The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We shall now study man in the state of waking life in the physical world, in the state of sleep and in so-called death. Everyone is familiar, from his own experience, with the waking state.

When the human being sinks into sleep, his astral body and ego, together with what has been worked upon in the astral body by the ego, withdraw from the physical and etheric bodies. When you observe the sleeping human being clairvoyantly, physical body and etheric body lie there in the bed. These two members remain connected whereas the astral body emerges together with the higher members; with clairvoyance we can see how, when sleep begins, the astral body, bathed in a kind of light, draws out of the other two bodies. To describe this condition with greater exactitude we must say that the astral body of modern man appears as if it consisted in many streams and sparkles of light and the whole appears like two intertwining spirals, as if there were two 6-figures, one of which vanishes into the physical body, while the other extends far out into the cosmos like the trail of a comet. Both these trails of the astral body very soon become invisible in their further extensions, so that the phenomenon then has an ovoid shape. When the human being wakes, the trail no longer extends into the cosmos and everything draws again into the etheric and physical bodies.

Dreaming is an intermediate condition between waking and sleeping. Sleep that is filled with dreams is a condition where the astral body has, it is true, loosened its whole connection with the physical body, but is still connected with the etheric body. Man's field of vision is then pervaded with the pictures we call dreams. This is, in very truth, an intermediate condition because the astral body has detached itself completely from the physical body, while remaining connected, in a certain way, with the etheric body.

The human being, while he is asleep, lives in his astral body outside his physical and etheric bodies. The fact that he must sink into sleep has deep significance for his whole make-up. Do not imagine that the astral body is inactive and has no work to do during the night while it is outside the physical and etheric bodies. During the day, when the astral body is within the physical and etheric bodies, influences come to it from the outside world, impressions which man receives as a result of the functioning of his own astral body, through his senses, through his activity in the physical world. Feelings and experiences, everything that works in upon him from outside continues on into the astral body. This constitutes the actual feeling and thinking part of man, and the physical body, together with the etheric body, is only the transmitter, the instrument. Thinking and willing take place in the astral body. While the human body is active in the external world during the day, the astral body is receiving impressions all the time. But let us remember, on the other hand, that the astral body is the builder of the etheric and physical bodies. Just as the physical body with all its organs has hardened out of the etheric body, so everything that streams and is active in the etheric body has been born out of the astral body.

Out of what is the astral body itself born? It is born out of the universal astral organism which weaves through the whole of the cosmos. If you want to envisage, by means of a simile, the relation of the small portion of astral substantiality contained in your astral body to the great astral ocean in which all human beings, animals, plants, minerals, and planets too, are contained and out of which they are born, if you want to envisage the relation of the human astral body to the great astral ocean, think of one drop of a liquid in a glass. The drop derives its existence entirely from the liquid in the glass. Similarly, what is contained in an astral body was once embraced within the astral ocean of the cosmos. It has separated out from this ocean and having passed into an etheric body and a physical body, has become a distinct entity, like the drop of liquid.

As long as the astral body lay within the astral ocean, it received its laws and its impressions from this cosmic source. It had its life within this cosmic astral body. After its separation it is exposed, during man's waking consciousness, to the impressions received from the physical world; so that it is divided between the influences coming from the cosmic astral body and those which it receives from outside as the result of the activity imposed upon it by the physical world. When man has reached the goal of his earth-evolution, this division, will merge into harmony. Today, these two kinds of influences do not harmonise.

Now the astral body is the builder of the etheric body and indirectly—because the etheric body is in turn the builder of the physical body—also of the physical body. Everything that the astral body has built up piece by piece through the ages has been born out of the great cosmic astral ocean. Because only harmonious and sound laws proceed from this astral ocean, the work carried out by the astral body in building the etheric and physical bodies is originally sound and harmonious; but as a result of the influences which came to the astral body from outside, from the physical world, impairing its original harmony, there arise all those disturbances of the physical body which prevail in mankind today.

If the astral body remained all the time within the human being, the strong influences of the physical world would soon destroy the harmony brought by the astral body from the cosmic ocean. The human being would very soon be spent by illness and exhaustion. During sleep the astral body withdraws from the impressions of the physical world, which contain nothing that produces harmony, and passes into the cosmic harmony from which it was born. And so in the morning it brings with it the lingering effects of the refreshment and renewal it has experienced during the night. Every night the astral body renews its harmony with the cosmic astral ocean and reveals itself to the clairvoyant as anything but inactive. The clairvoyant perceives a connection between the astral ocean and the one comet-like trail and observes how this part of the astral body works to eliminate the debility caused by the world of disharmony. This activity of the astral body expresses itself in the feeling of refreshed vigour in the morning. Having lived during the night within the great cosmic harmony, the astral body has of course again to adjust itself to the physical world; hence the feeling of greatest vigour does not arise until a few hours have elapsed after waking, when the astral body has again drawn into the physical body.

We will now turn to death, the “brother” of sleep, and study the condition of the human being after death. The difference between a man who is dead and one who is only sleeping is that at death the etheric body passes away together with the astral body and the physical body alone is left behind in the physical world. From birth until death the etheric body never leaves the physical body except during certain states of Initiation.

The period immediately following death is of great importance for the human being. It lasts for many hours, even days, during which the whole of the incarnation that is just over comes before the soul of the dead as in a great tableau of memories. This happens to every human being after death. The peculiarity of this tableau is that as long as it remains in the form in which it appears immediately after death, all the subjective experiences of the man during his life are expunged.

Our experiences are always accompanied by feelings either of joy or pain, upliftment of sorrow, in other words our outer life is always associated with an inner life. The joys and sorrows connected with the pictures of the past life are not present in the memory-tableau. The human being confronts this memory-tableau as objectively as he confronts a painting; even if this painting depicts a man who is sorrowful or full of pain, we still look at him quite objectively; we can, it is true, discern his sorrow, but we do not experience it directly. So it is with these pictures immediately after death. The tableau widens out and in an astonishingly brief span of time man sees all the detailed events of his life.

Separation of the physical body from the etheric body during life can take place only in an initiate, but there are certain moments when the etheric body suddenly loosens from the physical body. This occurs when a man has had terrible experiences, for instance, a dreadful fall or has been in danger of drowning.—The shock causes a kind of loosening of the etheric body from the physical body and the consequence is that in such a moment the whole of the previous life stands before the soul like a memory-picture. This is analogous to the experience after death.

Partial separations of the etheric body also occur when a limb has “gone to sleep” as we say if a hand, for instance, has gone to sleep, the seer can perceive the etheric part of the hand protruding like a glove; parts of the etheric brain also protrude when a man is in a state of hypnosis. Because the etheric body is woven in the physical body in tiny, pinpoint formations, there arises in the physical body the well-known sensation of prickling in a limb that has gone to sleep.

After the lapse of the time during which the etheric body together with the astral body is emerging from the physical body after death, there comes the moment when the astral body, with the higher members, leaves the etheric body. The latter separates off and the memory-tableau fades away; but something of it remains; it is not wholly lost. What may be called ether- or life-substance dissipates in the cosmic ether, but a kind of essence remains and this can never be lost to the human being through his further journeyings. He bears this with him into all his future incarnations as a kind of extract from the life-tableau, even though he has no remembrance of it. Out of this extract is formed what is called, with concrete reality, the “Causal Body.” After every incarnation a new page is added to the Book of Life. This augments the life-essence and, if the past lives were fruitful, causes the next life to develop in the proper way. This is what causes a life to be rich or poor in talents, qualities and the like.

In order to understand the life of the astral body after its separation from the etheric body, we must consider the conditions obtaining in physical life. In physical life it is the astral body that is happy, suffers, satisfies its desires, impulses and wishes through the organs of the physical body; after death these physical instruments are no longer at its disposal. The epicure can no longer satisfy his desire for choice food because the tongue has passed away with the physical body; but the desires, being connected with the astral body, remain in the man and this gives rise to the “burning thirst” of the Kamaloca period. (Kama = desire, wish; “loca” is “place”, but it is in reality a condition, not a place.) A man, who during physical life learns to transcend the physical body, shortens his time in Kamaloca.

To take delight in the beauty or harmony of things means growth and development, for this leads us beyond the material world. To delight in art that is materialistic increases the difficulties of the Kamaloca state, whereas delight in spiritual art lightens them. Every noble, spiritual delight shortens the time in Kamaloca. Already during earthly life we must break ourselves of pleasures and desires which can be satisfied only by the physical instrument. The period of Kamaloca is a time of the breaking of material pleasures and impulses. It lasts for approximately one third of the time of the earthly life. There is something singular about the experiences undergone in Kamaloca. The human being begins actually to live backwards through the whole of his past life. Immediately after death there was a memory-tableau devoid of the elements of joy and suffering; in Kamaloca the human being lives through all the joy and all the suffering again in such a way that he must experience in himself all the joy and the suffering he caused to others. This has nothing to do with the law of karma.

The journey backwards begins with the last event before death and proceeds at triple speed, to birth. When in this backward passage of remembrance the human being reaches his birth, the part of the astral body that has been transformed by the ego combines with the causal body and what has not been so transformed falls away like a shade, a phantom; this is the astral corpse of the human being. He has laid aside the physical corpse and the etheric corpse and now the astral corpse. He now lives through new conditions: those of Devachan. Devachan is all around us, just as is the astral world.

When the life has been lived through backwards as far as earliest childhood, when the three corpses have been discarded, man reaches the condition mysteriously indicated in the Bible by the words: “Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Devachan, the spiritual world—this is the Kingdom of Heaven in the Christian sense.)

The world of Devachan must now be traversed. It is a world as manifold and differentiated as our physical world. Just as solid regions, continents, are distinguished in the physical world, with an expanse of water surrounding the solid land, with the air above and above the air still finer conditions, so there is a similar differentiation in Devachan, in the spiritual world. By analogy with conditions on earth, the phenomena to be found in Devachan have been given similar names.

Firstly, there is a region which may be compared with solid, physical regions: it is the Continental region of Devachan. What is physical here on the earth is, in this region of Devachan, found to be a multitude of spiritual Beings. Think, for example, of a physical human being. To devachanic vision he appears like this: what the physical senses perceive, vanishes, and light flashes up in the sphere immediately around the physical man, where otherwise there is a void; in the middle, where the physical body is, there is an empty, shadowy space—like a kind of negative. Animals and human beings appear here in negative pictures; blood appears as green—its complementary colour. All formations which are physical in our world are present in the Archetypes of Devachan.

A second region—not separated off, but like a second stage—is the Oceanic region of Devachan. It is not water it is a particular substantiality which in rhythmic streams pervades the world of Devachan in colour that may be compared with that of young peach-blossom in Spring. It is fluidic life and it pervades the whole of Devachan. What is divided among individual human beings and animals here below is present in Devachan as a kind of watery element. We have a picture of it when we think of the diffusion of the blood in the human organism.

The third region of Devachan can best be characterised by saying that what lives here, in the physical world, within beings in the way of feelings, of happiness and suffering, joy, pain and the like, is present there in external manifestation.

To take an example.—Suppose a battle is waged here on the earth. Cannons, weapons and the like—these are all on the physical plane. But within human beings on the physical plane there are mutual feelings of revenge, pain, passions; the two armies confront one another full of opposing passions. Think of all this translated into external manifestation and you have a picture of how it appears on the devachanic plane. All that happens here on a battlefield, appears, in Devachan, like the bursting of a fearful storm. This is the atmosphere, the surrounding air of Devachan. Just as our earth is surrounded by air, so all the feelings that break out here, whether they come to physical expression or not, spread out in Devachan like an atmosphere.

The fourth region of Devachan contains the archetypal forms, the archetypal foundations of all truly original achievements on the earth. If we examine closely the happenings of the physical world, we find that the vast majority of inner processes are instigated from outside. A flower or an animal gives us joy; without the flower or the animal we should not experience this joy. But there are also processes which are not instigated from outside. A new idea, a work of art, a new machine—all these things bring into the world something that was not there before original creations come into being in all these domains. If new creations did not arise in the world, humanity would make no progress. Original creations given to the world by great artists and discoverers are only higher in the sense of degree than every other truly original act—even the most insignificant. The point is that something original arises in the inner being.

Archetypes exist in Devachan even for the most insignificant original actions; all these things are already prefigured in yonder world; any original achievement of a human being is already present in the germinal state, even before his birth.

Thus in Devachan we find four regions whose counter-images on the physical plane are Earth, Water, Air and Fire. There is the Continental region as the solid crust in Devachan-in the spiritual sense, of course; then the Oceanic region, corresponding to our area of water; the Atmospheric region, the streaming flow of passions and the like—beauty, but also tumult is to be found there. Finally, there is the all-pervading world of the Archetypes. Everything in the way of initiatives of will and original ideas to which, later on, effect is given in the physical world by beings who return thither—all this must be lived through by the soul in yonder world in order that fresh power may be gathered for the new life.

I

Since the publication of his poem “Sturm” in 1888, John Henry Mackay has been called the “first singer of anarchy”. In his book “Anarchisten” (1891), which describes the social currents of the late 19th century in a way that is more transparent, comprehensive and based on a deep knowledge of the cultural factors of our time than any other book, he emphasized that he was proud of this name. And he has every right to be proud of it. For through him, the world view that is capable of freeing man from the fetters that prejudice and violence have imposed on him for thousands of years has found its poetic expression. What it means that he has put his poetic power at the service of this world view can be seen from the words with which he introduces his “cultural portrait from the end of the century: The Anarchists”. “In no other area of social life is there such a hopeless confusion, such a naive superficiality, such a dangerous ignorance as in the area of anarchism. The mere uttering of the word is like waving a red flag - in blind rage, most people rush at it without taking the time to calmly examine and consider it.” The anarchist's conviction is nothing other than that one person cannot rule over the thoughts, desires and feelings of another, that only a state of communal life can be fruitful in which each person is able to determine the direction and goal of his or her own actions. Until now, everyone thought they knew what was good for everyone in the same way. And they wanted to organize community life in such a way that the “ideal of man” that they had in mind would be achieved. But how can Hinz know whether it is right for Kunz to realize the “ideal of man” that Hinzianism considers to be the “truly ideal”? Religion, the state, laws, duty, justice, etc. have come about because Hinz believed he had to tell Kunz how he – Kunz – could achieve his goal. Hinz has thought of everything for Kunz, except for one thing: that if Hinz shows Kunz the way to his happiness, he takes away from Kunz the opportunity to take care of his own happiness. But that is precisely what anarchism wants to do: to make Hinz realize that he will best take care of Kunz if he lets him be happy in Kunz's way, not Hinz's.

J. H. Mackay has given this view a beautiful expression in the poem “Anarchy” (on p. 444 of this collection):

Always reviled, cursed – never understood,
you have become the nightmare of this age —
They call it the dissolution of all order,
you are and struggle and never-ending murder.

O let them scream! - To them who never sought
To find the truth behind a word,
The true meaning of the word is also denied. They will remain blind among the blind.

But you, word, so clear, so strong, so pure,
That says everything I strive for restlessly,
I give you to the future! - It is yours,
When everyone finally awakens to themselves.

Will it come in the sun's rays? — In the roar of the storm?
I don't know - ... but it appears on earth! —
“I am an anarchist!” - ‘Why?’ - ”I do not
not rule, but also not be ruled!» —

It is sad that it has to happen: But it is necessary to say it again and again that true anarchism has nothing to do with the ridiculous behavior of those unfortunate and unclear fellows who seek to overcome the current social order by force. No, this “anarchism” is nothing more than the docile pupil of these same social institutions, which have always sought to make people understand their ideals of “religion, nationality, state, patriotism, law, duty, right, etc.” through inquisition, cannon and prison. The true anarchist is opposed to all measures of violence, even those that impudently claim the title of “anarchism.”

True anarchism wants the same opportunity for the free development of the personality. And there is no greater restriction of the personality than to try to teach it by force what it should be.

It is not my intention here to refute the objections of all the clever people who regard this avowal of the anarchists as a “pious belief” and point out that the whole of political economy demonstrates the refutation of this belief. Anarchism has a large body of literature that builds its economic foundation better than the advocates of state socialism or any other form of socialism are able to do for theirs. One need only read Tucker's excellent writings to be convinced of this.

But it is not the foundation of true anarchism that interests me here, but J.H. Mackay's position within it.

It is a stroke of luck of the first magnitude that this anarchistic world view has found a singer in Mackay. It may be left to future ages to judge what the enthusiastic and inspiring poems of this man have contributed to the world view of the future. But it behooves us to say that this man, who has undergone difficult and rare struggles to rise to the anarchist confession, should not be taken one-sidedly as a “poet”. John Henry Mackay is a cultural factor within the current development of the European intellectual life. And he has every right to say of the volume of his poems under discussion here: “More than once a sentimentality, a self-deception, an exuberance has elicited a smile from me as the pen went through the pages, changing a word here and there - but always only a single one on purpose - into another. But this volume represents a development, and for that very reason, arbitrary gaps should not be torn into its independently created structure, quite apart from the fact that it was the desire to give a complete picture of this development that this edition owes its existence to in the first place. Therefore, the stronger may try to hold the weaker or the one may fall with the other – in any case, the claim should appear fair to the discerning: that a whole person may demand to be taken as a whole.»

In a future essay, I will show to what extent this statement is justified, especially in the case of J. H. Mackay.

II

It is the energetic struggle of a strong personality that is expressed in J. H. Mackay's “Gesammelte Dichtungen”¹

We are confronted with the noble sensibilities of a man who can only be satisfied when he has reached the height of human existence, where he can feel his own worth as clearly as possible. The highest nobility of the human soul does not lie in a humble, devoted attitude. It lies in the proud awareness that one cannot place oneself high enough. People with such a consciousness feel the great responsibility that the personality has towards itself. They do not want to omit anything that is suitable for developing all the wealth of their talents. For them, human dignity consists in the fact that man must give himself his own value, his own meaning. Humble, devoted natures seek an ideal, a deity that they can worship and adore. For they feel, by their very nature, small and want greatness to be given to them from outside. They do not feel that man is only the pinnacle of nature when he makes himself into one. Their estimation of the world is not the highest. Those who choose a hero “to whom they work their way up the paths to Olympus” ultimately value existence as being of little worth. Those who feel the obligation to make the most of themselves so that their essence contributes to the general value of the world, value it more highly. This obligation is the source of the self-respect of noble natures. And it is also the source of their sensitivity to any foreign intervention in their own self. Their own self wants to be a world unto itself so that it can develop freely from within. Only from this sacred regard for one's own personality can the esteem for the foreign ego also arise. Those who want the possibility of free development for themselves cannot even think of interfering in the world of the foreign personality. And with that we have given the anarchism of noble natures. They strive for this world view out of inner, spiritual necessity.

We follow the path of such a nature in J. H. Mackay's poetry. Only people with a deep soul and fine sensibilities follow this path. It is their nature to see everything in its true greatness. That is why they are also allowed to seek the greatness of their own self. It is true that proud natures usually grow out of a sentimental mood of youth. That they become effusive when they express their feelings towards things. And this sentimentality, this exuberance, is a feature of Mackay's youthful poetry in abundance. But it would be a sad state of affairs for a youth that could not be sentimental, not exuberant. For in such a disposition of mind it is announced that man will recognize the true meaning of things in his later development. He who does not see things in their romantic splendor in his youth will certainly not see them in their truth later. The great things in the world will only escape us if our soul's eye is not attuned to their greatness. But such a disposition leads people in their youth to see things in a more ideal light than they really radiate. And when we can feel with Mackay when he says: “I do not love this youth. It was not cheerful, not free enough, not open enough,” we feel no less his other words: ‘But I have respect for it, for its tireless struggle, its silent self-confidence and its lonely struggle.’ It is precisely the exuberance of youth that gives him the right to feel self-sufficient today. A self-confidence that does not arise from such a disposition inspires us with little confidence. Only those who feel the need to see the world as something lofty and worthy of veneration will have the strength to seek the valuable within themselves. A sober youth will develop into a maturity that underestimates things; an exuberant youth will develop into a true appreciation of the whole world.

This is how Mackay's later, self-liberated nature is foreshadowed in his youthful poetry. His descriptions of nature show his tendency to see things in the light of greatness. When he sings of Scotland's mountains in his first poem, “Children of the Highlands”, it sounds like a demand of the later life ideal:

Like a virgin untouched,
never seduced by love,
To give herself to a man
and to bow her head,
So proud and stiff, so powerfully strong,
Her noble limbs full of marrow,
And never faltering in her courage
In silent splendor Mull rests island.

A poem such as “Über allen Wipfeln” seems to us to have been inspired by a true piety that has the need to be everything to the world that it can be. The poet wrote it during a visit to Ilmenau, in memory of the feelings that Goethe's soul experienced in the same place:

Are these the paths? And you may walk them
Is that not great, unnameable happiness?
And do you not feel how the breath of these winds
carry you back to that distant time?
- You think - and silently you walk the old tracks;
A song hovers on your lips - a song!
You feel the melancholy, how it gently, gently
once surrounded him – and now surrounds you too.

Anyone who can feel the greatness and beauty of the world in this way also has the full right to speak the words that we encounter in Mackay's “Storm” (1888) in later years:

I lift myself up! - Above the others
Rises high and free my proud self!
How long has it taken - after how long a journey?
until I finally found myself!
Now I wander alone. The world seems different to me
The world since I no longer give myself to it:
No laughter laughs to me, and no weeping weeps to me,
I am no longer a “one” - only I am I!
I know nothing more today of that delusion,
the last that forced me into its yoke:
The flag that is called love fell from the tired hand
is called love. - You laugh? Crush me, then!

Anyone who has been able to appreciate the world will also respect the part of the world that he himself is allowed to work on, if it is worthy of appreciation: his own self.

The depth of Mackay's empathy with every human personality is demonstrated by the deeply moving poem “Helene”. It describes a man's love for a fallen girl. If you follow the human ego into such depths, you will also gain the certainty of finding it on the heights.

The only thing that is justified about the belief in God is the human feeling that is inherent in it, which strives for a saint. Only a person who has the need for holy, pious feelings also has the right to atheism. Anyone who denies God only because he does not have the urge for the holy, his atheism appears stale and superficial. One must be capable of being pious, according to one's disposition: then one may be content with the de-divinized world. For one has not simultaneously eradicated the greatness of the world with the divine. What great religious sentiment lies in Mackay's poem “Atheism”.

Perhaps when once the weary eyes break,
When the dark night of death descends,
That a prayer then my lips speak,
that never in life the mind had thought.

Perhaps that I depart with a lie
from a being that has only known truth,
When I suffer the last pains of life
in fear and night and madness bound.

Then my spirit succumbed; then my will broke!
Then reason fled! - But if I can,
Then the last cry, the shrill one, will still be heard,
Then the last beat of the heart will still proclaim:
“I never believed in a God above,
The liar or the fool only give us. I die – and I know of nothing to praise
Perhaps only one: that we live only once!"

We are born into a world that wants to sweep us away with its eternal waves. The thoughts and will of those who came before us live on in our blood. The ideas and power of those around us exert countless influences on us. In the midst of all the hustle and bustle around us, we become aware of our own selves. The more we manage to take the rudder of our life into our own hands, the freer we are. The man who presents us with his poems here strove for such self-liberation. And he considers it his good fortune that he has found himself:

O world, how far you are!
I am drawn over your mountains.
But time, the minion, holds me back.

O man, how small you are!
you can only lift yourself up high
When you have learned to live only for yourself.

O illusion, how great you are!
I never gave myself to you,
And I conquered the fate of silence.

My ego, you raise your head!
You were a child and became a warrior.
He who always believed in himself remains the victor!

This poem from the last part of the “Collected Poems” from the “Strong Year” expresses the attitude of a person who has found himself.

It is from such feelings that a deep resentment of a social order arises that seeks the salvation of the world in erecting all possible barriers around man. The poet Mackay wages war with such an order, the noblest, bloodless war, which fights only with the one weapon that brings people to recognize their true nature. For such a war is nourished by the belief that people free themselves to the extent that they feel the need for their freedom.

A dog is one that knows a master!
But we are not masters and we are not servants!
impudent insolence dares to call
another man, who has the same rights
as he once had in the cradle of life!
— Let everyone see if he can walk,
But no one should be so dog-like as to bend
His knee in fear of another man.

Let every man's forehead be raised equally high,
Whether it be poor or rich!
I will have my right, you may praise yours:
For me, for you, for all it is the same...

(Collected Poems, $. 445)

Mackay may be quiet when others call him a poet of tendency, because as an artist he expresses a world view. Whose whole personality is so intertwined with this world view as his, he expresses it like another person expresses the feeling of love that he feels. For whoever has fought for a world view expresses it as his own being. And truly, it is no less worthy to express humanity's deepest thoughts and feelings than the inclination towards women or the joy of the green forest and the singing of birds.

We see the creator of the great cultural painting “The Anarchists” growing in the volume before us. Those who want to get to know him, how he struggled to realize the ideas in which he sees the liberation of humanity, should reach for these “Collected Poems”. They will feel that clarity is born out of suffering and disappointment. But they will also see the great path of liberation that alone brings man the self-satisfaction that can establish his happiness.

• 1. . Unfortunately, the title of the book discussed here was omitted in the first part of this essay. I am adding it here: “Gesammelte Dichtungen von John Henry Mackay. Mit der Photogravure des Dichters” (Zurich and Leipzig, Karl Henckell & Co).

The idea of development, which has become common in more recent times, does not truly consider the phenomena to which it is applied in terms of their main characteristics. Thus, when development is used to consider a connection between humanity and animality, the first question is not: How can the human being be imagined? It is taken too simply. It is not considered that the head, for example, must be grasped by completely different ideas than the rest of the organism. The head, if thought about correctly, represents so much of what is connected with the essence of the human being that the rest of the organism can be thought of as a limb attached to the head, into which the processes of transforming air and food are transferred. It is as if the head is to be relieved of these intraorganic processes. This idea, developed, would lead to seeing in the organization of the head the indication of an older form of human development that also included the organs for the transformation of air and food, and which then, through development towards the soul-spiritual side, separated these organs out as appendages. The same cannot be said of animals, not even of the more highly developed ones. In them, the head appears so much as a part of the whole organism that the latter must be spoken of as the whole animal. One can only say of man that he adds the animal to himself in order to relieve the head of what is essential to it. This leads to the idea that man is by nature older than animals; that he has added to his organization that of animality at a stage in his development, in order to ascend as a head being to a level of his essence that he could only reach by doing so.

Furthermore, this thought leads to the recognition that the living conditions in which the human being was when it had not yet added animal nature to itself were different from those that came later. For if they had been the same, the “human” head would have had to have degenerated into the animal form under their influence even then. These living conditions cannot have been the present earthly ones. For these bring man precisely in the animal direction of development. But his head shows another.

The question arises: What causes this other direction of development of the head being “human”? An unbiased consideration of the main characteristics of the head also teaches us about this. One must find it more mineralized than the rest of the organism. The mineralization of the organism, which ultimately ends in the bone system, is most comprehensively expressed in the head. And it is nothing other than this mineralization that pushes the initial organs of respiration and metabolism out of the head. In the animal head, this mineralization is far less advanced. But this leads us to ask: what predominates in the animal head in terms of mineralization? Unbiased observation shows that this is the vegetable aspect. The human head acquires its essence by progressing from the vegetable to the mineral. This leads us to think of it at an earlier stage of development in the stage of stronger vegetable development. The later vegetabilization of the animal head corresponds to an animalization of its entire being. Thus, the earlier stage of humanity must also show the human being as a head being in a stronger animalization than it is today. Today's conditions cause the degree of mineralization that is now characteristic of the human being. These conditions could not have been present when he was a mere head being. One must think of the state of the earth with the present conditions as having been preceded by another, which did not yet have the impact of the mineral forces that are bringing about the present state of humanity. Neither the present human forms nor the present animal forms could have lived within this state. Beings lived that held the middle between the present human and the present animal. Beings that could become human if they were able to absorb mineralization and that sank deeper into animality if they could not do so. The latter, which are the ancestors of the present animals, only formed as a whole organization what man added as initial links.

Now, through mineralization, man's spiritual element approaches him. This lives in him as his independent spiritual being by mineralizing part of his physical being. The animal does not have this spiritual being because it cannot mineralize itself to the same extent as man. By absorbing it, man experiences an independent spiritual being within himself, which is itself the opposite of the spiritual [in its organization]. He must extract the spirit from its organization in order to experience it as an independent being. In an earlier stage of development, the spirit permeated the animal's organization to a greater extent; in the present stage, the spirit permeates the organization to a lesser extent, but the human being is its participant. The animal is not able to experience the spirit living in its organization as spirit through itself.

The older intermediate forms between humans and animals were, on the whole, those in which spirit only permeated their organization. The ancestors of the present-day animals continued this relationship in the present-day conditions; to the old developmental conditions, the human being added others that brought about his spiritualization. The external living conditions that correspond to this spiritualization are those that the human being has around him as his world of the senses. What the human being observes as such a sensory world around him, he experiences externally through perception; inwardly, it asserts itself in his mineralization process. Animal nature is excluded from both. It remains inwardly more plant-like than the human being; and it does not exclude its sensory organs to such an extent from this more plant-like organism that the external world can be experienced through them to the same degree as it can by the human being. Thus animal life is much more than human life organically closed in itself; it does not participate in the external world to the same degree as man. Animal life is soul-life; human life is soul-spiritual life. The animal shapes its organism in soul-life and lives with it in the world as soul; man shapes his organism in spiritual life and lives with it in the world as spirit.

Insightful knowledge guides us in all these matters. There is more spiritual in the head of a human being than in the rest of the organism. The head is permeated by the insight of the spiritual of the rest of the organism. It stands out from the spiritual of the rest of the organism. In the course of a human life, the head of a child is more spiritual than that of a mature person; and the head of an old person shows a spirituality that is quite different from that of the rest of the organism. For those who can see these conditions, the earlier stage of the whole development of humanity is just as much a part of them as the childhood of a person is part of the sensory view. For beings who still actualize this earlier human stage today are present for the observing consciousness. These beings do not participate in the mineral process of the earth. Nothing of the mineral substance penetrates into their organization. They cannot be perceived by the senses. But they are perceived when the rhythm, which is unconscious in human life, is raised into consciousness. Then they are recognized as souls that are on the way to becoming human spirits. Man was such a soul before he became the spirit-soul that he is at present. But he could only be it when the earth was not yet endowed with the mineral impulses of the present. When it developed vegetable impulses instead of these. Man was then not yet man, but an ancestral being of the earth. It worked as a whole in the same way as a vegetable formation works today. It did not yet show the mineral impulse. One can say that man was then just as much an animal as he was not an animal. For he developed the present form of his animality only later.

In that man fashions his animality under the influence of the organization of his head, the latter becomes different from what it could become through the conditions which in earthly life directly shape the animality in animals. Careful observation, attentive in the deeper sense, shows the following as the main characteristic of the human being in this respect: Man is placed in the world by different balances of power than the animal. The weight pressure of his head is in a different direction to the line that passes through his center of gravity than in the animal. Attention must be paid to the fact that in judging what is considered here, it is not the temporary position of the human being that is considered, but the expression of these balances of power in his lasting form. In this form, the relationship between the brain and spinal cord, which distinguishes humans from animals, is expressed. But the relationship of the hands and arms to the feet and legs also comes out of the same balance of power in the revelation. The human being experiences this balance of power with all its consequences in a dull consciousness as that which carries his 'I'. And by standing face to face with another person, he perceives their 'I' directly in this form. Both perceptions, that of one's own ego and that of the other person's ego, live at the bottom of ordinary consciousness like the experiences of sleep consciousness. Only that the latter alternates with ordinary consciousness, the dull consciousness of the “I” always accompanies this ordinary consciousness. A second thing is this: the thought prevailing in the animal organization finds expression in the animal form. In the human form, it is not the thought that is expressed, but the equilibrium just described. Because in the animal the thought flows completely into the organic form, the animal does not have the faculty of thinking as a special power of the soul. What is formed in the manifold forms of the animal world into a sensory revelation: the human being carries it within him in a formless way, as a living weaving of his thinking. And this living weaving becomes the bearer of his soul. The animal soul lives, as it were, solidified in the animal form; the human soul lives a life of its own, free of the body and formless. The third consideration is that the animal's emotional life only flares up in response to its inhibited or uninhibited will. The human being can separate the emotional life from the will. In the human being, feeling develops into a way of life connected with the continuous experience of his body, while in the animal it is a temporary inner revelation of the experience of inhibited or uninhibited will. It is in this interpenetration of the body with the independent element of feeling that the difference between human and animal corporeality lies. And it is in the sphere of the body, so to speak, impregnated with the life of feeling, that the origin of memory also lies. Because feeling separates from the will in this way in the human being, the will is again separated from the organization of one's own body to a much greater degree than in the animal. The animal is connected soulfully with the results of its will, the human being spiritually. The animal directly involves its body in its volition, while the human being only involves that which is separated from the body, so to speak, as a physical precipitation. In perceptive experiences, this is revealed in such a way that the human being is conscious of standing, with his volition transforming into action, as a spiritual being in the same world in which he stands through experiencing the equilibrium with his ego. As a spirit, man lives in the perception of the balance of the world and in his actions determined by his will. As a soul, he lives in his thinking, which reveals an existence separate from him in the forms of the animal world, and in his feeling; as a body, he experiences this feeling and as a body, he is part of his will. In willing, the spirit physically places itself in the world; in feeling, it lives in it as an organic process; in thinking, the soul frees itself from the body; in the “I”, the human being becomes aware of himself as spirit. In animals, thinking, which lives in meaningful forms, directly causes the form; not through its own thinking, but through the content of this form, it permeates feeling and thus the physical body, which in turn is directly connected to the external world, in that what is experienced in feeling is in truth only inhibited or uninhibited will.

In that the human being has developed the animalistic as an appendage, its outer form carries an ambiguity. As a head being, the human being is in fact only the confluence of all animal forms. He is, as such, the entire animal world as a unity. For him, the head is what the external world is for the animal. This remaining organism is actually only a reflection of the head, but one that is removed from what is determined by the characterized balance. In the head, the firmly shaping and contouring element of thinking is anchored; in the rest of the organism, that which sets this thinking in motion. Nothing of feeling is anchored in the head except the continuous dream of this feeling, while feeling itself has its carrier in the rest of the body. And as for the will, the organism of the head can only produce a dreamless, dull consciousness of sleep for it, for the will has as its vehicle the qualitative state of equilibrium between the rest of the organism and the outer world. Therefore, the will can only shine forth before the ordinary consciousness to the extent that the person perceives the way in which it brings him into ever-changing relationships with the outer world.

For the seeing consciousness, the result of the will is again felt directly, but as an experience outside of the body, not in the sense that the inhibition or furtherance of the will expresses itself in one's own body, but insofar as the will can be seen as hindering or furthering the world; feeling becomes the soul-sensual expression of thoughts; thoughts appear as a spirit full of content. Through the spirit, which is full of content, the beholder experiences the world as imagination; through the thoughts of the soul-bearing feeling, the world is experienced as inspiration; through the will, which is connected to feeling again, the world is experienced through intuition. The animal is an imagination fixed in the sensual through its form; its soul is inspired to it, and its body is a realized intuition. In man, the I penetrates into imagination, thinking into inspiration, feeling into intuition, and the objective spirit that lifts him out of animality into will.

An external comparison of man with the animal does not yield any knowledge. For what can still be perceived in the animal can only be seen supernaturally in the human being: the formative world of thought. What is still physical in the animal is soul-physical in the human being: the bearer of the emotional world; what is still experienced in the animal in the body is experienced by the human being in his relationship to the external world, his changing qualitative equilibrium with the external world.

For the external observer, there are basically only hints of what is going on. Compare the physiognomy of the animal with that of the human being. The animal is entirely physiognomy, and a specific one at that. In the human being, the physiognomic aspect stands out from the formation and becomes a reflection in the countenance of what the released thought is able to bring to the formation, which is expressed in the balanced relationship between the head and the rest of the organism. In the animal, the soul is bound to what the body experiences through its organization. And feeling is part of this experience. In the human being, the independent soul reveals itself in everything between laughing and speaking, between crying and the wide range of gestures expressing displeasure. In animals, the will is a direct result of the bodily organization and its determination by the external world. In the human being, the experience of the external world becomes decisive for the will. In the will, the human being disconnects his bodily organization. Through his volition, he accomplishes what has nothing to do with his bodily organization. The difference between humans and animals only becomes apparent when we are able to recognize what the forces at work in humans are outside of humans: the power of thought is the force that shapes the animal forms.

What is the power of feeling?

Self-observation shows that its seat is in the body. In the human being it lives as the soul within the body. In the human being, it takes the desiring element out of the animal will. In this way, feeling is experienced in the body, but not merely as inhibited or uninhibited desire (will). It is the bringing forth of that within the body which the animal's desire-nature does not have. It is a soul counter-image of the plant life that lives in human feeling. What is characterized in the above as vegetabilization in the animal, lives in the animal directly bound to the animal, but in the human being it separates soulfully from the animal and is experienced as liberated feeling. The will lives in the mineralized in the human being, while in the animal it is bound to the vegetabilized. The animal has a will organism; the human being separates a will mechanism from this will organism. The animal has a form organism; the human being separates the thought organism from this form organism. The thought organism interacts with the perception mechanism; the will mechanism is actually only the part of the external world found in the human being. In the mechanism of will, the human being does not belong to himself; he is in it as a spirit in the external world. In the emotional organism, the human being is present as a soul-inspired spirit; in the thought organism, he is present as a head-body, but this body is actually a knowing experience of the physical, so it is a spiritual body. In the consciousness of self, the spirit lives in the conditions of equilibrium determined by the human element. It lives in the physical, but only through the forces active in the physical. [Text aborts]

Our time is characterized by reform. Reform movements and reform efforts are everywhere. Dissatisfied with the existing, the traditional and unsatisfied with the experiences they have made, people are seeking to shape and develop something new and to seek their salvation in something different. And that is how it should be; because everything in the universe, the big picture, all cultures, the individual human being, everything is in the process of becoming, of developing, there is no standstill.

How great and powerful the ideas of the individual reformers often are, but how distorted and taken to extremes they are by the masses. Let us take one of our most outstanding reform movements. There is a movement that has not yet been noticed in any cultural epoch, [which seems very strange to some:] it is the “women's movement”.

The urge to take part in the great tasks of culture and social life drives women to struggle for recognition and equality with men. The times also force women to do so. They no longer want to rule in a smaller circle, tied to unsatisfactory circumstances or standing alone in the world, without a supportive job, without a life's work. No, she wants to work in the cultural life, standing on her own two feet, with the same rights as men. The wonderful ideal of a housewife, which Schiller so beautifully shows us in his “Glocke”: “And within reigns the chaste housewife,” is no longer an ideal for the vast majority of our female world.

But how misunderstood and extreme this urge for independence and freedom is. Because women have not yet grasped that it is not only self-confidence in professional life that makes women free and independent, or that arbitrary action falls within the sphere of freedom, but that above all we must become independent and free within ourselves, that only the thorough working through of our entire psychological life, the ennoblement and purification of our character, makes women independent and free beings. Then external circumstances may be as they may, they will have little influence. The attainment of inner independence gives a woman the right to external freedom and independence; and only then can she become a man's equal, but not his rival. Only spiritual science can show us the way to this true inner independence; all other striving for freedom leads nowhere.

Let us turn to another area, that of naturopathy. It has been found that many of today's illnesses can be traced back to our current cultural life. The struggle for existence hardly allows people to rest, much less to recover. It is believed that because our ancestors lived so completely in nature, in the fresh air, unencumbered by clothing, [and with a simple diet], this was the decisive factor for their health. And because medical science can no longer find the right solution in some cases, people believe that a “back to nature”, a life with nature, would be the healthiest thing. They take earth, water, air and warmth and apply them wherever they can, in all conceivable cases.

But they do not consider that man is an individual being who no longer has a relationship with all elements. For some, sunbathing is not at all appropriate, while for others, water cures can be extremely harmful. If, from a secret scientific point of view, people are to become healthy, then an individual approach will have to be taken. Each person will receive the cure that is beneficial to their innermost nature, their temperament, their entire character, their spiritual makeup.

However, the human being is always in the closest connection with the eternal laws and only according to these can a complete healing of the same, a complete harmony of the human being with his physical and psychological organism be established. There is no “back to nature” for the human being in the sense that he believes he sees the highest in nature, but only a “through nature to the spirit”.

Vegetarianism usually goes hand in hand with natural healing methods. It is believed that animal food contains something that is not beneficial to health, and it is believed that it would be more beneficial for humans to enjoy plant-based food. This view goes so far as to consider that even milk, and the cheese and similar products made from it, are not suitable for nutrition. Everywhere, people are turning to plant products to get the right variety and a complete substitute for meat. This way of life is indeed very beneficial, but whether everyone can do it for a long time is another question. Because a vegetarian diet without spiritual pursuit inevitably leads to illness. It is said that [vegetarianism was known in Greece centuries before Christ, and] that the great sage of antiquity, Pythagoras, was the founder of vegetarianism. But this begs the question: Who was Pythagoras and why did he live as a vegetarian? And this brings us to the realm of secret schools, the mysteries.

From time immemorial, secret schools have existed all over the world, whose members endeavored to penetrate into the hidden being of the world, to see behind the veil of the ephemeral, through strict self-discipline, diligent study, and meditation. In Greece, it was especially Pythagoras, one of the great initiates, who worked in this sense. He had gathered students around him, whom he introduced to the mysteries through rigorous trials. At the same time, he also issued strict dietary regulations. Intoxicating drinks were completely frowned upon. Likewise, the consumption of meat and legumes was strictly forbidden. Even in later times, all secret schools gave instructions for the students' way of life. For the student should learn to choose food according to the principles of spiritual knowledge. He must know that in what he takes in as nourishment lies the power of certain entities. And if man wants to become the ruler of his organism, he must consciously choose his food.

When one first understands which entities are attracted by this or that food, one also recognizes the importance of nutrition. In the past, even in the great religious communities, for example in Judaism and Catholicism, the effects of food were known. Non-compliance with the regulations was punished with expulsion from the community.

In Brahmanism, too, the time between Christmas and Easter was dedicated to Vishnu. Those who called themselves his servants celebrated this time by abstaining from all legumes, oil, meat, salt and intoxicating drinks, for example. In those days, there still existed a living sense of the connection between the microcosm and the macrocosm, and every adult member of the community was required to make himself more receptive to certain spiritual forces at very specific times, so that he might celebrate a rebirth and resurrection with all of nature. These were the times before Christmas and before Easter.

Now let us consider what nourishment actually is. Almost no other area attracts as much interest as nutrition; because the demands that today's world places on the individual's ability to perform, necessitate good [and strong] nutrition. We see that we need nourishment to sustain our body. Through nourishment we supply our body with building and sustaining forces. From an external scientific point of view, food is a supply of energy. But esoteric science says: the trinity manifests itself in all of nature. Every thing consists of form, life and consciousness.

Everything in nature is animated and spiritualized. We take our nourishment from the animal and plant kingdoms. The animal has its physical body, its etheric body and its astral body in the physical world; the group ego of animals is on the astral plane. When the animal is dead, the effect of the animal nature is not yet eliminated, because the principle of the animal continues to work after the animal's death.

The same applies to plants. The plant has its physical and etheric body on the physical plane, its astral body in the astral world, and the plant's I is in Devachan. The principle at work in the plant will also be effective after the preparation of the plant. But the nutritional effect extends not only to the physical and life body, but also to the other parts of the human being.

And now let us speak about nutrition in connection with our spiritual striving. Meditation and concentration exercises will be the main thing, [but how the striving person nourishes himself will not be as unimportant] when the work on the astral body begins.

Above all, it is important to avoid alcohol in any form; even alcohol-filled sweets can be very harmful. Alcohol and spiritual exercises lead to the worst paths! From a scientific point of view, the bad influence on brain function has already been proven; how much more should a person who directs all his striving towards the spiritual abstain from a pleasure that completely excludes the recognition of the spiritual.

The consumption of meat and fish is not advisable. In meat, man enjoys all the animal passion, and in fish, he enjoys the entire world Kama [...] with.

Mushrooms are extremely harmful. They contain inhibiting lunar energy, and everything that originated on the moon signifies rigidity. Legumes are also not very advisable because of their high nitrogen content. Nitrogen pollutes the ether body.

Let us single out some of the coarsest lower qualities and relate them to the various nutrients. If a person is very independent and tends to be very selfish, they should eat little concentrated sugar; because sugar promotes independence. On the other hand, if someone has no inner or outer support and always believes they need to lean on and be supported, they should eat plenty of sugar to become more independent. If someone is very much dominated by [anger], they should eat a lot of spices, especially salt and pepper, in their food. If someone is very inclined towards laziness and indolence, they should especially avoid nitrogenous food and choose fruit and vegetables as their food.

If someone wants to tackle the difficult problem of mastering the sexual passion – the passion that, when acted out in a base manner, degrades man below the animal, but when transformed brings him closest to his divinity – he should consume as little protein-rich food as possible. Excessive consumption of proteins causes the reproductive substances to become overabundant, and this makes it very difficult to control one's sexual passion.

If someone tends towards envy, resentment and deceit, cucumbers, gourds and all the tendril plants are not beneficial for them. You also have to be a little careful when enjoying fruit. People who are very prone to emotional enthusiasm should not enjoy melons. The sweet, intoxicating scent [of this fruit] obscures clear consciousness. Even very abundant apple consumption is not beneficial for everyone. In certain people, it increases the desire for power and often leads to rudeness and brutality. Cherries and strawberries are not digestible for everyone because of their high iron content. Bananas, dates and figs are more beneficial.

You can also make a certain selection when it comes to nuts. If someone wants to undergo a course of intellectual training, then above all they need a well-built, healthy brain. Rarely do parents in this day and age give their children such a well-built brain, and so it needs a supplement to strengthen the brain, and it is above all the hazelnut that provides the substance to build the brain. All other types of nuts are less valuable. Peanuts should be avoided altogether.

As for fats, we should give preference to butter made from milk. Hazelnut butter would also be advisable.

Now we come to the luxury foods: coffee and tea. Drinking coffee aids logical thinking. But drinking coffee alone will not make us logical thinkers, for there is more to it than that. In people who do not have a thinking mind, as is often the case with women, drinking too much coffee can lead to hysteria. Drinking tea produces good ideas. But one can also get good ideas through special exercises.

During the time of spiritual striving, it is especially necessary for a person to live in moderation! “Temperance purifies the feelings, awakens the ability, cheers the mind and strengthens the memory. Through temperance, the soul is almost freed from its earthly burden and thus enjoys a higher freedom,” says an old sage.

If a person were to eat a lot and often, they would not be able to produce any fruitful thoughts. This is because if digestion takes up a lot of energy, there is no strength left for thinking. Precisely those people who filled the world with the products of their minds lived on a very meager diet. Schiller, Shakespeare and many other poets, to whom we owe magnificent works, worked their way through severe privation. The mind is never as clear as after a long fast. Also in the history of religious orders and in the biographies of the saints, one finds numerous examples of the effects of an abstemious life. The greatest saints lived only on fruits, bread and water, and no miracle-working saint would be known to have shown divine powers in action at an opulent meal. Also, all the great sages of antiquity were known for their temperance.

When the human being goes further in his spiritual striving, when the laws of truth and good flow more and more into the I, when the rays of the great spiritual sun flood and illuminate the I more and more, then the conscious working through of the life or etheric body begins.

The eternal essence of man, that which goes from embodiment to embodiment, lives itself out in each new embodiment in such a way that it causes a certain interaction of the four limbs (physical, etheric, astral body and I) of human nature, and from the way these [four] limbs interact, the temperament of the human being arises. Depending on which of these elements is particularly prominent, a person will approach us with this or that temperament. Whether the forces of one or the other prevail and predominate over the others, the peculiar coloring of human nature depends on this, which we call the peculiar coloring of temperament. There are four main temperaments: the choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, and melancholic temperaments. These are mixed in the most diverse ways in the individual human being, so that one can only speak of the fact that this or that predominates in a person. When a person works on himself, he brings harmony, order, and balance to these temperaments. Although spiritual exercises will be the main thing in working with the temperaments, how a person nourishes himself will also be important.

If the physical principle predominates in a person, this often becomes a kind of obstacle in development. But man must be master of his physical body if he wants to use it. Man is not able to use his instrument completely, so that the other principles experience an obstruction and disharmony arises between the physical body and the other limbs.

When the melancholic person works on himself, he should only eat food that grows very close to the sun. Food that grows far away from the earth, that has ripened under the full power of the sun, would be fruit food. Just as the spiritual sun glows and illuminates a person through spiritual exercises, so too should the solidifying and congealing tendencies in the melancholic be permeated and interwoven in the physical through the solar forces contained in fruit nutrition.

In the phlegmatic person, where the etheric body predominates, which keeps the individual functions in balance, where the inner life, which is limited in itself, generates inner comfort, and the person lives in this inner comfort preferentially, so that he feels so good when everything is in order in his organism, and is not at all inclined to turn his inner interest outward or even to develop a strong will: such a person should eat food that does not grow under the earth. Especially not foods that often take two years to flourish before they come to the surface; for example, a phlegmatic person should not eat black salsify. The seed of this plant takes so long to open up to external forces, and a phlegmatic person also needs a lot of work before they take an active interest in the outside world. The principle of this plant would only increase their inner complacency.

For sanguine persons, where the astral body predominates, where a person takes an interest in an object but soon lets it go, where a quick arousal and a rapid transition to another object is evident, even root vegetables should be chosen as food. One could almost say that a sanguine person must even be tied to the physical through food, otherwise his ease of movement could take him too far. So here, vegetables that thrive underground are even recommended.

When the ego is predominant, when the ego works with its powers in a particular way, and dominates the other elements of human nature, then the choleric temperament arises. The choleric person must above all beware of heating and exciting foods. Anything that is irritating and strongly spiced is extremely harmful to him.

One would assume that with higher development, temperament no longer plays a major role and that diet no longer has any influence. At the mastery level, this is indeed the case, because the master needs no solid food, nor will temperament influence or control him anymore. But he will use the temperaments to be effective in the physical world. He will use the choleric temperament to perform his magical acts; he will let the events and occurrences of the physical world pass by like a sanguine; he will behave like a phlegmatic in the enjoyment of life; and he will brood over his spiritual insights like a melancholic. But it will be a little while before we get there!

We should try to harmonize our whole life with our spiritual aspirations. Not just a small part of the day should be lived according to our ideals, but we should organize our occupations accordingly, choose our tasks with this in mind, and even regulate our nutrition in this way, striving to become a harmonious and established person, in order to then be able to engage in life to the best of our abilities. Life gives us nothing, everything must be achieved.

Goethe's beautiful saying belongs here:

“A serious will,
A persistent striving,
Is the only thing that leads you to your goal.
The purpose is no mere accident,
And life gives back only
What you gave to it.”

[My dear audience!] There are events in the spiritual life of humanity that, once they have come into existence, never lose their significance for a long, long time, indeed for what, in historical estimation, one will be able to call human becoming. These are events that shine far into the future once they have occurred. One of these events is that through which, in the dim and distant past, that law, or perhaps those laws, was given to man, which then inscribed itself so deeply not only in the human soul as such, but also in all the historical development of mankind, on depends that which is not only engraved in stone tablets in legend and history, but which is engraved above all in those brazen tablets whose material is taken from the soul life of humanity itself.

We shall speak today about an event of this kind, which we call the “Ten Commandments” (Ex 20:2-17; Deut 5:6-21). Only from the spiritual-scientific point of view can we understand why these Ten Commandments have had such a decisive significance for the life of all humanity ever since they came into being. Without exploring the origin and significance of these Ten Commandments from the depths of spiritual life, we still cannot understand their survival and significance for our time. For they are among those events in human history that were only possible at the time they were given in the way they occurred, and acquired their significance from the way they occurred.

This latter significance will never be able to be properly understood by our materialistic view of history. It is one of the many illusions that have been indulged in recently that it has been said: Historical research shows that these Ten Commandments were given to the Hebrew people, but if you look at other peoples, it turns out that they all had similar commandments. Indeed, today people are even glad when they believe that they can weaken the old sacred tradition by showing that such commandments are not only found among the Hebrew people, but also here and there among other peoples.

This point of view completely loses sight of the historical significance of the great moment when those commandments, like the fire of Sinai, also entered into the life of humanity in a spiritual sense. But the profound significance of such an event, as it was the impact of the Ten Commandments in the consciousness of man, one will only be able to understand correctly if one explores the nature of man in such a way that one also draws attention to the supersensible aspects of it.

For those who have heard me speak before, some things will have to be repeated, but we need this so that those who are here for the first time today will also understand. For spiritual science, what is called the essence of man is not as easy to experience as the physical is for external sensory science. What can be perceived with the outer senses of the human being is only a part of his being, and what can be seen with the eyes and felt with the hands is, for spiritual science, only the lowest part of the human being, which the human being has in common with inanimate nature, which is governed by chemical and physical laws.

But the one who has developed the inner spiritual senses, has just as much truth before him as the outer eye has color and light, which for the spiritual scientist is just as perceptible an entity as the physical body, these supersensible members of human nature, which the ordinary person cannot see, but he can at least make them clear to himself through his healthy mind through concepts.

Let us imagine a person standing in front of us: is that all there is, just what the eyes can see and the hands can grasp? Every person knows from their own direct experience that this is not the case. Everyone knows that there is something else there, something that flows through them as joy and pain, pleasure and suffering, and what we know as sensations and perceptions. All this cannot be seen with the outer eyes, but it is nevertheless a reality for the one who experiences it; and its effects are also felt by others. Let us take two primitive experiences of everyday life, the feeling of shame and fear. For example, if something is discussed that offends our aesthetic sensibilities, then the blush of shame rises to our faces. What everyone can see here is that a mental experience triggers a physical process, namely that blood flows out from our center to the periphery. Similarly, but in reverse, when we feel fear or anxiety, the blood withdraws from the body's surface back into the center, which manifests itself in a pallor of the face.

There are people, though, for whom such considerations mean nothing, who want to understand even more tangible consequences in purely materialistic terms, who believe, for example, that if something is going on in our environment, it could cause this phenomenon in us, that the tear water rushes out of our eyes. It is therefore not surprising if, as has actually happened, such a materialistic researcher comes to the strange conclusion: “Man does not weep because he is sad, but he is sad because he weeps.”

For spiritual science, everything material is an effect of the spiritual, except for the substance itself, which is nothing but an effect of the spiritual soul; even the physical body is only an expression of the spiritual soul. Thus, behind the physical, there is another link to the human being, the carrier of pleasure and suffering, drives, desires and passions, and sensations that sink down into a twilight consciousness when falling asleep in the evening and emerge again when awakening in the morning. In spiritual science, this part of the human being is called the desire body or astral body, and humans have this in common with all animals. At night, this astral body leaves the physical body to reenter it upon awakening.

It would be just as nonsensical to claim that what surrounds the skin disappears in the evening and is recreated in the morning as it would to claim that the desires and instincts disappear in the evening and are freshly recreated in the morning.

Why does the astral body, when it leaves the physical body, not perceive what is going on around it in the astral world, just as the physical body perceives what is going on around it in the physical world? This is very easy to understand. Imagine a person without eyes, that person cannot perceive anything that has to do with light and color; it is the same with the ear, with the loss of which all sounds disappear. If all the senses are extinguished, the person can no longer perceive his surroundings.

A person perceives as much of the physical environment as they have organs for. The same applies to our astral body; because at the present stage of development the astral body of the average person has not yet developed organs, it is not possible for him to perceive his environment during sleep, and therefore, during sleep, a person inevitably sinks into unconsciousness, while someone who has already developed these organs also retains consciousness during sleep and lives consciously in this astral world.

Spiritual science, however, distinguishes a second link in the human being, which lies between the physical and astral bodies: the etheric or life body. The physical body has the same powers as the so-called inanimate nature, the mineral world. But only when a person is a corpse does the body follow physical laws; in life, however, it has, like every animal and every plant, a faithful fighter against decay within it, a cohesive force that never leaves it, not even when it is asleep. The physical body would be a corpse at every moment and would disintegrate into its component parts, following the laws of physics, if it did not have this etheric or life body within it, and it alone is what fights every moment to preserve life.

Thus we have three members: the physical, etheric and astral body. In death, the etheric body detaches itself from the physical body; when a person sleeps, the physical body lies in bed with the etheric body. This etheric body is common to humans, animals and plants.

But now man has a fourth element, which elevates him far above all other living creatures and distinguishes him from all others, which makes him the crown of creation: the “I”. This little word has no equal. Any table can be called a “table” and any chair a “chair”, but the word “I” can never reach our ears from a foreign tongue if it is to mean us; only I can say “I” to myself, for everyone else I am a “you”, and that is deeply significant. In the depths of our soul, in our most holy inner being, it must fade away as the expression of what is most hidden in our being.

The mystery that is to be expressed by this has been felt by all religions based on spiritual science, and thus above all by the religion of the ancient Hebrew people. We can therefore only approach the moment when the lightning of the Ten Commandments flashed into humanity by looking closely at this fourth link. It is “the unspeakable name of God” in the human soul, a drop from the ocean of the Divine that floods the world. This is the spark from the Divine that the whole world lives and weaves through. It has often been said that spiritual science makes the world a god with this, but just as a drop of water does not become the sea, this reproach is also not justified. However, just as the drop is of the same substance as the sea, so too is a part of the Divine alive in every human being. Thus the divine lives and moves in the world, and a drop of it is in every human being, and because this divine does not need to penetrate through any senses, it announces itself in the innermost of the holy of holies.

He who is able to feel has always felt something infinitely sacred when he has come to understand what this “I” means. Jean Paul recounts how, as a boy, he stood in front of his father's barn and suddenly realized: You are an “I,” and that from that moment on he knew that an immortal lived in his soul. If people would reflect more on the path that this indicates, they would be able to penetrate ever deeper into spiritual science. Of course, Fichte is absolutely right: most people would rather consider themselves a piece of lava on the moon than an ego.

So we have the human being composed of four limbs of his being; but he has developed to this point over long periods of time. These four limbs were not present in their full sense from the beginning, but have developed little by little into the consciousness of the self. For a long time it slumbered dimly in the other three bodies, and mighty series of development were necessary before it awoke and became conscious of itself.

In this way, we can go back through the centuries in spiritual science and we find that the human soul has also changed, and the further back we go, the greater the change in the soul. The self was not always there either; it was less and less distinct the further back we go, and there was a time when man had developed his astral, etheric and physical body similarly, but the self was still unawakened and slumbering.

Man has developed over time in such a way that he started out from the physical, then the ethereal, then the astral body, and finally his I awakened. The I, which we regard as the divine spark, is the last to awaken in the human being as we see him today. There was once a human being in whom the I had not yet fully awakened. If we want to look for such a person in whom the I was still dormant, we would find such a person in the early days of ancient Greece. It was only with the appearance of the first philosophers that the I awoke, but Greek religion emerged from a time when man was not yet aware of his self, from a world view that was essentially tied to the astral body, and therefore we see the gods of Greece endowed with drives, passions and desires, with perceptions and sensations like those of man himself at that time. What the Greeks strove for and implored spurred them on to recognize the divine in their surroundings, for example the Furies. If we were to go back even further, we would find that man comprehends his surroundings with the etheric body.

Gradually, “I-consciousness” awakened in man, where I-consciousness struck with elemental force into the soul of man. We can eavesdrop on this moment, the moment when the eternal divine is called to him, that moment when he clearly heard the call: “The noblest, divine in you can only be grasped in your I, look into your I and you will find the spark through which you partake in the divine being.” Then there came a moment in human evolution when the God in man spoke: “I, the God, speak to you by giving myself the name you utter when you want to describe the center of your being. That was the great moment in human evolution when Moses, that great sage and initiate, felt this emerging in the course of events in the course of time, when he was in a state of inspiration in which he felt the divine blowing through the world in a completely new form and how this divine wanted to break through into human consciousness. And he asked the God: How can I call You, when I want to tell the people about You? And this Divinity said: Call me Jahve, that is, “I am that I am.” (Ex 3:13-14)

If the Greeks had seen in their gods what man can experience in the astral body, now it was a divinity for which there is only one worthy name, namely, that by which we designate our own innermost being, and the name of Yahweh is nothing other than that which is intended to express the core of our being. And only an individuality such as Moses's could receive that inspiration, which, like a lightning bolt, struck the world with a new knowledge of God.

But it was necessary that Moses should also be able to make this impact effective. The people to whom such a God was to be proclaimed must have no other divinity than this, which arose out of the I.

For an individuality such as Moses, it was not just a matter of receiving that mighty inspiration and proclaiming it to his people, but of permanently consolidating it in the consciousness of that people, and thus completely permeating the soul of the Jewish people with it. How could that happen? Let us ask ourselves how that which we have designated as the four parts of the human being is expressed in the material world. The physical body finds its expression through itself, the etheric body in the glandular system, the astral body in the nervous system, the I in the blood. This is also how Goethe's saying is to be understood: “Blood is a very special juice.”

Hence the importance of blood in all the wide-ranging events of human life. Hence also the great importance of consanguinity among ancient peoples, as it was conditioned by close marriage. For example, the tribal kinship among the Germanic peoples.

Because the same blood flows through their veins, the generations feel they belong together. The I is not only expressed in one's own blood, but it also runs down through the generations, and it is not an individual I as in today's people, but a “group I”. This is also the case with the “group I” of the ancient Jewish people, for example, who could say: “I and Father Abraham are one.” /From here on, other notes]

This divine impulse had to take effect in the blood, reproducing itself from generation to generation. In the past, man had not yet grasped the innermost center of his being. Now he had it. This beyond was translated into laws and commandments. These are the Ten Commandments. Through them, the whole of Yahweh's power had to take effect from grandfather to son and grandson and so on. The right idea had to live in the soul of man.

No ordinary translation is given here. Lexicographic translation does not reflect reality. As the Ten Commandments were understood in those days, so should they now come before the soul.

I. I am the Eternal-Divine. Henceforth you shall not place any other gods above me. I am the Eternal in you and an eternally effective force in you. If you let me work in you, your body will remain healthy, and this will work in you for generations, including children and children's children. Otherwise the body will become desolate.

II. Thou shalt not speak in error of me in thee, for every error in thee will desolate thy body.

III. You shall distinguish between workdays and holidays. That which lives in you as I has formed the world in six days and lives within itself on the seventh day. On the seventh day, your gaze shall find Me in you.

IV. Continue to work in the spirit of your father and your mother, so that the strength they have gathered together and that I have given you may remain in you.

V. Do not kill, that is, do not encroach upon the I of the other.

VI. Do not commit adultery, that is, do not encroach upon the community into which the other person has entered.

VII. Do not steal.

VIII. Do not belittle the value of your neighbor by saying untruthful things about him.

IX. Do not look down on the property of the other.

X. Do not look with envy at the other's wife

Our attention has been called to the fact that to human beings at a certain stage of evolution, the external phenomena of warmth, air, water, etc., become living and permeated with spirit, and it has been said that this stage may be designated as that of ‘penetration into the world of Spirits of the Elements.’ I would ask those who have been students of Spiritual Sciences for some time to note the words carefully, and to realise that they are used, not in an approximate, but in an exact sense. ‘Spirits of the Elements’ was the expression I used, and not ‘Elementary Spirits.’

It must be pointed out that when we ascend into super-sensible realms, other worlds, two of which shall be named, are added to the ordinary world experienced by means of the sense organs they are to be found behind what is perceptible by the senses and comprehensible to the intellect. There are certain striking characteristics which give an idea of the difference between our world and the two higher ones adjoining it. The first region hidden behind our ordinary world is named, as everyone knows, the Astral or Soul world; the Spiritual world is still more deeply hidden. In the physical world one of the most comprehensive laws is that of growth and decay, of coming into being and passing away. Look where we will in the physical world we find that a characteristic of its highest beings is that they are born and that they die within it; the inanimate kingdom of the minerals, belonging to the lower realms of nature, may arouse an illusion of permanence within the physical world, but if the mineral kingdom be observed over long periods of time, the law of growth and decay is found there.

Observation of the astral world, however, reveals the fact that here the capacity of transformation or metamorphosis is as predominant as is the law of birth and decay in the physical world. In the astral world we have to do with moving images changing one into the other, in a state of perpetual metamorphosis. Even the astral body of man, which is of all astral phenomena the most intimately bound up with us, visible to the seer as a kind of aura or cloud-like formation around the physical body, shares this characteristic of continual transformation. That which envelopes and penetrates the human being in the form of an astral auric cloud changes practically every moment as higher or lower impulses develop in him, as he experiences wilder or calmer passions, or cultivates thoughts of different nature according to the character of the will impulses. Images and shapes arise in the astral auric cloud, and as different thoughts rise and fade away, its colour and form may continually change. There is, however, a certain fundamental character and colour in the astral aura of every individual, corresponding to his more or less permanent type of character. Self-metamorphosis, then, is of the very nature of the human astral body. We have seen that the beings visible to a man in the astral world after he has reached the stage of illumination meet him as good or as evil beings according to his own preparation. So strong is the capacity of metamorphosis in those Beings which are invisible upon the physical plane and only perceptible in the astral and higher worlds, that they may change from good into evil, from light into dark.

In the real spiritual world there is permanence, even if it is relative. For this reason the inner being of man, if it is to exist without a break from one incarnation to another, must pass through the spiritual worlds, because only there is to be found a certain—not external—but relative permanence or continuity.

The rhythm of growth and decay is the pre-dominant characteristic of the physical world; metamorphosis from one form to another of the astral world; permanence or continuity of the spiritual world. First we must realise that the materials for the building up of the human being have been obtained from these worlds; man has been constructed out of them. The physical world lies before him the other worlds open up to him through initiation—through preparation and development of super-sensible faculties of perception. Man then first learns to know what is hidden from him in the ordinary world, but what has just as real an existence. When in ordinary life an outer sheath or expression of some being is found, as for example, fire or air, the being itself is to be sought in a higher world. In order to meet the beings whose expression is physical fire, man must ascend to a region higher than the physical world. That which is the cause and origin of fire, for instance, can only be discovered by rising from the physical plane to the world above it, because the Beings in question send down an expression of themselves into the lower world, but remain as to their essential nature in the higher region. This holds good not only for external phenomena such as fire, air, water or earth, but also for everything living within us in the physical world. Our feelings, perceptions and thoughts exist in the physical world along with phenomena of colour, sound, tastes, scent, etc. It must be clear to us that everything which constitutes man in an incarnation, every feeling experienced between birth and death, every thought, every idea, is a phenomenon of the physical world. And spiritual beings live behind our feelings and the whole of our soul life just as they do behind the external phenomena of colour, sound, scent, or as we say in Spiritual Science, behind fire, air, water and so on. In the same way, the ego, the self within the physical world is not our real being, is not what is called our Higher Self, for that is to be found in a super-sensible world behind our feelings and sensations. This Higher Self is experienced in a true sense only by attaining to super-sensible worlds, where it manifests itself in quite another form. I will show you by a definite example the relation of the self of man living in the physical world to the Higher Self; this example holds good for present conditions of life only since anyone who has spiritual sight knows that the nature of these things changes in the course of time. Let us suppose that a man has done an injustice to another and experiences the pang of conscience. I refer here to those special psychic experiences usually expressed by the word conscience. In ordinary life, conscience is a term used of certain inner voices demanding that we should set right any wrong we may have committed. Most people hardly ever come to the point of thinking about the nature of conscience; they recognise as a kind of vague feeling that an injustice should be righted; the soul is uneasy when this has not been done. For men in the physical world conscience is an inner experience of the soul. The spiritual Seer, however, observing from the astral world the man who has done the act of injustice, sees the pang of conscience surrounding him in remarkable astral shapes—shapes which are absent if no pang of conscience has been felt. The origin of these forms may be explained as follows: Suppose somebody has done an injustice: from thoughts which have led to the unjust act other thought-forms develop as the metamorphosis of the first. Everything that a man thinks and feels exists in his astral aura as a form or shape of the nature of thought or of feeling. A thought which is, let us say, distinct, definite, can be seen in sharp outline hovering round a man, and wild thoughts or passions in confused outlines. At the time when a man is doing an injustice he has certain thoughts and feelings; these forms detach themselves from him and live in his environment, but the essential point is that they do not remain in this condition but draw nourishment from certain worlds. Just as the wind rushes into empty spaces, beings from definite regions (of which more later) rush into the forms created by the pang of conscience and fill them with living substance. Thus in his own thought-forms a man offers opportunity for other beings to live in his environment, and these beings are really the cause of the sting of conscience. If the beings were not present the conscience would not sting. When a man begins to feel these beings unconsciously, the first gnawing of an uneasy conscience is experienced.

This example shows us that spiritual sight reveals a reality very different from that presented to physical sight. If a man is to contact the spirits of conscience, who live upon the Astral plane, he must look through his conscience into the higher worlds in the same way as would be necessary in order to perceive the spiritual beings who animate physical life.

From different lectures we know that the human soul has changed in the course of long periods of time;—human consciousness of today is different from the consciousness, let us say, of the ancient Indian people in the first Post Atlantean epoch, and it in its turn was very different from the consciousness of the Atlantean age. The clear waking consciousness of the physical world has developed from a dim, primitive clairvoyance. The farther we go back in evolution, the more traces do we find of this primitive clairvoyance.

We need not go further than some thousands of years, and we shall find that many people were then able not merely to perceive physical, fire, but to look through it to the spirits of the element of fire. Gradually it came about that the higher world withdrew from human consciousness and the latter came to be limited to the physical world. This holds good not merely for the external sense world, but for the whole of the life of the soul in the physical world. So it is stated that in a phenomenon like conscience a modern spiritual seer perceives astral forms around human beings, and the ancestors of this modern man, being endowed with clairvoyance, must have been able to see these astral forms. Just as fire conceals, the spirits of the fire, so does human conscience—the inner voice—conceal the world of the spirits of conscience. The astral phenomena must have been perceptible to men of ancient times; but they could at that time have had no inner conscience, since it had not yet developed. What we of today call the psychic phenomenon of conscience was not present in our forefathers, but on the other hand they could see in the Astral aura what is now only perceptible to the eye of the seer; modern men feel the inner voice of conscience and the spirits of conscience are hidden behind it.

I have brought forward this example deliberately, because it affords concrete evidence of these matters. It is possible to indicate precisely the epoch in external history when the transition took place from perception of the outer spirits of conscience, to the awakening of conscience as an inner voice. Compare the Orestes of Aeschylus with the same theme as treated by Euripides, who lived a short while later. Between the age of Aeschylus and that of Euripides—a few years only—occurred the transition which confirms what I have just said. In the story of Orestes as related by Aeschylus, Agamemnon returns home after the war and is murdered by his unfaithful wife. His son, Orestes, who is absent, returns and takes vengeance upon his mother for the death of his father, because one of the gods demands that he shall do so; his act is in harmony with the national feeling of those times that declares that his act is righteous and that he has done his duty. But as the result of the murder of his mother, Orestes sees the Erinyes, the avenging goddesses, approaching. These avenging goddesses of Greek mythology are simply a pictorial image of what has just been described as a reality for spiritual perception. And now let us see whether in this old drama there is any phenomenon which could be described by the modern word conscience. There is not even a word for it in any ancient language, as research would testify. In the poem of Euripides who used the same story a few decades later, we find no Furies, no avenging goddesses; there men hear instead the inner voice of conscience. Concretely perceptible, in the interval between the lives of these two poets, conscience arose. Clairvoyance was so vivid and real in human evolution before this age, that the feeling experienced by man, as the result of an unrighteous act, was entirely different from what it became later. Man's clairvoyant vision was still open; he saw in his environment what I have described in Greece as the Erinyes. The inner feeling which he experienced in presence of this vision was one in accordance with the character of the astral world he wanted to change, to transform the images surrounding him. As soon as an unrighteous or unjust deed has been wiped out by turning it into a good one, the Erinyes change into the beneficent Eumenides. Man felt that an evil deed brought about a terrible result in the astral world, that it must be transformed, and that he must by a positive act bring about the metamorphosis. His actions then were in accordance with what he saw in his environment. The inner voice of conscience was non-existent.

Everything in the world and in the inner life of the soul as well has developed or evolved, conscience among the rest. If anyone were to go back some thousands of years in search of an instance of our modern soul life, he would make a great mistake. For transitions such as this take place with considerable suddenness. Just as in the plant there is a sudden metamorphosis from leaf to flower, so does one occur in spiritual evolution. The phrase ‘nature makes no jumps’ is untrue; Nature continually makes jumps at decisive moments. And such sudden transitions are perceptible in spiritual life. For centuries and millennia there is slow and gradual development; but then there is a sudden change, as in the case of the conscience in the fifth century BC where an earlier tragic poet makes no mention of conscience in his dramas and only a few decades afterwards it is introduced for the first time. With this is connected the fact that clairvoyant perception of the spirits of conscience, the Erinyes, has disappeared. The spiritual beings are of such a nature that our inner experience of conscience comes between us and them in the same way as the outer expression of fire hides the spirits of the element of fire.

This points to the fact that so far as the physical world is concerned, limits of experience are set in two directions. The external phenomena of external colour form, and so on, form the boundary line at which the external spirits are to be found. But behind the inner phenomena of conscience, memory, feeling, will and thought, a spiritual element exists as it does behind fire, air, water or earth. The spirit is hidden behind them. When conscience came to be a voice speaking in the human soul, it interposed itself in front of the world of the Furies and hid that from human sight. The historical life of humanity becomes intelligible only when considered from this inner point of View. Mankind can understand nothing of what has come to pass in the world if it leaves spiritual facts out of sight in considering evolution, or becoming.

We may now ask, what is the relation of the inner and the outer spiritual realms to each other? We know that Man as a fourfold being is composed of Physical, Etheric, Astral bodies and ego, and that this fourfold constitution is to be traced back to the very source and origin of humanity. Man did not originate on the Earth, for the Earth itself has passed through other incarnations, that of Saturn, of Old Sun and Old Moon. The first germ of the physical body of man arose on Old Saturn, on Old Sun the Etheric body was added, and on Old Moon, the Astral body. The ego was first incorporated into this threefold constitution on Earth. Evolution is by no means such a simple matter as to involve merely a transition from the Saturn period into the Sun period, thence to Old Moon and thence again to Earth; the process is much more complicated than that. Even if we speak of the transition from Saturn to Old Sun and of this to Old Moon, we could not speak thus simply of the Old Moon evolution itself. I have said that during the Old Moon evolution there was a separation of Earth and Sun (the Earth was then Old Moon) or properly speaking, of Moon and Sun. Saturn and Sun may perhaps be spoken of as single bodies, but during the Old Moon period two bodies emerged from the one; the Old Moon existed at the same time as the Old Sun. These two bodies united again after a time, passed through an intermediate condition and arose later as Earth. During the earliest period of Earth evolution the substances and beings now to be found in the present Sun and Moon were united with the Earth; the present Sun beings separated from Earth, which remained in connection with what later separated off as our Moon; after the separation of Moon, Earth remained alone, between it and Sun. These three bodies were one in the beginning; only later did the Sun and the Moon develop out of the Earth.

Let us now enquire as to the spiritual meaning of this separation. We will leave-out of consideration the first separation occurring during the Old Moon period and look at what happened in this connection during the Earth period.—Certain beings pass through their evolution on Earth, and Sun and Moon afford evolutionary opportunities to others. Beings at a different stage of development from that of man separated from the Earth with the Sun, because their evolution could not proceed otherwise. At the time, therefore, of the separation of Sun from Earth, we are faced with the fact that man was left behind, since the nature of his evolution demanded the conditions afforded by Earth. The other beings, whose evolution could not proceed upon Earth, separated from it the substances necessary for them, and built their Sun abode. Thence they influence and work upon the Earth. In the physical sunbeams as they lighten and warm the Earth, we see streaming the activities of the sun spirits; the sunbeams are the outer, corporal manifestation of sun beings. That is the meaning of the separation of Sun from Earth.

What was the meaning of the separation of Moon? Man could not have kept pace with the evolutionary tempo of the sun-beings if they had remained in union with Earth. The evolutionary tempo of Earth was slackened by the separation of Sun, but still it was not suitable for human beings—it was too slow. Man would have become hardened or mummified, if Moon had remained in connection with Earth. Earth would gradually have become a planetary body from which the men would have developed with forms like dead bodies that lack inner spiritual and psychic life. Moon had to withdraw from Earth in order that the right evolutionary tempo for the being of man might be set up. If Sun had remained with Earth, man would have been forced into an outer life and activity which he could not have endured; if Moon had remained he would have become impervious to stimulus, he would have dried up, lacking vital force. The stimulus received by man from Sun was an external one which would have produced too rapid a tempo. In the same way as Sun stimulates the life of the flowers in the fields, would man's thoughts, feelings and will have been stimulated from without, but at such a rate that he would have been burnt up by physical and spiritual sun fire. The source of this stimulus left Earth and in this way its influence was weakened. At first, because of the hardening tendency inherent in Earth, the Sun's influence had too little effect, and a portion of these hardening factors had to leave with Moon. Therewith came into the evolution of Earth and of man a new vitalising principle, the stimulating influence of which was exactly contrary to that of Sun from without. The new stimulus came from within. The life of the soul in the physical world could develop only because man was saved from this hardening and mummification by the withdrawal of Moon.

Ask of one whose spiritual sight is able to penetrate into the Cosmos as to the origin of man's perception of the external world, and his answer will be that it is to be found in the physical or spiritual sun elements. Ask what lies at the basis of inner experience, of thought, of feeling, of conscience, for example, and it will be found that all this is due to the moon, to those beings who separated their substance from the earth with the moon. The presence of moon substances in the earth would have prevented the inner mobility of soul life.

We must remember that it was not merely for the sake of man that the separation of the sun and moon from the earth came to pass, but also for the sake of those beings whose evolution was at first bound to that of humanity. In the sun dwell beings who need the sun for their evolution, just as the evolution of man needs the earth. To remain with the earth would have been death to their existence; but the separation resulted in their becoming able by degrees to reach a stage where their beneficent influences could flow down to the earth from without. When the seer observes the light, when her perceives external objects, he realises at a certain stage of his evolution that it is the sun beings which live behind the physical phenomena of colour, sound, and so on, but that these beings themselves had to develop to their present stage. These sun spirits are the upper spiritual beings contacted through the phenomena of the sense world.

Let us now ask how the inner stimulus was given to save mankind from hardening, from ossification. Certain beings were needed which at the appropriate time, withdrew the moon substances from the earth. These beings realised that the act of the sun beings was not sufficient, and that they must protect the earth from ossification by withdrawing the moon from the earth. They were in a certain respect higher than the sun spirits. These latter, when the sun was still united with the earth, felt themselves obliged for the sake of their development to find another dwelling place, but the other spirits were able to remain with the Earth even after the sun spirits had gone out. And this made it possible for them to save human evolution at a certain point of time by separating the moon from the earth. Thus they were in a certain respect higher than the sun beings ... they were able to separate a substance from the earth relatively coarser than that connected with the sun spirits and by becoming rulers of this coarse substance to prove their greater power. For those who are able to transform evil into good are more powerful than those who rule over the good and make it, possibly, a little better.

Those are the beings behind the phenomena of the life of the soul, who by separating the moon from the earth, made thinking, feeling, willing, and conscience possible. They come from the moon region, a spiritual kingdom which in a certain respect is higher, more powerful than that of the sun spirits, which are to be found behind external Maya. Maya is twofold; there is the external Maya of the sense world, and the inner Maya of soul life. Behind the first stand those spiritual beings who have their centre in the Sun; behind the Maya of the inner life stand the other beings who belong to a more powerful kingdom. Just here we can see the truth of Greek mythology as portrayed in the story of Orestes. Orestes is told by the ruling gods that he has performed a good deed, but the Erinyes approach him, and they are felt to be older beings than those belonging to the kingdom of Zeus. Goddesses who take vengeance even though the external goddesses of the sun kingdom (the kingdom of Zeus) had given their consent to the act. Man is here confronted by beings of an older spiritual race, who intervene as a corrective in what he undertakes under the guidance and leadership of the beings who withdrew from the earth with the sun. This remarkable example clearly shows how the conceptions of ancient peoples, expressed in their mythology, confirm what spiritual investigations of today teach in another way.

At this point I ask you to bear in mind the fact that at a certain point of time during the Earth evolution, a spiritual being, Whom we name the Christ, a being previously united to the Sun, descended from the Sun, and at the time of the life of Jesus of Nazareth united Himself to the earth. The Christ being entered into the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This is an absolutely unique phenomenon and cannot be thought of in the same connection as other occurrences here mentioned. It has been said that after the separation of the sun, the earth would have hardened if the moon had not also been ejected; human beings would have mummified. This is perfectly true for a very large part of earth life, but not for the whole of it. In spite of the withdrawal of sun and moon, something in the earth would have fallen a prey to death if the Christ event had not come to pass. Though the withdrawal of the moon made an inner soul life possible, yet it was the Christ's descent from the sun which gave this inner life a new stimulus.

When a spiritual seer looks back to the time preceding the Christ event, a striking vision comes before him. The external form of the earth, confronting the physical senses as Maya, vanishes and something comparable to the human form appears, but only a form, a figure. To spiritual vision the outer Mayavic earth (and I say the earth deliberately) changed into the form of man with arms outstretched in the shape of a cross, a male-female form. This reminds us of the wonderful words of Plato, words that he drew from the Mysteries, that the world soul is crucified on the cross of the world's body. This is exactly the image which presents itself to the eye of the spiritual seer: the Christ died on the cross, and thereupon the earth, which had been mere form and figure, became filled with life. The coming of the Christ principle into the earth had something in common with the withdrawal of the moon; life poured into what otherwise would have remained mere form. To understand ancient times aright is to realise that they all lead up to the Christ event. Just as men of today look back to the Christ as a being Who at a certain point of time entered into human evolution, so pre-Christian initiates all pointed to the coming of the Christ as fore-shown by events. Nothing could have been a surer herald of the Christ than the mighty phenomenon, visible under certain conditions to spiritual sight, of the disappearance of the physical form of the earth and the vision of the world soul crucified on the world's body. In dim Indian antiquity it was said by the sages that when their spiritual vision arose, they saw, deep down under the mountains of the earth, near its central point, a cross, and upon it a male-female human being, having on its right side the symbol of the sun and upon its left side the symbol of the moon, and over the rest of the body the various land and sea formations of the earth. That was the clairvoyant vision which the sages of ancient India had of the form waiting until our earth could be brought to life by the Christ principle. And inasmuch as those ancient sages pointed to the most important prophecy of the Christ event, they were justified, when they looked still more deeply into existence, in saying: the Christ will come because that which points to Him is in existence. Ancient wisdom at its highest level becomes prophetic; it looks towards that which will come to pass in the future. What the future holds is entirely the result of the present and so present spiritual vision can receive intimations of a spiritual event, which is to take place in the future. Indications of the Christ event were not given in any outwardly abstract way, but were revealed to spiritual sight by the phenomenon of the world soul crucified on the cross of the world's body, waiting to receive the life of the Christ when He should unite Himself with the earth. The wisdom of all egos is a harmonious unity if considered in its fundamentals. Starting from this point let us look at the wisdom of different epochs in a light that will reveal it in its true aspect.

Today and next time I am going to speak about the Gospel of St. John. I would mention that what I have to say will only really be comprehensible to those who are already somewhat familiar with spiritual science. It would, however, take us too far out of our way if we went into everything unfamiliar to non-theosophists. You are probably aware that latterly New Testament textual criticism has discredited the John Gospel as an historical source. It is said in theological circles—at least in advanced circles—that the first three gospels, the synoptic gospels, are the only documents relevant to the life of the founder of Christianity. They are called synoptic because they can be taken together to form a general picture of the life of Christ Jesus. On the other hand modern theologians try to interpret the John Gospel as a sort of poetic work, a confession of faith, the writings of a person portraying his feelings, his intimate religious life as it was born in him through the impact of Christianity. Thus the John Gospel could be considered as a devotional work, a deeply felt confession of faith, not as anything that could be taken as Christian historical facts.

But for everyone who immerses himself in the writings of the New Testament, one fact is indisputable: an immediate life flows from the John Gospel, and there is a conviction, a source of truth of a different nature to that proceeding from other religious writings. There is a certainty, which needs no outer confirmation. There is a feeling that comes over one when one meets the John Gospel if one is sensitive to inner soul life and spiritual devotion. Only with the help of spiritual science can one understand why this is so. Many a time have I told you how spiritual science helps towards a more intimate connection with religious documents.

You all know that when one first meets the scriptures one adopts the attitude of a simple person and takes the facts as they are described, without criticism; one takes the bread of religious life from these sources and is satisfied with it.

Many people of our day who had this naive outlook and then became “clever”, became “enlightened”, noticed the contradictions in the gospels. Then they rejected the gospels and lost faith. They said: We cannot reconcile remaining faithful to these writings and seeking wisdom in them with our conscience and our sense of truth. This is the stage of the “clever” ones, the second stage.

Then there is the third way that people approach religious documents. They begin to explain them symbolically. They begin to see symbols and allegories in them. This is the way of free-thinkers, especially in recent times.

Bruno Wille, the editor of the paper “Der Freidenker” (The Free Thinker), has now chosen this way. He has taken to explaining symbolically the Christ myth and the Bible in general. The really necessary way of development that man needs, an inner turning point, cannot follow from this. Those who are less ingenious will explain the scriptures less ingeniously. Others who are more ingenious will be better. Much will be read into it that springs from human ingenuity. The third way is thus a half believing, but arbitrary, attitude.

Then there is quite a different standpoint. One learns that there are realities pertaining to higher worlds, that besides our world of the senses, there are soul-spiritual things, and that religious revelations are not concerned with the sense world but present facts of a higher world. Those who have gotten to know the realities of the astral world which lies behind our sense world, and of the devachanic (or mental world) which lies even deeper, will come to a new and higher understanding of religious sources. It is impossible to understand the John Gospel without rising to such higher worlds. The John Gospel is not a poetic work, nor a writing arising from mere religious fervour, but sets forth revelations from higher worlds that the writer of the gospel has received. It is something like this—I will briefly describe it. The supporting evidence I will not deal with today; perhaps I can go into it next time. The writer of the John Gospel learned, through experience in higher worlds, what took place at “the beginning of our era“ that related to the life of the founder of Christianity, and his acts.

Let me give you an example of the difference between just knowing, and truly comprehending. We have recently mentioned here that someone can be next to us, we can see what he looks like, but we need not necessarily really know him for what he is. I have told the story of the singer who, at an evening party sat between Mendelsohn and someone else she did not know. She got on very well with Mendelsohn, but towards the other guest, though he was very courteous, she felt an aversion. Afterwards she asked, “Who was that bore on my left?” The answer was, “It was the famous philosopher Hegel”. If the lady had been told previously that the great philosopher Hegel would be present at a party, that alone would probably have been enough for her to have accepted the invitation. But because he sat beside her unknown, he was a bore. This is the difference between seeing and understanding, between just knowing and comprehending.

He who was the founder of Christianity could not readily be recognised if one only possessed the ordinary intellect employed in the sense world. It needed that which the Christian mystics so often expressed in profound and beautiful language. This was what Angelus Silesius meant when he said:

There is an inner experience of Christ—there is the possibility to realize inwardly what took place outwardly as events in Palestine between the years 1 and 33 A.D. He who came into this world from higher worlds must be understood from a higher world. And he who portrayed Him most deeply had to raise himself to the two higher worlds we have mentioned, the astral and the devachanic, or mental worlds. This elevation of John, if we so name him, was the elevation into these two higher worlds. His Gospel reveals this to us.

The first twelve chapters contain John's experiences in the astral world. From chapter thirteen onwards it is his experiences in the devachanic, or mental world. He who wrote it down says of Christ (the words are not to be taken literally): Here on this earth He lived, here has He worked with divine powers, with occult powers. He has healed the sick, he has gone through everything from death to resurrection. It is impossible to understand these things with the ordinary intellect. Here on earth there is no science or learning by which one could really understand what occurred. But there is the possibility of rising to the higher worlds. There one can find the wisdom to understand Him who walked here on earth among us. Thus did the writer of the John Gospel rise to the two higher worlds and become initiated. It was an initiation, and the writer describes his initiation into the astral world and the devachanic, or mental world.

In olden times, in regions where man's body was still suited to these things, such an initiation took place as follows. The person had to go through a sort of sleep-state. What now takes several years in a modern European initiation—because the modern European can no longer go through the process I will describe—what today is achieved through long exercises of meditation and concentration, was achieved in a short time by some individuals, after the appropriate exercises of meditation and concentration. I particularly emphasise that anyone who really wishes to receive initiation must, in some form or other, face the two important experiences about to be described—though in a somewhat different way. He must go through a sort of sleep condition. To understand the nature of sleep, let us remind ourselves what takes place when one sleeps. One's higher bodies are then separated from one's lower bodies. Man consists of a physical body, which one can see with one's eyes. The second member is the etheric body which surrounds the physical body and which is much finer than the physical body. Currents and organs of wonderful variety and splendour are active in it. The etheric body contains the same organs as the physical body. It has a brain, heart, eyes etc. They represent the forces which formed the corresponding organs. It is as if one cooled water in a vessel until it becomes ice. In this way you should picture the arising of the physical organs through the densifying of the etheric organs. The etheric body extends only a little beyond the physical body.

The third member is the astral body. It is the bearer of desires, wishes, passions, etc. It permeates the physical body in the form of a cloud. There are colours—violent passions appear as lightning flashes. The peculiarities of temperament glide through the body in glowing points of varying intensity.

The whole inner man is expressed in a luminous form. This is the real ego of man, the bearer of the higher centre of his being. In normal sleep the physical and etheric bodies are lying in bed. They are closely united. The astral body and all the rest is separated. As long as one does not do anything particular one is unconscious when the astral body is outside the physical body. One is as unconscious as one would be in the physical world without eyes or ears. One could live as long as one liked in the physical world; if one had no eyes there would be no colours, if one had no ears there would be no sound. So it is when the astral body is outside the physical body. It is spread out in the soul world, but one does not see this world or become aware of it because one has no astral sense organs. They must gradually be formed. If a person does not practice exercises he remains unconscious in higher worlds. But if he does practice then he can attain consciousness in these higher worlds. When his astral body acquires organs he begins to see the astral world around him. Those of you who have often attended these lectures will know that there are seven such organs. They are called wheels, chakrams or lotus flowers. The two-petalled lotus flower lies between the eyes—between the eye-brows, the sixteen-petalled lies in the region of the larynx, the twelve-petalled lies in the heart region. If these organs are gradually developed one becomes clairvoyant in the astral world.

This astral vision is something quite different from physical sight. You can get some idea of astral vision if you think of the flow of dream life. In dreams we have symbolic pictures—true symbols. One sees symbols. One loses consciousness of what takes place here in the physical world, but one can experience in symbolic pictures such events as the life of Christ Jesus as John describes it from his own experience in the astral world. Descriptions of this nature form the content of the first twelve chapters of the John Gospel. Don't misunderstand me. I know many will say: If all this is astral experience, then it is nothing real and what is told us of the founder of Christianity is not authentic. But this is not the case. It would be as if one denied that a man of flesh and blood could be a genius, because one cannot see genius. Although one learns the truth of Christ Jesus only on the astral plane, it is still a fact that he lived his life on the physical plane. We are dealing with symbols on the astral plane and outer reality on the physical plane. Nothing is taken away from the facts when we understand them more deeply in the sense of the John Gospel.

Initiation in the astral world is preceded by, and depends on what is called meditation. This means that the soul sinks into itself—I have often described it here. To reach a meditative experience one must make oneself blind and deaf to all sense impressions. Nothing must be able to disturb one. Cannons can go off without one being aware of it in one's inner life. One does not achieve this at once, but through constant practice one can attain this capacity. One must empty oneself also of all past experiences. Memory must be wiped out. The soul must be concerned only with itself and then out of its inner being there arise the eternal truths which are able—not only to awaken our understanding—but to release capacities which lie slumbering under a spell in our souls. These great eternal verities will rise up in man according to the maturity he has attained through his karma—the one, as Subba Row says, in seven incarnations, another in seventy years, another in seven years, others in seven months, seven days or seven hours.

John sets forth the means whereby his soul was led to perception on the astral plane. The formula he used for meditation stands at the beginning of his gospel. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was a God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without this Word was not anything made that was made. In it was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”

In these five sentences lie the eternal verities which loosed the spell in John's soul and brought forth the great visions. This is the form of the meditation. Those for whom the John Gospel is written should not read it like any other book. The first five sentences must be taken as a formula of meditation. Then one follows John on his way, and attempts to experience oneself what he experienced. This is the way to do it; so it is meant.

John says: Do what I have done. Let the great formula, “In the beginning was the Word” work in your souls and you will verify what is said in my first twelve chapters.

This alone can really help towards understanding the John Gospel. Thus is it intended and thus should it be used. I have often spoken of what the “Word” signifies. “In the beginning” is not a good translation. It should really read: Out of the primal forces emerged the Word. That is what it means: The Word came forth, came forth out of the primal forces. Thus “in the beginning” means: coming forth out of the primal forces.

When man is in this sleep condition he is no longer in the sense world. He moves into a soul world and in this soul world experiences what the sense world really is. The truth of the sense world is revealed. He starts out from these words derived from the sense world leading back to the primal forces, and rises up to the words of truth. Every truth has seven meanings. For the mystic, immersed in contemplation it has however this meaning: The knowledge, the Word which emerges, is not something that merely applies to yesterday and today, but this Word is eternal. This Word leads to God because it was ever with God, because it is the very essence that God has planted into all things.

There is however, still another way of understanding this, and one acquires it if one returns day after day to the momentous words: “In the beginning was the Word”. When one begins to understand, not with the intellect, but with the heart, so that the heart becomes one with these words, then the power begins to work, and there begins the state of mind of which John speaks. He says it with great clarity: “All things were made by Him and without the Word was not anything made that was made”.

What do we find in this Word? We find life. What do we perceive through this life—through this light? We must take these religious texts quite literally if we want to attain higher knowledge. Where does this light shine? In the darkness of night. It comes to those who sleep. It comes to everyone who sleeps. But the darkness comprehended it not—until the ability develops to perceive it on the astral plane. Thus is the fifth verse to be understood literally. The astral light shines into the darkness of night but man does not normally see it, he must first learn to see.

As all this became reality for the writer of the John Gospel, the light dawned and he saw who He was, He whose disciple and apostle he was. Here on earth he had seen Him. Now he had found Him again on the astral plane, and he knew that He who had walked the earth in the flesh only differed in one respect from what lived in his own deepest inner self. In every single man there lives a divine man. In the distant future this divine man will arise resurrected in every man. As man stands before us today he is, in his outward appearance, to a greater or lesser extent, an expression of the inner divine man, and this inner divine man works constantly on the outer man.

Last Thursday [Public Lecture, Berlin, 15 Feb, 1906. “Reincarnation and Karma”] I already pointed out how one can illustrate this by a simple comparison. Look at a child. One could be tempted to say that these innocent features came from the father or mother, an uncle or an ancestor. However, everything within the child expresses itself in the features, in the gestures of the hands and in all its movements. What slumbers in the child strives to come to expression. Finally the individual emerges and the physiognomy becomes an expression of the individual soul, while previously it showed more of a family type. In primitive man the individual soul is usually still slumbering and has but a meagre existence. In the course of many incarnations and efforts the individual emerges, the soul aquires more power over the physical body, and the physiognomy takes on the imprint, or the expression of the inner man. An immature person expresses little of the power of the soul. Gradually man matures, and full maturity is reached when the inner word has become flesh completely—when the outer has become an exact imprint of the inner, so that the spirit shines through the flesh. This however, John only understood once his higher self had appeared clearly before his astral eyes. It stood in front of his astral eyes and he knew: This is I. Today have I experienced it on the astral plane. However it will gradually descend as it did in Him, who I followed. This is the deep relationship between Christ Jesus and the divine man that exists in every man. This is the deep inner experience of John.

The inner soul lives unconscious in man and he only becomes aware of it through the processes we have described.

What does it mean to say: something becomes conscious. Can we become conscious of something which lives within us? As long as it only lives within us we are not aware of it. Man is not aware of what he carries within him, what is subjective. I will use a crude comparison to make clear what I mean. You all have a physical brain but you cannot see it. It would have to be taken out, and then you could see it. For the same reason, though there is a certain difference, you cannot see your higher self. It is the “I” within you. But it must come out if you are to see it, and this can only happen on the astral plane. When it is outside and confronts you, then spiritually, it is as if you had a physical brain on a platter and made it the object of your sense perception.

The writer of the John Gospel describes this process. His own higher ego appears before Him—his own higher ego, which in its fullness represents the Christ. When you know this you will be able to understand certain hints and truths in the John Gospel. You will be able to understand certain things quite well with the help of what I said up to now. In occult language one describes what this ego inhabits—the physical body, which it has built for itself to dwell in—as the temple. Thus one says: The soul dwells in the temple.

It is not altogether a painless procedure when for the first time the soul must leave the temple of the body so that it becomes visible outside of it. This leaving of the body is not without pain. All that forms this higher connection with the physical body are bands that are not so easy to loosen. Imagine that you are bound with fetters and you break loose. You would experience pain through this tearing apart. It is like a process of tearing apart when the astral body leaves the physical body when it leaves it, perceptibly. Leaving the body in sleep is different, one is not aware of it. If one leaves it consciously then one experiences pain.

When man begins to develop astral consciousness, things on the astral plane appear to him as in a mirror. The number 165 should not be read as 165 but as 561—as reflected writing. Everything appears reversed on the astral plane. Even time is reversed. When you follow someone on the astral plane you start, to begin with, from where he is. Then you go back to his birth. You can follow him on the physical plane forwards; on the astral plane backwards. Leaving the physical body is like this: It is as though we were leaving the temple of the physical body and were laid hold of from all sides. This is the occurrence which John wants to describe. He left his body in order to experience the Christ, his own higher divine self, confronting him. People around him have their astral bodies bound strongly to their physical bodies as if with fetters. Had John remained like them he would have continued to be fettered to his physical body. Now let us read how this occurrence is described pictorially and symbolically in the John Gospel, chapter 8, verses 58 and 59: “Jesus said unto them, verily, verily I say unto you: Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them”, through the hindrances. With this ends the eighth chapter. This is the passing out of the astral body from the physical body. The final act, leading to the leaving of the physical body and to higher vision, usually lasts three days. When these three days are up, one attains a consciousness on the astral plane comparable to that previously experienced on the physical plane. Then one is united with the higher world.

In occult language this union with the higher world is called the marriage of the soul with the powers of the higher world. When one has left the physical body, this appears to one as a mother would appear to a new-born child, were the child able to be conscious at birth. Thus the physical body confronts one, and the astral body can very well say to the physical body: This is my mother. When one has celebrated this marriage one can say this. One can look back on the former union. This can happen after three days. This is the occult procedure on the astral plane. In chapter 2, verse 1, it is stated: “And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there”. This is the pictorial expression for what I have just said. It happened on the third day.

When a person enters the astral world, he finds himself in a region from which he can rise a step further into a still higher world—the mental, or devachanic world. This entry into the devachanic world can only be gained at the expense of the complete extinction, the death of the lower nature. He must go through the three days of death and then be awakened. Once he has attained vision of the astral plane and the pictures of the astral plane have confronted him, he is mature and ready to receive knowledge on the mental or devachanic plane. It is possible then to describe the awakening on the devachanic plane. To find oneself on the higher plane with conscious clarity of thought, this is the awakening of Lazarus.

John describes the awakening of Lazarus. Previously he has shown that through this chain of events one can enter the higher worlds. In chapter 10, verse 9, it is said: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture”. This is the awakening of what was wrapped in sleep and is now awakened on the devachanic plane. John goes through it. John is Lazarus, and John means nothing more nor less than what is described in his first twelve chapters. He describes as an astral experience that he was awakened on the astral plane. Then followed the initiation for the devachanic plane. Three days he lay in the grave, and then he received the awakening. The raising of Lazarus is the awakening of John who wrote the gospel.

Read everything up to the chapter on the raising of Lazarus and you will find no mention of John anywhere. Consider Lazarus and John. It is said of John (John, ch. 13, v. 23): “Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.” Regarding Lazarus, you find the same words—that He loved him. It is the same person. He is not mentioned previous to the awakening. He appears for the first time after he is “raised from the dead”. These are the enigmas hidden in the John Gospel. The disciple whom the Lord loved is he whom the Lord himself has initiated. The writer of the John Gospel was he whom the Lord loved. How was he able to say this? Because he had been initiated, first on the astral plane and then on the devachanic plane. If one is able in this way to find the deeper meaning of the John Gospel, then will one be able to understand it in its true profundity, and then it becomes one of the greatest texts ever written. It is the description of the initiation into the depths of the inner life of the soul. It has been written so that everyone who reads it can follow the same path. And this one can do. Sentence for sentence, word for word, one can find within oneself, by rising to the higher plane, what is described in the John Gospel. It is not a biography of Christ Jesus but a biography of the developing human soul. And what is described is eternal and can take place in the heart of every human being. This text is an example and a model. Hence it has this living and awakening power which not only makes people into Christians but enables them to awaken to a higher reality. The John Gospel is not a profession of faith, but a text which really gives strength, and a self-supporting, independent higher life. This springs forth from the John Gospel, and he who does not merely want to understand it, but to live it, has truly comprehended it.

With these few words I could only touch on the contents. Next time we will go into certain details. Then you will see how every single sentence confirms what we have said today in general terms. Step by step you will then see that the John Gospel is not addressed merely to the human intellect, but to man's entire soul forces, and that real soul experience springs from it.

Yesterday we described the various stages by which pupils of the Eastern and the Christian occult schools came to higher knowledge. Today I will try to describe, in a similar way, the stages of Rosicrucian training.

You must not imagine that the Rosicrucian training contradicts the other two. It has existed since the fourteenth century, and it had to be introduced because mankind then needed a different form of training. Among the Initiates it was foreseen that a time would come when because of the gradual increase of knowledge men would be confused in matters of religious faith. Therefore a form of instruction had to be created for those who felt within themselves the discord between faith and knowledge. In the Middle Ages the most learned men were also those of the greatest faith and piety; and for a long time afterwards those who had made headway in scientific knowledge could not conceive of any contradictions between knowledge and faith. We are usually told that faith was shaken by the ideas of Copernicus, but that is quite wrong: after all, Copernicus dedicated his book to the Pope! It is only in quite recent times that this conflict has gradually developed. The Masters of Wisdom saw that this was bound to happen and that a new path would have to be found for those whose faith had been destroyed. For persons much occupied with science, the necessary path towards Initiation is the Rosicrucian, for the Rosicrucian method shows that the highest knowledge of mundane things is thoroughly compatible with the highest knowledge of spiritual truths. It is precisely through the Rosicrucian path that those who have been led away from Christian belief by what they take to be science can learn to understand Christianity truly for the first time. By this method anyone can come to a deeper grasp of the truth of Christianity. Truth is one, but it can be reached along different paths, just as at the foot of a mountain there are various paths, but they all meet at the summit.

The essence of Rosicrucian training may be described in two words: true self-knowledge. The Rosicrucian pupil has to distinguish two things, not merely theoretically but practically, so that they become part of his everyday life. There are two forms of self-knowledge—the lower form, called by the Rosicrucian pupil “self-mirroring”, which should serve to overcome the lower self, and the higher form of self-knowledge which is born out of self-renunciation.

What is the lower form of self-knowledge? It consists in the recognition of our everyday self, of what we are and of what we bear within us: in other words, an examination of our own soul-life. But we must make it quite clear to ourselves that by this means we cannot reach the higher self. When we look into ourselves we see only what we are, and that is just what we have to grow out of in order to surmount the ordinary self. But how is this to be done? Most people are convinced that their characteristics are the best, and anyone who lacks these characteristics is uncongenial to them. Once a person has outgrown this idea, not only in theory but in feeling, he will be on the way to true self-knowledge.

You can get out of the habit of self-admiration by a particular method which can be practised whenever you have five minutes for it. You must start from the principle that all characteristics are one-sided; you must learn to recognise in what respects yours are one-sided and then try to balance them. This principle may not amount to much in theory, but in practice it is highly effective. If you are industrious, you must ask yourself whether your activity may not be wrongly applied. Quickness, too, is one-sided; it needs to be supplemented by careful deliberation. Every quality has its polar opposite; you should cultivate its opposite and then try to harmonise the two extremes. For example, make haste slowly; be quick and yet deliberate; deliberate and yet not slow. Then the pupil will begin to grow beyond himself. All this is not part of meditation, but must be acquired alongside it.

It is by attention to small details that this harmony can be achieved. If your tendency is not to let anyone finish what he is saying, you must keep a watch on yourself and make up your mind that for six weeks you will keep silent, as far as possible, when someone else is talking. Then you must accustom yourself to speak neither too loudly nor too softly. Things such as this, which are generally not thought of, contribute essentially to inner self-development, and the more attention you pay to quite insignificant characteristics, the better it will be. If you try not only to acquire certain moral, intellectual or emotional qualities, but to get rid of some external habit, this will be particularly effective. It is a question not so much of investigating your inner self as of endeavouring to perfect the qualities which you have not yet fully developed, and to complement those you already have by cultivating their polar counterparts. Self-knowledge is one of the hardest things to acquire, and it is precisely those who think they know themselves best who are most likely to be deceived: they think too much about themselves. You should get out of the habit of fixing your attention on yourself and constantly using the word “I”—“I think, I believe, I consider this right”. Above all you must get rid of the notion that your opinion is worth more than that of other people. Suppose, for instance, that someone is very clever. If he displays his cleverness in the company of people who are not so clever, his behaviour will be very ill-timed; he will be doing it only to please his own egoism. He ought to adapt his response to the needs and capacities of others. Agitators are particularly apt to offend against this rule.

In addition to all this you must cultivate patience, in the occult sense of the word. Most people who want to achieve something cannot wait; they imagine they are already fit to receive anything. This patience derives from strict self-training, and it, too, is related to the lower form of self-knowledge.

Higher self-knowledge begins only when we can say that our higher self is not in our ordinary “I”. It is in the whole great world outside, in the sun and the moon, in a stone or an animal: everywhere can be found the same essential being that is in us. If a man says: “I wish to cultivate my higher self and to withdraw from the world; I want to know nothing about anything material,” he entirely fails to understand that the higher self is everywhere outside, and that his own higher self is only a small part of the Great Self outside. Certain methods of so-called “spiritual” healers make this mistake, which can be very serious. They instil into patients the idea that matter has no real existence and so there can be no illnesses. This notion is based on a false self-knowledge, and, as I have said, it can be very dangerous. This healing method calls itself Christian, but in fact it is anti-Christian.

Christianity is an outlook which sees in everything a revelation of the Divine. Everything material becomes an illusion unless we look on it as an expression of the Divine. If we disown the external world, we are disowning the Divine; if we reject the material realm, in which God has revealed himself, we are rejecting the Divine. The important thing is not to gaze into ourselves, but to seek to know the Great Self which shines down into us. The lower self says: “Standing here I am cold.” The higher Self says: “I am also the cold, for as part of the one Self I live in the cold and make myself cold.” Again the lower self says: “I am here in the eye which beholds the sun.” The higher Self says: “I am in the sun and in the sun's rays I look into your eyes.”

Really to go out of yourself is to renounce yourself. Hence the Rosicrucian training aims at drawing the lower self out of man. In the early days of Theosophy the gravest mistake was made when people were told to look away from the external world and to gaze into themselves. That is a great illusion, for then we find only the lower self, the fourth principle, which imagines itself to be divine but is not so at all. We must come out of ourselves if we are to know the Divine. “Know thyself” means also “Overcome thyself”.

The Rosicrucian training leads its pupils through the following stages, and these go hand in hand with the six exercises already mentioned:⁴⁴ control of thought; initiative in action; tranquillity; lack of prejudice, or positiveness; faith; and inner balance. The training itself consists of the following:

1. Study. Without study, a modern European cannot get to know himself. He must try, first of all, to reproduce in himself the thoughts of the whole of humanity. He must learn to think in harmony with the world-order. He must say to himself: “If others have thought this, it must be a possible human thought; I will test whether one can live with it.” He need not swear to it as a dogma, but by studying it he must get to know what it is. The pupil must learn about the evolution of sun and planets, of the earth and humanity. Thoughts of this kind, given to us for study, purify the spirit. By following the strict lines of these thoughts, we come to form strictly logical thoughts ourselves. This kind of study, again, purifies our thoughts, and so we learn to think with strict logic. If, for instance, we are reading a difficult book, the most important thing is not to comprehend its whole content, but to enter into the author's line of thought and learn to think with him. Hence the pupil should find no book too difficult; if he does, it means only that he is too easy-going to think.

The best books are those we have to take up again and again, books we cannot understand immediately but have to study sentence by sentence. It does not matter so much what we study as how we study. If we study the great truths, for instance the planetary laws, we develop an important line of thought, and this is what really matters. If we say that we want more moral teaching and nothing about planetary systems, we show great egoism. True wisdom engenders a moral life.

2. Imagination or Imaginative Knowledge is the second thing we have to attain. What is it and how do we achieve it? As we go through the world we must observe it in the light of Goethe's saying: “Everything transitory is but a symbol.”⁴⁵ Goethe was a Rosicrucian and he can lead us into the life of the soul. Everything must become for us a symbol in manifold respects. Suppose, for instance, we are walking past a meadow saffron: in form and colour it is a symbol of mourning. Another flower, the convolvulus, is a symbol of helplessness; another flower, with its splash of red, is a sign of gaiety, and so on. A bird with bright colours may be a symbol of coquetry. The symbols may actually be expressed in the names: weeping willow, forget-me-not, and so on. The more we reflect in this way, so that external things become symbolic pictures of moral qualities, the more easily shall we attain to Imaginative Knowledge. We can see similar likenesses in human beings. For instance, we can study people's temperament from their gait—look at the slow, heavy step of the melancholic, the light, springy step of the sanguine type.

After some time spent on these exercises we can pass to exercises of real Imagination. Take, for example, a living plant, look at it carefully, sink yourself into it, then draw forth the inner feeling of your soul and lay it as it were in the plant, as is described in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.⁴⁶ All this stimulates the Imagination, and by this means the pupil acquires astral vision. After a time he will notice a little flame proceeding from the plant: that is the astral counterpart of its growth. Again, the pupil takes a seed and visualises the whole plant, as it will later on be in reality. These are exercises of the Imagination; by their means one comes to see things surrounded by their astral element.

3. The third stage is called learning the occult script. There is in fact such a script, through which one can penetrate more deeply into things. An example will show you more exactly what I mean. With the close of the old Indian civilisation a new civilisation began. The symbol for such an evolutionary stage is the vortex. These vortices exist everywhere in the world. They occur in the nebulae—the Orion nebula, for instance. There, too, an old world is dying and a new one being born. When the Indian civilisation was coming into being, the Sun was in the sign of Cancer; during the Persian civilisation in Gemini; during the Egyptian civilisation in Taurus; during the Graeco-Roman civilisation in Aries. Since the astronomical sign for Cancer is ♋, this was the sign for the rise of the Indian civilisation.

Another example is the letter M. Every letter of the alphabet can be traced back to an occult origin. Thus M is the symbol of wisdom; it derives from the shape of the upper lip. It is also the sign for the waves of the seas; hence wisdom may be symbolised by water. These signs indicate sounds which correspond with real things, and in the Rosicrucian training such studies are cultivated.

4. A rhythmical element is brought into breathing. It plays a less important part than it does in Eastern training, but it belongs to the Rosicrucian training and a Rosicrucian knows that through meditation the air he breathes out is purified.

5. The correspondence between Microcosm and Macrocosm is emphasised. This means the connection between the great world and the small, or between man and the world outside him.

Man has emerged by gradual stages and his various members have been formed in the course of evolution. Now it is impossible for certain organs to arise in a being which has, for example, no astral body, and therefore they could not come into existence on the Sun, even in a preliminary form. The liver is an instance of this: it cannot exist without the etheric body, but it is actually created by the astral body. Similarly, no being can have warm blood unless it first appeared at a time when the Ego was at least in course of preparation. True, the higher animals are warm-blooded, but they split off from man when the development of his Ego was already on the way. Hence we can say that the liver is closely related to the astral body, and warm blood to the Ego. In fact every one of man's organs, even the smallest, has its specific relationship to one member of his being. If the pupil concentrates his attention on himself objectively, as though on something outside himself—if for instance he concentrates on the point at the root of the nose and connects with it a particular saying given by his occult teacher, he will be guided to that which corresponds to this point and he will come to know it. If he concentrates on this point under definite guidance, he will come to know the nature of the Ego. Another, much later exercise is directed towards the inner part of the eye; through this one learns to know the inner nature of light and of the sun. The nature of the astral can be learnt by concentrating on the liver, with the aid of certain specific words.

This is true self-development, when the pupil is taken out of himself by means of each organ on which he concentrates his attention. This method has become specially important in recent times because humanity has become deeply involved in matter. In this way one penetrates through the material to its creative cause.

6. Dwelling in, or sinking oneself into, the Macrocosm. This is the same form of spiritual contemplation that we described as Dhyanam. The pupil sinks himself into the organ he is contemplating—for example, the inner part of the eye. After concentrating on it for a while, he drops the mental picture of the external organ and thinks only of that to which the eye leads him—the light. In this way he comes to the creator of the organ and so out into the Macrocosm. He then feels his body increasingly growing larger and larger until it is as large as the Earth; indeed even bigger than the Earth, until all things are in it. And then he lives in all things.

7. The seventh stage corresponds to the Eastern Samadhi. It is called divine blessedness, because now the pupil ceases to think of this last concept, but he retains the power to think. The content of his thought falls away, but the activity of thought remains. And thus he comes to rest in the divine-spiritual world.

These stages of Rosicrucian training are more inward, and call for a subtle cultivation of the higher life of the soul. The widespread superficiality of our material epoch is a powerful obstacle to the necessary deepening of the whole inner life; it must be overcome. This form of training is particularly well suited to Europeans. Anyone who is in earnest can carry it out. But Goethe's saying, “It is indeed easy, but even the easy is hard”,⁴⁷ applies here.

We have gone into the various methods of training, and I will end these lectures by showing you something of the relationship between man and the whole Earth, so that you will see how man is related to everything that happens on Earth.

I have described the evolution of man and shown you how he can acquire a true inner being of his own. In the course of evolution the whole of humanity will attain to everything that the individual can achieve through occult training. But what will be happening to the Earth while mankind is developing in this way? There is a great difference between the Earth seen by the occultist and the Earth known to the ordinary geologist or scientist. He looks on it as merely a sort of great lifeless ball, with an interior not very unlike its exterior, except that at most the interior substances are fluid. But it is not easy to understand how such a lifeless ball could have produced all the different kinds of beings on it.

We know that on this Earth of ours various phenomena occur which deeply affect the fate of many people; but present-day science looks on this as a purely external relationship. Thus the fate of hundreds and thousands may be affected by an earthquake or a volcano. Does the human will have any influence on this, or is it all a matter of chance? Are there dead laws which act with blind fury, or is there some connection between these events and the will of man? What is really happening when a man is killed by an earthquake? What does the occultist say about the interior of the Earth?

The occult science of all epochs says the following about the interior of the Earth. We must think of the Earth as consisting of a series of layers, not completely separated from one another like the skins of an onion, but merging into one another gradually.

1. The topmost layer, the mineral mass, is related to the interior as an eggshell is to the egg. This topmost layer is called the Mineral Earth.

2. Under it is a second layer, called the Fluid Earth; it consists of a substance to which there is nothing comparable on Earth. It is not really like any of the fluids we know, for these all have a mineral quality. This layer has specific characteristics: its substance begins to display certain spiritual qualities, which consist in the fact that as soon as it is brought into contact with something living, it strives to expel and destroy this life. The occultist is able to investigate this layer by pure concentration.

3. The “Air-Earth”. This is a substance which annuls feelings: for instance, if it is brought into contact with any pain, the pain is converted into pleasure, and vice versa. The original form of a feeling is, so to speak extinguished, rather as the second layer extinguishes life.

4. The “Water-Earth”, or the “Form-Earth”. It produces in the material realm the effects that occur spiritually in Devachan. There, we have the negative pictures of physical things. In the “Form-Earth” a cube of salt, for example, would be destroyed, but its negative would arise. The form is as it were changed into its opposite; all its qualities pass out into its surroundings. The actual space occupied by the object is left empty.

5. The “Fruit-Earth”. This substance is full of exuberant energy. Every little part of it grows out at once like sponge; it gets larger and larger and is held in place only by the upper layers. It is the underlying life which serves the forms of the layers above it.

6. The “Fire-Earth”. Its substance is essentially feeling and will. It is sensitive to pain and would cry out if it were trodden on. It consists, as it were, entirely of passions.

7. The “Earth-mirror” or “Earth-reflector”. This layer gets its name from the fact that its substance, if one concentrates on it, changes all the characteristics of the Earth into their opposites. If the seer disregards everything lying above it and gazes down directly into this layer, and if then, for example, he places something green before him, the green appears as red; every colour appears as its complementary opposite. A polaric reflection arises, a reversal of the original. Sorrow would be changed by this substance into joy.

8. The “Divisive” layer. If with developed power one concentrates on it, something very remarkable appears. For example, a plant held in the midst of this layer appears to be multiplied, and so with everything else. But the essential thing is that this layer disrupts the moral qualities also. Through the power it radiates to the Earth's surface, it is responsible for the fact that strife and disharmony exist there. In order to overcome this disruptive force, men must work together in harmony.

That is precisely why this layer was laid down in the Earth—so that men should be enabled to develop harmony for themselves. The substance of everything evil is prepared and organised there. Quarrelsome people are so constituted that this layer has a particular influence on them. This has been known to everyone who has written out of a true knowledge of occultism. Dante⁴⁸ in his Divine Comedy calls this layer the Cain-layer. It was here that the strife between the brothers Cain and Abel had its source. The substance of this layer is responsible for evil having come into the world.

9. The “Earth-core”. This is the substance through whose influence black magic arises in the world. The power of spiritual evil comes from this source.

You will see that man is related to all the layers, for they are continually radiating out their forces. Humanity lives under the influence of these layers and has to overcome their powers. When human beings have learnt to radiate life on Earth and have trained their breathing so that it promotes life, they will overcome the “Fire-Earth”. When spiritually they overcome pain through serenity, they overcome the “Air-Earth”. When concord reigns, the “Divisive” layer is conquered. When white magic triumphs, no evil remains on Earth. Human evolution thus implies a transformation of the Earth's interior. In the beginning the nature of the Earth's body was such as to hold subsequent developments in check. In the end, when human powers have transformed the Earth, it will be a spiritualised Earth. In this way man imparts his own being to the Earth.

Now there are occasions when the very substance of the passions of the Fire-Earth begins to rebel. Aroused by men's passions, it penetrates through the Fruit-Earth, forces its way through the channels in the upper layers and even flows up into and violently shakes the solid Earth: the result is an earthquake. If this passion from the Fire-Earth thrusts up some of the Earth's substance, a volcano erupts. All this is closely connected with man. In Lemurian times, the upper layer was still very soft and the Fire-layer was near the surface. Human passions and the “passion-substance” of this layer are related; when men give rein to evil passions they strengthen its passions, and that is what happened at the end of Lemurian times. Through their passions the Lemurians made the Fire-Earth rebellious, and in this way they brought the whole Lemurian continent to destruction. No other cause for this destruction could be found except in what they had themselves drawn forth from the Earth. Today the layers are thicker and firmer, but there is still this connection between human passions and the passion-layer in the interior of the Earth; and it is still an accumulation of evil passions and forces that gives rise to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

How man's destiny and will are related to happenings in the Earth can be seen from two examples which have been occultly investigated. It has been found that persons who have been killed in an earthquake appear in their next incarnation as men of high spiritual quality and faith. They had progressed far enough to be convinced by that final stroke of the transitoriness of earthly things. The effect of this in Devachan was that they learnt a lesson for their next lives: that matter is perishable but spirit prevails. They did not all come to realise that, but many of them are now living as people who belong to some spiritual-theosophical movement.

In the other example, the births which occurred during a time of frequent earthquakes were investigated. It was found that all those born at about the time of an earthquake, though not exactly in its area, were, surprisingly enough, men of a very materialistic cast of mind. The earthquakes were not the cause of this; rather it was these strongly materialistic souls, ripe for birth, who worked their way down into the physical world by means of their astral will and let loose the forces of the Fire-Earth layer, which proceeded to shake the Earth at the time of their birth.

Man transforms his dwelling-place and himself at the same time, and when he spiritualises himself, he spiritualises the Earth also. One day, at a later planetary stage, he will have ennobled the Earth by his own creative power. Every moment when we think and feel, we are working on the great structure of the Earth. The Leaders of mankind have insight into such relationships and seek to impart to men the forces which will work in the true direction of evolution. One of the latest of these impulses is the Theosophical Movement. Its purpose is to develop harmony and balance in the very depths of the human soul. Anyone who puts the assertion of his own opinion higher than love and peace has not thoroughly understood the idea of Theosophy. The spirit of love must penetrate even into the opinions a man holds. In the course of occult development he must unavoidably learn this, or he will get no further. He must renounce entirely his own opinions and must wish to be solely an instrument of the objective truth which comes from the spiritual world and flows through the world as the one great Truth. The more a man renounces himself and sets his own opinions aside, becoming instead a channel for the great Truth, the more does he manifest the true spirit of Theosophy.

All this is extraordinarily difficult today. But theosophical teaching is itself a promoter of peace. When we come together so that we may live within this teaching, it gives rise to peace. But if we introduce something from outside, we bring dissension in, and that should really be an impossibility. So the theosophical conception of the world must pass over into feeling—into something I would call a spiritual atmosphere—in which Theosophy lives. You must have a will to understand; then Theosophy will hover like a unifying spirit over our gatherings, and from there will spread its influence out through the world.

• 44. See Lecture Twelve.
• 45. Goethe's Faust, Part II, Act V, Chorus Mysticus.
• 46. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it achieved? Appeared as articles in Lucifer-Gnosis, June 1904 to September 1905; first published in book form,. 1909. Collected Edition, Dornach, 1961. Sixth English edition, 1969. Revised by C.D. and D.S.O.
• 47. Spoken by Mephistopheles in Faust, Part II, Act I, The Emperor's Palace.
• 48. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321. The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto 32.

Dornach, 27th June, 1924

Our study of karma can lead us only slowly and by degrees to an understanding of this fundamental and complicated law. To-day I should like, first of all, to repeat that in the elaboration of karma during the life stretching between death and a new birth there is co-operation primarily between those human beings who are living this life between death and a new birth. We work together with those with whom we are specially connected by karma. In the elaboration of karma during this life between death and a new birth, groups of human beings united by their karma work together and it can truly be said that in this purely spiritual life there are clear differentiations between the groups. This does not preclude the fact that we also form part of the whole of humanity in the life between death and a new birth, and still more do we form part of the life of those who are incarnate on the earth. The fact that we belong to a particular group of souls does not exclude us from forming part of humanity as one whole. And into all these groups and down into the destiny of each individual there flows the work of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies.

Those Beings of the higher Hierarchies who elaborate karma by the side of man during the life between death and a new birth, work also into the life we spend between birth and death, where karma works itself out in the moral sense, as destiny. And to-day we must find an answer to the question: In what way does the work of the Hierarchies influence human life?

Speaking now with the help of Initiation-Science, we shall admit that this is a deep and searching question. For you can understand from what I have told you in the course of recent lectures, that the phenomena of nature too are connected with the karma of mankind.

The man who directs his gaze to the whole flow of cosmic and human events and not alone to the immediate facts presented by the world of nature, perceives the connection between the events which take place among larger or smaller groups of men at one epoch and the facts of nature at another. There are occasions when we can observe events in nature breaking into the orbit of human life on earth. We witness devastating volcanic eruptions and we know what is brought about by natural influences during floods or suchlike phenomena.

If we regard such events as belonging merely to the natural order, we are confronted with something that is incomprehensible in its relation to the general impression we have of the world. For here we behold events that simply break into the cosmic order, events which are so envisaged by man that he gives up all hope of understanding them and accepts the distress they bring as a stroke of destiny. The investigations of spiritual science are able, however, to take us a little further, for they open up remarkable information precisely in connection with these elemental events in nature.

When we let our mind's eye scan the face of the earth, we find certain areas of the earth literally covered with volcanoes. We find that other parts of the earth are liable to earthquakes or other catastrophes. And if we examine the karmic connections of such events as these in the same way as we have examined them in recent lectures from the point of view of the history of certain personalities, then we arrive at very remarkable results. We find the following: Up above in the spiritual worlds, human souls are gathered together in groups according to their karma; they are elaborating their karma in conformity with their past and future existence. And we see one of these groups of human souls in their descent from pre-earthly into earthly existence wander to regions situated, for example, in the vicinity of volcanoes, or to districts where earthquakes are liable to occur, in order there to receive their destiny from the elemental phenomena of nature.¹ We even find that during this life between death and a new birth when man's conceptions and feelings are of quite a different nature, that such places are deliberately chosen by the souls thus karmically connected, in order that they may experience this very destiny. For a thought which finds little enough understanding in our souls on earth, such as the thought: “I choose a great disaster on earth in order to become more perfect, I choose it because I am still so far from fulfilling what lies in my past karma”—such a thought for which, as I have said, there is so little understanding in earthly life, can be present in the life between death, and a new birth, and has there an inherent value.

It can happen that we deliberately seek out a volcanic eruption, or an earthquake, in order to find in the path of disaster the path to perfection. Clear distinction must be made between these two completely different outlooks upon life,—one outlook being that of the spiritual world and the other of the physical world.

But in this connection there are other things to be considered. In the outer world, the everyday happenings of nature proceed with an ordered regularity inasmuch as the world of the stars is playing a part in them. For the world of stars with its mysteries works with a certain regularity. This above all is the case in connection with the sun and moon, indeed with all the stars with the outstanding exception of the enigmatic phenomena of meteorites and comets which burst in upon the regular, rhythmical order of the cosmos in a most mysterious way. But that which cuts across the regular course of natural existence in the way of thunderstorms, hailstorms and other climatological and meteorological events—all this interrupts the regular rhythm of natural happenings. We realise these things and, to begin with, resign ourselves to the outer course taken by natural phenomena. But later on, when a longing to understand spiritual things awakens within us, we listen to what is told us by Initiation-Science, namely that besides this outwardly visible world there is also the super-sensible world where dwell the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. And in our life between death and a new birth we enter the domain of these higher Hierarchies, just as in our life between birth and death we live among the three kingdoms of nature—the mineral, the plant and the animal kingdoms.

We listen to what is taught by Initiation-Science and try to envisage the existence of this second world, but we often stop short at the idea of the two worlds being there side by side, without connecting them together in our thought. We can form a true idea of the two worlds only when we are able to realise their existence simultaneously, and when with inner vision we can realise the way in which they work together and are interwoven. For this interworking must be known if we are to understand the shaping and forming of karma. In the life between death and a new birth, karma is prepared. But karma is worked out and elaborated on earth, too, with the help of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies who are also active during the life we lead between birth and death.

The question therefore arises: In what way do the higher Hierarchies work into earthly life?

In their work upon earthly life, these Beings of the higher Hierarchies make use of earthly processes. We shall best understand what this means if we look, to begin with, at all that is spread out before our senses, in the world of stars as well as in the physical world. Throughout our waking-day life, we see the sun up there in the heavens. Through the hours of the night we behold the radiance of the moon and of the stars. Think, my dear friends, of how we look out into the world, and how we allow what is above us, and what is around us in the kingdoms of nature, to work upon us. And let us remind ourselves that this world of the senses has in itself just as little meaning as a human corpse. The forces that are at work in the earth outside man are the forces that are in a corpse. But in a corpse we do not find the forces of the living man. In itself, the corpse is meaningless. It has significance only inasmuch as it is the remains of a living human being. It is not reasonable to imagine for a moment that a corpse could exist in itself as a collection of phenomena having an independent being of their own. A corpse can only reveal the form of something that is no longer visible. Just as one is led back from a corpse to a living human being, so too are we led by everything in the visible world of physical existence to the spiritual world. For this physical sense-existence has just as little meaning of its own as has a corpse.

Just as we are led in thought from the corpse to a living man, and say: This is the corpse of a living human being; so, in relation to nature, we say: This is the revelation of divine-spiritual powers.

No other way of thinking can be reasonable, indeed no other way is sound or healthy. To hold a different view would imply a morbid way of thinking.

But what is the nature of the spiritual world for which we are to look behind the physical world of sense? The spiritual world behind the physical world is the world of the Beings of the Second Hierarchy: Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes. The Second Hierarchy is behind everything on which the sun sheds its light. And what is there in the whole compass of our sense-experience that is not lit up and kept alive by the sun? The sun is the source of the light and the life of everything.

These Beings of the Second Hierarchy have their chief dwelling place in the sun. From the sun they rule over the visible world which is their revelation. Thus we can say: There we have the earth, with the sun shining down upon it, and behind and through the workings of the sun weave the Beings of the Second Hierarchy: Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis.

Upon the rays of the sun which are the deeds of the Second Hierarchy are borne all the sense-impressions that come to our senses through the hours of waking-day consciousness.

And so we speak truly if we say: Within and through and behind the workings of the sun throughout our physical sense-existence is the super-sensible world of the Second Hierarchy.

Now there is another and different condition of our earthly existence. We spoke of this different condition in the last lecture from a certain point of view. We have the condition of sleep. How does this condition of sleep present itself in its cosmic counterpart? Let us consider it for a moment. When our physical and etheric bodies are there in the bed, and our astral body and ego outside, then out in the cosmos we have to think of the sun at a position where the earth must first let the rays of the sun pass through it before they reach us. Now in all the ancient Mysteries a certain teaching was given which, if fully understood, produced a profoundly moving impression in those who become pupils in the Mysteries and gradually mastered the Science of Initiation. They reached a certain stage of inner development which they might have described in the following way.—I am now telling you what might have been said by one of these ancient Initiates when he had attained to a certain degree of Initiation.—He would have spoken somewhat as follows: “When I stand in the open fields in the daytime, when I direct my gaze upwards and give myself up to the impressions of the senses, then I behold the sun; I see it in its dazzling strength at noontide and behind the dazzling strength of the noontide sun I behold the working of the spiritual Beings of the Second Hierarchy in the substance of the sun. Before my Initiation the substance of the sun vanished from me at the moment of its setting. The shining radiance of the sun vanished in the purples of sunset. Before my Initiation I went through the dark path of night, and in the morning, when the dawn came, I remembered this darkness. Out of the dawn the sun shone forth again and took its course onward towards the dazzling brightness of noon. But now, having attained to Initiation, when I experience the dawn and behold the sun as it passes from dawn on through its daily course, a memory of my life during the night-time awakens within me. I know what I have experienced in this night life, I remember clearly how I beheld a blue, glimmering light arise from the evening twilight and gradually spread, travelling from west to east. And I remember how I beheld the sun at the midnight hour, at the opposite point in the firmament to where it had stood in its noontide, dazzling strength; I saw it gleaming there behind the earth, full of deep and solemn meaning. I beheld the Midnight Sun!”

Such has actually been the monologue of Initiates in their meditation, and it faithfully expresses their experience. The Initiate is conscious of these things. And when we read Jacob Boehme's book entitled Aurora then we cannot help being deeply moved by the realisation that the words which are written in this book are echoes of a wonderful teaching of the ancient Mysteries.

What is the “Dawn” to Initiates? It is an instigation to cosmic remembrance, to remembrance of the vision of the Midnight Sun behind the earth. With our ordinary sight we see the radiant yellow-white disc of the sun at noon, but with the vision of Initiation we see the bluish-violet sun at the opposite point of the heavens. The earth appears as a transparent body, with the sun gleaming on the other side of it with a bluish-red light. But this bluish-red sheen is not what it seems. I must utter the paradox:—it is not what it seems. When we are gazing at the Midnight Sun it seems at first that we are looking at something hazy in the distance. And when we learn with the help of Initiation more and more clearly to see what at first appears as a blur in the distance, then the bluish-red light will begin to take shape and form; it will spread itself over the whole of the sky but still on the other side of the earth and covered by the earth. It becomes peopled. And just as when we go out of our house on a starlit night and look up at the majestic spectacle of the starry heavens with its sparkling points of light, perhaps with the moon in the centre, so to the gaze of Initiation a whole world becomes visible on the farther side of the earth which is now transparent. It is a world that emerges, as it were, out of the clouds, becoming a world of living forms. It is the world of the Second Hierarchy, of the Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. There they appear, these Beings of the Second Hierarchy. And as we watch more and more closely, if we can attain the stillness of soul that is required, then something else happens. All this reveals itself after preparation and meditation and only becomes a conscious experience at dawn, as an after-memory, when it is immediately present with us, when we know we have actually beheld it during the night. What appears on yonder side of the earth is in reality the weaving world of the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. And from out of this weaving, living world of the Second Hierarchy there now radiates a world of other Beings—raying to us through the earth. It is a truly wonderful world of Beings that works thus through the earth at night, hovering there in the firmament, now approaching man, now drawing away, now approaching him again. We see how the line of the weaving Beings of the Second Hierarchy ever and again fades out, while another Hierarchy approaches man, now hovering towards him and now drawing away from him again. And by-and-by we learn to know what all this really means.

We have been conscious the whole day long and now we lie down in sleep. This means that the physical and etheric bodies are left to themselves, working in sleep as a plant and mineral world. But by day we have thoughts; all day long, ideas have been passing through our being. They have left their traces in our physical and etheric bodies. We should not be able to remember the experiences of our earthly existence at all if these traces which we subsequently use in our memories did not remain. There they remain, these traces, in what is left of man as he lies asleep at night—in that part of his being which he has left behind. A mysterious process takes place there, above all in the etheric body. All that man has thought during his waking life from morning till evening begins to move and ring on waves of sound. If you think of a certain region of the earth where men are sleeping, and think of all that weaves and works in the etheric bodies as an echo of all that these sleeping men have been thinking during the hours of their waking life, this will give you a picture of what has happened through the hours of the day.

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And those Beings who hover over us, rising and descending, busy themselves through our hours of sleep with the traces that have remained in our etheric bodies. This becomes their field of action. It is an immediate experience in them and absorbs their attention. When this is revealed to us, we say with a sense of deep reverence: “Thou, 0 Man, hast left thy body. And as it lies there it bears within it the traces of the day's experiences. It is the field where live the fruits of thy thoughts and ideas during the day. The Beings of the Third Hierarchy, the Angels, Archangels and Archai, now enter this field. While thou hast left thy physical and etheric bodies, these Beings experience what thou hast thyself experienced from the thoughts and ideas of thy waking hours.”—Deep reverence fills us at the sight of some region of the earth where human bodies are left in sleep and whither the Angels, Archangels and Archai wend their way to all that unfolds as an echo of the life of day. And we here behold a wonderful life, born of all that is unfolded between the Beings of the Third Hierarchy and the traces of the thoughts we have left behind.

As we gaze at this field, we become aware how, as human beings, we have our place within the spiritual cosmos, and how, when we wake, we create work for the Angels during our hours of sleep. It is so indeed: during our waking hours we create work for the Angels during the time of sleep. And now we learn to understand something about our world of thought. We realise that the thoughts which pass through our heads contain the fruits of what we lay into our own physical and etheric bodies—fruits which Angels gather at night. For Angels gather these fruits and bear them out into the cosmos in order that they may find there their place in the cosmic Order.

One thing more we see as we behold these Beings of the Third Hierarchy—Angels, Archangels and Archai—coming forth from the Beings of the Second Hierarchy and their activity. We behold how behind this weaving, again Beings of sublime majesty and grandeur take part in the activity of the Second Hierarchy. We gaze at the Second Hierarchy, and we see how into this weaving life of the Second Hierarchy something else works from behind; and we soon become aware how this not only strikes, lightning-like, into the weaving and working of the Second Hierarchy, but striking right to the other side of the earth, it has to do, not with the part of man that is left on the earth, but with that other part of his being that has gone out, namely, the ego-organisation and astral body. And as we gaze at what has been left behind and behold it as a field where the fruits of thoughts throughout the day are being gathered by the Angels, Archangels and Archai for the purposes of cosmic activity, so too we see how the Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, uniting their activity with that of the First Hierarchy—the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones—concern themselves with the astral body and ego. And in his morning memory the Initiate says to himself: “I have lived from the time of falling asleep till the time of waking in my ego and astral body. I have felt myself enwrapped in all that the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones are unfolding, together with the Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai. Living in this world I gazed down at my physical body and my etheric body and hovering above them I perceived the Angels, Archangels and Archai, gathering the fruits of my thoughts. I felt myself one with the Beings of the First and Second Hierarchies, and I beheld the weaving and working of the Third Hierarchy in mighty spirit-clouds over my body.”

And so, my dear friends, in this way you can get a clear picture of how the Beings of the three Hierarchies appear to the imaginative vision of Initiation, how they appear there on the opposite side of the earth in the picture of the physical world, but only when this physical world is plunged in darkness.

Knowledge and vision of these sublime truths penetrated more and more deeply into the hearts and souls of those who in days long since gone by, partook in the ancient mysteries of Initiation.

And once again this knowledge can find its way into the hearts and souls of those who are led to the modern science of Initiation.

Let us picture this majestic imagination which arises before the soul. We can picture the human soul liberated from the body, free from its physical and etheric bodies, weaving in the streaming forces of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, the Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai.

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In the ancient Mystery rite this was wont to be presented to the uninitiated in plastic form and in colour. The purpose was to present in plastic form what the Initiate was able to see in such sublime grandeur on the other side of the earth. And, in order to show that this world is also the world where karma is elaborated in communion with the highest Beings, in front of the plastic form stood the highest Initiates, those who during earthly existence itself could already behold with that vision which otherwise comes to man only between death and a new birth. The highest Initiates stood in front of the plastic form and still another form was set up, with human figures all around it. There stood the lesser Initiates whose work upon their physical and etheric bodies was not yet complete. The spectacle thus placed before the eyes of men was a copy of what the Initiates beheld in the Mysteries. Such was the origin of the altar, where the ritual was enacted by the higher and lower grades of the priesthood as a copy of what is revealed in Initiation-Science.

In Roman Catholic Churches to-day, as you look from the nave towards the altar, you have a faint copy of what was once inaugurated by Initiation-Science. And you begin to understand the origin of the cult. A ritual is not invented, for if it is invented it is not a true ritual. True ritual is brought into existence as a copy of happenings in the spiritual world.

If I may give an example, let me speak of one part of that great and all-embracing cult which has found its place in the Christian Community, and with which the majority of you are already familiar. Let me remind you of the ritual for the burial of the dead, as it is given in our Christian Community.

Watch the order of this ritual. There rests the coffin, containing the mortal remains of the dead. And before the coffin a ritual is enacted. Prayer is uttered by the priest. Other things could be introduced to make the ceremony more complicated, but the help it can be to humanity can also be clothed in simplicity. What is this ceremony? Let us suppose, my dear friends, that here we have a mirror and here again some object. You see the reflection of the object in the mirror. You have the two things—the original and the reflection. Similarly, when a ritual for the dead is enacted, there are the two things. The ritual enacted by the priest before the coffin is a reflection. It is a reflection, and it would be no reality if it were not a reflection. What does it reflect? The acts of the priest as he stands before the dead body have their prototype in the super-sensible world. For while we celebrate the earthly rite before the physical body, and the etheric body is still present, on the other side the heavenly ritual is enacted by the Beings beyond the threshold of earthly existence. Over yonder, the soul and spirit are received by what we may call a ritual of welcome, just as here on earth we assemble before the dead for a ritual of farewell. A cult or ceremony is only true when it has its origin in reality.

Thus you see how the super-sensible life works into earthly life and permeates it. If we celebrate a true ritual for the dead, a super-sensible ritual is enacted simultaneously. The two work together. And if there is sanctity, truth and dignity in the prayers for the dead, then the prayers of the Beings of the Hierarchies in the super-sensible world echo in the prayers for the dead and weave in them. The spiritual world and the physical unite.

Thus in all things there is accordance between the spiritual world and the physical world. The spiritual and the physical world interplay in the very truest way when there comes into being on earth a copy of what is woven as karma in the super-sensible world between death and a new birth together with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies.

• 1. The Deed of Christ and the Opposing Spiritual Powers. Two Lectures by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 1st Jan. and 22nd March, 1909.

Yesterday I spoke to you about the other side of nature-existence, about those super-sensible and invisible beings which accompany the beings and processes visible to the senses. An earlier, instinctive vision beheld these beings of the super-sensible world as clearly as we behold the world of the senses. Today, these beings have withdrawn from human view. It is only because this company of gnomes, undines, sylphs and fire-beings is not perceptible in the same way as animals, plants and so on, only to this is it due that man, in the present epoch of his earth-evolution, is not in a position to unfold his soul-spiritual being without the help of his physical and etheric bodies. In the present situation of earth evolution man is obliged to depend upon the etheric body when making use of his soul, and upon the physical body when making use of his spirit. The physical body, which provides the instrument for the spirit, the sense-apparatus, is not adapted to entering into connection with the beings which exist behind the physical world. It is the same with the etheric body, which man must use to develop his soul-being. Through this, if I may put it so, half of his earthly environment escapes him. He passes over everything connected with these elemental beings about which I spoke yesterday. To this world the etheric and physical bodies have no access. We gain an idea of what actually escapes the man of today when we realize what such gnomes, undines, and so on, actually are.

We have, you see, a whole host of lower creatures—lower at the present time—those beings which consist only of a soft mass, which live in the fluid element, and have nothing in the way of an articulated skeleton to give them inner support.

They are creatures which belong to the latest phase of earth-development; creatures which only now, when the earth has already evolved, develop what man—the oldest earth-being—already developed in his head-structure during the time of ancient Saturn. These creatures have not progressed so far as to form within themselves that hardening of the substance which can become the supporting skeleton.

It is the gnomes which, in a spiritual way, make good in the world what the lower orders of the animals up to the amphibians lack. This applies also to the fishes, which have only indications of the skeleton. These lower animal orders only become complete, as it were, through the fact that gnomes exist.

And just because the conditions of the beings in the world are very different, something arises between these lower creatures and the gnomes which I yesterday called antipathy. The gnomes do not wish to become like these lower creatures. They are continually on the watch to protect themselves from assuming their form. As I described to you, the gnomes are extraordinarily clever, intelligent beings. With them intelligence is already implicit in perception; they are in every respect the antithesis of the lower animal world. And whereas they have the significance for plant-growth which I described yesterday, in the case of the lower animal world they actually provide its completion. They supply what this lower animal world does not possess. This lower animal world has a dull consciousness; the gnomes have a consciousness of the utmost clarity. The lower creatures have no bony skeleton, no bony support; the gnomes bind together what works as the force of gravity and make their bodies from this volatile, invisible force, bodies which are, moreover, in constant danger of disintegrating, of losing their substance. The gnomes must ever and again create themselves anew out of gravity, because they continually stand in danger of losing their substance. Because of this, in order to retain their own existence, the gnomes are constantly attentive to what is going on around them. As far as earth-observation goes no being is more attentive than a gnome. It takes note of everything, for it must know everything, grasp everything, in order to preserve its life. A gnome must always be wide awake; if it were to become sleepy, as men often do, this sleepiness would immediately cause its death.

There is a German saying of very early origin which aptly expresses this characteristic of the gnomes, in having always to remain attentive. People say: Pay heed like a goblin. And goblins are in fact the gnomes. So, if one wishes to make someone attentive, one says to him: Pay heed like a gnome. A gnome is really an attentive being. If one could place a gnome as an object lesson on a front desk in every school classroom, where all could see it, it would be a splendid example for the children to imitate.

The gnomes have yet another characteristic. They are filled with an absolutely unconquerable lust for independence. They trouble themselves little about one another and give their attention only to the world of their own surroundings. One gnome takes little interest in another. But everything else in this world around them, in which they live, this interests them exceedingly.

Now I told you that the human body forms a hindrance to our perceiving such folk as these. The moment this hindrance is removed, these beings are there, just as are the other beings of nature for ordinary vision. Anyone who comes so far as to experience in full consciousness his dreams on falling asleep is well acquainted with these gnomes. You need only recall what I recently published in the “Goetheanum” on the subject of dreams. I said that a dream in no way appears to ordinary consciousness in its true form, but wears a mask. Such a mask is worn by the dream when we fall asleep. We do not immediately escape from the experience of our ordinary day consciousness. Reminiscences well up, memory-pictures from life; we perceive symbols, sense-pictures of the inner organs—the heart as a stove, the lungs as wings—all in symbolic form. These are masks. If someone were to see a dream unmasked, if he were actually to pass into the world of sleep without the beings existing there being masked, then, at the moment of falling asleep, he would behold a whole host of goblins coming towards him.

In ordinary consciousness man is protected from seeing these things unprepared, for they would terrify him. The form in which they would appear would actually be copy images of all those qualities in the man which work as forces of destruction. He would perceive all the destructive forces within him, all that continually destroys. These gnomes, if perceived unprepared, would be nothing but symbols of death. Man would be terribly alarmed by them, if in ordinary consciousness he knew nothing about them, and was now confronted by them on falling asleep. He would feel entombed by them—for this is how it would appear—entombed by them over yonder in the astral world. For it is a kind of entombment by the gnomes which, seen from the other side, takes place on falling asleep.

This holds good only for the moment of falling asleep. A further complement to the physical sense-world is supplied by the undines, the water-beings, which continually transform themselves, and which live in connection with the water just as the gnomes live in connection with the earth. These undines—we have learned to know the role they play in plant-growth—also exist as complementary beings to those animals which stand at a somewhat higher stage, which have assumed a more differentiated earthly body. These animals, which have developed into the more evolved fishes, or also into the more evolved amphibians, require scales, require some sort of hard external shell. The forces needed to provide certain creatures with this outer support, this outer skeleton—for these forces the world is indebted to the activity of the undines. The gnomes support spiritually those creatures which are at a quite low stage. Those creatures which must be supported externally, which must be clad in a kind of armour, they owe their protective sheath to the activity of the undines. Thus it is the undines which impart to these somewhat higher animals in a primitive way what we have in the covering of our skull. They make them, as it were, into heads. All these beings which are invisibly present behind the visible world have their great task in the economy of existence. You will always notice that, where materialistic science wishes to explain something of the kind I have just developed, there it breaks down. It is not in a position, for instance, to explain how the lower creatures manage to propel themselves forward in an element which is scarcely harder than they are themselves, because it does not know about the presence of this spiritual support from the gnomes which I have just described. Equally, the formation of an armour-like sheath will always create a difficulty for purely materialistic science, because it does not know that the undines, in their sensitivity to, their avoidance of their own tendency to become lower animals, thrust off from themselves what then appears upon the somewhat higher animals as scales or some other armour-like covering.

Again, in the case of these beings, it is only the body which hinders the ordinary consciousness of today from seeing them just as, for example, it sees the leaves of plants, or the higher animals.

When, however, man falls into a state of deep, dreamless sleep, and yet his sleep is not dreamless, because through the gift of inspiration it has become transparent, then his spiritual gaze perceives the undines rising up out of that astral sea in which, on falling asleep, he was engulfed, submerged by the gnomes. In deep sleep the undines become visible. Sleep extinguishes ordinary consciousness, but the sleep which is illumined by clear consciousness has as its content the wonderful world of ever-changing fluidity, a fluidity which lends itself in every possible way to the metamorphoses of the undines. Just as for day consciousness we have around us beings with firm contours, a clear night consciousness would present to us these ever-changing beings, which themselves well upwards and sink down again like the waves of the sea. All deep sleep in the environment of man is filled with a moving sea of living beings, a moving sea of undines.

Matters are otherwise with the sylphs. They, too, provide a completing element to the being of certain animals, but now in the other direction. The gnomes and undines add what is of the nature of the head to those animals where this is lacking. Birds, however, as I described to you, are actually pure head; they are entirely head-organization. The sylphs add to the birds in a spiritual way what they lack as the bodily complement of their head-organization. They complement the bird-kingdom in regard to what corresponds to the metabolic limb-system in man. If the birds fly about in the air with under-developed legs, so much the more powerfully developed is the limb-system of the sylphs. They may be said to represent in the air, in a spiritual way, what the cow represents below in physical matter. This is why I could say yesterday that it is in connection with the birds that the sylphs have their ego, have what connects them with the earth. Man acquires his ego on the earth. What connects the sylphs with the earth, that is the bird-kingdom. The sylphs are indebted to the bird-kingdom for their ego, or at least for the consciousness of their ego.

Now when someone has slept through the night, has had around him the astral sea, consisting as it does of the most manifold undine-forms, and then wakes up with an awakening dream, then again, if this dream on awakening were not masked in reminiscences of life or sense-pictures of the organs, if he were to see the unmasked dream, he would be confronted by the world of the sylphs. But these sylphs would assume for him a remarkable form; they would appear much as the sun might if it wished to send to men something which would affect them adversely, something which would lull them spiritually to sleep. We shall hear shortly why this is the case. Nevertheless, if someone were to perceive his dream on awakening unmasked, he would see in it an inflowing, an actual inflowing of light. He would also experience this as unpleasant, because the limb-system of these sylphs would, as it were, spin and weave around him. He would feel as though the light were attacking him from all sides, as if the light were something overwhelming, something to which he was extraordinarily sensitive. Here and there, perhaps, he might also feel this as a caress of the light. But in all these things I only wish to indicate to you how the light, with its upholding, gently touching quality, actually appears in the sylph-form.

And when we come to the fire-beings, we find that they provide the completing element to the fleeting nature of the butterflies. A butterfly itself develops as little as possible of its actual physical body; it lets this be as tenuous as possible. It is, on the contrary, a creature of light. The fire-spirits appear as beings which complement the butterfly's body, so that we can get the following impression. If, on the one hand, we had a physical butterfly before us, and pictured it greatly enlarged, and on the other side a fire-being—they are, it is true, rarely together, except in the circumstances which I mentioned to you yesterday—then, if these two were welded together, we would get something resembling a winged man, actually a winged man. We need only increase the size of the butterfly, and adapt the size of the fire-spirit to human proportions, and from this we would get something like a winged man.

This shows you again how the fire-spirits are in fact the complement to those creatures which are nearest to what is spiritual; they complement them, so to say, in a downward direction. Gnomes and undines complement in an upward direction, towards the head; sylphs and fire-beings complement the birds and butterflies in a downwards direction. Thus the fire-beings must be brought together with the butterflies.

Now in the same way that man can, as it were, penetrate through the sleeping-dream, so can he also penetrate through waking-day life. But here he makes use of his physical body in quite a robust way. This, too, I have described in articles in the “Goetheanum”. Here also man is totally unable to perceive how, in his waking life, he could continually see the fire-beings, in that the fire-beings are inwardly related to his thoughts, to everything which proceeds from the head-organization. But when a man has progressed so far that he can remain completely in waking consciousness, but nevertheless stand in a certain sense outside himself, viewing himself from outside as a thinking being, while standing firmly on the earth, then he will become aware how the fire-beings form that element in the world which, when we perceive it, makes our thoughts perceptible from the other side.

Thus the perceiving of the fire-beings can enable man to see himself as thinker, not merely to be the thinker and, as such, call up the thoughts, but actually to behold how the thoughts run their course. Only then do the thoughts cease to be bound to the human being; then they reveal themselves as world-thoughts; they work and weave as impulses in the world. Then one notices that the human head only calls forth the illusion that thoughts are enclosed inside the skull. There they are only reflected; their mirrored images are there. What underlies these thoughts belongs to the sphere of the fire-beings, one sees in these thoughts not only the thoughts themselves, but the thought-content of the world, which, at the same time, is actually an imaginative content. This is the force which enables us to arrive at the realization that thoughts are world-thoughts.

I venture to add: When we behold what is to be seen upon the earth, not from the human bodily nature, but from the sphere of the fire-beings—that is, from the Saturn-nature which has been carried into the Earth—then we gain exactly the picture of the evolution of the earth which I have described in “Occult Science—an Outline”. This book is actually so composed that the thoughts appear as the thought-content of the world, seen from the perspective of the fire-beings.

You see, these things have in themselves a deep and real significance. But they also have a deep and real significance for man. Take the gnomes and undines: they are, so to say, in the world which borders on human consciousness; they are already beyond the threshold. Ordinary consciousness is protected from seeing these beings, for the fact is that these beings are not all benevolent. The benevolent beings are, for instance, those which I described yesterday as working in the most varied ways upon plant-growth. But these beings are not all well-disposed. And in the moment when man breaks through into the world wherein they live and are active, he finds there not only the well-disposed beings but the malevolent ones as well. And so one must first form a conception as to which of them are well-disposed and which of them malevolent. This is not so easy, as you will see from the way I must describe the malevolent ones. The main difference between the ill-disposed beings and the well-disposed is that the latter are always drawn more to the plant and mineral kingdoms, whereas the ill-disposed are drawn to the animal and human kingdoms. Some, which are even more malevolent, also desire to approach the kingdoms of the plants and the minerals. But one can gain quite a fair idea of the malevolence which the beings of this realm can have, when one turns to those which are drawn to human beings and animals, wishing in particular to consummate in man what is allotted by the higher hierarchies to the well-disposed beings for the plant and mineral world.

You see, there exist ill-disposed beings from the realm of the gnomes and undines, which make for human beings and animals and bring it about that what they should really impart only to the lower animals appears physically in human beings. Certainly, these things are already present in man, but their aim is that this element should be manifested physically in human beings as well as in animals. Through the presence of these malevolent gnomes and undine-beings, animal and plant life of a low order—parasites—exist in human beings as well as in animals. These malevolent beings are the begetters of parasites. The moment man crosses the threshold of the spiritual world, he at once meets the subtleties of this world. Snares are everywhere, and he must first learn something from the goblins—namely, to be attentive. The spiritualists can never manage this! Everywhere there are snares. Now someone might say: Why then are these malevolent gnome and undine-beings there, if they engender parasites? Well, if they were not there, man would never be able to develop within himself the force to evolve the structure of his brain. And here we meet something of extraordinary significance.

I will sketch this for you in a diagram. If you think of the human being as consisting of the metabolic-limb-man, of the breast-man, that is, the rhythmic system, and then of the head-man, that is the system of nerves and senses, there are certain things about which you must be quite clear. Here below processes are taking place—let us leave out the rhythmic man—and here above processes are again taking place. If you look at the processes taking place below as a whole, you find that in ordinary life their essential function is usually disregarded. These processes are those of excretion—through the intestines, through the kidneys, and so on—all of them having their outlet in a downwards direction. They are mostly regarded simply as excretory processes. But this is a misinterpretation. Excretion does not take place merely for the purpose of elimination, but to the same degree in which the products of excretion appear, something appears spiritually in the lower man which resembles what the brain is physically above. What occurs in the lower man is a process which is arrested halfway in regard to its physical development. Excretion takes place because the process passes over into the spiritual. In the upper man the process is completed. What below is only spiritual, there assumes physical form. Above we have the physical brain, below a spiritual brain. And if what is eliminated below were to be subjected to a further process, if the changes in its condition were to be continued, then its final metamorphosis would be preliminary to the human brain.

The human brain-mass is the further evolved product of excretion. This is something which is of immense importance, in regard to medicine for instance, and it is something of which doctors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were still fully aware. Of course today people speak in a very derogatory manner—and rightly in many respects—of the old “quack-apothecaries”. But this is because they do not know that their potions still contained “mummies” of the spirit.

Naturally this is not intended as a glorification of what has figured as “quackery” in the past centuries, but I am drawing attention to many truths which have connections as deep as those which I have just cited.

It is a fact that the brain is a higher metamorphosis of the products of excretion. Hence the connection between brain illnesses and intestinal illnesses, and their cure.

You see, because gnomes and undines exist, because there is a real world in which they live, the forces are present, which, proceeding from the lower man, do indeed give rise to parasites, but yet, at the same time, bring about in the upper man the metamorphosis of the products of excretion into the brain. It would be absolutely impossible for us to have a brain, if the world were not so ordered that gnomes and undines can exist.

What holds good for gnomes and undines in regard to the destructive forces—for destruction, disintegration, also proceed in their turn from the brain—this holds good for sylphs and fire-beings, in regard to the constructive forces. Here again the well-disposed sylphs and fire-beings hold themselves aloof from men and animals, and busy themselves with plant-growth in the way I have described; but there are also those which are malevolent. These ill-disposed beings are above all concerned in carrying what should only have its place up above in the regions of air and warmth down into the watery and earthy regions.

Now if you wish to study what happens when these sylph-beings carry what belongs up above down into the watery and earthy regions, look at the belladonna. The belladonna is the plant, which, if I may put it so, has been kissed in its blossoms by the sylphs, and in it what could be beneficent juices have been changed into juices which are poisonous.

Here you have what may be called a displacement of spheres. It is right when the sylphs develop their enveloping forces up above, as I have already described, where the light touches the surface in a formative way—for the bird-world needs this. But if the sylph descends, and makes use below of what it should employ up above in the plant-world, a potent vegetable poison is engendered. Parasitic beings arise through gnomes and undines; through sylphs the poisons which are in fact a heavenly element which has streamed down too deeply on to the earth. When men or certain animals eat the belladonna, which looks like a cherry, except that it conceals itself in the calyx (in the very way it is pressed down you can see what I have just described)—when men or certain animals eat the belladonna, it is fatal to them. But just look at the thrushes and blackbirds; they perch on the belladonna and get from it the best food in the world. It is to their region that what is present in the belladonna belongs.

It is a remarkable thing that animals and man, who in their lower organs are in fact earth-bound, should experience as poison what has become corrupted on the earth in the belladonna, whereas birds such as thrushes and blackbirds, which should really get this in a spiritual way from the sylphs—and indeed through the benevolent sylphs do so obtain it—should be able to assimilate it, even when what belongs up above in their region has been carried downwards to the earth. They find nourishment in what is poison for beings more bound to the earth.

Thus you get a conception of how, on the one side, through gnomes and undines what is of a parasitic nature strives upwards from the earth towards other beings, and of how the poisons filter downwards from above.

When, on the other hand, the fire-beings imbue themselves with those impulses which belong in the region of the butterflies, and are of great use to them in their development—when the fire-beings carry those impulses down into the fruits, there arises within the species of the almonds, for instance—what appears as the poisonous almonds. This poison is carried into the fruit of the almond trees through the activity of the fire-beings. And yet the fruit of the almond could not come into existence at all if beings from this same world of the fire-beings did not in a beneficial way burn up, as it were, what is the edible part in other fruits. Only look at the almond. With other fruits you have the white core in the centre and around it the flesh of the fruit. With the almond you have the kernel there in the centre, and around it the flesh of the fruit is quite burnt up. That is the action of the fire-beings. And if this activity miscarries, if what the fire-beings are bringing about is not confined to the brown burnt-up shell, where it can still be beneficial, but something of what should be engaged in developing the almond-shell penetrates into the white kernel, then the almond becomes poisonous.

And so you have gained a picture of those beings which are just on the boundary of the world lying immediately beyond the threshold, and of how, if they carry their impulses to their final issue, they become the bearers of parasites, of poisons, and therewith of illnesses. Now it becomes clear how far man in health raises himself above the forces that take hold of him in illness. For illness springs from the malevolence of these beings who are necessary for the upbuilding of the whole structure of nature, but also for its fading and decay.

These are the things which, arising from instinctive clairvoyance, underlie such intuitions as those of the Indian Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Brahma represented the active Being in world-spheres which may legitimately approach man. Vishnu represented those world-spheres which may only approach man in so far as what has been built up must again be broken down, in so far as it must be continually transformed. Shiva represented everything connected with the forces of destruction. And in the earlier stages of the flower of Indian civilization it was said that Brahma is intimately related to all that is of the nature of the fire-beings, and the sylphs; Vishnu with all that is of the nature of sylphs and undines; Shiva with all that is of the nature of undines and gnomes. Generally speaking, when we go back to these more ancient conceptions, we find everywhere the pictorial expressions for what must be sought today as lying behind the secrets of nature.

Yesterday we studied the connection of this invisible folk with the plant-world; today we have added their connection with the world of the animals. Everywhere beings on this side of the threshold are interlocked with those from beyond it; and beings from beyond the threshold with those on this side. Only when one knows the living inter-working of both these kinds of beings does one really understand how the visible world unfolds. Knowledge of the super-sensible world is indeed very, very necessary for man, because in the moment when he passes through the gate of death he no longer has the sense-world around him, but now the other world begins to be his world. At his present stage of evolution man cannot find right access into the other world unless he has recognized, in physical manifestations the written characters which direct him over into this other world; if he has not learned to read in the creatures of the earth, in the creatures of the water, in the creatures of the air, and, indeed, in the creatures of the light, the butterflies, what leads him to the elemental beings which are our companions between death and a new birth. What we see of these beings here between birth and death is, so to speak, their crude, dense part. We only learn to recognize what belongs to them as their super-sensible nature when, with insight and understanding, we transfer ourselves into this super-sensible world.