. Especially in these most ancient times, the presentation of the mystery of Christmas night began with a reading, yes, at times even with a presentation of the story of Creation, the story of Creation as it is presented at the beginning of the Bible. Especially around the time of Christmas it was described how, out of the depths of the cosmos, the universal Word resounded, how out of the universal Word creation arose gradually, bit by bit. It was described how Lucifer approached the human being and how human beings thereby began earthly existence in a different way from what would have been the case had Lucifer not approached, in a way different from what was originally destined. The entire story of the temptation of Adam, and Eve was presented, and then it was shown how the human being was integrated, as if were, into ancient, pre-testamental history.

Only as time went on do we find what was presented in more or less detail in the various plays that developed in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries in Central Europe, of which we have seen a small example just now.

At the Christmas festival, an infinitely great thought originally drew together the beginning of the Old Testament with the mysterious story of the Mystery of Golgotha. Very little indeed has remained of what it was from this thought that drew together the two sacred stories. Only a little of this insight has remained, one contemporary example being our calendar, in which the day before Christmas Eve is called the day of Adam and Eve. This has its origin in the same thought. In more ancient times, however, there were those with deeper thoughts, with deeper feelings, a deeper knowledge received from their teachers who taught them how they were to grasp the mystery of Christmas and the mystery of Golgotha. For them a great, encompassing symbolic thought was always being presented: the thought of the origin of the Cross.

The God who is presented to us in the Old Testament gives one commandment to the human being, represented by Adam and Eve: “You may eat from all the fruits of the garden; only the fruits that grow on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil must you avoid, because they who have eaten of that fruit would be cast out of the original scene of their existence.”

The tree, however—which was now represented in the most varied ways—came by some means into the sequence of generations that were the original generations from which the bodily sheath of the Christ Jesus proceeded. This came about in the following way (as it was presented in certain periods of time): when Adam, the sinful man was buried, this tree again grew out of his grave and was thus removed from Paradise. In this story we see the thought suggested that Adam rests in the grave, the human being who went through sin, the human being who was misguided by Lucifer; he rests in the grave and he unites himself with the body of the earth; but out of his grave the tree grows, the tree that can now grow out of the earth with which Adam's body has been united.

The wood of this tree passes over to the generations to which Abraham also belongs, to which David belongs. And out of the wood of this tree, which actually stood in Paradise, which then grew again out of Adam's grave, out of the wood of this tree, the Cross was made on which Christ Jesus was crucified.

This is the thought that was made clear again and again by the teachers of those who were to understand the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha out of deeper foundations. There is a deep meaning in the fact that in ancient times deep thoughts came to expression in such pictures, and this meaning holds good for the present as well. It will become clear to us that it still holds true for today.

We have also acquainted ourselves with the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha that says to us; the Being who has lived on earth through the body of Jesus poured out over the earth what He could bring to the earth, He poured it into the aura of the earth. What the Christ brought into the earth has since then become united with the entire corporeality of the earth. The earth has become something different since the Mystery of Golgotha. What Christ brought out of heavenly heights down to the earth is living in the earth aura.

If we consider this spiritually in connection with the ancient picture of the tree, this picture shows us the entire relationship from a higher point of view. The Luciferic principle entered the human being when the human being made his beginning on earth. The human being, as he is now in his union with the Luciferic principle, belongs to the earth, indeed he forms a part of the earth. And when we lay his body into the earth, this body is not rust as anatomy sees it; this body is at the same time the outer mold of what the human being is in his inner being within the earthly realm. It can then also be clear out of spiritual science that it is not just what goes through the portal of death into the spiritual world that belongs to the being of man; rather it becomes clear that the human being through all his activity, through all his deeds, is united with the earth. He is really united with it in the same way as those happenings that the geologist, the mineralogist, the zoologist, etc., find connected with the earth.

It is only when the human being goes through the portal of death that one could say that there is a termination for the human individuality of that which unites him to the earth. Our outer form, however, which we surrender in some way to the earth, enters the body of the earth. It carries in itself the stamp of what the earth has become through the fact that Lucifer entered into earthly evolution. What the human being achieves on the earth carries the Luciferic principle; the human being brings this Luciferic principle into the aura of the earth. It is not only what was originally the intention of the human being that arises, that blossoms out of human deeds, out of the activities of human beings; out of human deeds there arises something that has the Luciferic element mixed in with it. This then is in the aura of the earth. And when we now look upon the tree growing out of the grave of the human being Adam, who was led astray by Lucifer, if we look at the tree that has become something different through the Luciferic temptation—this tree that was originally the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—we see everything that the human being brought about by the fact that he left his original state of existence, that he became something different through, the Luciferic temptation and that something was thereby brought into earthly evolution that had not previously been intended.

We see the tree grow out of what forms the physical body for the earth, which was stamped in its earthly form by that which permits the human being to appear on the earth in a lower sphere than he would have if he had not gone through the Luciferic temptation. Something grows out of man's entire earthly existence that has come into humanity's evolution through the Luciferic misguidance, through the temptation. When we seek knowledge, we seek it in a different way than was originally predestined. This makes it appear that something different grows out of our earthly deeds from what would have been the case in accordance with the gods' original intention. We form an earthly existence that is not as the gods originally intended for us; we mix something else into it, and we must form very definite pictures of this if we wish to understand it. Definite mental images are required if we wish to understand, to understand properly.

We must say to ourselves: I am placed into earthly evolution. What I give to earthly evolution through my deeds bears fruit; it bears the fruit of knowledge that has become muse by the fact that I have gained the knowledge of good and evil on the earth. This knowledge lives in the evolution of the earth, this knowledge is there. As I look at this knowledge, however, it becomes something different for me, something that is different from what it originally should have been. It becomes something that I must change if the goal and task of the earth are to be achieved, I see growing out of my earthly deeds something that must become different. The tree grows forth, the tree that becomes the Cross of earthly existence, the tree that becomes something to which the human being must gain a new relationship. For the old relationship allows this tree to grow. The tree of the Cross, of that Cross which grows out of the Luciferically colored evolution of the earth, grows out of Adam's grave, out of the humanity that Adam has become since the temptation. The Tree of Knowledge must become the trunk of the Cross, because the human being must unite himself anew with the properly understood Tree of Knowledge as it is now in order to achieve the goal and task of the earth.

Let us ask ourselves—and here we touch on a significant mystery of spiritual science—what is really the situation with the members we have come to know as the members of human nature? We know to begin with that the highest member of human nature is the “I.” We learn to express our “I” at a definite moment in childhood. We gain a relationship to this “I” at the point to which we have memories in later life. We know from the most varied spiritual scientific considerations that until this point in time the “I” itself was active in forming and structuring us. This remains the case until the point at which we begin to have a relationship, a conscious relationship, to our “I.” In the child, this “I” is there also, but it works within, its first task is to form our body. To begin with it creates the super-sensible forces in the spiritual world. When we have gone through conception and birth it still works creatively on our body for a period of time that lasts a few years, until we have our body as a tool so that we can consciously comprehend our self as an “I.”

A deep mystery is connected with this entry of the “I” into the human bodily nature. When we meet a person we ask him, “How old are you?” He gives his age as the years that have passed since his birth. As has been said, we touch here on a certain mystery of spiritual science that will become more and more clear as time passes. Today, however, I will only touch on it, will only share it with you. What a person gives as his age at a definite time of his life is connected with his physical body. He says nothing other than that his physical body has been developing for so-and-so long since his birth. The “I” does not go along with this development of the physical body. The “I” stays there,

This is a difficult mystery to grasp, that the “I” stays at the point of time to which we can recollect, the point at which we remember ourselves. It does not change with the body, it stays there. For just this reason we always have it in front of us so that, as we look, it can mirror our experiences for us. The “I” does not take part in our earthly journey. Only when we have gone through the portal of death must we take the path that we call Kamaloca backward again to our birth in order to re encounter our “I” and then to take it along on our further journey. The “I” remains behind. The body pushes itself forward in years while the “I” remains behind, the “I” stays there. This is difficult to comprehend because one cannot imagine that something remains standing in time while time keeps moving. Nevertheless this is so, the “I” stays there, and it remains there because the “I” does not actually unite itself with what approaches the human being from earthly existence. It remains united with those forces we call ours in the spiritual world. The “I” remains there, the “I” fundamentally remains in the form in which it has been conferred on us, as we know, by the Spirits of Form.

This “I” is retained in the spiritual world. It must be held in the spiritual world, for otherwise we would never be able to achieve again the earth's original goal and aim as human beings during our earthly evolution. What the human being underwent here on earth because of his Adam nature, you could say, of which he takes an impress into the grave when he dies as Adam—this clings to the physical body, etheric body, and astral body, this comes from these. The “I” waits, waits with everything that is in it, waits the entire time undergone by the human being on the earth. It looks only toward the further development of the human being as he repeats it for himself when he has gone through the portal of death and follows this path in reverse. This means that we remain with our “I” back in the spiritual world (this is meant in a specific sense). Humanity ought to become conscious of this fact. And humanity is only able to become conscious of this fact because at a certain time the Christ descended out of those worlds to which the human being belongs, out of the spiritual worlds. In the body of Jesus He prepared for Himself, in the way we know, in a twofold way, what was to serve Him as body on the earth.

If we understand ourselves correctly, we always look back through our entire earthly life, back to our childhood. Our spiritual element has remained back in our childhood. We always look toward this if we wish to understand things correctly. And humanity ought to be instructed to look toward what the spirit out of the heights can say: “Let the little children come to me.” Not adults, who are connected with the earth, but rather the little children. In having been given the festival of Christmas in addition to the Mystery of Golgotha, humanity ought to be instructed in this. Otherwise the Mystery of Golgotha would only need to have been conferred on humanity in relation to the last three years of Christ's life, when Christ was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Christmas festival shows how Christ prepared the human body for himself during childhood. This is what should lie at the basis of the Christmas experience: to know how the human being has actually always remained connected with what is approaching now through what remained behind during growth, remaining in the heavenly heights. In the form of the child, the human being should be reminded of the human-divine element from which he has distanced himself on descending to the earth but that now has returned to him. The human being ought to be reminded of this childlike element in him. He ought to be reminded of Him who brought back the childlike element to him again. Though it was not easy, one can see the force that works so wonderfully to carry this precisely in the way in which the festival of the World Child, the Christmas festival, was developed in areas of Central Europe.

What we have seen today was only a small example of the Christmas plays, of which there are many. It comes from olden times and is one of the kind of Christmas plays that I have already pointed to. Only a few of these so-called Paradise Plays have remained, which were performed at Christmas and in which the story of Creation was presented. It has remained connected to the Shepherds' Play and with the play of the Three Kings, who bring their gifts. Much of this used to live in numerous Christmas plays, but to a large extent they have now disappeared.

These plays disappeared even in rural areas in approximately the middle of the eighteenth century, but it is wonderful to see how some remained alive. A man about whom I have spoken, Karl Julius Schröer, collected such Christmas plays in the area of western Hungary in the 1850's. He searched for them in the area around Pressburg, and then further beyond Pressburg into Hungary. Others collected such Christmas plays in different areas, but what Karl Julius Schröer was able to find at that time of the performance of these Christmas plays and the customs connected with them can enter our hearts deeply. These Christmas plays, handwritten, remained in the hands of certain families in the villages and were treasured as something especially sacred. When October came around, people began thinking about having to perform these plays during the Christmas season for the people of the village. Then the best behaved boys and girls were selected, and they began to prepare themselves: they were not permitted to drink wine or any alcoholic beverages, nor were they permitted—which could well happen in such places, as we know—to be rowdy and rambunctious on Sundays, and they were not permitted any other transgressions. They really had to “lead a holy life,” as is said. Thus people were aware that a certain moral mood of the soul had to be assumed by those who were to devote themselves to the performance of such plays during the Christmas season. Such plays were not to be performed out of ordinary worldliness.

They were performed with all the naïveté with which the peasants could perform something like that. And yet the whole performance was permeated with deepest seriousness, with infinite seriousness. The plays gathered by Karl Julius Schröer and others in the most varied areas have in common this deep seriousness, the seriousness with which one approached the Christmas mystery. But this was not always the case. We only need to go back just a few centuries to find something different, to encounter something most curious. In looking at how these Christmas plays arose and gradually developed in areas of Central Europe, we are able to see especially clearly how overwhelmingly the Christmas thought was active.

But this thought was not immediately taken up in the way I have just described it, approached with a certain kind of sacred modesty, with great seriousness and awareness of the significance of the event that lived in the feeling. No indeed! In many areas it began by simply placing a manger in some kind of side altar in this or that church. (This was still the case in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it goes back to still earlier times.) A manger was placed there, and therefore a stall, in which were placed an ox and an ass, as well as the Child and two dolls representing Joseph and Mary. At first they used a very naive sculptural technique, but then it was desired to bring more life to the figures. This came first from the side of the clergy. Thus priests dressed themselves up, one as Joseph, the other as Mary, and they then represented these figures. They played these roles instead of using the dolls. In the earliest times they even presented the scene in Latin, because in the old churches, if the performance was to present a deep meaning it was considered important that those who saw or listened understand as little as possible, that they only see the outer mimicry.

After some time this was no longer tolerated. The people also wanted to understand what was performed in front of them. Gradually there was a transition to presenting portions of it in the local language spoken in those regions. And finally the people awoke to a feeling of wanting to participate, to experience it themselves. Yet it remained foreign to them, quite foreign. We need only consider that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for example, familiarity with these holy mysteries of Christmas night, for example, did not exist. Today we take these things for granted, but at that time it was not there. You have to keep in mind that year in and year out people heard the mass, also hearing it at Christmas (held at midnight during the holy night), but that they did not hear the Bible—the Bible was only there for the priest to read. Thus they knew only single fragments of the sacred story. The initial attempts by the priests to present these things dramatically were really in order to acquaint the people with what had once taken place. In this way the people learned to know what was written in the Bible.

I must say something now that I beg you not to misunderstand. It can be mentioned because it corresponds to purely historical truth. Some kind of mystery mood or something similar did not immediately emanate from these presentations once people wanted to participate in the Christmas plays. This is not how it was. Rather the longing to take part in what was presented to them, to be more active participants, was what brought people closer to the situation. And finally they had to be permitted to participate to some extent; things had to be made more comprehensible to the people. By making it more comprehensible, things moved forward step by step. For example, people did not understand initially that in the manger lay the Child. They had never seen that, they had never seen a child in a manger. Certainly earlier, when they were not permitted to understand anything, they just accepted it, but new that they wanted to participate it needed to be made completely comprehensible to them.

At that time only a rocking cradle was placed in front of them, and people began to take part by walking by the cradle, each person rocking the Child in it for a little while. Gradually similar moments of participation developed. There were even regions where first a person approached the manger very seriously and then, on finding the Child there, incredible noise erupted and everyone screamed and pointed and danced, indicating the pleasure they now experienced because the Child had been born. This was taken up entirely in a mood emanating from the longing to participate themselves, the longing to experience a story. In the story, however, there was such grandness, something so powerful, that out of this completely profane mood—for it was initially a profane mood—there developed gradually, bit by bit, the holy mood about which I have just been speaking. The situation itself poured its holiness out over a reception that initially could not have been called holy. Especially in the Middle Ages, the holy story of Christmas first had to conquer the people. And the story conquered them to such an extent that while they were performing their plays they wanted to prepare themselves morally m such an intensive way.

What was it that conquered human feelings, the human soul? It was the tow of the Child, the view of what has remained holy in the human being while the three remaining bodies unite themselves with earthly development. Although in certain regions and during certain periods the story of Bethlehem took on grotesque forms, it was inherent in human nature to develop this holy view toward the nature of the Child, which is connected with what entered into Christian evolution from the very beginning: the consciousness of how what remains behind in the human being when he begins his earthly development must enter into a new bond with that which united itself with earthly man. He gives over to the earth the wood out of which the Cross must be made, through which he establishes a new bond.

In older times of Christian development in Central Europe, only the Easter thought was present among the people. Only in the way in which I have described it has the Christmas thought gradually been added. What we find written in the Heliand, or similar works, was recorded by individual poets, but it did not become popular. The popular aspects of Christmas arose in the way I have just described, which shows in a truly grand way how the thought of the bond with the childlike, with the pure, truly childlike element that appeared in a new form in the Jesus Child, has conquered the human being. If we bring the power of this thought together with the fact that this thought can live in souls so as to unite all people (and to begin with it is the only thought in our earthly existence that can do so), we come to the true Christ thought. The Christ thought therefore becomes great and must gradually become stronger in us if the further evolution of the earth is to take place in the right way.

Just consider how far removed the human being in present earthly existence still is from what is concealed in the depths of the Christ thought. A book has just recently been published—perhaps you have read it—written by Ernst Haeckel, World War Thoughts About Life, Death, and Infinity and Religion. A book by Ernst Haeckel is certainly one that proceeds from the most serious search for truth. This book by Ernst Haeckel points to what is now taking place on the earth, how people are at war with one another, how they hate one another, how countless deaths result every day. Haeckel mentions all these thoughts that obtrude upon people so painfully. Certainly he always mentions these thoughts with the background of looking at the world as he sees it from his standpoint. We know about his standpoint, having often spoken about it and about how we can recognize in Haeckel one of the greatest scientists. This standpoint leads also to other things, but it leads to something that can be observed in the newer phases of Haeckel's development.

Haeckel offers some thoughts about the World War. He also remarks on how much blood is flowing now, how many deaths surround us, and he asks himself, “Can the thoughts of religion survive next to these events?” As Haeckel asks it, “Can one believe that there is in any way a wisdom-filled providence, a beneficent God who rules the world, when every day one sees that by mere chance,” so he says, “so many people's lives are ended, that they die by no cause that can be proven to be related in any way to some kind of wise world rulership? Instead, by chance” he says, “this one or that one is struck by a bullet, suffering either death or injury. In the face of all these events, do thoughts of wisdom, thoughts of divine providence, have any meaning? Must not just such events as these prove that the human being must stay in one place, that he is nothing but what the outer, materialistically conceived history of evolution shows us, and that fundamentally everything in earthly existence is ruled not by divine providence but by chance? Is it possible in the face of all these events to have another religious thought” says Haeckel, “to do something other than resign oneself, saying that a person simply surrenders his body and dissipates into the cosmos?”

One can ask further, however—Haeckel no longer asks this question—“If this cosmos is nothing but the play of atoms, does human life really provide a meaning for earthly existence?” As I said, Haeckel does not ask this question anymore, but he does give an answer in his Christmas book: “Precisely events such as those that touch us so painfully now, just such events show that there is no justification for believing in any kind of beneficent providence or wise guidance of the world or anything like it; it is impossible now to maintain that anything like this weaves through and guides the world. Therefore resignation, seeing one's own way, is all there is.”

Haeckel's book is also a Christmas book! It is a Christmas book meant very sincerely and honestly. But this book is based on a significant prejudice. It rests on the prejudice that, it is not permissible to seek in a spiritual way for the earth's meaning, that humanity is prohibited from looking for a meaning of the earth in a spiritual way.

If it is only the outer course of events that is considered, one does not see this meaning. This is what happens to Haeckel. Then the situation must remain with the recognition that this life has no meaning. This is what Haeckel means. Looking for meaning is not permitted! But is it not so that another might come and say something further: that if we look only at these contemporary events externally, pointing out that countless bullets are destroying human lives, if we look only at these events and no meaning results, then precisely because of this we must seek for this meaning in a deeper way. It is precisely events such as these that show us we cannot amply look for and believe in meaning by looking just at what is going on now on the earth—by seeing only that these human souls vanish like their bodily natures. Instead we must look at what they are now beginning as they pass through the portal of death. In short, another person could come and say that precisely because no meaning can be found in the outer events, the meaning must be looked for outside the outer, the meaning must be looked for in the super-sensible.

Is this any different from looking at the same matter in a completely different realm? For one who thinks the way Haeckel thinks today, Haeckel's science can become a refusal to recognize any meaning in earthly existence. It can happen that a person wants to prove out of the events that are taking place so painfully today that earthly life as such has no meaning. But, if one takes hold of the problem in our way—we have done this frequently—precisely this same science takes as its starting point the deep and great meaning that can be unraveled by us in world phenomena. For this to happen, however, something spiritual must be active in the world; we must be able to unite ourselves with the spiritual, It is impossible for people to find a meaning for the earth, a real meaning, because our educated people do not yet understand that it is necessary to permit the power to work upon them that once so wonderfully conquered hearts, souls: the power that arose on looking at the Christmas mystery, from which a profane comprehension evolved into a sacred comprehension. Scholars are unable to grasp this yet; they cannot yet unite the Christ impulse with what they see in the outer world, and thus it is impossible for them to find a meaning for the earth.

Thus one must say that science, for all its great progress of which people are so proud today—and justifiably so - is not in a position out of itself to lead to a view that satisfies the human being. As it goes its way, it can lead in the same way either to meaninglessness or to the meaning of the earth, just as in any other domain. Consider this outer science so proudly developed in the last few centuries, especially from the nineteenth century until today, with all its wonderful laws. Consider everything that surrounds us today. It has been brought forth by this science. We no longer burn light at night in the same way that Goethe burned his. We burn light in a completely different way, and we illuminate our rooms in a completely different way. Consider everything that lives in our souls today out of our science; it has arisen through the great progress of science, of which humanity is justifiably proud. What is the effect of this same science? It is a blessing if man develops it as such. But today, especially since it is such a complete science, it produces indomitable instruments of death. Its progress serves destruction just as well as construction. Just as the science acknowledged by Haeckel can lead to either meaning or meaninglessness, so the science that can achieve such great things can serve either construction or destruction. Arid if the main thing is this science, science will bring forth evermore horrible and frightful works of destruction out of the same source that leads to constructive ends.

Science does not directly have an impulse to bring humanity forward. If only this were seen once, this science would be evaluated in the right way! Only then would it be known that something else must be an integral part of humanity's evolution than what the human being can achieve through this science. For what is this science, after all? In reality it is nothing but the tree that grows out of the grave of Adam. And the time is fast approaching when people will recognize that this science is the tree growing out of Adam's grave. And the time will come when people will recognize that this tree must become the wood that is the Cross of humanity. This wood can lead to a blessing only if that which unites in the right way with what lies beyond death, but lives already here in the human being, is crucified on the Cross: that which we behold on the holy Christmas night if we experience it in the right way, in its true mystery, that which can fee presented in a childlike way but that bears the highest mysteries. Isn't it actually wonderful that in the simplest way it can be said to the people: something entered which is active through human life on earth, something that actually may not go beyond childhood. It is related to what the human being belongs to as a super-sensible being. Isn't it wonderful that this super-sensible-invisible element, in the most eminent sense, can come so near to human souls in such a simple picture? Simple human souls!

Yes, those who are educated must also undertake the path taken by those simple human souls. There was a time when the Child was not presented in the manger. The Child in the manger was not presented, but instead the Child sleeping on the Cross was presented. The Child sleeping on the Cross! A wonderfully profound picture, bringing the entire thought to expression that I have wanted to let arise before your souls today.

And is it not basically very simple to express this thought? Yes, it is. Indeed, let us look once for the origin of those impulses that oppose each other in the world today in such a horrible way. Where do these impulses originate? Where does everything originate that makes the life of humanity so difficult today? Where is the origin of all this? It lies in everything we become in the world only after that point of time at which we can recollect ourselves. If we go back beyond this point of time, if we go back to the point in time at which we are called the “little children who are able to enter the kingdom of heaven”—this is not where it originates. At that point nothing of what today is in battle and dispute resides in human souls. The thought can be expressed this simply, but spiritually we must consider the fact that there is something so original in the human soul that it goes beyond all human strife, beyond all human disharmony.

We have often spoken of the ancient mysteries that wanted to awaken in human nature that which permits the human being to look up into the super-sensible. And we have spoken of the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha, perceptible for all human beings on the stage of history, has presented the super-sensible mystery. There is something that fundamentally unites us with the true Christ thought. We have this by virtue of the fact that we are able to have moments in our life (I am now speaking directly, not in a pictorial way) in which, despite everything we are in the outer world, we can bring alive in us what we received as a child. We can do this by going backward, feeling ourselves back at the child's standpoint? we can do this by looking toward the human being as he develops between birth and death, so that we are able to sense within us what we received as a child.

In the public lecture about Johann Gottlieb Fichte which I gave last Thursday, I could have added something, but at the time it would not have been understood. I could have said something that would have clarified a great deal that lives in this devout man in such a peculiar way. I would have spoken about why he actually developed the very particular way he did, and I would have had to say that this was because, more than other people, he retained the childlike quality in himself despite growing old. He retained more of the childlike quality in himself than other people do. Such people actually grow less old. It is really true that what existed in childhood remains more in such people than in others. This is generally the secret of many great human beings, that right into their oldest age they are able to remain children in a certain way; even when they die, they die as children, though this must be expressed only partially, since one must be connected with life.

The Christmas mystery thus speaks to what lives in us as a childlike quality, it speaks with a view to the divine Child who was selected to take up the Christ, it speaks with a view to the one who was already overshadowed by the Christ, who went through the Mystery of Golgotha in reality to heal the earth.

Let us become conscious of the fact that when we surrender the imprint of our higher self, when we surrender our physical body to the earth, it is not a merely physical process. Something spiritual is also taking place. But this spiritual aspect takes place in the right way only by virtue of the fact that the Christ being has streamed into the earth aura, the Christ being who went through the Mystery of Golgotha. We cannot see the earth in its completeness if we do not see that since the Mystery of Golgotha the Christ has been united with the earth. We can bypass the Christ, just as we can bypass everything super-sensible, if we feel ourselves constituted only of earthly matter and only able to relate to it. But if the earth is to have a real and true meaning for us, we can not bypass Christ. For this reason everything depends on our being able to awaken in ourselves something that will open the view into the spiritual world.

Let us make our Christmas festival into something that it must be especially for us. Let us make it into a festival that serves not only the past but the future, the future that little by little is to bring to birth the spiritual life for all humanity. We want to unite ourselves with the prophetic feeling, the prophetic intimation, that such a birth of the spiritual life must be brought to humanity, that presiding over humanity's future a great holy night must be active, coming to birth out of what gives meaning to the earth from human thoughts. The earth received this meaning objectively through the fact that the Christ being united Himself with the earth aura through the Mystery of Golgotha. In the holy night let us think of how, out of the depths of darkness, light must enter human evolution, the light of spiritual life. The old light of spiritual life that was there before the Mystery of Golgotha had to pass away, gradually it had to be extinguished. The light must arise again, must be reborn after the Mystery of Golgotha through the consciousness in the human soul, that this human soul is connected with what Christ became for the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha,

If there are more and more people who come to know how to conceive of Christmas in such a spiritual scientific sense, this Christmas night will develop a force in human hearts and human souls that will have its meaning in all times. It will have meaning in times in which people surrender themselves to feelings of joy but also in times in which people have to surrender themselves to the feelings of pain that must penetrate us today when we think of the great misery of our tune.

Since looking up to the spiritual gives meaning to the earth, I would like to share with you today the words of one who expressed this so beautifully:

What gave my eye this force,
That all misshapen forms have dissolved.
That the nights become like brilliant suns.
Disorder becomes order, decay life?

What intricate weaving through time, through space,
Guides me surely to the eternal well
Of the Beautiful, the True, the Good, and of all delight.
And in destroying immerses all my striving?

It is this: into Urania's eye, the deep,
Itself clear, blue, still, pure
Lightflame, I myself have quietly gazed.

Since then, this eye rests in my depths
And is in my being—the eternal
One, Lives in my life, sees in my seeing.

And in a second small poem:

Nothing is but God, and God is nothing but life,
You know it, you and I know it together,
But how would knowing be there
If it were not knowing of God's life?

“How gladly would I surrender myself to this,
Yet where do I find it? Somehow it flows
Into knowing, then transforms itself into seeming,
Mingling with it, surrounded by its sheaths.”

Quite dearly the sheath rises up before you,
It is your I, what is destructible dies,
And henceforth only God lives in your striving.

See through what survives this striving,
Then the sheath becomes visible to you as sheath.
And unveiled you see divine life.

Certainly people do not always know what they ought to do with those who point to perceiving the spiritual that gives meaning to the earth. It is not only materialists who do not know what to do. Others who believe they are not materialists because they are always saying, “God! God! God!” or “Lord! Lord! Lord!” often do not know what to make of these individuals who guide us to the spiritual. For what can one do with a person who says. “There is nothing but God! Everything is God! Everywhere, everywhere is God!” He was seeking for God in everything, the one who said:

See through what survives this striving,
Then the sheath becomes visible to you as sheath
And unveiled, you see divine life!

An individual who wants to see divine life everywhere could be accused of not allowing the world to exist, of denying the existence of the world. Though one could call him a world-denier, his contemporaries called him a denier of God, and they therefore chased him away from the colleges and universities. The words I have read to you are those of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. If the Mystery of Golgotha continues to live on in the human soul through earthly existence—amid what is connected with this Mystery of Golgotha in the Christmas mystery—it can serve as an impulse resounding in the soul. Fichte is a perfect example of how, when this is the case, a path is opened on which we can find the consciousness in which our own “I” flows together with the earth “I”—for this earth “I” is the Christ. Through this, we develop something in the human being that must become greater and greater if the earth is to move toward the development for which it was destined from the beginning.

Therefore we especially wish, out of the spirit of our spiritual knowledge renewed in the sense it has been today, to let the Christmas thought become an impulse in us. By looking up to this Christmas thought, we wish to attempt to see from what surrounds us not the meaninglessness of earthly evolution; rather, in the suffering and pain, in the strife and hate, we hope to see something that ultimately helps humanity forward, something that really brings humanity a bit forward.

It is not so important to look for causes, which anyway are so easily concealed in partisan strife. It is much more important for what happens today to focus on the possible effects, those effects that we must picture to ourselves as healing, as bringing healing for humanity.

The nations and people who are in a position to shape something that can be healing for humanity of the future out of what is able to sprout from the blood-drenched soil will be led to the right approach. What can be healing for humanity, however, can develop only if people find the way into the spiritual worlds, if people do not forget that there was not only one Christmas but that there must be an everlasting Christmas, an everlasting coming-to-birth of the divine- spiritual in the physical, earthly human being.

Especially today we wish to enclose the sacredness of this thought in our souls, we wish to hold it for the time surrounding Christmas, which can he a symbol for the evolution of light also in its outer course. In these days, at this time of year, darkness, earth darkness, will be here to the greatest degree possible on earth. When the earth lives in this deepest outer darkness, however, we know that the earth soul experiences her light, beginning to awaken to the highest degree.

The time of Christmas, then, is connected with the time of spiritual awakening. And with this time of spiritual awakening, the memory of the spiritual awakening for earthly evolution through the Christ Jesus shall be united. We therefore have the institution of the Christmas festival especially at this time.

Let us unite the Christmas thought with our soul in. this cosmic, and at the same time earthly, moral sense. Then, reinforced and strengthened with this Christmas thought as best as we can, let us look upon everything surrounding us to want what is right for the progress of events, also wanting what is appropriate in the development of deeds of the present time.

Especially this year as Christmas approaches, we must think of the kind of feelings that unite us with these words and their deep and universal meaning—that deep meaning for the world experienced by countless people in such a way that the word peace resounds through it, the word peace in a time when peace is utterly absent in the widest circles of humanity. How do we think of these Christmas words in this time?

Nevertheless, it is a thought that, perhaps in connection with these words resounding through the world, touches us ever more deeply in the present than in other times. One thought! Nations confront one another full of animosity. Blood, so much blood saturates our earth. We have witnessed and must feel countless deaths around us in this time. Infinite suffering weaves around our inner atmosphere of feeling. Hate and antipathy race through spiritual space and can easily show how far human beings in our time still are from that love spoken about by the One whose birth is celebrated at Christmas. One thought, however, is especially predominant. We think how enemy stands against enemy, opponent against opponent, how human beings can bring death to each other and how they then can go through the same portal of death with the thought of the divine leader of light, the Christ Jesus. We think of how, all over the earth, where there is war and pain and discord, those who are otherwise in such discord can be united. Within their deepest hearts they carry their connection with Him who entered the world on the day we celebrate at Christmas.

We think how through all animosity, through all antipathy, through all hate, a feeling can impress itself into all human souls everywhere in these times, can impress itself in the midst of blood and hate: the thought of the innermost link with the One, with Him who thereby united hearts through something higher than what is able to separate human beings on earth. And so it is nevertheless a thought of infinite greatness, a thought of infinite depth of feeling, this thought of the Christ Jesus who harmonizes human beings no matter what their discord might be, no matter what goes on in the world.

If we take hold of the thought in this way, we will want to grasp it even more intensely, especially in our time. Then we will have an intimation of how strongly this thought is connected with what must become great and strong and powerful within human evolution. If this were to happen, much that must still be fought for in such a bloody way at this time could be achieved in another way by human hearts, by human soul.

That He makes us strong, that He strengthens us, that He teaches us all over the earth really to feel in the truest sense of the word the Christmas verse, transcending everything that separates us: those who truly feel themselves connected with the Christ Jesus must promise this to themselves on Christmas night again and again.

There is a tradition within the history of Christianity that arose repeatedly in later times and was a custom in certain Christian regions over many centuries. Already in far distant times in various regions, mostly emerging from Christian churches, there were presentations for believers of the mystery of Christmas night. Especially in these most ancient times, the presentation of the mystery of Christmas night began with a reading, yes, at times even with a presentation of the story of Creation, the story of Creation as it is presented at the beginning of the Bible. Especially around the time of Christmas it was described how, out of the depths of the cosmos, the universal Word resounded, how out of the universal Word creation arose gradually, bit by bit. It was described how Lucifer approached the human being and how human beings thereby began earthly existence in a different way from what would have been the case had Lucifer not approached, in a way different from what was originally destined. The entire story of the temptation of Adam, and Eve was presented, and then it was shown how the human being was integrated, as if were, into ancient, pre-testamental history.

Only as time went on do we find what was presented in more or less detail in the various plays that developed in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries in Central Europe, of which we have seen a small example just now.

At the Christmas festival, an infinitely great thought originally drew together the beginning of the Old Testament with the mysterious story of the Mystery of Golgotha. Very little indeed has remained of what it was from this thought that drew together the two sacred stories. Only a little of this insight has remained, one contemporary example being our calendar, in which the day before Christmas Eve is called the day of Adam and Eve. This has its origin in the same thought. In more ancient times, however, there were those with deeper thoughts, with deeper feelings, a deeper knowledge received from their teachers who taught them how they were to grasp the mystery of Christmas and the mystery of Golgotha. For them a great, encompassing symbolic thought was always being presented: the thought of the origin of the Cross.

The God who is presented to us in the Old Testament gives one commandment to the human being, represented by Adam and Eve: “You may eat from all the fruits of the garden; only the fruits that grow on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil must you avoid, because they who have eaten of that fruit would be cast out of the original scene of their existence.”

The tree, however—which was now represented in the most varied ways—came by some means into the sequence of generations that were the original generations from which the bodily sheath of the Christ Jesus proceeded. This came about in the following way (as it was presented in certain periods of time): when Adam, the sinful man was buried, this tree again grew out of his grave and was thus removed from Paradise. In this story we see the thought suggested that Adam rests in the grave, the human being who went through sin, the human being who was misguided by Lucifer; he rests in the grave and he unites himself with the body of the earth; but out of his grave the tree grows, the tree that can now grow out of the earth with which Adam's body has been united.

The wood of this tree passes over to the generations to which Abraham also belongs, to which David belongs. And out of the wood of this tree, which actually stood in Paradise, which then grew again out of Adam's grave, out of the wood of this tree, the Cross was made on which Christ Jesus was crucified.

This is the thought that was made clear again and again by the teachers of those who were to understand the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha out of deeper foundations. There is a deep meaning in the fact that in ancient times deep thoughts came to expression in such pictures, and this meaning holds good for the present as well. It will become clear to us that it still holds true for today.

We have also acquainted ourselves with the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha that says to us; the Being who has lived on earth through the body of Jesus poured out over the earth what He could bring to the earth, He poured it into the aura of the earth. What the Christ brought into the earth has since then become united with the entire corporeality of the earth. The earth has become something different since the Mystery of Golgotha. What Christ brought out of heavenly heights down to the earth is living in the earth aura.

If we consider this spiritually in connection with the ancient picture of the tree, this picture shows us the entire relationship from a higher point of view. The Luciferic principle entered the human being when the human being made his beginning on earth. The human being, as he is now in his union with the Luciferic principle, belongs to the earth, indeed he forms a part of the earth. And when we lay his body into the earth, this body is not rust as anatomy sees it; this body is at the same time the outer mold of what the human being is in his inner being within the earthly realm. It can then also be clear out of spiritual science that it is not just what goes through the portal of death into the spiritual world that belongs to the being of man; rather it becomes clear that the human being through all his activity, through all his deeds, is united with the earth. He is really united with it in the same way as those happenings that the geologist, the mineralogist, the zoologist, etc., find connected with the earth.

It is only when the human being goes through the portal of death that one could say that there is a termination for the human individuality of that which unites him to the earth. Our outer form, however, which we surrender in some way to the earth, enters the body of the earth. It carries in itself the stamp of what the earth has become through the fact that Lucifer entered into earthly evolution. What the human being achieves on the earth carries the Luciferic principle; the human being brings this Luciferic principle into the aura of the earth. It is not only what was originally the intention of the human being that arises, that blossoms out of human deeds, out of the activities of human beings; out of human deeds there arises something that has the Luciferic element mixed in with it. This then is in the aura of the earth. And when we now look upon the tree growing out of the grave of the human being Adam, who was led astray by Lucifer, if we look at the tree that has become something different through the Luciferic temptation—this tree that was originally the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—we see everything that the human being brought about by the fact that he left his original state of existence, that he became something different through, the Luciferic temptation and that something was thereby brought into earthly evolution that had not previously been intended.

We see the tree grow out of what forms the physical body for the earth, which was stamped in its earthly form by that which permits the human being to appear on the earth in a lower sphere than he would have if he had not gone through the Luciferic temptation. Something grows out of man's entire earthly existence that has come into humanity's evolution through the Luciferic misguidance, through the temptation. When we seek knowledge, we seek it in a different way than was originally predestined. This makes it appear that something different grows out of our earthly deeds from what would have been the case in accordance with the gods' original intention. We form an earthly existence that is not as the gods originally intended for us; we mix something else into it, and we must form very definite pictures of this if we wish to understand it. Definite mental images are required if we wish to understand, to understand properly.

We must say to ourselves: I am placed into earthly evolution. What I give to earthly evolution through my deeds bears fruit; it bears the fruit of knowledge that has become muse by the fact that I have gained the knowledge of good and evil on the earth. This knowledge lives in the evolution of the earth, this knowledge is there. As I look at this knowledge, however, it becomes something different for me, something that is different from what it originally should have been. It becomes something that I must change if the goal and task of the earth are to be achieved, I see growing out of my earthly deeds something that must become different. The tree grows forth, the tree that becomes the Cross of earthly existence, the tree that becomes something to which the human being must gain a new relationship. For the old relationship allows this tree to grow. The tree of the Cross, of that Cross which grows out of the Luciferically colored evolution of the earth, grows out of Adam's grave, out of the humanity that Adam has become since the temptation. The Tree of Knowledge must become the trunk of the Cross, because the human being must unite himself anew with the properly understood Tree of Knowledge as it is now in order to achieve the goal and task of the earth.

Let us ask ourselves—and here we touch on a significant mystery of spiritual science—what is really the situation with the members we have come to know as the members of human nature? We know to begin with that the highest member of human nature is the “I.” We learn to express our “I” at a definite moment in childhood. We gain a relationship to this “I” at the point to which we have memories in later life. We know from the most varied spiritual scientific considerations that until this point in time the “I” itself was active in forming and structuring us. This remains the case until the point at which we begin to have a relationship, a conscious relationship, to our “I.” In the child, this “I” is there also, but it works within, its first task is to form our body. To begin with it creates the super-sensible forces in the spiritual world. When we have gone through conception and birth it still works creatively on our body for a period of time that lasts a few years, until we have our body as a tool so that we can consciously comprehend our self as an “I.”

A deep mystery is connected with this entry of the “I” into the human bodily nature. When we meet a person we ask him, “How old are you?” He gives his age as the years that have passed since his birth. As has been said, we touch here on a certain mystery of spiritual science that will become more and more clear as time passes. Today, however, I will only touch on it, will only share it with you. What a person gives as his age at a definite time of his life is connected with his physical body. He says nothing other than that his physical body has been developing for so-and-so long since his birth. The “I” does not go along with this development of the physical body. The “I” stays there,

This is a difficult mystery to grasp, that the “I” stays at the point of time to which we can recollect, the point at which we remember ourselves. It does not change with the body, it stays there. For just this reason we always have it in front of us so that, as we look, it can mirror our experiences for us. The “I” does not take part in our earthly journey. Only when we have gone through the portal of death must we take the path that we call Kamaloca backward again to our birth in order to re encounter our “I” and then to take it along on our further journey. The “I” remains behind. The body pushes itself forward in years while the “I” remains behind, the “I” stays there. This is difficult to comprehend because one cannot imagine that something remains standing in time while time keeps moving. Nevertheless this is so, the “I” stays there, and it remains there because the “I” does not actually unite itself with what approaches the human being from earthly existence. It remains united with those forces we call ours in the spiritual world. The “I” remains there, the “I” fundamentally remains in the form in which it has been conferred on us, as we know, by the Spirits of Form.

This “I” is retained in the spiritual world. It must be held in the spiritual world, for otherwise we would never be able to achieve again the earth's original goal and aim as human beings during our earthly evolution. What the human being underwent here on earth because of his Adam nature, you could say, of which he takes an impress into the grave when he dies as Adam—this clings to the physical body, etheric body, and astral body, this comes from these. The “I” waits, waits with everything that is in it, waits the entire time undergone by the human being on the earth. It looks only toward the further development of the human being as he repeats it for himself when he has gone through the portal of death and follows this path in reverse. This means that we remain with our “I” back in the spiritual world (this is meant in a specific sense). Humanity ought to become conscious of this fact. And humanity is only able to become conscious of this fact because at a certain time the Christ descended out of those worlds to which the human being belongs, out of the spiritual worlds. In the body of Jesus He prepared for Himself, in the way we know, in a twofold way, what was to serve Him as body on the earth.

If we understand ourselves correctly, we always look back through our entire earthly life, back to our childhood. Our spiritual element has remained back in our childhood. We always look toward this if we wish to understand things correctly. And humanity ought to be instructed to look toward what the spirit out of the heights can say: “Let the little children come to me.” Not adults, who are connected with the earth, but rather the little children. In having been given the festival of Christmas in addition to the Mystery of Golgotha, humanity ought to be instructed in this. Otherwise the Mystery of Golgotha would only need to have been conferred on humanity in relation to the last three years of Christ's life, when Christ was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Christmas festival shows how Christ prepared the human body for himself during childhood. This is what should lie at the basis of the Christmas experience: to know how the human being has actually always remained connected with what is approaching now through what remained behind during growth, remaining in the heavenly heights. In the form of the child, the human being should be reminded of the human-divine element from which he has distanced himself on descending to the earth but that now has returned to him. The human being ought to be reminded of this childlike element in him. He ought to be reminded of Him who brought back the childlike element to him again. Though it was not easy, one can see the force that works so wonderfully to carry this precisely in the way in which the festival of the World Child, the Christmas festival, was developed in areas of Central Europe.

What we have seen today was only a small example of the Christmas plays, of which there are many. It comes from olden times and is one of the kind of Christmas plays that I have already pointed to. Only a few of these so-called Paradise Plays have remained, which were performed at Christmas and in which the story of Creation was presented. It has remained connected to the Shepherds' Play and with the play of the Three Kings, who bring their gifts. Much of this used to live in numerous Christmas plays, but to a large extent they have now disappeared.

These plays disappeared even in rural areas in approximately the middle of the eighteenth century, but it is wonderful to see how some remained alive. A man about whom I have spoken, Karl Julius Schröer, collected such Christmas plays in the area of western Hungary in the 1850's. He searched for them in the area around Pressburg, and then further beyond Pressburg into Hungary. Others collected such Christmas plays in different areas, but what Karl Julius Schröer was able to find at that time of the performance of these Christmas plays and the customs connected with them can enter our hearts deeply. These Christmas plays, handwritten, remained in the hands of certain families in the villages and were treasured as something especially sacred. When October came around, people began thinking about having to perform these plays during the Christmas season for the people of the village. Then the best behaved boys and girls were selected, and they began to prepare themselves: they were not permitted to drink wine or any alcoholic beverages, nor were they permitted—which could well happen in such places, as we know—to be rowdy and rambunctious on Sundays, and they were not permitted any other transgressions. They really had to “lead a holy life,” as is said. Thus people were aware that a certain moral mood of the soul had to be assumed by those who were to devote themselves to the performance of such plays during the Christmas season. Such plays were not to be performed out of ordinary worldliness.

They were performed with all the naïveté with which the peasants could perform something like that. And yet the whole performance was permeated with deepest seriousness, with infinite seriousness. The plays gathered by Karl Julius Schröer and others in the most varied areas have in common this deep seriousness, the seriousness with which one approached the Christmas mystery. But this was not always the case. We only need to go back just a few centuries to find something different, to encounter something most curious. In looking at how these Christmas plays arose and gradually developed in areas of Central Europe, we are able to see especially clearly how overwhelmingly the Christmas thought was active.

But this thought was not immediately taken up in the way I have just described it, approached with a certain kind of sacred modesty, with great seriousness and awareness of the significance of the event that lived in the feeling. No indeed! In many areas it began by simply placing a manger in some kind of side altar in this or that church. (This was still the case in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it goes back to still earlier times.) A manger was placed there, and therefore a stall, in which were placed an ox and an ass, as well as the Child and two dolls representing Joseph and Mary. At first they used a very naive sculptural technique, but then it was desired to bring more life to the figures. This came first from the side of the clergy. Thus priests dressed themselves up, one as Joseph, the other as Mary, and they then represented these figures. They played these roles instead of using the dolls. In the earliest times they even presented the scene in Latin, because in the old churches, if the performance was to present a deep meaning it was considered important that those who saw or listened understand as little as possible, that they only see the outer mimicry.

After some time this was no longer tolerated. The people also wanted to understand what was performed in front of them. Gradually there was a transition to presenting portions of it in the local language spoken in those regions. And finally the people awoke to a feeling of wanting to participate, to experience it themselves. Yet it remained foreign to them, quite foreign. We need only consider that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for example, familiarity with these holy mysteries of Christmas night, for example, did not exist. Today we take these things for granted, but at that time it was not there. You have to keep in mind that year in and year out people heard the mass, also hearing it at Christmas (held at midnight during the holy night), but that they did not hear the Bible—the Bible was only there for the priest to read. Thus they knew only single fragments of the sacred story. The initial attempts by the priests to present these things dramatically were really in order to acquaint the people with what had once taken place. In this way the people learned to know what was written in the Bible.

I must say something now that I beg you not to misunderstand. It can be mentioned because it corresponds to purely historical truth. Some kind of mystery mood or something similar did not immediately emanate from these presentations once people wanted to participate in the Christmas plays. This is not how it was. Rather the longing to take part in what was presented to them, to be more active participants, was what brought people closer to the situation. And finally they had to be permitted to participate to some extent; things had to be made more comprehensible to the people. By making it more comprehensible, things moved forward step by step. For example, people did not understand initially that in the manger lay the Child. They had never seen that, they had never seen a child in a manger. Certainly earlier, when they were not permitted to understand anything, they just accepted it, but new that they wanted to participate it needed to be made completely comprehensible to them.

At that time only a rocking cradle was placed in front of them, and people began to take part by walking by the cradle, each person rocking the Child in it for a little while. Gradually similar moments of participation developed. There were even regions where first a person approached the manger very seriously and then, on finding the Child there, incredible noise erupted and everyone screamed and pointed and danced, indicating the pleasure they now experienced because the Child had been born. This was taken up entirely in a mood emanating from the longing to participate themselves, the longing to experience a story. In the story, however, there was such grandness, something so powerful, that out of this completely profane mood—for it was initially a profane mood—there developed gradually, bit by bit, the holy mood about which I have just been speaking. The situation itself poured its holiness out over a reception that initially could not have been called holy. Especially in the Middle Ages, the holy story of Christmas first had to conquer the people. And the story conquered them to such an extent that while they were performing their plays they wanted to prepare themselves morally m such an intensive way.

What was it that conquered human feelings, the human soul? It was the tow of the Child, the view of what has remained holy in the human being while the three remaining bodies unite themselves with earthly development. Although in certain regions and during certain periods the story of Bethlehem took on grotesque forms, it was inherent in human nature to develop this holy view toward the nature of the Child, which is connected with what entered into Christian evolution from the very beginning: the consciousness of how what remains behind in the human being when he begins his earthly development must enter into a new bond with that which united itself with earthly man. He gives over to the earth the wood out of which the Cross must be made, through which he establishes a new bond.

In older times of Christian development in Central Europe, only the Easter thought was present among the people. Only in the way in which I have described it has the Christmas thought gradually been added. What we find written in the Heliand, or similar works, was recorded by individual poets, but it did not become popular. The popular aspects of Christmas arose in the way I have just described, which shows in a truly grand way how the thought of the bond with the childlike, with the pure, truly childlike element that appeared in a new form in the Jesus Child, has conquered the human being. If we bring the power of this thought together with the fact that this thought can live in souls so as to unite all people (and to begin with it is the only thought in our earthly existence that can do so), we come to the true Christ thought. The Christ thought therefore becomes great and must gradually become stronger in us if the further evolution of the earth is to take place in the right way.

Just consider how far removed the human being in present earthly existence still is from what is concealed in the depths of the Christ thought. A book has just recently been published—perhaps you have read it—written by Ernst Haeckel, World War Thoughts About Life, Death, and Infinity and Religion. A book by Ernst Haeckel is certainly one that proceeds from the most serious search for truth. This book by Ernst Haeckel points to what is now taking place on the earth, how people are at war with one another, how they hate one another, how countless deaths result every day. Haeckel mentions all these thoughts that obtrude upon people so painfully. Certainly he always mentions these thoughts with the background of looking at the world as he sees it from his standpoint. We know about his standpoint, having often spoken about it and about how we can recognize in Haeckel one of the greatest scientists. This standpoint leads also to other things, but it leads to something that can be observed in the newer phases of Haeckel's development.

Haeckel offers some thoughts about the World War. He also remarks on how much blood is flowing now, how many deaths surround us, and he asks himself, “Can the thoughts of religion survive next to these events?” As Haeckel asks it, “Can one believe that there is in any way a wisdom-filled providence, a beneficent God who rules the world, when every day one sees that by mere chance,” so he says, “so many people's lives are ended, that they die by no cause that can be proven to be related in any way to some kind of wise world rulership? Instead, by chance” he says, “this one or that one is struck by a bullet, suffering either death or injury. In the face of all these events, do thoughts of wisdom, thoughts of divine providence, have any meaning? Must not just such events as these prove that the human being must stay in one place, that he is nothing but what the outer, materialistically conceived history of evolution shows us, and that fundamentally everything in earthly existence is ruled not by divine providence but by chance? Is it possible in the face of all these events to have another religious thought” says Haeckel, “to do something other than resign oneself, saying that a person simply surrenders his body and dissipates into the cosmos?”

One can ask further, however—Haeckel no longer asks this question—“If this cosmos is nothing but the play of atoms, does human life really provide a meaning for earthly existence?” As I said, Haeckel does not ask this question anymore, but he does give an answer in his Christmas book: “Precisely events such as those that touch us so painfully now, just such events show that there is no justification for believing in any kind of beneficent providence or wise guidance of the world or anything like it; it is impossible now to maintain that anything like this weaves through and guides the world. Therefore resignation, seeing one's own way, is all there is.”

Haeckel's book is also a Christmas book! It is a Christmas book meant very sincerely and honestly. But this book is based on a significant prejudice. It rests on the prejudice that, it is not permissible to seek in a spiritual way for the earth's meaning, that humanity is prohibited from looking for a meaning of the earth in a spiritual way.

If it is only the outer course of events that is considered, one does not see this meaning. This is what happens to Haeckel. Then the situation must remain with the recognition that this life has no meaning. This is what Haeckel means. Looking for meaning is not permitted! But is it not so that another might come and say something further: that if we look only at these contemporary events externally, pointing out that countless bullets are destroying human lives, if we look only at these events and no meaning results, then precisely because of this we must seek for this meaning in a deeper way. It is precisely events such as these that show us we cannot amply look for and believe in meaning by looking just at what is going on now on the earth—by seeing only that these human souls vanish like their bodily natures. Instead we must look at what they are now beginning as they pass through the portal of death. In short, another person could come and say that precisely because no meaning can be found in the outer events, the meaning must be looked for outside the outer, the meaning must be looked for in the super-sensible.

Is this any different from looking at the same matter in a completely different realm? For one who thinks the way Haeckel thinks today, Haeckel's science can become a refusal to recognize any meaning in earthly existence. It can happen that a person wants to prove out of the events that are taking place so painfully today that earthly life as such has no meaning. But, if one takes hold of the problem in our way—we have done this frequently—precisely this same science takes as its starting point the deep and great meaning that can be unraveled by us in world phenomena. For this to happen, however, something spiritual must be active in the world; we must be able to unite ourselves with the spiritual, It is impossible for people to find a meaning for the earth, a real meaning, because our educated people do not yet understand that it is necessary to permit the power to work upon them that once so wonderfully conquered hearts, souls: the power that arose on looking at the Christmas mystery, from which a profane comprehension evolved into a sacred comprehension. Scholars are unable to grasp this yet; they cannot yet unite the Christ impulse with what they see in the outer world, and thus it is impossible for them to find a meaning for the earth.

Thus one must say that science, for all its great progress of which people are so proud today—and justifiably so - is not in a position out of itself to lead to a view that satisfies the human being. As it goes its way, it can lead in the same way either to meaninglessness or to the meaning of the earth, just as in any other domain. Consider this outer science so proudly developed in the last few centuries, especially from the nineteenth century until today, with all its wonderful laws. Consider everything that surrounds us today. It has been brought forth by this science. We no longer burn light at night in the same way that Goethe burned his. We burn light in a completely different way, and we illuminate our rooms in a completely different way. Consider everything that lives in our souls today out of our science; it has arisen through the great progress of science, of which humanity is justifiably proud. What is the effect of this same science? It is a blessing if man develops it as such. But today, especially since it is such a complete science, it produces indomitable instruments of death. Its progress serves destruction just as well as construction. Just as the science acknowledged by Haeckel can lead to either meaning or meaninglessness, so the science that can achieve such great things can serve either construction or destruction. Arid if the main thing is this science, science will bring forth evermore horrible and frightful works of destruction out of the same source that leads to constructive ends.

Science does not directly have an impulse to bring humanity forward. If only this were seen once, this science would be evaluated in the right way! Only then would it be known that something else must be an integral part of humanity's evolution than what the human being can achieve through this science. For what is this science, after all? In reality it is nothing but the tree that grows out of the grave of Adam. And the time is fast approaching when people will recognize that this science is the tree growing out of Adam's grave. And the time will come when people will recognize that this tree must become the wood that is the Cross of humanity. This wood can lead to a blessing only if that which unites in the right way with what lies beyond death, but lives already here in the human being, is crucified on the Cross: that which we behold on the holy Christmas night if we experience it in the right way, in its true mystery, that which can fee presented in a childlike way but that bears the highest mysteries. Isn't it actually wonderful that in the simplest way it can be said to the people: something entered which is active through human life on earth, something that actually may not go beyond childhood. It is related to what the human being belongs to as a super-sensible being. Isn't it wonderful that this super-sensible-invisible element, in the most eminent sense, can come so near to human souls in such a simple picture? Simple human souls!

Yes, those who are educated must also undertake the path taken by those simple human souls. There was a time when the Child was not presented in the manger. The Child in the manger was not presented, but instead the Child sleeping on the Cross was presented. The Child sleeping on the Cross! A wonderfully profound picture, bringing the entire thought to expression that I have wanted to let arise before your souls today.

And is it not basically very simple to express this thought? Yes, it is. Indeed, let us look once for the origin of those impulses that oppose each other in the world today in such a horrible way. Where do these impulses originate? Where does everything originate that makes the life of humanity so difficult today? Where is the origin of all this? It lies in everything we become in the world only after that point of time at which we can recollect ourselves. If we go back beyond this point of time, if we go back to the point in time at which we are called the “little children who are able to enter the kingdom of heaven”—this is not where it originates. At that point nothing of what today is in battle and dispute resides in human souls. The thought can be expressed this simply, but spiritually we must consider the fact that there is something so original in the human soul that it goes beyond all human strife, beyond all human disharmony.

We have often spoken of the ancient mysteries that wanted to awaken in human nature that which permits the human being to look up into the super-sensible. And we have spoken of the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha, perceptible for all human beings on the stage of history, has presented the super-sensible mystery. There is something that fundamentally unites us with the true Christ thought. We have this by virtue of the fact that we are able to have moments in our life (I am now speaking directly, not in a pictorial way) in which, despite everything we are in the outer world, we can bring alive in us what we received as a child. We can do this by going backward, feeling ourselves back at the child's standpoint? we can do this by looking toward the human being as he develops between birth and death, so that we are able to sense within us what we received as a child.

In the public lecture about Johann Gottlieb Fichte which I gave last Thursday, I could have added something, but at the time it would not have been understood. I could have said something that would have clarified a great deal that lives in this devout man in such a peculiar way. I would have spoken about why he actually developed the very particular way he did, and I would have had to say that this was because, more than other people, he retained the childlike quality in himself despite growing old. He retained more of the childlike quality in himself than other people do. Such people actually grow less old. It is really true that what existed in childhood remains more in such people than in others. This is generally the secret of many great human beings, that right into their oldest age they are able to remain children in a certain way; even when they die, they die as children, though this must be expressed only partially, since one must be connected with life.

The Christmas mystery thus speaks to what lives in us as a childlike quality, it speaks with a view to the divine Child who was selected to take up the Christ, it speaks with a view to the one who was already overshadowed by the Christ, who went through the Mystery of Golgotha in reality to heal the earth.

Let us become conscious of the fact that when we surrender the imprint of our higher self, when we surrender our physical body to the earth, it is not a merely physical process. Something spiritual is also taking place. But this spiritual aspect takes place in the right way only by virtue of the fact that the Christ being has streamed into the earth aura, the Christ being who went through the Mystery of Golgotha. We cannot see the earth in its completeness if we do not see that since the Mystery of Golgotha the Christ has been united with the earth. We can bypass the Christ, just as we can bypass everything super-sensible, if we feel ourselves constituted only of earthly matter and only able to relate to it. But if the earth is to have a real and true meaning for us, we can not bypass Christ. For this reason everything depends on our being able to awaken in ourselves something that will open the view into the spiritual world.

Let us make our Christmas festival into something that it must be especially for us. Let us make it into a festival that serves not only the past but the future, the future that little by little is to bring to birth the spiritual life for all humanity. We want to unite ourselves with the prophetic feeling, the prophetic intimation, that such a birth of the spiritual life must be brought to humanity, that presiding over humanity's future a great holy night must be active, coming to birth out of what gives meaning to the earth from human thoughts. The earth received this meaning objectively through the fact that the Christ being united Himself with the earth aura through the Mystery of Golgotha. In the holy night let us think of how, out of the depths of darkness, light must enter human evolution, the light of spiritual life. The old light of spiritual life that was there before the Mystery of Golgotha had to pass away, gradually it had to be extinguished. The light must arise again, must be reborn after the Mystery of Golgotha through the consciousness in the human soul, that this human soul is connected with what Christ became for the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha,

If there are more and more people who come to know how to conceive of Christmas in such a spiritual scientific sense, this Christmas night will develop a force in human hearts and human souls that will have its meaning in all times. It will have meaning in times in which people surrender themselves to feelings of joy but also in times in which people have to surrender themselves to the feelings of pain that must penetrate us today when we think of the great misery of our tune.

Since looking up to the spiritual gives meaning to the earth, I would like to share with you today the words of one who expressed this so beautifully:

What gave my eye this force,
That all misshapen forms have dissolved.
That the nights become like brilliant suns.
Disorder becomes order, decay life?

What intricate weaving through time, through space,
Guides me surely to the eternal well
Of the Beautiful, the True, the Good, and of all delight.
And in destroying immerses all my striving?

It is this: into Urania's eye, the deep,
Itself clear, blue, still, pure
Lightflame, I myself have quietly gazed.

Since then, this eye rests in my depths
And is in my being—the eternal
One, Lives in my life, sees in my seeing.

And in a second small poem:

Nothing is but God, and God is nothing but life,
You know it, you and I know it together,
But how would knowing be there
If it were not knowing of God's life?

“How gladly would I surrender myself to this,
Yet where do I find it? Somehow it flows
Into knowing, then transforms itself into seeming,
Mingling with it, surrounded by its sheaths.”

Quite dearly the sheath rises up before you,
It is your I, what is destructible dies,
And henceforth only God lives in your striving.

See through what survives this striving,
Then the sheath becomes visible to you as sheath.
And unveiled you see divine life.

Certainly people do not always know what they ought to do with those who point to perceiving the spiritual that gives meaning to the earth. It is not only materialists who do not know what to do. Others who believe they are not materialists because they are always saying, “God! God! God!” or “Lord! Lord! Lord!” often do not know what to make of these individuals who guide us to the spiritual. For what can one do with a person who says. “There is nothing but God! Everything is God! Everywhere, everywhere is God!” He was seeking for God in everything, the one who said:

See through what survives this striving,
Then the sheath becomes visible to you as sheath
And unveiled, you see divine life!

An individual who wants to see divine life everywhere could be accused of not allowing the world to exist, of denying the existence of the world. Though one could call him a world-denier, his contemporaries called him a denier of God, and they therefore chased him away from the colleges and universities. The words I have read to you are those of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. If the Mystery of Golgotha continues to live on in the human soul through earthly existence—amid what is connected with this Mystery of Golgotha in the Christmas mystery—it can serve as an impulse resounding in the soul. Fichte is a perfect example of how, when this is the case, a path is opened on which we can find the consciousness in which our own “I” flows together with the earth “I”—for this earth “I” is the Christ. Through this, we develop something in the human being that must become greater and greater if the earth is to move toward the development for which it was destined from the beginning.

Therefore we especially wish, out of the spirit of our spiritual knowledge renewed in the sense it has been today, to let the Christmas thought become an impulse in us. By looking up to this Christmas thought, we wish to attempt to see from what surrounds us not the meaninglessness of earthly evolution; rather, in the suffering and pain, in the strife and hate, we hope to see something that ultimately helps humanity forward, something that really brings humanity a bit forward.

It is not so important to look for causes, which anyway are so easily concealed in partisan strife. It is much more important for what happens today to focus on the possible effects, those effects that we must picture to ourselves as healing, as bringing healing for humanity.

The nations and people who are in a position to shape something that can be healing for humanity of the future out of what is able to sprout from the blood-drenched soil will be led to the right approach. What can be healing for humanity, however, can develop only if people find the way into the spiritual worlds, if people do not forget that there was not only one Christmas but that there must be an everlasting Christmas, an everlasting coming-to-birth of the divine- spiritual in the physical, earthly human being.

Especially today we wish to enclose the sacredness of this thought in our souls, we wish to hold it for the time surrounding Christmas, which can he a symbol for the evolution of light also in its outer course. In these days, at this time of year, darkness, earth darkness, will be here to the greatest degree possible on earth. When the earth lives in this deepest outer darkness, however, we know that the earth soul experiences her light, beginning to awaken to the highest degree.

The time of Christmas, then, is connected with the time of spiritual awakening. And with this time of spiritual awakening, the memory of the spiritual awakening for earthly evolution through the Christ Jesus shall be united. We therefore have the institution of the Christmas festival especially at this time.

Let us unite the Christmas thought with our soul in. this cosmic, and at the same time earthly, moral sense. Then, reinforced and strengthened with this Christmas thought as best as we can, let us look upon everything surrounding us to want what is right for the progress of events, also wanting what is appropriate in the development of deeds of the present time.

From the last lecture we were able to gather that man, as a physical organisation, separates himself from the outside world, to a certain extent, by means of his skin. When we conceive the human organism entirely in the light in which we have had to do during the preceding lectures, it becomes necessary to say that it is this human organism itself, with its various force-systems, which provides itself with a definite external boundary by means of the skin. In other words, we must understand clearly that the human organism is a system of forces of a nature so self-determined that it gives itself the exact outline of form which appears in the contours of our skin. We shall have to say, therefore, that in connection with the life-process of man there is the interesting fact that in the outer border of the form we have, expressed in a picture, as it were, the combined activity of all the force-systems of the organism. If, on the other hand, the skin itself is to be such an expression for the organism, then we should have to presuppose that it must actually be possible in some way to find the whole man, in a certain sense, in the skin. For, if man as he exists is so to construct himself that the outer skin, as the boundary of his form, expresses what he is, it must in that case be possible to find in the skin everything belonging to his total organisation. As a matter of fact, if we look into what belongs to this total organisation of man, we shall find out how true it is that everything is present in the skin, inside the skin itself, which is present as a tendency in the force-systems of the entire organism.

In all the preceding we have seen that the whole man, in his appearance as earth-man, has in his blood-system the instrument of the ego, so that he actually is man by reason of the fact that he harbours within himself an ego, and that this ego can create an expression of itself as far as the physical system, can work with the blood as its instrument. And now, if the surface of the body, the boundary of the form, is an essential member of the whole organisation, we must conclude that this whole organisation must be active by means of the blood as far as the skin, in order that an expression of the whole human being in so far as he is physical can exist. If we observe the skin—and we must understand it as consisting of several layers stretched over the entire surface of the body—we find that, as a matter of fact, fine blood vessels do extend into this skin, and we are therefore obliged to conclude that it is by means of these fine blood vessels which extend into the skin that the ego is able to send out its forces and create for itself, through the blood, an expression of the human being extending as far as the skin. We know, furthermore, that the nervous system is the physical instrument for everything which we may characterise as consciousness. And, inasmuch as the boundary of the bodily surface is an expression of the plan of the human being as a whole, the nerves must also reach out into the skin-boundary in order that man may express himself adequately in this skin-boundary. We see, therefore, spreading out close to the fine blood vessels lying within the layers of the skin, the nerve-terminations, commonly although not quite correctly called tactile corpuscles, because it is believed that with the help of these man perceives the external world through the sense of touch, just as he perceives light and sound through the eye and the ear. Such is not the case, however, and we shall see later what the facts really are.

Thus we find present in the skin what constitutes the expression, or the bodily organ, of the human ego; and we find also what constitutes the expression of human consciousness reaching out into the skin in the form of fine nerves and their projections. Then we must look around for the expression of what we may consider as the instrument of the life-process. We have already in our last lecture directed attention to this instrument of the life-process, in our discussion of the function of secretion. In this function, in which we have seen that a sort of hindering takes place, as it were, we may recognise the expression of the life-process, to the extent that a living being which wills to exist in the world is compelled to shut itself off from the outside world. This self-enclosing can take place only by its experiencing a hindering within itself. This living through a hindrance in itself is brought about by means of the organs of secretion, which may be described in the broadest sense as glands. Glands are organs of secretion; and, in so far as they are such, there takes place in them that sort of hindrance which calls forth inner resistance, in order that a being may shut itself off within itself. We must presuppose, therefore, that such organs of secretion, similar to those we have everywhere else in the organism, belong also to the skin. And they do belong to the skin; for we find, in the skin organs of secretion, glands of the greatest possible variety, which carry on this function of secretion, in other words, a life-process, within the skin.

Now, if we ask finally what underlies this life-process, we shall find there something we may call a purely material process, that is, the conveying of substances from one organ to another. At this point we must differentiate carefully between a process such as has to do with life and is a process of secretion, which creates an inner hindrance, and that process which transports substances quite externally, which causes a transference of substances from one organ to another. These are not the same. To a materialistic conception it might seem as if they were, but to a living grasp of reality they are not so. As long as we are alive we are not dealing, in a single member of the human organisation, with a mere transportation of substances from one organ to another. In the very moment, rather, when the substances of nutrition are taken in by the life-process, we have to do with occurrences such as those of the inner secretive processes. Thus we come down a step from the real life-process to the process of the physical body when we say that this process of secretion, looked at physically, is such that the substances of nutrition which are taken in are transported to all the different parts of the physical body; whereas in its other aspect it is a living activity, a becoming aware of itself, as it were, on the part of the organism in its own inner being, through the setting up of hindrances. Through the life-processes there takes place at the same time a transporting of substances, and we find this in the skin just as in the other parts of the organism. The nutritive substances are continually being secreted, carried outwards in the skin, and there also excreted through the process of perspiration, so that here also what we may call a transporting in the physical sense, a changing of the substances in the organism, is physically present.

We have thus set forth in its essence the fact that even in the external organ of the skin are present both the blood-system, as the expression of the ego, and the nervous system as the expression of the consciousness. And now I wish little by little to direct you to the fact that we have a right to bring together all phenomena of consciousness under the expression “astral body,” that is, to conceive the nervous system comprehensively as an expression of the astral body; that we have what we may call the glandular system as an expression of the ether-body, or life-body; and the actual process of nutrition and depositing of substances as an expression of the physical body. To this extent all the separate members of the human organism are actually present in the skin-system, through which man shuts himself off from the outside world. Now, we must take into account the fact that all such divisions of the human organisation as the blood-system, the nervous system, the nutritive system, etc., form in their mutual relations a whole; and that when we observe these four systems of the human organisation and have them before us in the physical body, we are viewing the human organism in two aspects, as it were. We actually have it before us in two aspects and in such a way, indeed, that we may say that the human organism has meaning within our earth-existence only if, as an entire organism, it is the instrument of the ego. It can be this, however, only if the most immediate instrument which the human ego can employ, the blood-system, is present in it.

We can state thus that the blood-system is the most immediate instrument of the human ego. Yet the blood-system is possible only if all the other systems are first existent. The blood is not only, according to the meaning of the poet's words, “a very special fluid”; it is also obvious that it cannot exist as it is except by finding a place for itself in the entire remaining organism; its existence must necessarily be prepared for by all the rest of the human organism. The blood, as it exists in man, cannot be found anywhere else than in the human organism. We shall refer, further on, to the relation of the human blood to the blood of the animal; and this will be a very important consideration, since external science to-day takes little notice of it. To-day we are dealing with blood as the expression of the human ego, taking account, at the same time, of a remark which was made in the first lecture: namely, that what is here said concerning man cannot, without further thought, be applied to any other kind of earth-being whatever. We may say then that, when once the entire remaining organism of man is constructed as it is, it is then capable of receiving into itself the circulatory course of the blood, is capable, that is, of carrying the blood, of having within itself that instrument which is the tool of our ego. The whole human organism, however, must first be built up for this purpose.

As you know, there are other beings on the earth which seem to have a certain kinship with man, but which are not in a position to bring to expression a human ego. In their case it is obvious that what appears similar in these other systems to human potentialities is built up otherwise than in the human being. To put it somewhat differently: in all of these systems which precede the blood-system there must first be present everything, in a preparatory plan, which is capable of receiving the blood. This means that we must have a nervous system exactly fitted to receive a blood-system such as that of man; we must have a glandular system which is perfectly prepared for the circulation of human blood; and the system of nutrition must likewise be thoroughly prepared for the human blood-system. This signifies in turn, however, that even from the other aspect of man's organism, for example, the whole nutritional system, which we have described as expressing the actual physical body of man, there must be present the potentiality of the ego. The entire process of nutrition must, as it were, be so directed and guided through the organism that the blood can finally move in the courses which are right for it. What does that mean?

Let us assume, since everything is absolutely determined in its formation and its particular kind of activity by the quality of man's being, that we had to draw the course of the blood (in a mere diagram, of course) in this fashion. We should then have to say that this circulation of the blood must now be received by the rest of the organism, which must fit itself into this. This means that all the other systems of organs must be directed to the very place, or to the neighbourhood, where the blood has to be. We could not have the whole texture of the blood-vessels, as this exists in our head for example, or in some other part of our organism, if what is necessary to it were not in each case directed just where the blood is to circulate. That is, the force-systems (which I here indicate by a second line) must act in the human organism, beginning with the nutritive system, in such a way that they carry all the nutritive matter to the proper places, and at the same time so form it beforehand that in these places, by means of such preparation of the nutritive matter, the blood-system can hold exactly to the form of the course it now takes, and thereby be an expression of the ego. There must, accordingly, be contained in all the impulses of our nutritive apparatus, that is, our lowest organ-system, just that thing which makes of man an ego. In other words, the entire form which man finally presents to us must be incorporated in what we call the various methods of nutrition. Here we are looking down from the blood into the organ-systems which prepare the circulatory course of the blood, far, far down, from our ego to those processes which go on in the darkness of our organism. Although our blood is the expression of our ego-activity, the most conscious activity in us, it is at the same time necessary to look down into the obscure depths of our organism and say that the way in which our organism down there is built up and formed through other processes, concerning which we do not know at all how the different substances are carried to those places where they ought to be, in order that our organism may be constructed by the several force-systems just as the ego desires to have it—this shows us that, beginning with the nutritive processes, there are present in man's organism all the laws which lead ultimately to the formation of the course of the blood.

Now, the blood presents to us the most mobile, the most active, of all our systems. We know, indeed, that even if we interfere only very slightly with the course of the blood, it follows at once another direction from the one it takes in the normal course. We need only prick ourselves and the blood at once takes another direction from its usual one. This is of infinite importance; for we can see from it that the blood is the most easily controlled element in the human body; that it has a good foundation in the other organic systems while at the same time it is the most controllable of them all, has the least stability within itself, and is more determined than any other system by the experiences of the conscious ego. I shall not now go into the fantastic theories of external science concerning blushing or turning pale from feelings of shame or anxiety; I shall merely point to the purely external fact that, underlying such experiences as fear or anxiety, or the feeling of shame, are ego-experiences which are recognisable in their effect upon the blood. With the feeling of fear or anxiety it is as if we wanted to guard ourselves, so to speak, against something which we believe will have an influence upon us: we draw back with our ego. With the feeling of shame we would best of all like to hide ourselves, to obliterate our ego. In both cases, referring only to the external facts, the blood, as an external physical instrument, follows physically what the ego lives through in itself. In the case of feelings of fear and anxiety, where a man would like to draw back into himself completely, from something which he feels to be threatening him, he becomes pale; the blood draws back to its centre, draws inward. When a man would like to hide himself because of his sense of shame, would like to obliterate his ego, or best of all not to exist, or to slink away somewhere, the blood, under the influence of what the ego may here live through, spreads out as far as the periphery. And so you see from this that the blood is the most easily controllable system in man, and that it can follow in a definite way the experiences of the ego.

Now, the further we go down into the organic systems, the less are they regulated so as to follow our ego in this way, the less inclined to adapt themselves wholly to the inner experiences of the ego. Whatever especially affects the nervous system is regulated as we know along certain definite nerve-courses, and these nerve-courses show us something relatively fixed, in their functioning, in contrast to the blood. Whereas the blood is mobile, and can be guided under the influence of ego-experiences from one part of the body to another, as happens in the case of shame and fear, we must say, with regard to the nerve- courses, that the forces which are active here must be the forces of consciousness, and that these forces cannot carry the nerve-substance from one place to another as can be done with the blood-substance. This substance of the nervous system is, indeed, more fixed than the substance of the blood.

And this is still more true in the case of the glandular system, which shows us glands that have certain definite tasks to perform in definite places within the organism. If a gland has to be brought into activity by some means or other to some definite purpose, it cannot be aroused by means of some such cord as the nerve-cord; rather it must be stimulated at the very place where it is situated. That which is contained in the glandular system, therefore, is even more fixed than the nerves; we must excite the glands where they are. Whereas we can guide the activity of the nerves along the nerve-cords (we have in this system connecting fibres also, which unite the separate ganglions), the gland must be looked for where it is located.

Still more striking, however, is this process of fixation, this process of being inwardly determined (not “being determinable”) in everything that has to do with the system of nutrition, by means of which man incorporates substances directly into himself in order to be a physical, sensuous being. For this incorporating of substances there must, nevertheless, be available a thorough preparation for the instrument of the ego as well as for the other instruments.

Thus, when we observe the human organism primarily with reference to its lowest system, the nutritive system, in its broadest sense, by means of which the substances within the organism are conveyed to all its various members, we may say that these substances must be so regulated that the formation, the external structure, of the man may proceed in a manner which finally renders possible the manifestation of the ego within this human organisation. To this end much is necessary. It is necessary not only that the substances of nutrition be conveyed in the most diverse ways, that they be deposited in all the different parts of the organism; but also that all possible provision be made to determine the outer form of the human organism.

Now, it is important that we should be clear as regards the following: in what we have called the skin are represented indeed, as we have found, all the systems of the human organism, so that we have been able to come even to the lowest system itself, the nutritive system, and to say that everything which in the strictest sense belongs to the physical system of man, considered as the system of nutrition, is poured into the skin. Yet you can easily understand that this skin as such, in spite of the fact that it has all these other systems in it, has one great defect. It does, to be sure, correspond to the form of the human organism; yet, of itself alone, it would not have this form. In spite of the fact that it has all the organ-systems in itself, it would not of itself be capable of giving to man the outline of his form. If that alone were present which is present in the skin, man would collapse, through it alone he could not maintain his upright form. From this we see that not only are there necessary those nutritive processes which make the skin a physical system, but that there must also be possible other manifold nutritive processes which determine the form of the human organism as a whole. At this point, therefore, it will not be difficult to grasp the fact that we must consider those nutritive processes which go on in the cartilage and the bones as such transformed nutritive processes. What sort of processes are they?

When the matter contained in our nutritive substances is conducted to a cartilage or a bone, it is really transported only as physical matter; and what we ultimately find in the cartilage or the bone is nothing else than the transformed nutritive substances. Here, however, they are transformed otherwise than in the skin. We must, therefore, conclude that we have, in the skin, transformed nutritive substances which are deposited in the outermost boundary of our body, following the outline of its form, for the purpose of making us into physical man; yet, on the other hand, through the way in which the nutritive matter is deposited in the bones, we must also see that there we have to do with a nutritive process which rounds out the human form but which, in comparison with that expressed in the skin, is a different transformation of the nutritive process. And now, if we follow the method of observation we used earlier in connection with the nervous system, it will not any longer be hard for us also to understand that this entire nutritive process is our transportation system for the supply of food.

When we look at the skin, which finally shuts man off from the outside world, and when we observe the nutritive substances that bring about that external enclosure which in itself certainly provides man with his surface structure, but which could not of itself produce the human form, it then becomes clear that this sort of nutritive process which is active in the skin is the most recent one in the human organism. In the manner of providing nourishment to the bones we see a process which bears a similar relation to the process of nourishment in the skin to that which we attributed to the process of the formation of the brain, as compared with that of the formation of the spinal cord. Just as the brain appeared to us to be the older organ, and the spinal cord the younger, and the brain appeared to be a metamorphosed spinal cord, so here we have a right to say: if that same thing which we see as the latest, external process of skin-formation is imagined at a maturer stage metamorphosed, we can then recognise this in the firmer, self-solidifying process of nourishment which appears in the building up of the cartilage and the shaping of the bones.

This observation of the human organism might, therefore, point us to the following conception, namely, that what to-day appears before us as the bony system, in which the process of nourishment shows us a quality of inner stability, an earthy quality, so to speak, this bony system actually did, at an earlier stage, also develop in a softer substance; and only later did it become hard and take on the form of the firm bony system. This can be indicated even by external science, which teaches us that certain forms which in later life are quite clearly bones in the human organism are in the early years of childhood still soft, have the quality of cartilage. This means, therefore, that out of a softer, cartilaginous mass the bones are formed, as a result of the depositing of a different sort of nutritive matter from that which is deposited in the mass of cartilage. Here we have, indeed, a transition from a softer to a firmer form, as this process still goes on to-day in the individual human life. If we see, then, in the cartilage an earlier stage of the bone, we may say that the whole depositing of the bony system in the organism appears to us as something representing a last result, as it were, of those processes appearing in the nourishing of the skin. First, the substances must in the simplest way be metamorphosed to the softest possible substance and driven toward the organs of the body; and, when this preparation has taken place, the nutritive process then can go on, and certain parts can be hardened into bony matter, in order that the form of the human organism as a whole may be the final result.

The nature of the bones as we see them, on the other hand, gives us the right to conclude from direct evidence that really we can find no further progress in the nutritive process beyond that in the bony formation, in so far as the human being, up to the present stage of his evolution, is concerned. Whereas we have in the content of the blood the most determinable substance in man, we have in the bony substance, in that which appears before us in the form of the bones, something which is not determinable, which has arrived at a stage of maximum fixity of form. Indeed, if we continue our previous observations, that the blood is man's most easily controlled instrument whereas the nerves are less subject to his influence, we must then consider that in the bony system, which is the foundation of the entire human organization, we have something that has arrived at the ultimate stage in its evolution so far as man of to-day is concerned, something which represents the product of a final metamorphosis. For this reason, moreover, everything which has to do with forming the bony system, in spite of the fact that this must be wholly directed toward the ego, must take place in such a way that the bones may be ultimately the carriers and supporters of an organism like this, in order that the courses of the blood may take such directions as they should, and this in turn in order that in these courses of the blood the human ego may have a proper instrument.

I should like to ask who would not look upon the human organism with the greatest admiration, and say: “I have here before me that which must have gone through the greatest number of transformations, the greatest number of stages, which must have begun with the lowest stage of a process of nutrition and finally have ascended, through countless epochs, as far as the bony system, which at length has been so constructed that it can be the firm bearer, the firm supporter of the ego!” Once we become aware of how the tendency of the ego works even in the forming of the separate bones, so that man can ultimately become an ego-bearer, who of us would not be filled with admiration before this edifice of the human organism and say: “When we observe this human being we find we have two poles, as it were, of physical existence represented in the blood-system, which is the most subject to outside influence, and the bony system, which is in itself the most solid of all, the one which has gone farthest in the state of impermeability to influence.” In this bony system of man the physical organisation has found the final expression of itself, an ultimate conclusion, whereas in the blood-system the human physical organisation has, in a certain sense and at its present stage of existence, made a new beginning.

When we look at our bony system, we can truly say that we revere it as an ultimate conclusion of the human physical organisation. And, when we look at our blood-system, we can say that we see in it a beginning, something which could begin only after all the other systems of the organisation were there first. We may say with regard to the bony system: “Its first beginning must already have been present, as a soft substance, before the glands could be given a place; for the glands had, indeed, to be supported at their appropriate places by the bone-forces; and such was the case likewise with the courses of the nerves and the blood. The bony system is the oldest of the force-systems belonging to the human organism; consequently it is the foundation of our organisation.”

If, therefore, we observe these two extremes in the human organisation, we find we have in the blood-system the most mobile element, the element which is so active within us that to a certain extent it follows every inner stirring of the ego; and in the bony system we have something almost entirely withdrawn from that over which our ego still has any influence, we can no longer reach it with our ego; yet in spite of this, the whole organisation of the ego is contained within its form. Hence, even to purely external observation, the blood-system and the bony system in man are like a beginning and a conclusion in contrast to each other. And, if we thus look at ourselves, having a blood-system which continually obeys all the stirrings of the ego, we must conclude that human life really expresses itself in this active blood. And when we look at our bony system we say: “It really is somewhat isolated; it is that which draws aloof from our human life, and serves it only as a support.” Or, to express it differently: “Our pulsating blood is our life; our bony system is that which has already withdrawn from a direct connection with our life, because of its ancient origin; has already eliminated itself, and continues merely to serve as a support, to give us form.” Whereas in our blood we are alive, we are in truth already dead in our bony system. And I urge you to look upon this expression as a leitmotiv for the lectures which follow, for it will help us to certain important physiological conclusions: “Whereas in our blood we are alive, we are in our bony system, strictly speaking, already dead!” Our bony system is like a scaffolding, the thing in us that is least of all alive, only a scaffolding to support us.

We have seen in man from the first a duality. And here this duality confronts us in yet another form: we have, on the one hand, in our blood that which is the most vitally active, the most living thing in man; and, on the other, we have in our bony system something which draws aloof from this vital activity of ours, something which really already bears death in itself. Moreover it is, in a certain sense, our bony system which is least subordinated in its form to the life of the ego. For this reason the bony system has already arrived, in its form, at a certain final conclusion, even though it still continues to grow, at that stage in a human life when the ego-experiences first begin to stir inwardly. By the time of the change of teeth the bony system has taken its form in the main; it then merely continues to develop by growth those forms which it has produced. In the forming of the new teeth, somewhere about the seventh year, we have the last productive activity of which the bony system is capable. During that very time when we ourselves still remain withdrawn from our inner vital activity, the chief development of our bony system is proceeding.

It is then, moreover, that most mistakes are made in the giving of nutrition, when the bony system is building itself out of the dark foundations and forces of the organism. The way is prepared in these years for bone-diseases such as rickets and the like, if the processes of nourishment are not properly directed. Thus we see that what is withheld from the ego works into our bony system.

It is entirely different in the case of the blood-system, which follows in active response the life of the individual human being and is more dependent than any other system upon the processes of our conscious inner life. It is a fallacy on the part of external science to believe that the nervous system is more susceptible to inner experiences than is the blood-system. I shall here point only to the fact that in a phenomenon such as blushing, where a shifting of the blood takes place, we have the very simplest form of the influencing of the blood-system by way of the ego-experiences; likewise, when we become pale from anxiety and fear, we have transitory expressions of ego-experiences clearly manifested in the instrument of the ego. The way the ego feels in fear or shame is expressed through its instrument, the blood. You can understand, therefore, if such expressions occur even in the merely transitory processes, that the more lasting, habitual experiences of the ego must certainly manifest themselves in the easily excitable element of the blood. There is no passion, no instinct, no emotion, whether we experience these habitually or whether they come to expression in an explosive way, which does not pass over, as inner experience, to the blood as the instrument of the ego, which does not there express itself externally. All the unwholesome elements of the inner life of the ego express themselves primarily in the blood-system. And so, wherever we wish to understand anything that goes on in the blood-system, it is important not merely to inquire as to the nutritive process but even more to look into the soul-processes in so far as they are inner ego-experiences, such as moods, habitual passions, emotions and the like. Only the materialist will direct his attention chiefly to the nutrition in connection with disturbances in the blood-system. For the nourishment of the blood is dependent upon that of the physical system, the glandular system, the nervous system, and the rest; and, as a matter of fact, the nutritive matter is already thoroughly filtered when it comes into the blood. If therefore the blood is to be affected from without, the organism must be already in a seriously diseased state. On the other hand all soul-processes, all processes of the ego, react directly upon what is occurring in the circulation of the blood.

Thus our bony system is the one which most of all draws aloof from the processes of our ego, while our blood-system accommodates itself more than any other to these ego-processes. Indeed this bony system is by nature, we might say, quite independent of the human ego, and yet adapted to its purpose, with the exception of one single portion which, just because it presents an exception to the characteristic of the bony system of not being determinable by the ego, has given cause for all sorts of mischief.

You know that there is such a thing as “Phrenology,” an investigation of the skull. This bone-investigation, in spite of the fact that, from a certain materialistic point of view, it is looked upon as superstition, has gradually, even where loyally fostered, taken on a materialistic colouring in accordance with the general fashion of our time. If we were disposed to characterise it somewhat crudely we might say: Phrenology is carried on in general in such a way that the expression of the inner nature of the ego is sought for in the forms in which the skull is moulded. Thereby certain general principles are set up, that one prominence in the skull signifies this, another that, and so forth. The human qualities are sought for in the light of these prominences, so that phrenology seeks in the bony system of the skull for a kind of plastic expression of the ego. And yet, if it is carried on in this way, even though it seems to look for spiritual expressions in the structure pf the single bones, it is harmful. For anyone who is a truly keen observer knows that no single human skull is like another, and that no one could ever account for this or that by way of generic elevations or depressions. Every separate skull is so different from every other that in each we find different forms.

Now, we have stated that whereas the blood in its vital activity is the system that most of all follows the ego, the bony structure withdraws from it, follows it least of any. And yet, although the bones in general appear to be designed according to type, the skull-bones and also the bones of the face seem in a certain way to correspond to the human ego. Anyone who observes the structure of the skull knows, at the same time, that although man himself is an individual and his skull-structure is also individual, yet this wonderful configuration of the skull has been designed from the beginning in accordance with the particular human individuality and must develop just as the other bones do only in a different form for each man. How does this come about? It comes about for the same reason that underlies the development of the individual qualities of man in general; for the entire life of the individual human being does not run its course only from a birth to a death, but continues throughout many incarnations. Whereas our ego has no influence, therefore, over the skull-structure in our present incarnation, it has developed during the intervening period between the last death and the last birth in accordance with the experiences of the preceding incarnation, the forces which determine the skull-structure; and it is these forces which determine the form of the skull in this incarnation. What the ego was in the preceding incarnation determines the form of the skull in this one; so that in the structure of our skull we have an external plastic expression of the way in which we, every single one of us, again however as individuals, have lived and acted in the preceding incarnation. Whereas all the other bones we have in us express something which is common to man, the skull in its external form expresses that which we were in an earlier incarnation.

Thus the element of the blood, which is the most vitally active of all, can be determined by the ego in this incarnation; our bones, on the other hand, have already entirely withdrawn during this incarnation from the influence of the ego, with the exception of the last remaining case of the skull-bone which also, however, no longer follows the ego in this incarnation, except only as the ego carries over its own evolution from the one incarnation into the next, and so develops the formative forces in the interval between the two that it can manifest in these very bones what was our nature and character in the preceding incarnation. There is no such thing as a general phrenology; but, to sum up, we must judge every man according to what he himself is; and the structure of our skull we must look upon as a work of art. Of course we are compelled to recognise something individual in the skull-structure; yet at the same time an individual something that is an expression of the ego of a preceding incarnation.

Thus we see that even this form of bone-structure, as it appears in the structure of the skull, is withdrawn from the blood to such an extent that the ego has no more influence over it excepting only during the passing between death and a new birth, when the ego receives, after death, still stronger forces with which to overcome and shape for itself those forces that have already completely withdrawn from the vital activity in the man. When, therefore, anyone speaks about the idea of reincarnation and says: “That is something which, speaking generally, is beyond our judgment or reason,” one may answer: “You can, if you will, convince yourself by tangible evidence that the human ego was present in a previous incarnation. When you take hold of a human head you have before you the tangible proof of reincarnation!” And anyone who does not admit this, who sees something paradoxical in the fact that, because of the way in which a thing is formed externally, the way a thing appears in its outward form, one is forced to infer something living that formed this exterior shape out of its own inner life, such a person has no right to deduce in any other case a living something when he comes across a plastic structure. He who cannot admit as strictly logical the conclusion that in the form of our individual skull is expressed the configuration of our ego of preceding incarnations has also no right, if he finds a shell, for example, to conclude from its form that at one time there was a living being in it! And anyone who does so conclude dare not dismiss the logical and absolutely equivalent conclusion that, in the individual plastic formation of a man's cranium, direct proof is given of the influence of an earlier life on the present one.

Thus you see that we have here one of the means by which to throw light by means of physiology upon the idea of reincarnation. We must only give ourselves time. If we are patient and wait, we shall discover where proofs may be procured, and how to procure them. And anyone who might be disposed to deny that there is logic in what has just been stated would have to disown all palaeontology; for it rests on the same inference. Thus we see how, by penetration into the forms of the human organisation, we can trace it back to its spiritual foundations.

[ 1 ] When the human soul consciously enters the elemental world, it finds itself obliged to change many of the ideas which it acquired in the physical world; but if the soul strengthens its forces to a corresponding degree, it will be quite fit for the change. Only if it shrinks from the effort of this acquiring strength, may it be seized by the feeling of losing, on entering the elemental world, the firm basis on which it must build up its inner life. The ideas which are gained in the physical world only offer an impediment to entering the elemental world as long as we try to keep them in exactly the same form in which we gained them. There is, however, no reason except habit for adhering to them in this way. It is also quite natural that the consciousness, which at first only lives in the physical world, should be accustomed to look upon the form of its ideas which it has shaped there, as the only possible one. And it is even more than natural, it is necessary. The life of the soul would never attain its inner solidarity, its necessary stability, if it did not develop a consciousness in the physical world which in a certain respect lived in fixed ideas, rigorously forced upon it. Through everything which life in the physical world can give the soul, is it able to enter the elemental world in such a way that it does not lose its independence and firmness of nature there. Strengthening and reinforcement of the life of the soul must be gained in order that that independence may not only be present as an unconscious quality of the soul on entering the elemental world, but may also be kept clearly in the consciousness. If the soul is too weak for conscious experience in the elemental world, on entering it the independence vanishes, just as a thought does which is not imprinted with sufficient clearness on the soul to live on as a distinct memory. In this case the soul cannot really enter the supersensible world at all with its consciousness. When it makes the attempt to enter, it is again and again thrown back into the physical world, by the being living within the soul which may be called the guardian of the threshold. And even if the soul has, so to speak, nibbled at the supersensible world, so that on sinking back into the physical world it retains something of the supersensible in its consciousness, such spoil from another sphere often only causes confusion in the life of thought. It is quite impossible to fall into such confusion if the faculty of sound judgment, as it may be acquired in the physical world, be adequately cultivated. By thus reinforcing the faculty of judgment, the soul will develop the right relation to the events and beings of super-sensible worlds. For in order to live consciously in those worlds, an attitude of the soul is necessary which cannot be developed in the physical world with the same intensity with which it appears in supersensible worlds. This is the attitude of surrender to what is being experienced. We must steep ourselves in the experience and identify ourselves with it; and we must be able to do this to such a degree that we see ourselves outside our own being and feel ourselves within some other being. A transformation of our own being into the other with which we are having the experience must take place. If we do not possess this faculty of transformation, we cannot experience anything genuine in supersensible worlds. For there all experience is due to our being able to realise this feeling, “Now I am transformed in a certain definite way; now I am vitally present in a being which through its nature transforms mine in this particular way.” This transformation of self, this conscious projection of oneself into other beings, is life in supersensible worlds. By this process of conscious self-projection into others, we learn to know the beings and events of those worlds. We come to notice that with one being we have a certain degree of affinity; but that, by virtue of our own nature, we are further removed from another. Variations of inner experience come into view, which, especially in the elemental world, we must call sympathies and antipathies. For on encountering a being or event of the elemental world, we feel an experience emerging in the soul which may be denoted sympathy. By this experience we recognise the nature of the elemental being or event. But we must not think that experiences of sympathy and antipathy are only of account in proportion to their intensity or degree. In the physical world it is indeed in a certain sense true that we only speak of a strong or weak sympathy or antipathy as the case may be. In the elemental world, sympathies and antipathies are not only distinguishable by their intensity, but also in the same way as, for instance, colours may be distinguished from each other in the physical world. Just as we have a physical world of many colours, so can we experience an elemental world containing many sympathies or antipathies. It has also to be taken into account that antipathy in the elemental realm does not carry with it the meaning that we inwardly turn away from the thing so described; by antipathetic we simply mean a quality of the elemental being or event which bears a similar relation to the sympathetic quality of another event or being as does blue to red in the physical world.

[ 2 ] We may speak of a “sense” which man is able to awaken for the elemental world in his etheric body. This sense is capable of perceiving sympathies and antipathies in the elemental world just as the eye becomes aware of colours and the ear of sounds in the physical world. And just as there one object is red and another blue, so the beings of the elemental world are such that one radiates a certain kind of sympathy, and another a certain kind of antipathy to our spiritual sight.

[ 3 ] This experience of the elemental world through sympathies and antipathies is again something not confined to the clairvoyantly awakened soul; it is always at hand for every human soul, being part of its nature. But in the ordinary life of the soul the knowledge of this part of human nature is not developed. Man bears within him his etheric body; and through it is connected in manifold ways with beings and events of the elemental world. At one moment of his life he is woven with sympathies and antipathies into the elemental world in one way; at another moment in another way.

[ 4 ] The soul, however, cannot continuously so live as an etheric being that sympathies and antipathies are always active and clearly expressed within it. Just as waking life alternates with sleep in physical existence, so does a different state contrast with that of experiencing sympathies and antipathies in the elemental world. The soul may withdraw from all sympathies and antipathies and experience itself alone, regarding and feeling merely its own being. Indeed, this feeling may reach such a degree of intensity that we may speak of willing our own being. It is then a question of a condition of the soul's life not easy to describe, because in its pure, original nature it is of such a kind that nothing in the physical world resembles it except the strong, unalloyed ego-feeling or feeling of self in the soul. As far as the elemental world is concerned we may describe this state as one in which the soul feels the impulse to say to itself with regard to the necessary surrender to experiences of sympathy and antipathy: “I will keep entirely to myself and within myself.” And by a species of development of will the soul wrenches itself free from the state of surrender to the elemental experiences of sympathy and antipathy. This life in the self is, as it were, the sleeping state of the elemental world; whereas the surrender to events and beings is the waking state. When the human soul is awake in the elemental world and develops a wish to experience itself only, that is to say, feels the need of elemental sleep, it can obtain this by returning to the waking state of physical life with a fully developed feeling of self. For such experience, saturated with the feeling of self, in the physical world is synonymous with elemental sleep. It consists in the soul's being torn away from elemental experiences. It is literally true that to clairvoyant consciousness the life of the soul in the physical world is a spiritual sleep.

[ 5 ] When awakening to the supersensible world takes place in rightly developed human clairvoyance, the memory of the soul's experiences in the physical world still remains. It must remain, otherwise other beings and events would be present in clairvoyant consciousness, but not the clairvoyant's own being. We should in that case have no knowledge of ourselves; we should not be living in the spirit ourselves; but other beings and events would be living in our soul. Taking this into consideration, it will be clear that rightly developed clairvoyance must lay great stress on the cultivation of a strong ego-feeling. This ego-feeling developed with clairvoyance is by no means something which only enters the soul through clairvoyance; it is merely that we get to know that which always exists in the depths of the soul, but which remains unknown to the soul's ordinary life as it runs its course in the physical world.

[ 6 ] The strong ego-feeling is not there through the etheric body as such, but through the soul which experiences itself in the physical body. If the soul does not bring that feeling with it into the clairvoyant state from its experience in the physical world, it will prove insufficiently equipped for experience in the elemental world.

[ 7 ] On the other hand, it is essential for human consciousness within the physical world that the soul's feeling of self, its experience of the ego, although it must exist, should be modified. By this means it is possible for the soul to undergo within the physical world training for the noblest of moral forces, that of fellow-feeling, or feeling with another. If the strong ego-feeling were to project itself into the soul's conscious experiences within the physical world, moral impulses and ideas could not develop in the right way. They could not bring forth the fruit of love. But the faculty of self-surrender, a natural impulse in the elemental world, is not to be put on a par with what is called love in human experience. Elemental self-surrender means experiencing oneself in another being or event; love is the experiencing another being in one's own soul. In order to develop the latter experience, the feeling of self, or ego-experience, present in the depths of the soul, must have, as it were, a veil drawn over it; and in consequence of the soul's own forces being thus dulled, one is able to feel within oneself the sorrows and joys of the other being: love, which is the source of all genuine morality in human life, springs up. Love is the most important result for man of his experience in the physical world. If we analyse the nature of love or fellow-feeling, we find it is the way in which spiritual reality is expressed in the physical world. It has already been said that it is in the nature of what is supersensible to become transformed into something else. If what is spiritual in man as he lives the physical life becomes so transformed that it dulls the ego-feeling and lives again as love, the spiritual remains true to its own elemental laws. We may say that on becoming clairvoyantly conscious the human soul awakes in the spiritual world; but we must say just as much that in love the spiritual awakens in the physical world. Where love and fellow-feeling are stirring in life, we sense the tragic breath of the spirit, interpenetrating the physical world. [In the preceding sentence, the translation of the German “Zauberhauch” is “tragic breath” ... a better translation might be, “magic touch.”—e.Ed] Hence rightly developed clairvoyance can never weaken sympathy or love. The more completely the soul becomes at home in spiritual worlds, the more it feels lovelessness and lack of fellow-feeling to be a denial of spirit itself.

[ 8 ] The experiences of consciousness which is becoming clairvoyant, manifest special peculiarities with regard to what has just been stated. Whereas the ego-feeling—necessary as it is for experience in supersensible worlds—is easily deadened, and often behaves like a weak, fading thought in the memory, feelings of hatred and lovelessness, and immoral impulses become intense experiences immediately after entering the supersensible world. They appear before the soul like reproaches come to life, and become terribly real pictures. In order not to be tormented by them, clairvoyant consciousness often has recourse to the expedient of looking about for spiritual forces which weaken the impressions of these pictures. But by doing so the soul steeps itself in these forces, which have an injurious effect on the newly-won clairvoyance. They drive it out of the good regions of the spiritual world, and towards the bad ones.

[ 9 ] On the other hand, true love and real kindness of heart are experiences of the soul which strengthen the forces of consciousness in the way necessary for acquiring clairvoyance. When it is said that the soul needs preparation before it is able to have experiences in the supersensible world, it should be added that one of the many means of preparation is the capacity for true love, and the disposition towards genuine human kindness and fellow-feeling.

[ 10 ] An over-developed ego-feeling in the physical world works against morality. An ego-feeling too feebly developed causes the soul, around which the storms of elemental sympathies and antipathies are actually playing, to be lacking in inner firmness and stability. These qualities can only exist when a sufficiently strong ego-feeling is working out of the experiences of the physical world upon the etheric body, which of course remains unknown in ordinary life. But in order to develop a really moral temper of mind it is necessary that the ego-feeling, though it must exist, should be moderated by feelings of good-fellowship, sympathy, and love.

In last week's lecture we became familiar with every day expressions of man's inner life, namely laughing and weeping, and today we will explore the conditions in both our immediate and more distant surroundings upon which this inner being of man, including man's whole evolution, in a certain way depend. As wide as possible a study of man is what we have been working at in these group lectures this winter, and we will go on studying man from as many aspects as possible.

If you consider what you know of earth conditions, then even if you look at these relatively superficially you would realise immediately that man takes on a different form in different regions of the earth. External bodily characteristics vary according to the different zones of the earth. You will remember that there are ‘races’, the black, red, yellow and white race, and that these races were originally connected with certain regions of the earth. You will also find this corroborated by history, either in what you learnt at school from the observation of purely physical, material conditions, or what we have learnt through anthroposophical science itself. Looking back into the ancient past, we see how the human soul and actually the human body too, developed in the different epochs of earth evolution. In the sphere of spiritual science we have looked back into ancient India, Persia, Egypt, and so on. And we saw how the various capacities that mankind has today, developed gradually in the course of ages. All this gives you an idea of how external conditions are connected with the unfolding of man's inner being. Now if even present-day earth conditions bring about such differences among men, what tremendous human differences must have come about since the very beginnings of our earth evolution, after it has passed through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution. We have described various details of this. What we are going to describe today, however, shall be considered from another point of view. For we shall really get to know human conditions if we continually consider them from different points of view.

At the beginning of earth evolution, earth, sun and moon were, as you know, still one body. The conditions within our whole evolution must have been entirely different then. Man, evolving in earthly evolution, would have been very different whilst the earth was still one with the sun; and how greatly he had to change as first of all the sun and then the moon separated from the earth! Now we know that the epoch after the sun and the moon had separated from the earth is also the so-called Lemurian evolution, in which man had only just begun to acquire a form that is anything like our present-day one. We have often described it by saying that this was actually the time when man descended from higher regions on to the earth. Although man was already in a physical body at the time when the sun was still joined with the earth, it was not like today's body. At that time he had the kind of physical body like you can imagine if you picture man today not standing with his feet on the earth, but raising himself into the air, as though he had no bony elements within him, but still belonged to the regions of air and water, whereby we must imagine the water dissolved in the air. He would have been like a transparent being on the periphery of the earth. A present-day eye would not be able to distinguish this human being from his environment, just as a present-day eye cannot distinguish certain sea creatures from their surroundings, because they look so similar. You can imagine such a being wafting through the air. Not until after the separation of the sun and the moon did man become like we know him today. What were the conditions necessary for man to develop into what he is today? It was essential that the sun's force should not work from inside but from outside on to the earth. That was the purpose of the separation of both sun and moon, that these two cosmic bodies should send their forces, like the sun sends its light, from outside on to the earth. Man could only acquire his present-day form because the sun shone on him not from below, from the centre of the planet, but from the side. Just imagine, if you care to assume such a hypothesis, that the moon were to fall back on to the earth, and the sun to reunite with it; if he wanted to survive in those conditions man would have to re-clothe himself with a body as airy as it was before, and he would have to be able to waft through the environment he is familiar with today. Thus man owes his present existence to the fact that the sun and moon shine on him from outside. We will disregard all the other forces today.

Now the sun and moon work in various ways from outside. The way the sun works in the region of the North Pole is very different from the way it works at the Equator. We get the impression of tremendous contrasts that acquired a meaning the moment the sun began to shine on to the earth from outside. You know, of course, that the nearer we get to the North Pole the greater are the differences between winter and summer. And right at the North Pole half the year is day and half the year night. When you think of these differences, then what spiritual science has to say about these things will make sense. It tells us that at the North Pole itself earth conditions in Lemurian times were the closest to those conditions existing on the earth when the sun and moon were still united with it. Today, of course, these conditions are quite different. But even today it is still to a certain extent true that at the North Pole the strongest influence is from the earth's centre to its surface, and the influence of the sun and the moon are at their least. What has made itself felt since Lemurian times, in the great increase of forces raying in from outside, has had the least influence of all at the North Pole, so the effect of the centre of the earth on its surface and everything living upon it is here at its greatest. On the other hand the influence of the sun and the moon is strongest around the Equator, and this was already so in Lemurian times. In the Kashic Record we can confirm that earth conditions changed to something completely new with the separation of sun and moon. This, however, led to a quite definite consequence. Something arose which was of fundamental importance for the whole of earth evolution. For the reasons we have given it was in the area of the North Pole least possible for man to descend, as it were, and to incarnate in a physical human form in such a way that he could come to best expression within it. Therefore in ancient Lemurian times it was just at the North Pole that those beings congregated who, if I may express it this way, laid no claim as yet to coming right down on to the earth, but who preferred to remain above in the regions where the air was still interlaced with vapour. Thus there was at the North Pole in Lemurian times a kind of spiritual species that did not concern itself very much with the physical bodies that swarmed about on the earth below. From a spiritual point of view, seen by a present-day eye, this species consisted of transparent forms that were therefore not actually visible, and as such they were highly developed, but regarding their physical form they showed a lower form of humanity. They lived in an etheric body and were beings of a more ethereal nature, having only a loose connection with the primitive bodies developing on the earth below that still had no density to speak of. These bodies were too dependent on the earth, and these spiritually more advanced beings only used them as sheaths to the very smallest extent. If, therefore, a man of the present, with his powers of perception, had been able to visit the North Pole in Lemurian times, he would have spoken about its population much in this way: What peculiar people!

They are really very little developed with regard to their physical bodies, but this must point to something special, for as a people they are skilful and intelligent; it is as though they were being directed by strings from above! And so indeed it was, for the real human being did not descend on to the earth's surface. That is why the people living around the North Pole at that time were in the highest degree ethereal beings with highly developed etheric bodies but underdeveloped physical bodies; beings that as it were could grasp all the wisdom of the world with their etheric bodies, as though they had great clairvoyant faculties, and who looked out to the starry Heavens with an understanding of the beings who were weaving the life of world spaces. But you could almost say that their physical bodies were sleepy. Yet because they were led as though by strings from above, the deeds they performed were perfectly intelligent.

In the equatorial regions it was different. The influence of the sun and the moon was becoming more and more active from outside. The air was interlaced and warmed through by the rays of the sun. All the phenomena taking place in the region of the air became dependent on the sun and the moon. And the result of this was that just in ancient Lemurian times the people of these regions descended deepest into their physical bodies, and their etheric bodies interpenetrated their physical bodies most deeply. A present-day man with eyes of the senses would assume these beings to be the most highly developed physical human beings, whilst he would reckon the northern peoples to be underdeveloped. And there was a further difference that is of special importance.

Where the sun had least influence men developed in such a way that over large areas they all looked more or less similar to one another. For each of these beings that did not descend but was still ethereal belonged to a number of forms below. Up in the North they were group souls, whilst the souls around the Equator were more individual souls, and each human being was much more inside his own body. Thus the inhabitants of those regions that we find at the North Pole today had, in Lemurian times, the characteristics of group soul beings to the greatest imaginable degree. A great number of people looked up to their group soul. And if we look at these group souls as souls we will see that they were much more highly developed than the souls which, in Lemurian times, descended into physical bodies in the equatorial regions. So we can say that the North Pole was populated by people that actually lived in the realms of air in a kind of paradise, and who had not yet descended as far as the earth. What we thus understand to be a necessary consequence of the foregoing you can now compare with what you encounter here and there in anthroposophical literature, namely that those higher beings who were once the teachers of mankind descended from the cold North! We have actually found them, the group souls around the North Pole. If they wanted to become teachers of those people who were inferior souls and who entered more into physical bodies, then they had to descend further, too, and oppose the capacity of the clairvoyance of Lemurian times in their etheric body, or they had to sacrifice themselves and take on the physical human form of the Lemurian people.

If we had taken a journey in Lemurian times from the Equator to the North Pole, we should have found a spiritualising of the earth population. In those times we can distinguish as it were a twofold population: one kind that had still remained spiritual, and whose earthly bodies appeared really to be only an addition to their spiritual being, and another kind that had already descended into matter, into the physical. What would have happened if no change had occurred with earth evolution? The best souls of the polar regions would not have been able to descend at all into physical bodies. And on the other hand the equatorial population would have more or less died out. Having descended too soon into a physical body, they fell into those wicked and immoral practices that led to the downfall of Lemuria. And this resulted in the best section of the population migrating to those regions lying between the Equator and the northern lands. For in Lemurian times we find the members of mankind with the greatest chance of survival living in the countries between the Equator and the North Pole. The human bodies that could become bearers of the most advanced human souls developed best in those regions of ancient Atlantis known today as the temperate zones.

Now all the various stages of evolution leave so-called stragglers behind and there are also stragglers left from these ancient times. What we call the Lemurian population of the earth, that remarkable people of the North with strongly developed etheric bodies and less developed physical bodies, and that other equatorial population with strongly developed physical bodies and less developed etheric bodies, of these people nothing remains, they became extinct. For these bodies were of such a nature that we cannot even find remains; the substance was so soft that there can be no question of there being any remains. Of paramount importance in their Atlantean descendants was that the germ of the ego, the consciousness of Self, the foundations of which were already basically there from ancient Lemurian times on, went through a progressive development on the earth. If mankind had not to a large extent migrated to Atlantis, the active development of the ego would not have come about. For the Lemurian population would have gradually died out, having to succumb to passions, and the best souls of the North would not have descended to earth at all, for they would not have been able to find suitable bodies. The underdeveloped bodies of earlier times would not have provided them with the possibility of developing a strong consciousness of self within the bodily nature. Through the fact that the better sections of the Lemurian population migrated to Atlantis, the human body evolved its form to the extent that it could become the bearer of self-consciousness in a harmonious way. And it was only in the course of time that the human body acquired this form in the regions corresponding to the present temperate zones. For in this period of evolution the human body was still evolving. In Atlantean times the human body was not yet confined to rigid forms, and the highly developed human beings, those of great spiritual significance, were physically small in those days, whereas a person who was not very significant spiritually had in Atlantean times a gigantically developed physical body. And if you had met such a giant in those days, you could have concluded: He is not on a very high level spiritually, for he has rushed into his body with his whole being! Everything that refers to ‘giants’ in legends is absolutely based on a knowledge of the truth. If, therefore, a real memory of these times is preserved in the Germanic myths, we feel it to be absolutely correct, from the spiritual scientific point of view, that the giants are stupid and the dwarfs very clever. This is entirely based on what could be said of the Atlantean population: Where the people are small we find great intelligence, and a race of large men are all stupid! Where human intelligence ran to flesh there was not much mind left. So that physical size expressed the inability to retain the spiritual. In those days the body was still to a certain extent perfectly capable of transformation. Just at the time when Atlantis began to sink there was a great contrast between men who were good as to their qualities of soul, and were a race of little men, and the giant forms who were wicked and in whom everything had turned to flesh. You might even find echoes of these facts in the Bible, if you cared to look for them.

So we see that in Atlantean times the human body could still form itself according to spiritual characteristics. Therefore it could also take on the form which enabled it to mould all the organs, heart, brain, and so on, in such a way that they could become the expression of an actual ego being, a being with self-consciousness. These capacities and characteristics, however, developed on innumerable different levels. There were people whose inner nature was correctly balanced and who were normal, for they had not developed egoism to too great an extent, nor had they developed their ego-feeling solely on a lower level. With them, devotion to the outer world and ego-feeling maintained a balance. Such people were scattered about everywhere. And these were the men that the Atlantean initiates could do most with. On the other hand there were other men who had developed a tremendously strong ego-feeling, much too soon, of course; for human beings had not yet reached the point when they could make of their bodies an instrument for a strongly developed ego-feeling. This made the body hardened in egoism as it were, and it became impossible for it to develop beyond a certain point. There were other people again who had not reached anything like a normal ego-feeling because they were more susceptible to influences from the outer world than they should have been; peoples who had completely surrendered themselves to the outer world. Thus it was the normal human beings that were the best material for the initiates to use for the evolution of the future, and they were also the ones that the great sun initiate, Manu, gathered around him as being most capable of evolving. Those peoples whose ego impulse was developed too strongly, so that it permeated their whole being and made it a manifestation of egohood, these people gradually wandered to the West and became the nation the last survivors of which appeared as the Red Indians of America. Those people whose ego-feeling was too little developed migrated to the East, and the survivors of these people became the subsequent Negro population of Africa. If you look at those things in a really spiritual scientific way you will see evidence of them right into the physical characteristics. If a man brings his whole inner being to expression in his physiognomy and on the surface of his body, then it permeates his external being with the colour of his inner nature as it were. Now the colour of egohood is red or copper or a yellowish brown. And an overpowering feeling of ego arising from offended self-respect can even nowadays turn a man as it were yellow with rage. They are absolutely connected, these two phenomena: the red colour of those peoples that migrated to the West and the yellow colour of the man whose ‘blood boils’ as we say, and whose inner nature is showing itself right into his skin. Those people, however, who had developed their ego being too little, and who were too exposed to the influences of the sun, were like plants: they deposited too many carbonic constituents beneath their skin and became black. This is why the Negroes are black. Thus both east of Atlantis in the black population and west of Atlantis in the red population we find survivors of the kind of people who had not developed their ego-feeling in a normal way. The human beings who had developed normally lent themselves best to progress. Therefore they were the ones chosen to infiltrate the various other regions from the place we know of in Asia.

Now between the little group of people Manu gathered round him and the extreme cases there were obviously innumerable intermediary stages of development. These were also turned to account, of course. To some extent these intermediary levels were extraordinarily suitable for the further evolution of earth civilisation. Thus for example, in the migration from West to East a people remained behind in parts of Europe who had developed their ego-feeling to a marked degree, but who were at the same time not very open to influences from the environment. Think what a peculiar mixture was bound to result in Europe. Those people who migrated to the East and became the black race were very susceptible to external influences, especially that of the sun, just because they had so little ego-feeling. But other peoples migrated into these parts, or at least in this direction, who had a strong ego-feeling. These were peoples who had preferred as it were going East to going West, and they are a milder red than they would have been had they gone West. They gave rise to the race of people who had a strong ego-feeling which nevertheless kept a balance between this and their devotion to the outer world. Those are the peoples of Europe of whom we were able to say in the last public lecture that their strong feeling of personality was from the beginning their essential feature.

Thus we see how man's outer surroundings work on his inner situation, and how the earth, through the different positions in which the areas of its surface are exposed to the sunlight, gave rise to innumerable levels of soul development. All according to the direction in which the souls looked, they found a different possibility for developing themselves in a physical body. It is very important that we realise the connection between the sun's influence on the earth and man's evolution. If some day you follow up these matters with me as far as the details of later times you will see how much becomes comprehensible through the fact that all these possible shades of colouring arose. Thus for example there was that particular part of the population that stayed in Europe whose characteristics were as I have described, and they led an independent existence up till much later times. They did not concern themselves about other people; but those that migrated into the regions already colonised by peoples with various shades of dark skin, and mixed with them, acquired every possible shade of skin colour. Look at the colours to be found in Asia, from the Negroes to the yellow races. Hence you have bodies that are sheaths for every possible level of soul, from the completely passive Negro soul entirely given up to the outer world of physical existence, to the other levels of passive souls in every possible part of Asia.

Various characteristics of the evolution of the Asiatic and African peoples will now be comprehensible to you: they present various combinations of surrender to the environment and the external manifestation of ego-feeling. So fundamentally we have two groups of people representing combinations: those on European soil, forming the root stock of the white population, who had predominantly developed the feeling of personality, but who did not migrate to where the feeling of personality permeated the whole body, but to where the ego-feeling became more inward. Therefore in western Asia and partly in North Africa and the countries of Europe, too, in earlier times, you find a people with a strong inner ego-feeling, but who on the whole were not given to losing themselves in the outer world; their inner character was strong and firm, but it did not set its imprint on the bodily nature. On the other hand there are those peoples in Asia with passive, self-effacing natures in whom just this passivity expresses itself in the highest degree. This makes the people dreamy, and the etheric body penetrates very deeply into the physical body. That is the fundamental difference between the European and the Asiatic peoples.

Manu, with his group of normal men, was wedged in between them. He had to bring the right form of culture to each different shade of the population, and he had to colour this wisdom and teaching to suit the external conditions of the people. Thus we see that the peoples of Asia were given instruction of the kind to satisfy them in their passivity and self-effacement. The Afro-Asiatic peoples do not emphasise the ego. The Negro would to some extent not lay stress on the ego at all. When these people looked up to the divine, they said: I do not find my innermost being within me, I find it in Brahma by flowing out of myself and surrendering myself to the universe!

A teaching such as this would not have been understood in Europe. Europe was situated much too near the North Pole for that, and the countries have kept a certain similarity right down the ages. Let us remind ourselves that it was at the North Pole that we previously found the peoples that did not descend right into physical bodies but whose physical bodies were actually to a certain extent stunted. In fact the European peoples had not as yet quite descended into their physical bodies. They turned their feeling of personality inward. And we would find this more and more the further back we went. Just think how this feeling of personality has been preserved right into later times, when people perhaps no longer saw any reason for it. Someone who belonged to the East would have said: I unite myself with the one, all-embracing Brahma! Thou unitest thyself with Brahma! The other man unites himself with Brahma, they all unite themselves with the one Brahma! With whom did the European unite himself, if he had to acknowledge this as an acceptable idea? He united himself with the one valkyrie, with the one higher soul. And the valkyrie, one might say, was there for each one at the moment of death. It was all an individual, personal matter. And it was only at the border of these two regions that such a thing as the Moses-Christ religion could arise. It could only come right in the middle between East and West. And whilst it could not take root over in the East where the idea of God was that of a unity, but at a previous stage, it could assert itself as the idea of a personal God, which Jehovah is and which Christ is, among those people who already bore the feeling of personality within themselves. Therefore it spread to the West, and we see it meeting with understanding, when envisaged as the idea of a God people could think of as a person. That is why we see it developing in this way almost as a necessity just in this particular belt. The feeling of personality was there, but it was still inward, still spiritual, just as with the ancient Lemurians everything was still spiritual, and the bodily nature was only developed to a small degree. The bodily nature was certainly developed here, but the personal element, which man prized so highly, was inward, and man also wanted to conquer what was external by means of the inner being. Thus it was here that they best understood a God who had the greatest wealth of inner nature permeating his outer nature, namely the Christ. In Europe everything was prepared for the Christ. And because these were regions in which in earlier times men had not descended entirely on to the earthly scene, and therefore some kind of last remnants of spiritual perception existed, there was still something remaining of the vision of spiritual beings, of the old European clairvoyance.

This old European clairvoyance had also led to there being an ancient image of God throughout Europe and also as far as Asia, which present-day scholars, perhaps, will only get to know of if they discover it in the myths of certain isolated districts of Siberia. A remarkable description emerged there long before Christian times, when nothing was known as yet of what was going on in the South, namely what is described in the Old Testament, the Greco-Roman evolution and that of the East. A remarkable idea emerged there which possibly led to the name that has now more or less died out, the ‘Ongod’; and Ongod is a name that is still echoed as it were in the idea of the ‘One God’. The Ongod would be something like the divine we perceive in all spiritual beings. So according to this way of thinking the idea of a personal God was something that was absolutely familiar to the people that lived in this particular belt of the earth. Therefore we can understand that it was just here that this particular outlook bore its chief fruit. For this belt of the earth and its inhabitants had so to speak solved the mystery of the ego. Strictly speaking all evolution since Atlantean times consists either of peoples who maintained the ego-feeling in just the right proportion, or of peoples who developed the ego too much or too little. Nothing special could come of the peoples who had developed the ego in too great or too little a degree. The peoples we have just described as the peoples of the Near East, and also the peoples of certain parts of Africa and especially of Europe, had developed the ego in a unique way.

These were the basic conditions necessary for the coming civilisation that has developed roughly since the beginning of our era. The ego had to reach a certain point of development, as it were, but not overdo it in either direction. And it is our task today to understand this in the right way. For all spiritual science has in a certain respect to appeal to what we call the development of a higher ego from out of the lower. When we look back over the ages we can learn from the fact that certain sections of the earth's inhabitant's did not find it possible to keep pace with earth evolution in the development of their ego, how many mistakes can be made in regard to the development of the higher ego out of the lower. In ancient Atlantis, for instance, there were peoples who dropped out of the earth population so to speak, and they became Red Indians. What would they have said if they had been able to put the facts of their development into words? They would have said: Above all I want to develop my inner being, which I find to be the highest thing within men when I look within myself. And they developed this ego so strongly that it affected even the colour of their skin, and that is how they became red. Their development led them into decadence. Among the people of Atlantis in whom everything still went directly into the body, these were the ones who cultivated what we might call inner brooding upon the ego, and they were so to say convinced that they could find within themselves everything that had to be developed. At the other extreme were those people who said: Oh, the ego is of no significance. The ego must lose itself entirely, it must dissolve altogether, and only listen to what the outside world says! They did not really say this, because they did not reflect in this manner. But those are the peoples who denied their ego to such an extent that they went black, because the external forces coming from the sun to the earth made them so. Only those peoples that were capable of holding the balance with regard to their ego could develop into the future.

Now let us look at our present earth population. There are still people today who say: Oh, the anthroposophists talk of a spiritual world which they seek within themselves. We, however, look back to our good old religious traditions that have been handed down to us externally. We rely on what comes to us from outside and are not very concerned about a higher world! Of course everything is more spiritual today than it was in Atlantis. Nowadays you no longer go black if you rely merely on traditions, and say: Those to whom we have entrusted the welfare of our souls will take care of us, those who do the job, and whose business it is to see that our souls reach Heaven! Nowadays this no longer makes you black. But we do not wish to deny everything, for in parts of Europe people still say today that if you think in this way you will go ‘black’! Everything happens to be more spiritual today! That then is the one type. The others are those who, without taking the trouble to go into all the details of spiritual science—investigations in the Kashic Record, the nature of reincarnation and karma, the principles of man's being, and so on—which require an effort to be understood, are so easy-going that they say: What do I want all that for? I look within myself, that is my higher ego, the divine man within me is there! Such a way of thinking often arises, even in theosophical circles. These people do not want to learn anything, or really develop themselves and be prepared to wait until the ego has taken hold of the various parts of their nature, but run around waiting for the divine man to speak out of them, talking incessantly about the higher ego. Indeed, there are even certain books that tell you: You do not need to learn at all! Just let the God within you speak! Today, when everything is more spiritual, this no longer makes people red. But they succumb to the same fate as did the peoples that were always boasting of their ego.

What we need is an ego that keeps itself mobile, neither losing itself in external physical observation or in external physical experience, nor remaining stationary at one point, but really advancing in spiritual development. That is why the great masters of wisdom and of harmony of the perceptions have not been telling us all the time in the theosophical movement that we should let the divine man within us speak; on the contrary they have given us quite specific impulses for finding the wisdom of the world in all its different aspects. And we are not pupils of the great masters by only wanting to let the God within us speak, or by imagining that each individual carries his own master within himself, but by wanting to get to know the structure of the world in all its aspects. Anthroposophical development is a striving to know all the subtle aspects of cosmic happenings. We attain our higher ego by evolving upwards from stage to stage. Our ego is there outside, manifest in the wonders of the world. For we are born out of the world and want to live our way back into it.

Thus we see that conditions which a man can fall into today are only so to speak modern, more spiritual versions of what we met with in Atlantean times. Even then men came under these three categories: There were those who really wanted to develop their egos, and who were always taking in new things, and by so doing they really became the bearers of post-Atlantean civilisation. Then there were those who only wanted to let the divine speak in them, and their egos made them red. And the third group turned their minds exclusively outwards, and these people became black.

We must learn the right lesson from these phenomena of earth evolution, then in the anthroposophical movement we shall really find the right impulse. What happens has always in a certain way already happened, but it happens again in ever new forms. The anthroposophical movement is something so great and significant because it is carrying further in the various regions of the earth something that developed visibly in Atlantis, but now is more invisible. Thus man is hastening forward from a civilisation of the visible towards a cultural epoch of the invisible and ever more invisible.

[ 1 ] The life of the soul in its earthly existence is passed in the facts of thinking, feeling and willing. In thinking we have a mirrored picture of the experience of the astral organism and the ego-being within the physical sense-world. These higher parts of the human nature were also experienced during the state of sleep. But this experience remains unconscious during the stay on earth. The soul is then too weak in its inner being to present its own content to its consciousness. As soon as the consciousness perceives this content, it takes it for a purely psycho-spiritual one.

[ 2 ] In awaking the astral organism and the ego enter into the etheric and physical organisms. Through thinking the sense-perceptions are experienced by the etheric organisms. But in this experience it is not the world surrounding man, which is active, but a copy of this world. In this copy the sum-total of the formative powers underlying the earthly course of man manifests itself. And a copy of the outer world is present in man at every instant. Man does not directly experience this thinking, but its reflection is presented to ordinary consciousness by the physical organism.

[ 3 ] Ordinary consciousness cannot perceive what is happening behind the reflective activity of thinking in the physical organism, it can only perceive the result, namely the reflected images, presented as thoughts. These unperceived happenings in the physical organism are activities of the etheric and astral organism and of the ego. In his thoughts man perceives what he himself is enacting in his physical organism as a psycho-spiritual being. [ 4 ] There is in the etheric organism a copy of the outer world as inner activity, filling the physical organism. In the astral organism there exists a copy of the pre-earthly existence; in the ego exists the eternal central being of man.

[ 5 ] In the etheric organism the outer world is active in man. In the astral organism continues to be active whatever man has experienced in the pre-earthly existence. This activity has not changed in kind during its earthly existence from what it was in its pre-earthly existence. It was of a kind which occurred in a spiritually changed physical organism. In the waking state it is similar. The inner head-organization of man strives continually to be changed from a physical state into a spiritual one. But this change can only remain a tendency during earthly existence. The physical organization resists it. Precisely at the moment at which the astral organism in its changing activity arrives at a point at which the inner physical head-organization would have to cease as a physical one, the state of sleep intervenes. It replenishes the inner head-organization with strength from the rest of the physical organization by means of which it can continue in the physical world.

[ 6 ] This strength lies in the etheric organism, which grows less and less differentiated inside the head-organization during the waking state. During sleep however it is differentiated internally into definite formations. In those formations are manifest the forces which during existence on earth act in rebuilding the physical organism.

[ 7 ] In the head-organization a two-fold activity is thus enacted during the waking state; one building up through the etheric organism and one tearing down, that is, one which destroys the physical organism. This destruction takes place through the astral organism.

[ 8 ] Through this astral activity man carries death in him continually during his existence on earth. Only this death is vanquished day by day by forces opposing it. But we owe to these constantly acting death tendencies the ordinary consciousness. For in the dying life of the head-organization is found that which is capable of reflecting the soul activity as thought-experience. An organically-growing activity urging towards life cannot produce a tissue of thought. For that a tendency towards death is required. The organically-growing activity reduces the machinery of thought to stupor or unconsciousness.

[ 9 ] What finally happens to the whole human organism in physical death accompanies human life during existence on earth as a tendency, as an always recurring beginning of death. And to this continued dying within him man owes his ordinary consciousness. Before this consciousness stand the etheric and the physical organism as non-transparent things; man does not see them but the thought-reflections mirrored by them and experienced by him in his soul. The physical and etheric organizations hide for him the astral organization and the Ego; and just because the consciousness of soul is filled by the reflections of the physical organism during existence on earth man is prevented from seeing his etheric and astral organization and his Ego.

[ 10 ] In death the physical organism separates from the etheric and astral one and from the Ego. Now man carries his etheric and astral organism and his ego in himself. Through the casting off of the physical organism the obstacle to man's perceiving the etheric organism has been removed. The picture of his life on earth just passed through stands before man's soul. For this picture is only the expression of the formative powers, which in their sum represent the etheric body.

[ 11 ] What is present in the etheric body has been woven into man from the etheric part of the Cosmos. He can never be entirely free of the Cosmos. The Cosmic-etheric act continues inside the human organization and this continuation inside man is the etheric organism. Thus it is when after death man becomes conscious of his etheric organism this consciousness begins already to change into a cosmic one. Man feels the world ether as well as his etheric organism as part of himself. This actually means that the etheric body dissolves after a very short while in the world ether. Man keeps that part which was bound to the physical and etheric organism during existence on earth, namely, his astral organism and his ego.

[ 12 ] The astral being is never wholly incorporated into the physical organism. The head-organization represents a total transformation of this astral organism and the Ego. But in everything that can be called the rhythmical organization of man, in the processes of breathing, blood-circulation, etc. the astral organization and the Ego continue to live with a certain independence, for their activities are not reflected by these processes as they are by the head-organization. The astral organization and the Ego can blend with the rhythmical processes. This union brings about a Being, of spirit and of body known to the ordinary consciousness as the ‘Feeling’ life. In man's Feeling life the astral organism and the Ego are united with man's experiences. [ 13 ] We must look at this union in its details. Let us assume that man has created something within the world of the senses. For his psychic life things do not remain there. He judges his own act. But this judgment is not only happening in the life of thought, the impulse towards it is derived from the astral organism, which in conjunction with the rhythmical processes also manifests itself in physical life. To thought-life which is passed in reflex pictures is added a reflection of moral judgment, which appears within the reflected thought-world as itself only bearing the character of the reflected thought-thing. But in the astral-rhythmical organism it lives in reality. This reality does not enter into the ordinary consciousness during existence on earth. Its entry is prevented because the physical rhythmical processes are felt more strongly than the spiritual processes accompanying them. When the physical organism is discarded in death and the physical rhythmical processes are no longer there, then the importance of the death of man to the spiritual-cosmic world is realized by the cosmic consciousness. This cosmic consciousness is formed after the separation from the etheric organism. In this state a man looks upon himself as a moral being as in earthly life he looked upon himself as a physical being. He now has an inner life formed by the moral quality of his activity on earth. He looks upon his astral organism. But the spiritual-cosmic world breaks in upon this astral organism. Whatever judgment this world pronounces on man's earthly activities is presented as facts to his soul.

[ 14 ] In death a man enters a form of experiences of another rhythm than during existence on earth. This rhythm appears as a cosmic imitation of his activity on earth. And into this imitative experience the spirit-cosmos enters continually as does the air into the lungs in breathing during existence on earth. In conscious cosmic experience we have a rhythm of which the physical one is a copy. Through the cosmic rhythm the activities of man on earth as a world of moral qualities are united to an amoral world. And man experiences after his death this moral kernel of a future cosmos, ripening within the cosmos, which will not only exist in a purely natural order like the present, but in a moral-natural one. The chief feeling passing through the soul during this experience in a cosmic world in the making is expressed by the question: Shall I be worthy to form part of a moral-natural order of things in a future existence?

[ 15 ] In my book Theosophy I have called the world of experience through which man passes after his death, the ‘Soul-world’. It is the consciousness of this world through ‘Inspiration’ which gives us material for a real Cosmology. Just as an ‘Imaginative cognition’ of the actual course of human life gives us material for a true philosophy.

[ 16 ] Man's soul cannot gain sufficient impulses out of that cosmic consciousness into which the cosmic after-effect of man's activities on earth have been reaching, to prepare spiritually for the future physical organism. This organism would be spoilt if the soul remained in a soul-world. It must enter into a world of experience in which the non-human, spiritual impulses of the cosmos are active. I have called this world the ‘Spirit-Land’ in the same book.

[ 17 ] The ancient Initiates were able to say to their followers out of the knowledge gained by initiation: That Spiritual Being, who, in the physical world, shows his reflected glory in the Sun, will meet you after death in the spiritual world. He will lead you out of the soul world into the Spirit Land; under His guidance you will be purified, so that you will be able to prepare a physical organism for the next world during your stay in the Spirit land.

[ 18 ] At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and during the first Christian centuries the Initiates had to tell their followers: The degree of Ego consciousness to which you will attain during existence on earth will by its own nature on earth be so light that its antithesis which will begin after death will be so dark that you will not be able to see the spiritual sun-guide. Therefore the sun-being has descended on earth as Christ and has consummated the Mystery of Golgotha. If therefore during your existence on earth you already let yourself be permeated by a lively feeling of your connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, then its significance will become part of life on earth and will continue to be active in man after death. You can then recognize the Christ-guide through this result. [ 19 ] After the Fourth Century this old initiated knowledge was lost in the course of human development. A renewed Christian Religious knowledge should introduce once more from inspiration into cosmological science Christ's deed for humanity even into experiences after death. To expound how the events of human existence on earth, hidden by Will, have their effects even after death, will be the task of the next study.

The various limbs of the human being are related to the seven successive great planets. We must be clear that the human body as such has the physical degrees, then the etheric body and the astral body. Developed they have on Saturn, Sun, Moon.

Let us realize for once that something also had to have been already present when the Saturn chain began. We must ask ourselves: How did the physical body originate? This has become from an astral body. It is divided into these three parts, as it were like pieces of ice are condensed in water. We can regard this physical body as a condensation. It was exactly an imprint of the preceding divine astral body. During the whole development of Saturn this physical body gradually subdivides. Little by little the seven sensory germs of man work themselves out. On the sun the etheric body separates. This division causes at the same time that the senses, which were formed earlier on Saturn, attain a certain ability. Earlier they were only physical apparatuses on Saturn. Because of the addition of the ether on the sun, the eye shines, the ear sounds. So that we can say that the physical body and the etheric body work together on the sun, while a rest of the astral body remains. On the moon, a new system is added: masculine and feminine, in such a way that on the moon the physical body is always the masculine, the etheric body the feminine. The astral body is neutral.

Now we have on the Moon three bodies sharply differentiated: physical body, etheric body and astral body, which come to Earth as the fruit of the Moon. What must happen? Man must become self-aware, he must get an "I". He could not get an "I" if only the forces were in him which come from the moon; it must come from outside. It is the force that comes from Jupiter. From the next planet we will enter comes the force that forms our I. The power center of Jupiter is already there, the earth Jupiter not yet. The beings that have now reached Jupiter draw man after them and now give him the power of the ego. The astral body must now first be made suitable to become the bearer of this I, and is now endowed with two kinds of forces: with Mars forces and with Mercury forces. The Mars forces first make it free from the Moon forces, and the Mercury forces prepare it for the next three planets; they make it suitable for ascension.

What becomes of the astral body when it has absorbed the Martian forces, we call the sentient soul; when it has absorbed the Mercury forces: the mind soul, and the move to Jupiter: consciousness soul.

Now a great change has taken place with the astral body. This revolution causes its whole nature to change, it is split into two. In the astral body of the present earth man the lunar forces are still present: This is the lower pole of the astral body; and that striving towards Jupiter is the higher pole - they are the bodily and the spiritual pole. What goes on with the bodily pole is subject to birth and death. The spiritual pole is still a baby, gradually forming and becoming the causal body. What the latter has achieved remains, while the lower pole is always building up its physical and etheric body anew. This lower pole of the astral body is even now hermaphroditic, male-female. And while on the moon the physical body was always male, the etheric body always female, on earth this changes in such a way that the human being is male in one incarnation and female in the other. Likewise, the etheric body alternates. When the physical body is passive, the etheric body is active. The forces are polar.

Now with the etheric body, namely when it is active - masculine - the quality which Plato calls courage is exhibited, and we therefore actually find that certain acts of courage, especially when one speaks of love, are more exhibited in the female sex than in the male, while in the average man in love the receiving is more apparent.

The changes in the astral body itself, brought about by Mars and Mercury forces and the Jupiter forces - what are they like? When the divine entities recognized the time to be right, they brought down the Mars forces and put them into man. These forces are preferably sound and sonic. In contrast, the Mercury forces are preferably forces of light, color phenomena. The astral body becomes luminous in a new way. About the middle of the Atlantean race the Mercury forces begin to work. There also the one eye turns into the two. The Mercury forces illuminate the astral body, the Jupiter forces penetrate it with forces similar to the electric ones. There the foundation is laid for what has been described above in relation to coal.

Sonic Forces Mars Forces - Sentient Soul

Light forces Mercury forces - mind soul

Electric forces Jupiter forces - consciousness soul