The Rudolf Steiner Archive

There is a time when the experience of death, from the point of view of the physical plane, comes before our souls in many ways, in a broader and in a narrower sense, a thousandfold outside in humanity and also in our immediate circle, from which, especially in the course of the last few years and also months, dear friends have passed through the gate of death. It is perhaps appropriate to direct our thoughts, to which we can feel connected here in this branch, to certain aspects of the mystery of death and many things related to it. We direct our contemplative gaze to the riddle of death, not merely because we are plagued by curiosity or a thirst for knowledge to recognize what is mysteriously connected with death, but because we have already sufficiently gathered from the insights that spiritual science can impart to us how intimately connected with the mystery of death, with the knowledge of it, is that which we need in the way of strengthening forces of life, how, in fact, the contemplation of death removes the gulf between the two worlds — the world we live through in the physical and the world of the spiritual. We have often realized and rightly called to mind again and again in the face of concrete deaths how those souls that were connected to us in physical life remain so even after they have passed through the gate of death. In this context, I was also able to say in this branch that it is one of the strengthening, invigorating thoughts that we can let carry us, that we have friend souls in the spiritual worlds who, through the way they were connected with our cause here on earth, have become and will become our loyal helpers and co-workers. It must be emphasized that we are now living in a time in which we feel obliged to elaborate spiritual science, but in which this spiritual science is still met with much misunderstanding and opposition arising from this lack of understanding. And sometimes doubts may arise as to whether, in the face of ever-increasing opposition - and it will truly take on even stronger forms - what forces are given to us within the physical world can suffice. Then we are consoled by the thought that the souls of our friends who have passed away and are still united with us in our work, who are not hampered by the obstacles that still confront us here on earth, combine their forces with ours. And out of such conviction we believe in the victorious, if also slow, advance of spiritual scientific work.

When a person passes through the gate of death, it is indeed, I would say, close to our soul to experience how he, after leaving his physical body on the scene of earthly existence, then ascends into the spiritual worlds, so to speak, leaving these physical worlds. If we have gained convictions in spiritual science, then we perceive the passing through of the gate of death in a human being as a leaving of the physical world. If now the spiritual scientific view is directed to the experience of death, that is, to the passing through of a human being through the gate of death, then to this spiritual scientific view the matter presents itself somewhat differently. What comes into consideration is mainly what the so-called dead person experiences himself, how he feels and experiences passing through the gate of death in his innermost being, and how it then unfolds for him between death and a new birth. And here it must be said that what passes through the gate of death is, as we know, first of all the etheric body with the astral body and the ego. Now, however, the dead person, by entering the spiritual world in this triad of his being, first feels the scene of the physical world and, standing on it, those people with whom he felt connected in life, and also everything else to which he felt connected, actually as if it were all leaving him, as if it were moving away from him, so to speak. And then the one who has passed through the gate of death and is settling into the etheric world with his etheric body, becomes one with this etheric world. And we also already know this: a kind of overview of the experience on earth in the last incarnation occurs before his eyes. This experience can really be compared to a kind of universal 'dream experience'. Life goes on for days in surging, weaving images that are meaningful and full of meaning. One feels like saying that this panorama of life enlarges as the dead person feels: 'This is what you see, your life unwinds, flows away.' And beyond this flowing life, the scene on which you were standing leaves you.

This is a completely ethereal experience. While we, when we experience physically and sensually, come across the solid and sturdy with our senses and know exactly: what we experience with our senses is out there and we feel ourselves within the boundaries of our skin, the one who has passed through the gate of death experiences his existence and his connection to the world in such a way that he does not distinguish in such a strong way; he feels, so to speak, what he has as a tableau of life, as a piece of his self. Yes, this tableau of life is his world in the first instance. He surveys what he has lived through in a great panorama of life, as his immediate world, in which he is at first. In a sense, earthly existence fades away from him, and from this fading earthly existence he extracts what he has experienced since his birth within this earthly existence. This unfolds like a powerful, vivid panorama of images, not with a dull 'dream consciousness', but with a clear consciousness, in which not only images are seen, but in which everything that we have experienced in life in some other way is revived. Every single conversation we have had with people: we hear it again; everything we have experienced with people, everything we have exchanged with them in terms of feelings: we experience it again. The fact that everything is flooded with life makes possible that abundance of life which, compressed into a few days, gives a complete overview – which is actually always before us at the same time – of what we have gone through in a sometimes long life on earth. And we go through it in such a way that we then know: earlier, on earth, you went through it in such a way that experience followed experience. You had an experience and were in a context of life. It flowed by, remained partly in your memory, was partly forgotten. Then something new occurred, and so the stream of life was composed over the years. Now all of this is standing before the mind's eye at the same time, and now all of this is, one might say, in the self expanded into the world.

In these days after death, one does not distinguish between the world and the self, but both flow together, and the world is simply what one has experienced oneself. Otherwise, at first there is nothing but what one has experienced oneself, in which everything we have lived through with other people on earth is also included. And then we feel as if the external ethereal material, which initially appears to be the carrier of this world of images, were to leave us, and as if this world of images were no longer like one we have seen, but one that we have now completely connected with our own being, that now forms our innermost being. And by absorbing it, as it were, into ourselves, we are able to perceive and experience the rest of the spiritual world, to survey it with our consciousness.

Now, little by little, human souls appear in the rest of the spiritual world. These are either souls who have gone through the portal of death before us and are now there too, or human souls who are still in the physical body, in earthly existence. One sees these human souls from the spiritual world by seeing them in their spiritual-soul aspect. The physical is, of course, only perceptible to physical organs, but the spiritual-soul that lines the physical is then also in the person before our soul's eye, rising up. We feel much more intimately connected to all that is now being experienced by us than we could feel connected to when we were actually on earth, where there are separating barriers due to the physical body.

There is just one thing we must always bear in mind: we must choose our words carefully when we want to describe the spiritual, because the experience in the spiritual world is simply much more intimate than the experience here on the physical plane. When we visualize how a thought, which represents an experience long past, emerges from within us, reminding us of that experience, and when we now now, I might say, imagine the reality of such a shadowy memory experience, then we gradually get an idea of how spiritual reality actually appears to us after we have passed through the gate of death. As a rule, it does not approach us from outside like the experiences of the physical-sensory world. The imaginations come up as they are, only with infinitely greater vividness than the memory images, but in such a way that we do not distinguish our I and the imaginations as we distinguish ourselves from the outside world here. They arise from within us like memory images, but in such a way that we know: what arises on the horizon of our consciousness is reality. An image arises and we know that it is connected to us in the same way that a memory image is connected to us here on the physical plane. It arises with all its vitality. But we know that we are connected to it, our I is within it. In this way the soul arises, and we feel ourselves in union with the souls and soul beings of the higher hierarchies that gradually arise. The spiritual world comes to me, I would say, from the indefinite twilight darkness, approaching my own soul, like memories that arise in our soul. Only that the memories are very dim and depict only an external reality, while the imaginations that arise become speaking imaginations, announcing themselves essentially through their revealing language, which then becomes for us a revelation of the souls, of the spirits, with whom we continue to be in the most varied ways warmer, more intimate, than we can be with a person here on the physical plane.

One must now be particularly aware of the significance of the very first experience that a person undergoes when he passes through the gate of death. This looking back at the last life has a great, an enormous significance for the whole of the subsequent experience between death and a new birth, and we can realize this significance if we think about how we actually come to our sense of self in physical life on earth; not to our self, but to our sense of self. We know how we come to the I from our study of spiritual science: the spirits of form give us this I by advancing us from a moon-based existence to an earth-based existence. But this I is initially subconscious. It becomes conscious through being reflected in the physical body. How is it reflected here on the physical plane? Well, you know that even in the ordinary dream experience you can see it: The I only very rarely becomes clearly aware of itself in the dream experience; the I becomes blurred with the experiences, with the images of the dream that emerge. How do we experience I-consciousness during waking hours? Become aware of how this I-consciousness is actually connected to all external perceptions and all external experiences. When we move our hand through the air like this, we feel nothing. But in the moment when we push through the air, we feel something. But we actually feel our own experience, feel what we experience through our fingers. It is by touching the outside world that we become aware of our self. And in another sense, we actually become aware of our self when we wake up, in that we descend from the consciousness of sleep into our physical body, we collide with our physical body. In this collision with the physical body, the consciousness of self is actually summoned to the soul.

Let us be clear about the fact that the consciousness of self must not be confused with the I. The I initially remains in the subconscious, one could say, incomplete. Only during the volcanic period will man experience what the I really is. But the I acquires earthly consciousness by submerging with the astral body into the etheric body and colliding with the etheric body and physical body. And in this collision with the physical body, the ego becomes aware of itself: this is how the sense of self arises from the moment when the physical body is so hardened that this collision is strong enough, that is, from a certain point in early childhood, as far as we can remember.

Now the soul must also collide with something in the life between death and a new birth. Here in the physical life, it collides with the physical body, which is given from the physical forces and substances of the outer nature, in order to come to the I-consciousness. After death, between death and a new birth, the soul, in order to come to its now spiritual self-awareness, collides with its own life, which it has just seen in the days after passing through the gate of death and which it keeps looking back on. First, life presents itself in a way that allows us to see it, then it becomes a constant looking back. As spiritual beings, after we have passed through the gate of death and continue to live in the stream of time, looking back on what we have directly experienced in and with death, the soul, as it continues to progress, always encounters this panorama of life in retrospect, which one has had, but which now remains as a spiritual memory. And just as the I is ignited to its I-consciousness here through its collision with the physical body, so after death the I-consciousness is ignited by the look back at our own life, which encounters the last life on earth. As we look back on it, we experience this I-consciousness between death and a new birth. It is different, this sense of self after death, but it is by no means weaker.

What is this sense of self actually like here in the physical world? It is the case that here in the physical world, if we want to become aware of our self, we actually have to rely on it being shown to us through something else in our physical body. It appears to us, as it were, in the mirror of our physical body, this physical self of ours. We feel quite passive in the production of our self, at least if we do not happen to live according to a philosophy like that of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. By contrast, after we have passed through the gate of death, we feel constantly active. We give ourselves, as it were, our now much more intense consciousness again and again by looking back at our own life and connecting with the consciousness of the self: we want us, and always want us again, and we may want us, because we remain unlosable to ourselves by the indelible impression of what we have once lived through. I would like to use these words to express very clearly what is experienced in the consciousness between death and a new birth. And the consciousness between death and a new birth is very different from the consciousness here on the physical plane. Here on the physical plane, no one can actually look back on their own birth from their own experience in normal consciousness. Someone cannot observe their own birth in their own experience with normal consciousness; remembering only begins later. I have said this before: if people only want to rely on experience, on what they have experienced themselves in life, then actually no one can believe in their own birth; basically, they only experience their birth when they look back clairvoyantly. If someone says: I will not believe in the spiritual world until I have seen it myself; I do not want to believe what spiritual science tells me, I only believe what I have seen myself - then one can basically answer: And your own birth? It seems as if you do believe that this has taken place? But you cannot have any experience of it. — This shows how even something quite significant for human life is only conscious of a conclusion for normal consciousness. We only ever assume for normal consciousness that we are born by concluding: we look just like the people we have already observed being born, so we must also be born. — But it is only based on a conclusion.

The situation is quite different in the time between death and a new birth. Just as little as one can look back in normal consciousness to one's own birth, so much one always looks with this remembered panorama of life to the moment of one's death. And just as birth fades away for earthly consciousness, so too does the event of death always stand in retrospective consciousness before the soul life between death and a new birth, but now viewed from the other side. Here on the physical plane, man sees the experience of death only from one side. There are many gruesome aspects to it. But one should not conclude from this that it is now terrible for the one who lives on to have to look back forever at the experience of death. Seen from there, this is the most beautiful, greatest, most significant experience that a human soul can ever have, because it always shows in a radiant way how the spirit conquers material existence. This continuous review of the experience of death has an invigorating, uplifting and elevating effect on all consciousness. It is mainly through this experience of death that the soul says to itself: I live here in the spiritual world, with the spiritual world. The fact that the soul has the strength to say this makes this experience of death of immense importance for the life that begins after death.

I said: Man feels how his body and everything that was on earth leaves him, and he feels how he must now balance his consciousness through inner activity, how he must achieve something for his consciousness that he used to receive through the instrument of the body. I can live consciously without the body within me: the possibility of grasping this thought produces a much stronger consciousness than one can have within earthly life. And this is the lesson that death teaches us: that one can feel that the body is leaving, but that now begins a time when you are no longer dependent on your body to feel yourself as an ego, now begins a time when you, so to speak, pour the spiritual forces into your soul-shell yourself, so that you continually call yourself to consciousness. By recognizing how this calling-oneself-to-consciousness can be there when one's body is snatched away, one has the life impression of the inner creation of existence. This begins with death, where one must begin to experience oneself as an ego without the body. This is the starting point for continuing to feel oneself as an ego without the body by looking back at the experience of death. When the spiritual researcher's gaze, by bringing the spiritual world to life within him, causes souls that have passed through the gateway of death to emerge in the imaginations on the field of consciousness within, one learns to recognize how the dead experience. One learns to recognize differences that arise. Of course, one can only describe individual cases. Let us consider one such difference.

One learns to recognize how human souls appear at the scene of the soul's observation after death. These human souls are of two kinds: those human souls that have already entered the spiritual world before our death, which we therefore find inside as disembodied souls, and those souls that are still embodied in the body on earth. We are also able to experience those that are still on earth in the same way. As the scene of earthly existence disappears from us, we are left with the possibility of still knowing ourselves connected to what was spiritual. Only the physical disappears from us, our soul expands, unites with the vast universe, and precisely because of this, the possibility is given to know and experience that we are still connected to the soul even as the physical, as it were, rushes away from us.

But there is now a difference between the experience of one kind of soul and the other kind of soul. When we experience a human soul in the spiritual world, then of course we do not experience it in such a way – it hardly needs saying, but those who have not yet understood anything about looking in the spiritual world believe that – that one confronts it as one confronts an external being; but one experiences it in such a way that one feels the being emerging in consciousness. And now, when we encounter a soul that has already been disembodied, that has already passed through the gate of death, we have the inner experience of its presence. This is where the impression begins. We know: there is a soul. But we must, as it were, live ourselves into it, feel into it. We must receive the imagination of it in such a way that we feel ourselves participating in the creation of the imagination.

It is really the case that one would like to describe the matter in the following way: One feels oneself in the spiritual world. The awareness arises: You are not alone now, a soul is approaching you. — Now it is as if, in the physical world, one carries a thought invisibly in one's soul. But one wants to make it visible. So one takes a piece of chalk and draws the thought, makes a picture of it. That is really how it is at first with experiences in the spiritual world. One knows that a real spiritual being is present. In order to see the soul, one must first come into contact with it in such a way that one draws it, as it were, into the spiritual realm as an image. And that is what one does, but one is aware of being active in creating the imagination. And when, through the music of the spheres, it wants to speak its essence to our essence, as the human being here announces his soul to us in the physical world through his speech, when it lets the music of the spheres resound from within, then one also feels that one cannot remain passive. If you hear someone speaking and you don't want to think about it, you don't have to understand it. You have to participate if you want to understand. So you have to participate everywhere here too. You live together so actively, you know that you have to co-create every piece of the manifestation of the essence of a soul that you can have before you as a manifestation. You create the manifestation, not the essence. There will also be times when you do not feel so intensely active that you know: now there is a human soul. But this soul impels us, without our participating as intensely as in the case just described, to imagination. Imagination arises more by itself before us. Then we are confronted with a soul that is still embodied on earth. And as the human being has passed through the gate of death and gradually lives on in the spiritual world, he gets to know the differences between souls, through the way he relates to the souls that he meets in the spiritual world and those that he imagines on earth.

This is one of the differences in how experiences take place in the spiritual world, as they are directly experienced. And so it is also necessary to distinguish between experiences, inner experiences, whether one is experiencing human souls or the souls of the beings of the higher hierarchies. Please consider what I have described as an experience of human souls. I said: One experiences human souls either in such a way that one creates or recreates the imaginations, or by creating them more or less by oneself. But then the experience can also be like this: One knows that a being is there. This being must also be present as an imagination, it must also be present in the experience if we really want to be with it. But we will not be able to produce the imagination directly in the same way as in the cases just described, where it even builds itself up by itself. We must, by having the experience that a being is there, develop something else in us. We must develop the feeling in us: we create this being in us. We give our powers so that the powers of this being may stream into us. While we feel ourselves as creating in our imagination with the human soul, we feel that with the beings of the higher hierarchies, the angeloi and the archangeloi, these beings create the imagination in us. And so we gradually live ourselves into this co-experience of the spiritual world.

We also know that in the concrete sense this co-experience happens in such a way that through a long series of years – we have already considered its length in relation to the last life on earth – life is experienced backwards again. First we have a few days of the panorama of life, then we begin to experience life on earth in reverse, but in a different way than we experienced it here between birth and death. We experience the last one first, then we experience what we experienced before that, and so back in our mind to birth. We experience it by looking at our life, but now from the other side. I can say that we look at it from the side of the effects. Let's assume something rough, I have said to a person at some time in my life: 'You are a base person', or I have hurt him in some way. Then I have experienced something during my life. What I have experienced is different from what he has experienced. He had experienced the hurt feeling, the insult, the pain, the suffering. Now, in the afterlife in the spiritual world, one experiences the effects of what one has done. The suffering that the other person experienced when we insulted him, we experience this suffering, this pain, in ourselves. We experience the effects of our actions in the other being by living back in this way. We get a certain insight into this experience after death when we focus on something that can reveal itself to the spiritual researcher as a connection between this experience after death and the experience here in the physical world.

What I am going to discuss now is something that can really make us aware of how the spiritual researcher gradually comes to his results, and how it is a prejudice to think that someone who has crossed the threshold to the spiritual world now knows the spiritual world from his own point of view, and that we can ask him anything. We must experience it again and again when the spiritual researcher talks about this and that, especially in public, and one - as it may seem desirable from certain points of view - gives a question-and-answer session on all things in heaven and on earth and the whole of infinity, by assuming that anyone who looks into the spiritual world already knows everything that can be known there. That is about as clever as if someone here would say: You have eyes, you know Munich, so describe California to me! — It is really the case in the spiritual world that one must acquire step by step what is to be understood from the spiritual world, and it is naive to believe that everything there does not have to be looked at step by step first. Now, the spiritual world is still different from here in the physical world. Here in the physical world, if you, I mean, have never been to Heidelberg and now want to describe Heidelberg, you go there, don't you, you set yourself in motion. In the spiritual world, things have to come to us, and we have to develop the power of waiting, the inner power of experience, in our souls. Things enter our field of vision when we have made ourselves capable of perceiving them. The Heidelberg of the spiritual world must come to us, we must prepare our soul for it. It is always in a sense dependent on the grace with which we are endowed, whether we can learn something about this or that in the spiritual world. In this way, the spiritual researcher can gradually be taught about the secrets of the spiritual world.

Now I would like to discuss a spiritual research result from a certain point of view today that I have not yet discussed here from this point of view. When, after developing certain inner, that is, spiritual powers of observation, one observes the soul experience of the human being between falling asleep and waking up in the spiritual world, when one observes the sleeping person as a soul, as he is outside of his physical body – one gets to know many things, but one must learn to look from a certain point of view if one wants to grasp something – then one notices that in sleep a person is actually constantly active in his soul, much more active than during waking hours. While awake, a person makes use of the activity that his body develops, and this is what he places himself in as a soul, this is what he lives in. In sleep, on the other hand, he lives in his own activity. And if you follow this, you will find that in sleep, man relives in a different way what he has experienced in the physical world from waking to falling asleep. Let us assume that I have done something, have read this or that: in my sleep I relive the whole reading, I go through everything again. We just don't have this kind of consciousness in our normal waking life yet, so that it also becomes I-conscious, but that is why it still takes place in the soul, only vaguely, but it is the soul that actually now actively processes what it has experienced during the day. The thoughts are transformed in such a way that they can bear fruit in the soul. We process as fruits of life what we have worked for during the day. During sleep, we always actively incorporate the fruits of life, the results of our life.

Then the spiritual researcher can make a discovery. When he compares this sleep experience that the person has here with the experiences that the person has in the years or decades after he has passed through the gate of death and thus walks through his life backwards, it is interesting that the person walks through his life in such a way that he actually lives through the nights, not the days. As he looked back on the day every night, he now experiences it in the world of the soul. It is the same thing that one experienced in the waking consciousness, but seen from sleep. We experience this in such a way that it is very strange. Most of the time, one does not think about it, but actually, in the physical life, our memory only extends to the experiences of the day. We remember what we have in our waking consciousness. Now, after death, we remember what we have relived during the nights, what we have gone through in our earthly life. Then the conscious memory of the night experiences occurs. I did not express this so clearly earlier, simply because I did not know it. Such things arise in a successive spiritual research.

But one thing comes to light that is important, important for the consciousness that we are to create in our collective work in the branches. I have previously – you can read about it – pointed out from a different point of view the fact that the life in the soul is about a third of the time one has lived through between birth and death. Reasons for this are given in the books. But these reasons are given from a different point of view than the one I am giving now. One lives through the nights of life. How long does one actually sleep normally? One sleeps through a third of one's life. It is approximately true that one sleeps a third of one's life. Now, by passing through the nights after death, a third of earthly life lasts. This is connected with passing through the nights. It is tremendously interesting and important. Because the previous statement was based on completely different reasons. I have recorded this again, for example in 'Occult Science in Outline': after death, reliving the same thing again takes a third of earthly life, the Kamaloka life. Now, from a completely different point of view, which was not thought of at all before, it turns out again: this Kamalokaleben is one third of earthly life - from the point of view that one lives through the nights. You see, these are the kinds of things that, when they occur again and again, are so tremendously supportive and strengthening as proving forces for what spiritual science can give to man. One searches for a truth from a certain starting point and arrives at the conclusion that the Kamaloka life lasts for a third of the earth-lives. Then one arrives at the same result from quite a different point of view. These results support each other. We come across this again and again and it gives precisely that certainty which is also given to him who cannot yet do research himself. I have often called attention to this harmony. By following in detail how things are found in the life of the branch, we gradually gain inner certainty and conviction, even though we still have a long way to go in making our own experiences and gaining our own experiences on our own path of knowledge.

And now, in conclusion, I would like to share with you a truth that is of particular interest for our time, although it can always interest people. In my public lecture, I already spoke from one point of view about the death that occurs when a person in the prime of life is hit by a bullet, for example, and his physical body is effectively taken away from him. As I said, I have shown what becomes of these unused forces. I have already shown this from various points of view. Today I would like to point out this experience of death from yet another point of view.

How does someone enter the spiritual world who has not lost his physical body through illness or old age, but who has lost his body violently through a bullet or other injury? I have discussed what remains of his unused powers. But how he enters the spiritual world himself, that becomes a mystery. Especially in a time like ours, when so many souls enter the spiritual world through the gate of death. Their body has been taken from them by an external influence. In the spiritual world they differ greatly from the souls whose bodies have been taken away through illness or old age. In order to explain and understand such things, one must be able to place the right thing next to the right thing in the spiritual world. One must now be able to ask: how must one combine the phenomenon that is becoming a mystery in order to solve it? And here it becomes evident that this phenomenon must be put together with something that is experienced in the physical world. Now, let us characterize the experience here in the physical world in such a way that we first look at the coarsely materialistic-minded spirits who want to accept nothing but what can be grasped in a rough way through sense experience, which, because it makes a rough impression, is designated as being. But there is something else in this world that makes this life valuable, and that something else is ideals. Of course, the most crude materialists will say: you cannot eat ideals, they have no proper being, they are mere thoughts. But those people who bring ideals into their lives are actually working for the right fertilization, elevation and enlivenment of earthly existence. That which is not in a purely materialistic sense must be brought into the course of earthly existence in order to make this life valuable. Idealists are those who, in a certain sense, are messengers from divine worlds for earthly existence. For ideals are something like messages from divine worlds, something that belongs to the physical world but does not come from it. You cannot observe ideals, nor can you experiment on ideals to demonstrate them through experience. Yet ideals are like messages from a spiritual world.

When the human soul, from whom the body has been taken, for example, by a bullet in the prime of life, passes through the gate of death into the spiritual world, it not only leaves unused powers that are used in the way I have already indicated, but it also brings a very specific consciousness into the spiritual worlds. Such a soul enters the spiritual world through the gate of death differently than other souls who were able to complete their lives or whose body was taken from them by an illness. These souls enter the spiritual world bringing with them the thought of something that could have been down there in the physical world, namely their own life from the point at which they sacrificed themselves. As far as the abilities are concerned, what could have been, was already destined for the physical world, could have been its natural life for the next few years. There would have been the possibility that, say, two years after the death the body would have existed as a physical body in front of others. Now it does not exist. There could have been something in the physical world that is now not there. This is taken up by the soul, from whom the body has been taken away, into the spiritual world.

Now it is just as necessary for the spiritual world to be able to proclaim that something exists up there as for something to exist down there in the world that has the potential of this coarse existence, but which does not live out as a coarse material existence. This proclamation is something similar for the spiritual worlds as the proclamation of ideals is for the physical world. These are the reverse idealists. Here below, life can take such a course that inclinations do not live out, that souls return from the physical world that have found violent death. This makes a proclamation up there among those who have not experienced this, which means the same as the proclamation of ideals here. Here in the physical existence one proclaims: Not only is valuable that which makes an impression on the senses, but also valuable are the ideals that come from the spiritual world. In the spiritual world, those who have been deprived of their bodies proclaim that there is an effective force that, although intended for the sensual world, does not enter into this sensual world, but enters the world in a different way, and that it animates the spiritual world just as ideals animate the sensual world. This is a very significant result of spiritual research, and it indicates to us that sacrificial deaths also have a significance for the spiritual world, not only the significance that I explained yesterday for the physical world, but also for the spiritual world. Among the souls of the spiritual world, there are those who look to the ordinary course of life, but there are also those who have learned that inclinations can be cut off with a single blow. And they are, so to speak, the reverse idealists for the spiritual world.

And so, little by little, the phenomena of life reveal themselves, the riddles of existence, and one really gains the impression, especially in such times as ours, when so much that is mysterious can be sensed in blood and suffering, of how spiritual science can first place man in the whole of full life. Humanity is progressing. Natural science as it exists today did not exist in the past; it has emerged out of the dim darkness of soul striving. In the same way, spiritual science must come into being. In the future, man will not be able to do without it. Today it still has many opponents, but man will feel more and more the riddles of existence and thereby more and more the necessity of approaching the riddles of existence in a spiritual-scientific way. This must arise again and again in our souls as the thought that holds us together with our spiritual movement, that points out to us, as it were, how we seek within our spiritual movement something that must spread more and more in humanity, and that we must persevere through all the opposition that still exists in our present time in a very natural way.

I would like to emphasize this in our time, especially in view of today's reflection, as the seriousness of our time should remind us in these days to do everything we can, out of our strength, to truly incorporate spiritual science into the development of humanity, as far as it is up to us. And I would like to focus this admonition to the effect that we must now make this thought all the more alive in us, because the circumstances of the times can really lead to our not being able to be together as often as in normal times. And so let me address this admonition to our souls, that we work all the more faithfully and devotedly in our individual branches in these times of war, even if the collaboration between you and me, for example, may now be less frequent until we return to normal times, because traveling around the world is now much more difficult than usual, and it may be that we have to learn right now to rely on ourselves and work independently in the individual branches. What we can do in this direction will bear real fruit for that spiritual striving in our minds that must flow into the evolution of humanity. For it must be pointed out again and again that The great sacrifices that so many people have to make in the present, and which are so intimately connected with what death, as a mystery and as pain, hides in the development of mankind, these events can only have a proper relationship to our soul life if we can look at them from the point of view of spiritual science, in the context of the history of mankind.

It is not my intention to go into all kinds of inhibiting and hindering things, which may already have reached your ears in the last few days because they had to be discussed somewhere. But these things have shown how necessary it is that we allow ourselves to be taken up quite objectively by the fruitfulness and necessity of the spiritual-scientific movement, and that we can separate from it that which arises as our personal wishes and desires and will always stand in the way of the right course of our spiritual-scientific work as an obstacle and hindrance. Spiritual science is so rich in content that it can occupy us entirely objectively. Let us try to remind ourselves often how easy it is for personal, ambitious or vain striving to mix with what we should actually take hold of and allow ourselves to be taken hold of by as a spiritual life pulsating through the world.

Some events that have taken place within our society have already suggested to our souls: Oh, there is blood flowing out there, a large part of humanity is struggling for things whose significance cannot yet be measured, and there is a spiritual movement that could truly stimulate interest in purely objective terms, in which one does not need to focus on what is only personal, but there is so much of the personal in it, and at such a time when the soul must feel obliged to live together with the great events. That is also a source of pain, what was possible in terms of mixing the personal with what should be impersonal.

Now, again and again, and especially today, we should look from our isolated lives at what all of European humanity and humanity beyond is experiencing, and say to ourselves: the right fruits, the hard-won ones, will only arise in the future if what spiritual science wants to incorporate into the development of humanity is added to humanity. When what can be achieved in thought through spiritual science unites with the fruits of blood and pain, of suffering and deprivation, which will live on for the future, then one day a spiritual life, a human life, will flourish in the fields that today claim so many victims, a life worthy of these victims. Looking at this, we want to conclude with the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit —
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

May many such souls arise within our ranks, directing their minds to the spiritual realm, then the fruits and blossoms that arise from their efforts will truly be able to become not only a personal blessing but also a blessing for all mankind. In this spirit, whatever life may bring, we want to continue to work together on our cause with great intensity!

At present we live in the midst of events that arouse every feeling of the human soul in the deepest and most significant way. We live in the midst of events that cause death to pass over the earth very, very frequently, in a comparatively short time, death that has always been looked upon by our spiritual science as a riddle which must be solved. The times in which we live send pain and suffering to many human souls, but let us hope that these times also bear within them forces for the unfolding of man's future development. Many things are born out of pain and suffering, and in these fateful days spiritual-scientific thoughts in particular are well suited to awaken in us forces of confidence and of hope. Let me therefore unfold a few thoughts before your souls. Although not directly, they are nevertheless, indirectly connected with feelings that come to the surface in these stormy and sorrowful times.

What we can see and feel in the manifold events of the present time, is the fact that many people abandon the physical plane, at a comparatively early age of their earthly life. What characterizes the events of the present, is that they call away many young lives from the physical plane.

We know that when a human being passes through the portal of death, he must leave his physical body to the elements of the earth. When he passes through the portal of death, he is, to begin with, still united with his etheric body, his astral body and his ego. And we know that after a comparatively short time the etheric body becomes severed from the human being, who then continues along the path which he must tread between death and a new birth; he passes through the after-death experiences with his ego and his astral body and together with those members of his spiritual nature which can only be acquired in the spiritual world. Afterwards, however, as he continues along his path during the time between death and a new birth, also the etheric body becomes severed from the human individuality and goes its own ways.

Now it must be evident to everyone of us that the etheric body of a man who died young must have an entirely different constitution than that of a man who died after having reached, so to speak, a normal age. We know that the ordinary natural science of to-day always speaks of the fact that forces never go lost, but transform themselves. Natural science recognises this truth in regard to the external world of physical life; it admits that forces do not go lost, but merely transform themselves. Spiritual science must teach that this truth should be recognised in regard to the spiritual world.

When an etheric body abandons a human being who has passed through the portal of death at an early age, that etheric body might still have maintained that man's life on the physical plane for many decades. The constitution of an etheric body must be of such a kind as to enable it to provide the life-forces required by a human being until he reaches an advanced age. But when a human being passes through the portal of death in his 25^th, 26^th or 30^th year, the etheric body that abandons him still possesses the forces that might have enabled it to preserve physical life up to the 60^th, 70^th or 80^th year. These forces live in the etheric body; they do not go lost.

Particularly at a time such as the present one, in which so many etheric bodies are entrusted, as it were, to the spiritual worlds, we should contemplate the following problem: What takes place with the etheric bodies of those who have passed through the portal of death in their early youth?—In order to obtain a sound answer to this question, it will be a good thing to become acquainted first of all with the path trodden by man's etheric body, while he is passing through his life between birth and death.

Man's external physical body (we know this, for it is a trivial truth) grows older and older. But this is not the case with the etheric body. It may perhaps be difficult to understand this, but the etheric body does not in any way grow older; the etheric body grows younger and younger, in the same degree in which the physical body grows older, until it reaches, as it were, a certain childlike stage of etheric existence, when the human being passes through the portal of death after having reached a normal age. We should therefore say to ourselves: When we begin our physical life on earth through birth, then our etheric body, that has become united with our physical body, is, comparatively speaking, old, and in the course of our earthly life it grows younger and younger, until it reaches its childhood stage, when we pass through the portal of death. We might also say: When a human being dies in his young years, his etheric body has not grown young enough, but has instead maintained a certain age. What does this really mean?—A concrete example, already known to many of you, but that I must nevertheless repeat here, a real event of recent times, experienced by quite a number of our friends, may throw some light upon this question.

This concrete example is really connected with a child, with the little boy of one of our members. After an evening lecture at Dornach, we were told that the son of our friend Faiss was missing—a little boy of seven. It was soon evident that a terrible accident must have happened, for a large furniture van had arrived in the late afternoon, moving towards the Goetheanum Building. Curiously enough, this furniture van had appeared in a part where perhaps no furniture van had been seen for a long time, or perhaps never at all, and where perhaps no furniture van would ever be seen again. At a certain spot, this large van had overturned; this had happened towards evening. Nothing else had been noticed, but the little boy was missing. When our friends, with the help of other people, began to lift the van between eleven and twelve at night (the owners intended to lift it the following day for it had fallen most awkwardly and was moreover a very heavy van), sparing no effort in doing so, and when they at last succeeded in lifting it, with the help of other people, it appeared that the little boy, Theodor Faiss, had passed by just when the van had collapsed, so that it fell on top of him. This child (he was only seven years old) was an exceptionally lovable child, with exceptionally beautiful qualities.

In order to see this in the light of spiritual science, let me remind you of a logical train of thoughts which I have often advanced in our circles. I have frequently explained to you that a superficial manner of thinking, an untrained manner of thinking, easily mixes up cause and effect; indeed, such confusions in regard to cause and effect are very frequent. I tried to explain this with the aid of an example, which was only meant, as a comparison. Take the following case: You see a man, who is walking along the bank of a river; you see him fall into the river and try to reach him. Where he fell into the river, you see a stone. You then try to draw the man out of the water; he is dead. What would be more natural than to think that he had stumbled over the stone, thus falling into the water and drowning? But this need not be true at all; a physical investigation may show us that his destiny in no way led him to the stone or anything else, but that at the very moment when he reached the stone, he had a stroke, and this stroke was the cause of his felling into the water. If we were not to investigate matters, we would simply say that the cause of his death was the fact that he fell into the river. Yet this would be the exact opposite of the truth.

In the case of things that are connected, with the spiritual world, it is far more difficult to perceive the true relationship of cause and effect. We should therefore say to ourselves: When we have before us [a] case resembling that of the boy who found his death under circumstances that were so extraordinary (other things too occurred that made it appear extraordinary), we should not think—if we consider the whole case from a higher standpoint—that for instance, the following course of events took place: That the furniture van arrived and overturned, and that the child simply happened to be crushed by it, so that the van was the real cause of the child's death. In a similar case, we think correctly and contemplate it from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, if we say instead that the boy's Karma had reached its end and that the van really arrived at that particular spot because the child had to encounter its death. The van therefore merely provided the external conditions that enabled the child to meet its death, as prescribed in its Karma. Trivially speaking, we might say: The child's Higher Self, that wished to pass through the portal of death, gave orders that this situation should arise, it ordered that these events should occur. Of course, those who think in accordance with the mentality of our time, will find that this is quite an insane idea. Spiritual science must however show that many things which are looked upon as insane by the materialistically minded people of the present time, really correspond to the truth.

In this particular case, however, it is significant that the etheric body of a child of seven severed itself from the child's individuality, from that part of its being which then continued along its path in the spiritual world, united with its ego and astral body. Now I do not mean to speak of the further path taken by the individuality of little Theodor Faiss, but I would rather draw your attention to the fact that this etheric body was of such a kind that its life-forces nurtured that boy's physical existence for only seven years; nevertheless it contained forces that might have enabled it to sustain a whole existence between birth and death, feeding it with life-forces. These forces remained in that etheric body and the significant fact is that all those who had any spiritual connection with the Building which we intend to erect at Dornach in the service of spiritual science, know from that day, which is connected with the death of little Theodor Faiss, what has become of his etheric body.

Many things must be achieved in connection with the Building. Let me now say a few things in regard to the inspirations which must now be brought down from the spiritual worlds. Helping forces are needed if everything that must be brought down from the spiritual world is really to come down. Ever since the death of little Theodor Faiss, we can see that our Dornach Building is enveloped by the greatly enlarged etheric body of this child, as if by an aura that reaches very far. Indeed, we may even determine the limits of this enveloping aura. If you contemplate the Dornach Building you will know (and those who have seen it know this) that it is a double cupola building. (A drawing is made). Here is a separate fire-box building, constructed in a special way, according to principles dictated by spiritual science, and here is another building, where the glass windows for the Goetheanum are cut. Casually I might also add that here you may see the so-called “Haus Hansi”, the house in which I live. Now it is strange to see that little Theodor Faiss' aura, enveloping the whole Building, reaches as far as this spot, near the woods; then it goes past the fire-box building and through the very midst of the building where the windows are cut, and finally past Haus Hansi, but without enclosing it. Consequently, when we enter the Goetheanum, we actually enter this etheric aura.

I have often explained to you that when the etheric body frees itself from the physical body it grows large. Consequently we should not wonder at the large size of this etheric body. It contains mediating forces, and in these we may find certain impressions from the spiritual world, which are needed to create the forms and the artistic structure of our Building. Those who work upon the Building know how much they owe to this etheric aura. And I shall never hesitate to confess that ever since little Theodor's death, the work upon the Building became possible, because the boy's etheric body spreading over the Building supplied the mediating forces that were needed to draw down inspirations from the spiritual world. It would be far easier to hide this fact, or to take on airs as if these mediating forces were not needed. But this is not the essential point; the essential point is to recognise the true facts.

If we consider the facts which I have described to you just now, we can grasp how matters really stand with an etheric body that had to cut itself off from the existence of a human being at a moment when death closed this existence at an early age. It is important to note that the etheric body does not remain, as it were, a mere misty shape, in which the physical body lies embedded. Even the true aspect of the physical body cannot be recognised if we merely describe a mass of muscles, bones, etc. It can only be recognised if we see in it, as it were, a kind of temple, an abode of the Godhead—if we see it standing before us like a microcosm. We recognise what pertains to the physical body only if we realise that its forms are really taken from the whole universe and that in regard to his physical body the human being is a wonderful structure. Those who know the feelings voiced in the first dialogue of my second Mystery Play, “The Souls' Probation”, can have an idea of how the individual human being is placed into his physical existence; all the hierarchies are at work on his physical body, a whole world of divine Beings has the task of placing a human being into his physical existence. If we bear in mind to some extent the observations of clairvoyant knowledge, we fully learn to know the significance of the physical body.

You see, clairvoyant knowledge arises when our soul-spiritual part is lifted out of our physical-corporeal part, so that we are endowed with consciousness and with perceptive forces in the soul-spiritual sphere, outside the body.

From a purely external standpoint, there is really no difference between one who is able to perceive clairvoyantly and one who is asleep, for in both cases the soul-spiritual part is lifted out of the physical-corporeal part. The clairvoyant consciousness is able to perceive outside the physical body, so that it can have an idea of what takes place with the human being when he is asleep.

To facilitate matters, let me draw you a diagram. (A drawing is made.) Now let us assume that this is the physical-corporeal and that the soul-spiritual part of a sleeping human being. When a man is awake, the soul-spiritual part is of course contained in the physical-corporeal part; but let us now imagine a sleeping human being. On the bed lie his physical body and his etheric body; they do not contain his astral body and his ego, as is the case when he is awake. We might say, however: The activity that our astral body and ego carry on within our physical body while we are awake, does not cease completely while we are asleep. To begin with, and seen purely from outside, the sleeping human being lying there on the bed has a lifeless aspect, but to a clairvoyant consciousness the physical and etheric body of the man lying there asleep on the bed do not present a lifeless aspect. The seer must give an entirely different description of a sleeping human being, of this physical and etheric human being, lying there asleep on his bed. A clairvoyant seer must say: The whole day long the sun shone over that region of the earth, where the human beings are now sleeping. Now it is night. (I am speaking of normal conditions; when people are asleep during the night and awake during the day, I am not speaking of the conditions of life in great cities, of metropolitan habits). Darkness envelops that region on which the sun shone the whole day long. And now it is strange to notice the following: The earth, as a living Being, begins to think, and the organs through which the earth thinks are the sleeping human bodies.

The human beings think through their brain, and in the same way the earth thinks through these sleeping human bodies. The earth always perceives by day; it perceives through the fact that the sun shines upon it out of the cosmic spaces. That is the earth's perception. And during the night, the earth works out in thoughts all its perceptions. “The earth thinks”, says the clairvoyant seer; the earth thinks because it makes use of the sleeping human beings. Every sleeping human being becomes, as it were, a brain-molecule of the earth. Our physical body is organised in such a way that it can be used by the earth for it's thinking activity, when we do not use it ourselves.

Just as the earth thinks through the physical body, so it “imagines” (you know what imaginative knowledge is)—it imagines all that is not earthly upon the earth itself, all that belongs to the earth from out the cosmos. The earth imagines this through the etheric body.

We may discern in the sleeping human body parts of the earth's brain, and when the human being is asleep, we may discern in his etheric body the imagination of that part of the universe which belongs, to begin with, to the earth. The etheric body contains, in a play of wonderful pictures, all the forces that must stream into the earth out of the etheric world, so that the earth's events may take place.

As a physical being man belongs to the earth, and just as truly does he belong to the heavens as an etheric being. We can only use our physical body as an organ of thinking, because it is organised for that purpose, because the earth sets it free, as it were, for this purpose, when we are awake. And we can only use our etheric body in such a way that it provides us with life-forces, because the heavens place it at our disposal; when we are awake, and because the heavenly forces of imagination are transformed into life-forces within us, when we are awake.

Thus we cannot speak of our etheric body merely as a misty form, but we should rather speak of it as a microcosmic form reflecting the heavens. When we are born, the etheric body is handed over to us as a specially perfect form. When we are born, our etheric body glistens and shines inwardly, because it is so full of imaginations that come towards it from the great universe. It is a magnificent reflexion of the universe! All that we acquire during our life as culture, knowledge and forces of the will and of feeling, is all drawn out of our etheric body as we grow old in the course of our existence between birth and death. Heaven's cosmic forces give us what they must give us during our life between birth and death, and so we are once more young as etheric beings, when we have lived through a normal life between birth and death, for then we have drawn out of our etheric body everything that could be drawn out of it.

But when an etheric body belonging to a youthful body passes through the portal of death, it still contains a great, great deal of unused heavenly light. That is why it becomes a mediator of the forces which I have described to you. Quite apart from what takes place with the individuality of a human soul such as the one of which we spoke just now, its etheric body almost becomes a heavenly gift, a gift of the spiritual worlds. Such an etheric body can therefore have the inspiring influence that I have described to you.

It would lead us too far to speak of the peculiar Karma of a human soul that is able to make such a sacrifice. This cannot be produced artificially; it must be connected with the whole Karma of the human being that is called upon to make this sacrifice, thus fulfilling something within the process of development of the world that is destined to play a part in the spiritual progress of humanity—and this is the aim of our Building at Dornach, that will house our spiritual-scientific endeavours.

Consider now that we live in a time in which many of these etheric bodies, though they may not be as young as Theodor Faiss, but which are nevertheless etheric bodies coming from youthful human lives, inhabit, as it were, the spiritual atmosphere. Those who crossed the threshold of death on the bloodstained battlefields, pass through this portal of death in a different way than those who pass through it when they die in bed, or as a result of an ordinary accident. In a certain way, they pass through the portal of death so that they reckon with their death, even though this may be more or less unconscious, but in a certain way the astral body reckons with death. We can always say that these deaths are sacrifices. All the etheric bodies, of youthful human beings that thus ascend to the spiritual world contain unused forces. And at present we are facing an epoch in the evolution of humanity in which the souls of men will be able to look up consciously to the spiritual worlds and say to themselves: A time has gone by which sent many, many unused etheric bodies to the spiritual world. These unused etheric bodies contain forces. And from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, we may say even at the present time that these unused etheric bodies contain forces that will be very significant for the evolution of humanity.

When similar things are discussed, it should be emphasized that they cannot apply to every war that was waged in the evolution of humanity upon the earth. What takes place spiritually, what should be contemplated with the aid of spiritual science, is not so easy as natural science thinks. Other wars belonging to the past, require to be spoken of differently. And what I am now explaining to you only applies to the present fateful times.

Now imagine the following: On various occasions we had to emphasize the fact that to-day we do not pursue spiritual science arbitrarily, but that this is connected with the evolutionary process of humanity. It is connected with the progress of humanity that the human beings should gradually become acquainted with spiritual science. We know that every epoch of human evolution has its particular task. You will find this in many of my lectures. And we can realise that man's future salvation, man's welfare in the nearest future, can only flourish if that which spiritual science can reveal, becomes the spiritual property of an ever growing number of human souls.

Consider now—you, who are filled with a heartfelt enthusiasm for spiritual science—consider the difficulties connected with the propagation of spiritual-scientific truths at the present time! Consider the strong opposition that spiritual-scientific truths encounter on the part of people outside. Consider how these truths are slandered, how people look upon them as something insane, distorted and mad, how they consider them to be empty fantasies. Indeed, I might mention striking cases, yet they would all be merely a portion of what everyone can feel, if he is filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science and faces a world, desirous that this world should take up spiritual science ... a world that is so little inclined to take it up!

The spiritual scientist may now say: What the mere earthly forces of humanity are able to attain, seems so weak, so very weak, in comparison to the tasks of spiritual science! But in the near future, the unused etheric bodies of those who had to carry life and soul through the portal of death, on the battlefields where the events of our time are taking place, will be there—and these etheric bodies with their unused forces will be inspiring forces, they will be helping forces in the near future. We only need to look up, but not in an intellectual or theoretic way, we only need to look up to the heavenly etheric bodies of those who in the present fateful times passed through the portal of death in their youth; we only need to direct our souls, as it were, in the mood of prayer towards these etheric bodies ... all those who are filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science only need to direct their souls towards these forces, and they will obtain help from these etheric bodies. Help will come! Those who are genuinely filled with a spiritual-scientific mentality and having a deep life in common with these etheric bodies will find that among the many fruits that will fall into the lap of our earnest time there will also be the one that the souls of men who are filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science will receive the instreaming forces of the youthful etheric bodies that were sacrificed in these terrible times; these forces will flow into them. The souls of those who will live in physical bodies in the near future, and who genuinely feel this, will be filled by the forces of the etheric bodies that were thus sacrificed; their forces will stream into them. And these will be heavenly forces, that is to say, forces pertaining to the spiritual world! Entirely different forces will in future hold sway in the world, so that the world may receive what it should receive: a spiritual-scientific mentality. If we but find the possibility of recognising what is taking place now, if we recognise it in accordance with the explanations given to you just now, this fateful present will acquire a deep, deep significance, also for those who pursue spiritual science.

I already explained to you how wonderful are the imaginative forms contained in man's etheric body! Yet they would present a different aspect, if they had not passed through a human etheric body. We may also apply to this field the saying: “Out of nothing, comes nothing.” Although this is not an absolute truth, it is nevertheless valid for this particular field. The etheric body that man receives through the fact that the human soul enters physical existence through birth, contains a whole collection of forces pertaining to the spiritual world. These forces are gradually used up during physical life. They do not come from nothing, they exist in the spiritual world. They may, of course, also be found in the spiritual world, but it is difficult to discover them directly in the spiritual world; for this we would have to unfold far greater powers. They can be used and they can help us more easily when they have passed through a human being who died young, and in that case they appear together with what they contain through the fact that they passed through that human being. All the forces that lived in the youthful etheric body of little Theodor Faiss would be in the spiritual world even if he had not existed, but without him, it would be a Herculean task to draw them down. Ever since they have become accessible to us through that boy, it is far easier to be inspired by them, so that there is a difference.

Think how important it is for the whole progress of human evolution that in the near future such a great number of etheric bodies with their unused forces will be at the disposal of humanity! Since these forces (I must always call them heavenly forces) have passed through human beings, they have become, as it were, emancipated from the cosmic laws on which they depend. Outside, in the cosmos, these forces that are drawn directly out of the cosmos, cannot possibly be used in an evil way.

Let us now consider the following: All those who pass through the portal of death as a result of the war, or through some other accident, would not yield such a great number of etheric bodies, had the war not broken out. Of course, all these forces also exist in the cosmos, but they could not be employed by the human beings on earth, for it would be too difficult to use them. Another reason why they could not be employed is that they would be entirely used up in the life of men who die at a normal age. This is a very significant fact, it is most important that these heavenly forces should have passed through human bodies, for this renders them, as it were, free from the ordinary course of development. Yet this very freedom also makes it possible that these forces be used for other purposes than the salvation of humanity.

These forces could be used in different ways. Let us take for granted that human life develops in the light of freedom. Let us then assume that Ahriman succeeds in darkening human thought and reason to such an extent as to induce him to reject spiritual science. The etheric bodies would then still be there, but no souls would be there, filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science and able to place these forces at the service of the earth's progress. Lucifer and Ahriman would in that case be able to exercise their influence and they would make use of these etheric forces, either by leading them into the world built up by Lucifer, or into that built up by Ahriman.

Consider the tremendous importance of this fact! It means, that it will depend on man, as it were, how these forces, bestowed upon the world through death-sacrifices, will be embodied in the evolutionary process of the earth. They serve the evolutionary process of the world through the fact that they can inspire us with what spiritual science has kindled. If materialism were to take hold of every mind, or if nationalism were to spread out exclusively in the form of passion, then Lucifer and Ahriman would be able to use these forces for their own end and in that case these forces would be unable to further the progress of the earth. If we consider these connections, then the deep significance which spiritual science has for the human development on earth rises up before us. And only then shall we be able to say: In order that these forces, sacrificed through death, may be rightly used for the progress of human development, it is necessary that the new spirit, which is the outcome of spiritual science, should take hold of those human beings who are capable of grasping it. If we consider spiritual science in connection with the spiritual process of evolution, which comes to the fore so clearly in these fateful days, then we realise that spiritual science is something tremendously great and sacred. The new spirit which can be acquired through spiritual science thus becomes something that may be compared with the mood of prayer and it may be comprised in the words:

O cosmic spirit, let us be completely filled with the spirit that grows out of spiritual science; so that we may not fail to wrest from Ahriman and Lucifer that which can be of help to the earth, for its salvation and its progress!

Our Building is intended to be a symbol of the soul-attitude that humanity should adopt through spiritual science; for that reason, it is built in such a way that its forms are an artistic expression of what spiritual science is able to give us.

I would be obliged to speak of many things were I to explain to you all that is contained in the details of this Building. But you will learn to know them when you shall see the Building in the course of time and participate in what takes place within it.

To-day I will just mention one thing connected with the explanations which I gave just now. There will be a plastic group in a significant place of our Building, where it turns to the East. This plastic group in particular expresses something that should completely fill our consciousness at the present time. Apart from the details that will be added to the group, we may say that it consists of three chief figures. Three Beings express themselves in this plastic group. In this sculpture we shall see a kind of rock with a projecting part, and in this projection there will be a cave. The central figure of the group will stand upon the projecting rock. It is quite indifferent what name we give to this central figure, but we may see in it the representative of man on earth, man's representative in the highest meaning of the word. And if we see the ideal of humanity in that human being who for three years bore within him the Christ, then we may also see the Christ in this central figure of our plastic group. Yet we should not simply face the statue with the thought: “That is meant to be the Christ”, for this would be wrong. Instead, we should experience everything in an artistic way, that is to say, we should not interpret things symbolically from outside, but everything should result from what the forms themselves reveal.

Above, you may see a second shape. This Being has a head resembling (I can only say, resembling) a human head. It is really formed in such a way that it has a strongly developed skull and particularly a strongly developed forehead. Whereas in man these parts are relatively rigid, everything in that Being is extremely mobile. That is to say, everything is an expression of the soul. Just as we can move our hands and fingers, but not the upper parts of our head, so this Being can move everything up there. And the sculptural work expresses that everything up there is mobile. In this Being, the lower part of the physiognomy recedes in a marked way. One might say that the mighty skull dominates the face, that recedes. (I can only discuss a few details, for every line of this sculpture is significant). It is characteristic that the ear of this Being is connected with that part which has, in the case of man, deteriorated and become his larynx. The lobe of the larynx grows upwards and forms the lower part of the ear, whereas the upper part of the ear is formed by the forehead. On the other side, we can see two protuberances that remind us of birds' wings, and in between there is a form that, as a whole resembles a transformed human countenance. The wings, larynx and ear are one form. We may therefore say that this Being lives with its wings in the harmony of the spheres; it swings through the spaces, through the waves of the harmony of the spheres, and this becomes localised in the ear. (In man, all this has deteriorated). Through the fact that the Representative of Mankind raises His left hand, the wings of that Being break against the rock. You may now guess that this falling shape with the broken wings is meant to be Lucifer.

Below in the cave, we can see another shape. Its wings do not resemble birds' wings, but those of a bat. Its body is like that of a dragon, or of a worm, and its head again reminds us of a human head. Whereas in Lucifer's forehead everything is powerfully developed, the forehead of this second Being recedes and is quite undeveloped. Instead, the lower parts, towards the jaw, are strongly developed. This Being is enwrapped in gold; it is the gold contained in the earth. The gold of the earth takes on the shape of strong fetters that chain this shape to the cave. It writhes under the influence of Christ's hand pointing downward, the hand of the Representative of Mankind. The shape in the cave is Ahriman; it is Ahriman fettered by the gold of the earth.

The above explanations can really give you, as it were, an idea of the whole. Yet this idea merely indicates the essential point. The essential point that we must bear in mind is that we should never imitate the mistake of the old theosophists, who always work with symbols; the essential point which we must bear in mind is that everything in spiritual science that tends towards human feeling should be transformed into something artistic. We should therefore not say: that these sculptures express “this or that”, but they should reveal to us, through what they are artistically and through what we can see in them, the relation of man, or of Christ, to Lucifer and Ahriman. For that reason, it is impossible to express this with the artistic means of the past. Every movement of the fingers and of the hands, the way in which the hands are shaped, are significant, for they must express something significant. At first we may think that Christ raises His left hand and sends out forces with the intention of breaking Lucifer's wings and of causing him to fall. We might also think that the right hand of Christ pointing downwards sends out forces that fetter Ahriman. Yet it would be quite wrong to think so.

In order to explain the significant fact contained in this, let me remind you of one of the greatest works of art that have so far been produced, of Michelangelo's Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. There we see Christ sending the righteous men to heaven and the sinful ones to hell. We see Christ sending one part of mankind to a good world and the other part to an evil world. The Christ that is portrayed on Michelangelo's picture is not the Christ whose true nature we must, from now onwards, learn to know through spiritual science. The true Christ never condemns in wrath, nor does he mete out praise in ordinary love. His influence goes out of him simply because he is there; Lucifer's wings do not get broken, but it is Lucifer himself who breaks them, as a result of what takes place within his soul through the fact that he is in the proximity of Christ. And Ahriman fetters himself, as a result of what takes place within his soul, through the fact that he is in the proximity of Christ. When Christ raises his left hand and points downwards with his right hand, he only expresses purest compassion with the world. Lucifer, there above, cannot bear this, he cannot bear the proximity of Christ's hand. And what he thus experiences within him induces him to break his wings. It is not Christ who breaks them, it is Lucifer himself who breaks his own wings.

Michelangelo was not as yet able to portray the real Christ. Christ is such a significant Being and it is so difficult to understand Him, that this understanding can only be reached in the course of time. Only in [the] future shall we be able to grasp the Christ Who induces the other beings to condemn or to redeem themselves, simply through the fact that He is there. The Christ on Michelangelo's painting still has Luciferic and Ahrimanic traits, for he sends the sinners to hell in wrath and leads the righteous to heaven, so that his passions are active. But in our sculpture, Christ is mute impersonal, and the Beings that approach Him must judge themselves.

You may therefore see that man's position in the world that contains the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces will be significantly expressed in our Building. You will see in it the artistic expression of Beings that can only be found in the spiritual world. Naturalism in art and everything towards which art has striven in recent times as a result of materialism which took hold of man, must be overcome by the art which we cultivate here. Even in the sphere of art, something entirely new must enter the world through spiritual science, something that is able to overcome even the greatest artistic achievement—the Christ, portrayed in Michelangelo's Last Judgment.

It is permissible to say this, if we emphasize on the other hand something that we should not forget: that in spite of everything, our Building is but a first, primitive beginning. Everything in this Building is still imperfect and elementary, it is merely a beginning, yet it is the beginning of an entirely new impulse. We should of course bear in mind that everything is imperfect, yet at the same time we should not fail to notice in this the new impulse that will enter human life.

Consider how easy it is to ignore a gift of cosmic life consisting of the unused forces pertaining to the etheric bodies of human beings! Consider how these unused forces of the human etheric bodies can fall a prey to Lucifer and Ahriman, if we do not find the possibility of including them in the evolution of the earth, for the welfare of the earth!

Here we touch upon a great mystery, connected with the evolution of humanity upon the earth. It is the mystery of the connection existing between the Christ-impulse and the impulses of Lucifer and Ahriman. This connection of the Christ-impulse with the Lucifer-impulse and with the Ahriman-impulse will be grasped more and more clearly in the near future.

Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces surge through the world, but owing to the fact that man is conscious of Christ, owing to his Christ-consciousness, he is like a sailor who must steer his boat through the storms called up by Lucifer and Ahriman. He can steer his boat through that ocean, whose living substance consists of Lucifer and of Ahriman; he can do this in spite of everything, because he sits in his Christ-boat.

The true reason why we come together in our Group-meetings is not that of learning in a theoretical way one or the other truth which spiritual science can reveal, but the true reason why we assemble is that everything that lives in our souls should be filled with the spirit that can flow out of spiritual science. The essential point is not WHAT we think, but HOW we think, feel and will. The smallest or the greatest things in the evolution of the earth may rise up before our soul's eye, yet everything shows us how necessary it is for the human beings of the future to become acquainted above all with the significance of the triad, Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman. Michelangelo was unable to grasp this, and in the times that have gone by men were unable to see how these three Beings stand within the world. The true nature of Christ will only be grasped in the right way if we can see Him in relation to the forces which are active in the same way in which the North and the South poles are active: in relation to the forces of Lucifer and of Ahriman.

Many things connected with these thoughts will be discussed in the next few days for those who can remain. To-day I wished to bring before your souls thoughts that render the spiritual-scientific attitude so important even in regard to the significant things that will in the near future appear in the spiritual world to those who can discern the spiritual behind the physical events.

O how earnestly one would like to entreat the guardian spirits and the guardian divinities, of the earth and of humanity to give man strength, so that the things needed for the welfare of mankind may take place!

There above, will be the unused etheric forces of those human beings who passed through death in their youth. But here on earth there must be human hearts and human souls who look up to these forces so that they can be included in the right direction of human evolution. It is not only essential that these forces should exist up there, for they can fall a prey to Lucifer and Ahriman, but it is essential above all that here below physical bodies should be inhabited by human souls that send up their reverent thoughts to these sacrificed etheric bodies. On this circumstance will depend the way in which these forces will stream into the evolution of humanity, these forces that arose on the battlefields streaming with blood, where sacrifices are made and suffering is borne.

This indicates more or less what spiritual science is able to contribute to the future development of humanity, if a certain number of people really takes in that which can only be recognised through spiritual science.

Before I close this lecture, let me once more address to your souls a few pragmatic words that express what the present time, so fraught with destiny, is able to give us:

From the courage of the fighters
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the nation's sacrifices,
Shall grow forth a spirit-fruit,
If souls will lead, in spirit-consciousness,
Their mind and heart into the spirit-realm.

Original German Text:

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

Since I was asked to speak about the therapeutic principles which have developed out of the anthroposophical view of the world, I will gladly meet this request. However, it is difficult to be brief, especially about this kind of subject matter which is so extraordinarily extensive. In one brief lecture, which can only be aphoristic, one can hardly develop correct ideas of what is important. In addition, certain deliberations must be undertaken in such an attempt which are quite removed from what people generally think about. Nevertheless, this evening I will attempt to present the relevant issues in as generally comprehensive a manner as possible.

The fact that within our anthroposophical movement there is also a medical-therapeutic endeavor is certainly not based upon our desire as anthroposophists to participate in everything and to stick our noses, so to speak, into everything. That is absolutely not the case; but as the anthroposophical movement sought to make its way through the world, physicians too found their way to this movement. They are seriously striving physicians; and a relatively large number of such physicians had come to a more or less clear awareness of how uncertain, how vacillating the views of contemporary, official medicine actually are, of how in many cases the foundations for the actual comprehension of processes of illness and healing are lacking. These foundations are lacking in official medicine because today the claims for scientific validity are actually based exclusively upon generally accepted natural science. This natural science in turn believes itself to be moving with certainty only with what it can determine in a mechanical, physical or chemical manner from outer nature. It then applies the discoveries made through physics and chemistry about outer natural processes in order to come to an understanding of the human being. But even if there is a kind of concentration, a microcosmic concentration of all world processes within the human being, nevertheless, the outer physical and chemical processes never proceed within the human organism in the same form in which they proceed outside in nature. Man takes the substances of the earth into himself, substances which are not merely passive, but which are actually always permeated by nature processes. A substance only appears outwardly as if it were resting within itself. In reality, everything lives and weaves in the substance. Thus man also takes into his organism these processes, this living and weaving activity, proceeding chemically and physically in nature; but he transforms it immediately in his organism—he makes it into something different.

This something different, which develops out of the nature processes in the human organism, can only be understood if one attains a comprehensive observation of the human being based on reality. But contemporary natural science actually excludes from its realm what proceeds in the human being as intrinsically human. Even, for example, what proceeds as intrinsically human in the physical body is attributed exclusively to physical and chemical processes; for in the physical body of man nothing takes place which is not at the same time subject to the influences of etheric processes, of astral processes, of ego processes. But as natural science totally ignores these ego processes, these astral processes, this etheric living and weaving, it actually does not at all approach the human being. Therefore this natural science can not really look into the inner activities of the human being in order to comprehend how the outer chemical and physical processes continue to work in him: how they continue to work when he is healthy, and how they continue to work when he is diseased.

How shall it then be possible to properly judge the effects of medicaments, of a remedy, if one has not acquired an understanding for how some substance of nature which we introduce into the human organism, or with which we treat the human organism, continues to work in that organism.

It could indeed be said that the greatest progress imaginable in medicine in more recent times has actually only been made in the area of surgery where one is dealing with external mechanical manipulations, as it were. In contrast, in the area of actual therapy, there reigns great confusion—(this is not my judgment, but the judgment of those physicians who have become conscious of all this). The reason for this confusion is that the connection between any object of nature and its effect upon illness cannot be understood if, by virtue of a specific point of view which one has about natural science, one actually excludes the human being from scientific considerations.

Since anthroposophy strives to know the human being comprehensively—insofar as he is a super-sensible as well as a material being—it is also possible that anthroposophy can yield knowledge concerning the treatment of illnesses with various natural substances.

Fundamentally speaking, we are already confronting today a kind of boundary in medicine if we ask only for the actual nature of illness. What is illness? This question cannot be answered out of contemporary scientific knowledge. For, what, according to these natural scientific views, are all the processes which proceed in the healthy human being? From the head to the tip of the toes these are processes of nature. But then what are the processes which take place during illness in the liver, kidney, head, heart, wherever? What kind of processes are these? These are also natural processes! All healthy processes are processes of nature; all processes of illness are also processes of nature. Why then is the human being healthy with one sort of natural process and ill with the other sort of natural process?

It is not a matter of speaking in vague generalities: well, yes the healthy processes of nature are normal, but the sick processes of nature are not. One can get the impression that, if one doesn't know anything, there arises “at the proper time,” a word, a label for our ignorance.

What is actually going on when customary natural science is applied in approaching the human being? The predominant practice is not to look at the living being, but at the corpse; here and there a piece of the organism is sampled and then various abstractions are made about what kind of healthy or sick natural processes proceeded within it. Thus it actually doesn't matter whether one takes some kind of tissue out of the head, out of the liver, out of the big toe, or the like. Everything is finally reduced to the cell. Gradually histology, the study of tissues and cells, has actually become the most highly developed teaching of the human being. Of course, if one goes into the smallest parts and ignores all other forces, all other relationships, then, as at night all cows are grey, all organs are the same. The result is a benighted “grey cow science,” not a true science which acquaints itself with the uniqueness of the separate organs in man.

What must provide the basis there I actually dared to express only a few years ago. Although it is generally imagined that it is easy for spiritual science to come to its results, this matter has occupied me for more than thirty years. It is thought that one only needs to look into the spiritual world to find out everything, while it is difficult if one has to work in laboratories or in a clinic—there one must really struggle. In spiritual science it is only a matter of looking into the world of the spirit and then one finds out everything. It really isn't that simple. Thorough and responsible spiritual investigation demands more effort and above all more responsibility than the manipulations in the laboratory or in the clinic or observatories. And so it is that the first conception of what I will now briefly indicate in principle stood before me approximately thirty-five years ago. I was only able to speak about it a few years ago after everything was worked through and, above all, verified completely on the findings of the entire contemporary official natural science. It was under the influence of these principles of the membering of the human being that what I just told you about developed—this medical-therapeutic endeavor within our anthroposophical movement.

Even if we confront the human being as a solely physical being, we must definitely distinguish three members which differ one from another. These three different members can be labeled in the most varied ways, but we can best approach them if we characterize them by saying that one system of the physical being is the nerve-sense system which is primarily localized in the head. The second system is the rhythmic system, which encompasses respiration, blood circulation, the rhythmic activities of the digestive system, and so forth. The third system is represented in the interconnection between the movement system, the system of the limbs, and the actual metabolic system, This interconnection becomes immediately evident to you if you think of the fact that the metabolism is enhanced especially through the movement of the limbs and that inwardly the limbs are organically connected with the metabolic organs. That is directly evident also in anatomy. Just look at how the legs are continued inwardly into the metabolic organs and, similarly, how the arms are continued inwardly. Thus we can now distinguish the nerve-sense system, located primarily in the head; the rhythmic system, located primarily in the chest; and the metabolic limb system, located primarily in the limbs and the attached metabolic organs.

This membering, however, may not be done as a professor once did who wanted to ridicule the anthroposophical movement. He did not attempt to penetrate into what is actually meant with this membering. He said: these anthroposophists maintain that man consists of three systems: a head, a rump consisting of chest and abdomen, and limbs. Of course, in this manner it is easy to ridicule the matter.

What matters is not that the nerve-sense system is only in the head. It is primarily in the head, but it extends over the entire organism. The head organization spreads out through the entire organism. Similarly, the rhythmic system extends upwards and downwards through the entire organism. Spatially speaking the human being is entirely metabolic-limb system. If you move the eyes, the eyes are limbs. So these systems are not spatially next to one another; instead they interpenetrate one another. They totally interpenetrate and one must accustom oneself a little to an exact thinking if one wants to evaluate this membering of the human being in the right way.

Now both these systems, the first and the third, the nerve-sense system and the metabolic-limb system, are placed polarically opposite each other. What the one creates destroys the other. What destroys the other is created by the one. They thus work in completely opposite ways. And the middle system, the rhythmic system, establishes the connection between the two. There is a kind of vacillation, oscillation, between them, so that a harmony can always exist between the destruction of the one system and the construction of the other system. If, for example, we look at the metabolic system, we recognize that it naturally works with its greatest intensity in the lower body of the human being; but that which goes on within the human abdomen, or the lower body, must call forth the polar opposite activity in the head, in the nerve-sense system, when the person is healthy.

Imagine now that the activity actually inherent in the human digestive system intensifies so much that it extends right up to the nerve-sense system, so that the activity which should actually remain in the metabolic-limb system reaches over to the nerve-sense system. Then you have a natural process, so to speak, but you can see immediately how that natural process becomes an abnormal one. It should remain in the metabolic system, but breaks through, so to speak, upwards into the nerve-sense system.

That results then in the various forms of the illness treated by medicine today as insignificant, but not treated in that way by a large part of humanity because these various forms of illness are known everywhere. What develops is known as the various forms of migraine. In order to understand migraine in its various forms we must comprehend this process which ought only to take place in the metabolic system but which breaks through to the nerve-sense system so that the nerves and senses are so affected that the metabolism shoots into them instead of remaining in its own place.

The reverse can also take place. The process which ought to be most intensive in the nerve-sense system, and which is completely opposite to the metabolic process, can in a certain sense also break through to the metabolic system. Consequently an enhanced nerve-sense process takes place in the metabolic system where normally a merely subordinated nerve-sense process should be active. Thus what belongs to the head, as it were, breaks through into the lower body. If this happens then the dangerous illness develops which is known as typhoid fever.¹

Thus we can see how a fundamental understanding of this three-fold human being makes it possible for us to understand how a process of illness develops out of a healthy process. If our head, with its nerve-sense system, were not organized as it is, then we could never have typhoid fever. If our lower body were not organized as it is, we could never have migraine. The head activity should remain in the head, the lower body activity in the lower body. If they break through then such forms of illness develop.

And just as we can point to two especially characteristic forms of illness, so can we point to other forms of illness which always develop when an activity which belongs to one organ system asserts itself in another place, in another organ system.

If one proceeds only anatomically one merely observes the status of the smallest parts in the tissues of the organism. But one does not see the working of polar opposite activities. When studying the nerve cell you can only study that its organization is opposite to that of the liver cell, for example. If, however, you were able to look into the totality of the organism in such a way that it appears to you in its three-foldness, then you will also notice how the nerve cell is a cell which continually tends to dissolve, which continually tends to be broken down if it is healthy: and how a liver cell is something which continually tends to be built up if it is healthy. Those are polar activities. They work in the right way upon one another if they are appropriately distributed in the organism; they work incorrectly within one another if they penetrate into one another.

The rhythmic system is in the middle and always strives to create the balance between the two opposed polar activities of the nerve-sense system and the metabolic-limb system.

I would now like to select a special example to let you have insight into how one can find the relationship of a remedy which has been taken from nature with its forces to the health-giving and illness-generating forces active within man.

Let us direct our gaze to an ore which can be found in nature, so-called antimony. As soon as we look at it externally we see that it has an extraordinarily interesting property. Its form in nature is such that certain rods develop—stem-like, lance-like structures which lie next to one another—so that if we were to draw the ore schematically we could draw the following:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

It grows almost like a mineral moss or a mineral lichen. One can see that this mineral wants to order itself into threads. One can see this even more clearly if we subject it to a certain physical-chemical process. Then the thread-like crystals become even thinner. It orders itself into clusters of very fine threads. Especially important, however, is what occurs when this antimony is subjected to a certain kind of combustion process. You get a white smoke which can then condense on the walls and becomes mirror-like. That is called the antimony mirror. It is hardly respected at all today but in older medicine it was widely used. This antimony mirror, which first arises out of the combustion process and condenses on the walls so that it shines like a mirror is something exceptionally important.

In addition there is another property. I will emphasize only this: if antimony is subjected to certain electrolytic processes and it is brought to the so-called electrolytic cathode, then it is only necessary (after the antimony was subjected to the electrolytic process on the cathode), to exert a slight action on it and a small antimony explosion will occur. In brief, this antimony has the most interesting properties.

If antimony is introduced into the human organism in a moderate dose one can study various processes which show how in fact the same forces which behave as I have just described experience a kind of continuation in the human organism and how they take on all kinds of forms of forces and effects within it.

I can naturally not explain all the details and proofs to you: I only want to briefly sketch for you what is inherent in these forms of activity. These processes which arise in the human organism occur especially strongly wherever blood coagulates. Therefore they strengthen or enhance the coagulation of blood. However, if we use those methods of study which are consistent with an understanding of the threefold human organism, we are permitted to gradually look into the human being and gain knowledge of how the separate systems behave in the different organs. If we look into the human organism in this way, we find that what lives in antimony lives not only outside in the mineral antimony, but also is active as a force-system in the human organism. This force system is always present in the healthy human organism. In the sick human organism it takes on forms of the kind which I have just explained to you.

This antimony process existing in the human organism is opposed in a polar way to another process. It is opposed to that process which arises where the plastically active forces, for example, the cell-forming forces occur. These are the forces which round out the cells, which form the cellular substance of the human organism. I would like to call these forces, because they are primarily contained in protein substance, the albuminizing forces. Thus we have in the human organism the forces which we find outside in human nature in antimony if we subject antimony, for example, to combustion, and bring about an antimony mirror. In addition we also have the opposing forces active, the albuminizing forces, which immobilize, which take away the antimonizing forces.

These two force systems, albuminizing and antimonizing, work against one another in such a way that they must be in a certain state of equilibrium in the human organism. One must now recognize that the process which I have described to you before in principle, and which lies at the basis of abdominal typhus, is essentially based on a disturbance of the balance between these two force systems.

In order to look properly into the human organism one must be able to take recourse to that which I have described to you from the most varied—although not medical—points of view in these morning lectures.

In them we have seen how man has not merely his physical body, but also an etheric body—a body of formative forces, an astral and an ego organization. And just yesterday I was able to explain to you how there is an intimate connection on the one hand between the physical body and the formative force body, and on the other, between the ego and the astral body. There is a looser connection between the astral body and the formative force body, for they separate every night.

This interconnection, which consists of a working into one another of the forces of the astral and etheric bodies, is radically disturbed in typhoid fever. In this illness the astral body becomes weak and is unable to work with a corresponding intensity into the physical body because it works for itself thereby bringing about that excess which presses downward, so to speak, the nerve-sense organization, which is primarily subject to the astral body. Instead of transforming itself into metabolic activity, it remains active as astral activity. The astral body works for itself. It does not work properly into the etheric body. The consequences are the symptoms of illness which give us the symptomatology of typhus.

Now that which occurs as antimony is active in such a way that antimony denies its mineral nature. It gets crystalline threads, so that even the antimony mirror, wherever it deposits, appears like ice-flowers in the window, thereby showing the inner force of crystallization as in nature. This force of crystallization, which becomes active in antimony, if it is properly incorporated into a remedy and introduced into the organism, works in such a way that it supports this organism enabling it to insert its astral body with its forces into the etheric body in the right way, so that it can bring these bodies again into the right connection.

With antimony prepared in a proper way into a remedy we support that process which opposes the typhus process. And just with this antimony remedy, to which other substances are added, one can battle against the illness by stimulating and supporting processes in the organism so that it unfolds its own, I would like to say, antimonizing force which has as its goal to call forth the proper rhythm in the working together of astral body and etheric body. Other substances must be mixed in to establish a proper connection to the organism depending on whether an illness takes one or another course.

Thus an anthroposophical consideration leads to the recognition of a relationship between what is active in the objects of nature, as I have shown you with the example of antimony, and that which is active within the human organism. You will be able to follow up this albuminizing, this plastically rounding force, and the other force which works linearly right into the germ cell.

Whoever has truly gained knowledge in this field—however uncomfortable it may be for him to say so, because he knows he will call forth hate and antipathy in certain people—and who thus looks into the operation of the human organism will consider the otherwise amazing and wonderful microscopic studies about the germ cell, exceptionally dilettantish. There people look externally at the egg cell, observe the development of the so-called centrosomes—you can read about that in any textbook about embryology,—without knowing how these albuminizing forces, which also rule throughout the entire human organism, are opposed, polarically opposed, to the antimonizing forces. The rounding of the egg cell as such is brought about by the albuminizing forces; the centrosomes, after fertilization, are called forth by the antimonizing forces.

That, however, goes on in the entire human body; and by preparing remedies in the right way, and knowing through the diagnosis where one must support the human organism, one introduces into this organism the forces which can work against a process of illness.

By bringing anthroposophical points of view into medicine a connection is established between the macrocosm and the human being. Naturally I would have to say much more about antimony if I wanted to scientifically explain it in detail, but I only want to point out general principles here. In addition I wanted to tell you about the processes which antimony is able to bring forth out of itself, which it has in itself, depending on how one treats it.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

I could also show you now, as an example, the entire behavior within nature and its processes for that which we call quartz, or silicic acid. It is one of the constituents of granite. It is transparently crystalline and so hard that you can't score it with a knife at all. If we treat this substance in the proper way and administer it to the human organism—in the proper doses that are determined from the diagnosis—then it gains the characteristic of being able to support that which is to be active in the nerve-sense system, which the organism through the nerve-sense system is to bring forth as the intrinsic forces of this system. So what, by rights, the senses actually should do is supported by the remedy, which is prepared in the right way from quartz, or silica and administered in the proper doses. It is necessary then, depending upon the accompanying symptoms, to add still other substances, but here it is primarily a matter of the effect of that which lies in the silicic acid formation process. Thus if one brings this silicic acid formation process into the human organism, then a weak activity in the nerve-sense system is supported so that it then works with the proper strength. Now if this nerve-sense activity becomes too weak, then the digestive activity is able to penetrate through to the head and the migraine-like symptoms develop.

If one then supports the nerve-sense activity in the right way with a remedy which is produced in the proper manner out of silicic acid, the nerve-sense system becomes so strong in the person suffering from migraine that it can again press back the digestive process which broke through.

Naturally I am characterizing these matters somewhat crudely, but you will see what is significant here. What matters is to really be able to see through the healthy or ill human organism, not merely in accordance with its cellular composition but according the forces active in it, whether they work co-operatively, rhythmically or in opposition. Then one can look in nature for what in the human organism can fight against this or that process of illness.

Thus one can find, for example, how the process which is contained in phosphorus is in outer nature a process which, if introduced into the human organism, works in a supportive way upon a certain kind of inner disability of the human organism; namely, when the human organism becomes incapable of allowing to act in the right way certain forces, which should always work in the healthy organism. This is when a person has too little strength and cannot let certain forces be active within him which are a kind of organic combustion process which is always present in the transformation of substances in the human organism. This takes place in every movement, in all that man does, and also in what is active within organic combustion processes. Now the human organism can become too weak to regulate these organic combustion processes in the proper way, for they must be inhibited in a certain manner. If they are insufficiently inhibited, they develop an excessive activity. The organic combustion processes in themselves actually always have an immeasurable, unlimited intensity. If that were not so, an excessive fatigue would arise immediately, or one would be unable to keep moving. However, the organism must also continuously have the possibility of inhibiting the boundless intensity of the organic combustion processes.

If now these inhibiting forces are neither in an organ system nor in the entire organism, if the organism has become too weak to inhibit its organic combustion processes in the proper way, then there develops something which manifests itself as tuberculosis in the most various forms. The suitable nutrient soil for the bacilli is created through this organic loss of strength, through the inability of the organism to inhibit the combustion processes.

Nothing will here be said against the bacterial theory which to a certain extent is very useful. In the various ways by which bacilli arise here or there one can naturally find out many things; for purposes of diagnoses one can generally get a lot of information. In no way do I want to say anything against official medicine, except that it needs to be augmented and developed further when it arrives at certain boundaries—and it can be developed further when the points of view of anthroposophy can be applied to it.

If phosphorus is then introduced into the human organism, then these capacities of containing the organic combustion process are supported. But one must see to it that this containment can emanate from the various organ systems. Let us begin by looking at the system which primarily works in the bones. There the activity of phosphorus in the human organism must be supported in that one directs it towards the bones. That can happen when one combines the remedy phosphorus—in a way which becomes clear through a more exacting study of the matter—with calcium or a calcium salt. When dealing with tuberculosis of the small intestine one will mix some kind of copper compounds in the right dosage with the phosphorus. When dealing with a pulmonary tuberculosis, one will add iron to the phosphorus. But still other additions come under consideration since pulmonary tuberculosis is an exceedingly complicated disease. Thus you see that the possibility of a true therapy is based on how the chemical and physical processes continue to work on in the human organism.

Official medicine often starts out from the opinion that the working of the antimony forces outside in nature is the same as it is in the human organism, but that is not the case. One must be clear about how these processes work on in the human organism, and this can be seen if one applies actual anthroposophical insights to the experiments which must be done.

We have seen how antimony establishes the rhythm between the astral body and the etheric body. Now we can see how the forces which are active in quartz are especially suitable to reestablishing the proper relationship, when it has been disturbed, between the ego and the astral body, in order thereby to work in a healing way upon the nerve-sense system. We can also see how calcium—especially that calcium which is obtained from the calcium excretions of animals—provides remedies which establish the proper relationship between the body of formative forces, the etheric body and the physical body.

Thus one can say that a correct view of the human being leads to the use of calcium or something similar, namely, what is secreted from the animal organism,—oyster shells, for example—in order to establish the proper relationship between the etheric body and the physical body, which, if out of balance, always expresses itself in physical processes of illness. That is what one must reflect upon when preparing remedies from such calcareous or similar excretions.

When dealing with an arhythmic working together of the body of formative forces and the astral body, one must look for what is present in antimony, and also in numerous other metals. If one wants to use remedies prepared from plants, one must also look especially into those constituents which are contained in the middle parts of the plants, those which are particularly present in the leaves and stem, whereas those forces which correspond to the phosphorus process are contained primarily in the blossom organs of the plants. Those processes which correspond to the silicic acid process are contained in the root organs of the plant. Thus one finds relationships between the forces which are in the various parts of the plant and the human organism. The root forces have a definite relationship and connection to the human head and to the nerve-sense system; the leaves and the stem organs have a specific connection to the rhythmic system; the blossom organs have a special connection to the metabolic system.

If one therefore wants to give assistance in a simple way to the digestive, metabolic system, that can often successfully be done—after having made the diagnosis in the correct way—by choosing certain blossoms of which one makes a tea. In this way one can assist the digestive organs. If one wants to gain a remedy which works especially upon the nerve-sense processes, upon the head organization, one would have to extract the salts from the roots by a special extraction process.

Thus it is necessary to penetrate into nature on the one hand and into the human organism on the other. Then it is possible to really find the remedies in nature so that one can see how the two are connected. Otherwise one does things by trial and error in order to find out how something works only to discover that it is not valid, or to write up a number of cases where 90% or 70% showed a favorable result, but 40% were unsuccessful. Then the matter is statistically treated, and depending on what result the statistics yielded, a determination is made whether or not a particular remedy should be used.

Because of the brief time available I can only speak about these matters aphoristically in order to indicate how in fact, without succumbing to dilettantism or medical sectarianism, one can proceed strictly in accordance with science in approaching illness processes through remedies which come out of a full perception of man.

Just as the correct knowledge of natural substances and natural processes is important in order to create a remedy, so it is equally important to know the specific manner of application of the remedy.

One can either work upon the nerve-sense system in bringing about, in the right manner, the process of healing, or one can work on the rhythmic system, or on the metabolic-limb system. In order to work on these different systems it is essential to know how the method of treatment must be initiated, for almost every remedy can be used in three different ways. To begin with it can be taken orally. This makes it possible for a person to take up the remedy through the metabolic system, which then in turn works upon the other systems. Some remedies are meant to be used in just this way.

There are also, however, remedies which can be used in a way which allows them to work directly on the rhythmic system. (In this connection antimony will provide a good example for finding the proper method of treatment.) This is where administration by injection must be introduced. Injecting the remedy intravenously or sub-cutaneously is the mode of administration which can best work upon the rhythmic processes in man.

In those remedies used in ointments, or in baths, or even wherever there is a question of treating the human organism in an external, mechanical way, for example in massage, then one can count upon this method of treatment as working primarily upon the nerve-sense system.

One can thus work through every organ system in the most varied ways in an effort at working towards a healing process. Let us assume we have silica, or quartz. It makes quite a difference whether we prepare this remedy to be taken by mouth or to be injected. If we count upon the fact that it will be taken by mouth then we will be preparing it to work through the digestive system, and the digestive system in turn can send forces into the nerve-sense system. We are then introducing the quartz processes by detour through the digestive system. If, however, we see that more quartz processes need to be transmitted to the nerve-sense system by introducing them via the rhythmic system, via the blood and breath, then we inject the remedy and thereby attempt to heal by way of the rhythmic system.

If we want to work therapeutically by way of the digestive organs with aromatic ether substances contained in the blossom of the plant, then we will prepare a tea and introduce it into the gastro-intestinal tract by having the patient drink it. If we want to bring etheric oils which, through their aromatic properties, work directly upon the nerve-sense system—or working first upon the nerve-sense system and then into the rhythmic system—then we could make some kind of bath to which we add the juices of the blossoms. In this manner we work upon the nerve-sense system.

Thus we see how the healing effect of the different substances brought into a relationship to man depends on the various methods of application and treatment. This will become transparently clear if anthroposophical knowledge is more and more applied to bringing about a connection between nature processes and the human being. It can then become evident through anthroposophy which remedies one needs to apply and how one needs to apply them.

In this way something can be brought about in the laboratories within our clinical-therapeutic institutes and other endeavors in which physicians are involved making it possible that on the one hand, remedies and therapeutic methods can be tried out, and on the other hand, the remedies themselves can be prepared. We have such clinical institutes as well as chemical-pharmaceutical laboratories in Arlesheim, near Dornach, as well as in Stuttgart.

I must point here especially to the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim (now the Ita Wegman Klinik) which is under the exceptional direction of Frau Dr. Ita Wegman, who unfolds an activity full of blessing for that institute because she has that which I would like to call “the courage to heal.” It is evident that this courage to heal is necessary, especially if you look on the one hand into the complexity of natural processes out of which healing processes must be drawn forth, and on the other hand into the immense complexity of processes of illness and health in man.—If a physician confronts this vast field even if he only has a certain number of patients, then she or he is required to have courage in order to heal.

Attached to this Arlesheim Institute is the International Pharmaceutical Laboratory (now the Weleda) in which remedies are produced. They can be used today in the entire world. The pharmacy produces the remedies and it is up to others to find the ways and means to make use of them. That is the essential point. People must find the right ways and means to arrive at the right remedies without being dilettantes. Then contemporary science will not be negated; rather, it will be taken further, extended.

If this knowledge becomes widely known, the success of such an endeavor as the International Pharmaceutical Laboratory in Arlesheim will not be a problem. But it is difficult in the face of the prevalent, purely materialistic direction of medicine to bring into the world effective therapeutics which are based upon a full knowledge of man. To bring about a change one would have to count upon the insight of every person who has a heartfelt interest in the health of his fellow man.

In pointing to that which can be achieved through natural remedies and their appropriate application, I certainly do not want to exclude what can be achieved by more soul-spiritual processes of healing. In this realm one can make especially fruitful observations. If we now carry hygienic-therapeutic considerations—as always must be the case in a proper pedagogy—into the school, one can see how the manner in which one works upon the children in a soul-spiritual manner in instruction can have an effect on the health and illness of a person—if not immediately, then certainly in the course of life. When I give pedagogical lectures I naturally speak about these matters in greater detail. I will mention only one example: the teacher can proceed properly in relation to the memory of the child only if he expects neither too much nor too little. If he proceeds improperly, if he places too many demands on the memory in the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh years of life, then he does not have the proper pedagogical tact. What the soul must go through in an excessive activity of memory, or artificially nurtured activity of memory, will live itself out later in life as all kinds of physical illnesses. It is possible to establish a connection between diabetes and erroneous methods in education in relationship to memory. So too can the use of memory in education to the opposite extreme also have unfavorable effects upon a child.

I can mention this only in principle, but one can see from it not only how the natural remedies work in health and illness, but also how the special manner in which the soul itself works can be significant to health and illness.

Starting from there one can also find one's way to those methods whereby we attempt, through purely soul-spiritual influences, from person to person,—which I naturally cannot describe in detail any more today—to bring about processes leading to healing. Especially in this realm, however, it is very easy to get into dilettantism. One can, for example, harbor the belief that the so-called mental illnesses can be most easily healed through spiritual influences (for example by discussion). However, mental illnesses especially distinguish themselves by the fact that one can hardly approach the ill person with rational discussion. As a matter of fact it is just that impossibility of rational exchange which closes off the soul against outer influences in the so-called mentally ill. But one will find over and again that especially in so-called mental illness—which actually has been, as such, incorrectly named—physical processes of illness are present in a hidden way somewhere. Before one wants to meddle in a dilettantish way with mental illness, one ought actually, with the proper diagnosis, to determine which physical organ is involved in the illness. Only then will one be working beneficially through a corresponding healing of the physical organism.

One can help physical illnesses much sooner through all kinds of soul-spiritual (mental-psychological) influences, This is being done today but generally in a dilettantish way. I will not go into that now, Especially in physical illness much benefit will come in this way and the outer process which is brought about through remedies and the like will be supported in different ways.

I can only indicate this, Those methods which are based on the foundation of anthroposophy certainly do not exclude therapeutic soul-spiritual influences; rather, they include them. You have evidence of this in the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim-Dornach. Besides the physical-therapeutic methods you also find curative eurythmy.

This curative eurythmy consists in taking what you have seen here as artistic eurythmy and transforming it into health-giving movements for the person moving them, The vowel aspect is transformed so that the person makes healthy movements which are drawn out of eurythmy and are applied specifically in support of those forces which earlier I have called the albuminizing forces in man, while the consonant forces in many ways support the antimonizing forces, Thus it is possible through the working together of consonant and vowel eurythmy to bring about a balance between these two kinds of forces, And it can show there, if things are done properly, not in a dilettantish manner, how other healing processes, also in chronic illnesses, can be immensely supported through this curative eurythmy.

This curative eurythmy is actually based upon the fact that soul-spiritual processes are awakened through that which man does with his limbs. If one knows which movements want to come directly forth out of the healthy human organism, then one can also find the corresponding movements which will work in a healing way if one works back from the limbs, i.e. from the human movement, upon the processes of the inner organs.

In the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim the possibility exists to look at this curative eurythmy and to see how it, as a therapy, can be a specialized branch within the entire therapeutic process, a therapy which can be discovered out of true anthroposophical knowledge of man. It would naturally be going too far to discuss details in this area. The principles are actually given in what I have presented to you.

Thus it has happened that in the most varied ways we have had to develop this therapeutic endeavor within the anthroposophical movement because those involved in therapy have approached us. It has been a demand arising from the condition of the times. It was so-to-speak demanded by contemporary civilization. Anthroposophy has only given the answers to questions which were posed to it.

I really could only present the principles aphoristically to you today. More has not been possible during the available time. If I wanted to present matters in their totality, then I would have to do what I refused to do two days ago during the lecture on eurythmy. I would have to invite you to stay here through the night and listen to me till tomorrow morning, until the morning lecture. But that is something that would make you sick, and it would certainly be inappropriate for someone who wants to speak about bringing health to make people sick in this way. Therefore I must send you home for a healthy sleep following this sketchy presentation.

• 1. A febrile illness of prolonged duration which is marked by hectic fever, delirium, enlargement of the spleen, abdominal pain, and a variety of systemic manifestations such as headache, diarrhea, skin lesions, and more.

[ 1 ] Passing on to-day to the paintings in the smaller dome, it has not been possible to make lantern slides from the photographs of the paintings of the larger dome—as we pass on to the paintings in the smaller dome, I am indeed in a peculiar position, and everyone will be in this position who wishes to present an idea from these copies of what is meant by the paintings of the dome, to the wider public who has not first seen them here. The attempt has been made in accordance with that artistic point of view referred to, in my Mystery Play The Portal of Initiation, to evolve form in the painting entirely out of colour, so that, as regards the painting of the smaller dome, as far as possible, the influence of this point of view is actually felt—even then of course everything is only at the initial stages. [ 2 ] To allow form to appear as the creation of colour is that which is aimed at here. If we follow the history of painting we see that this fundamental principle to draw forth all that is pictorial from colour, can really only be at the very beginning of its development. Men tried in the art of painting because it offers the special temptation—this was even so in the most brilliant period—to express some naturalistic theme in reproduction. Even though it must be admitted—and who would not willingly admit, in reference to the production of Raphael, Leonardo, Michael Angelo and others?—that the greatest heights of pictorial art have been reached in striving for expression in this way, and it must be admitted that the whole modern cosmic conception which is unspiritual can scarcely do otherwise than somehow strive for expression, yet the time has come when a spiritualization of our cosmic conception must be sought; another principle, another way of artistic thinking, especially in the art of painting must make itself felt. [ 3 ] This artistic feeling certainly will only be admitted by him who has a presentiment that in this world each element represents a creative whole. If we have a right sense for the world of colour we find something truly world-creative in colour. Anyone able to sink himself into the world of colour is able to soar up to the feeling, that from this mysterious world of colour a world of beings spring up, that the colour itself through its own inherent forces will develop into a world of beings. I might say: as we see the growing man in embryo in the little child, so can we see a world of beings in embryo if we have a right sense for the world of colour.

[ 4 ] Certainly it does not mean that we should have merely a feeling for the single colour; the single colour, as a rule, establishes only a relationship between man and colour as such. To see blue means to feel an intense desire, longing, to go out into the space in which the colour is manifesting, to follow the colour; to look at red calls forth a feeling of being attacked, as if one had to defend oneself against something, and so on with the other colours. Colours have also a certain relation with that which can be formed in colour, if we are able to draw the form out of the colour. Blue, for instance will always help if we wish to express movement, red will always help if we wish to express physiognomy. But what I mean has to do much less with single colours at with what the colours have to say to one another, whet red has to say to blue, green to blue, green to red, orange to lilac, etc. In this exchange, I might say, of speech, and exchange of activity between the colours, an entirely new world would come to expression. And we do not fully perceive this interchange of speech and interplay of: colours, if me are not. able to perceive colours as ocean-waves rising and falling, and at the same to perceive, playing upon the waves of colour, coming into life from the colour-waves, the elemental beings which develop their forms of themselves out from the colour-waves.

[ 5 ] Thus the attempt has been made to show in painting the secret of how to create out of the very nature of colour. For a greater part of that which is living, which we look out on, is born wholly out of the creative colour-world. As our vegetation has sprung forth from the ocean, so that which is living grows out of the colour-world.

[ 6 ] I might say, it is always pitiful to see how those who are possessed of artistic feeling truly feel that the old forms of art are bankrupt, that they can go no further, and how in spite of this the world is not willing to respond to the impulse which can only be explained through the anthroposophical interpretation of the world. Certainly this anthroposophical interpretation of the world must be something more than a mere intellectual idealistic set of ideas. It must be an intuitive perception. We must be able to think in colours, in forms, just as we think in ideas and thoughts. We must be able to live in colours, in forms. [ 7 ] If our Building is to be what it is intended to be, it must in a certain sense, bring to expression, as in one living being, the spiritual, the psychic and the physical. The spiritual is essentially brought to expression in the forms of the pillars, the architrave and the capitals, etc. In these is reflected the spirit, out of itself creating form. The psychic finds its manifestation, for example, in the glass-windows. In this interplay of the external light with the engraving on the coloured sheets of glass may be dimly apprehended by the play of the psychic, and the physical, that shows itself in its own configuration if one has the right-vision for what is painted in the domes. The paintings in the domes express to a certain extent the physical substantiality. It is, of course, the case that in the arrangement of the Building, which strives to give an understanding of the world to come extent, there is a reversed order, as compared with the ordinary comprehension of the three world principles. This follows naturally in contrast to what one generally imagines, i.e. the spiritual above, the physical below. In that which should develop in the human soul as force of inspiration through the whole artistic structure of the Building there must be a reversed relationship.

[ 8 ] But this very creation from colours is of course just what I cannot show you in lantern slides, and therefore with lantern slides we do not get what is really essentially purposed in the painting in the domes. We get as it were inartistic ideas, effects of what is intended to he artistic. But of course that cannot be helped, and it is to be hoped that those who see these lantern slides of colour-pictures will regard there pictures as it were as crying out for something else, as not really giving expression to that which is intended. If we take them in the right way we must say, as regards these lantern slides of colour-pictures somewhat as follows: “What is really in these pictures, really wishes to speak to us in a totally different language”, and then we shall be led to see the Building itself in the original conception of it. And out of the contemplation of these lantern slides, this will be a longing that will then arise in him who has artistic perception. Hence I do not think it quite superfluous to produce even these lantern slides.

[ 9 ] We start from here in the small dome, where as a beginning there is, on the surface of the walls, a kind of flying child, immediately at the junction of the large and small domes. You see this flying child, which in its composition belongs to what follows on here on your left. The composition is of course entirely derived from the colour; yet it also forms an element in the configuration of the small dome. You understand the whole figure of this child here if you keep in mind the two adjacent forms.

We will now put on the next picture.

[ 10 ] You see here as it were a figure of Faust. Here we are in the riddle Ages, just at the time when our fifth post-Atlantean age begins and here you find the only word written in letters, the Ich or I or Ego. In the whole Building you find nothing anywhere expressed in written letters. The intellectual method of representing a word, of this foundation word I or Ego, has so far its justification here, in that, with the commencement of the fifth post-Atlantean civilisation that in which ourselves stand—in the 15th century, developing further into the time of Faust, in the 16th century, that which was invisible appeared, that which expressed by mere symbols, by what had detached itself from Reality. That which lay at the bottom of the real ego-being of man was not grasped. In the universal spiritual evolution of humanity no image of the ego had been evolved. For, when man said “I” he had only an abstract idea in his mind. This is therefore the justification for introducing a wholly unreal representation of the ego through letters. And it falls into place naturally by the side of the Faust-figure. [ 11 ] Do not, I beg you, attach any special value to my expression Faust-figure. The main thing is that in the whole composition this figure expresses what the spirit of the age in that very epoch produces in the seeking man. You see it brought to expression especially in the eye, in the countenance, in the attitude of the hand, you see it expressed in the whole gesture of the figure. That we are reminded of Faust is what one might say—purely arbitrary. It is the man who in the fifth our post-Atlantean age actually seeks, which is the characteristic of our age. Of the real fundamental character of this seeking few men as yet are conscious. Since the 15th century we have evolved ever more a sort of philosophy of death, which is no longer capable of grappling with life. [ 12 ] This is the result of the whole training which humanity had to pass through at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period. During this period humanity has to develop the inner force of freedom. self-consciousness. Humanity can only do this by breaking adrift from nature. But to break adrift from nature means to identify oneself with the forces which in perceiving, alone understand death, recognise what is dead. All our ideas, all concepts which are the actual concepts of civilisation lead to death, are concerned with what is dead. And he who to-day is not himself dead, as most learned men are in soul, he who to-day is not himself dead as regards his seeking, finds in the seeking of these principles an incentive to what makes man free but is at the same time, I might say, the abyss or the dead. He has constantly the feeling: Thou makest thyself indeed free, but in so doing thou comest into proximity with death. Thus Death had to be brought into proximity with the Faust-figure.

[ 13 ] This is below. Hero you see the seeking man, who to-day is under the impress, under the feeling of death, death which always accompanies the most important ideals in the search for knowledge. It would be unbearable to a feeling soul to have a sort of Faust-figure above and below to have death, and no counterpart in the composition. Therefore, before we come to this composition of Faust and Death, we have this flying child, which to some extent represents the contrast to the feeling of Death. Thus a Trinity is to be understood: Death, the Seeking Man and the young Child full of life. With this is painted in the small dome what may be presented as the Initiation of the fifth post-Atlantean time. The Initiation-wisdom of the fifth-post Atlantean time is not to be won without one's having as it were full consciousness of the significance of Death, not only in human life, but in the life of the whole world as well. We possess indeed our powers of thinking because we continually bear the forces of death in our head. Were these forces which are active in our head for the purpose of thinking to penetrate our whole organism we should not be able to live, we should continually die. We only live because the tendency in our head to death is continually balanced by the tendency to life in the rest of our organism. That is, I may say briefly and lightly expressed in the abstract, the law of our time. [ 14 ] When I tell you this, I can understand that it does not penetrate specially deeply into your hearts, into your souls. To have experienced, signifies something fearful; to have experienced that impulse which in every effort for knowledge says: What thou canst acquire as knowledge at the present time, thou owest to Death which penetrates more and more into the earth-life. What really must enter into the earth-life of humanity will only enter when this initiation-principle, now at the very beginning of its growth—the power of Death!—extends further and further and engenders the vital longing of the newer future humanity for the compensating spirit, for a youth who is already Jupiter, which is no longer earth-youth, which is already the youth of the next planetary embodiment of the earth.

[ 15 ] We now go back to what can-be pictorially represented of the fourth post-Atlantean (the Graeco-Latin) period of civilisation. A sort of form is given here in the paintings of the small dome, which in its whole configuration - you will particularly feel this when you look at the colouring of this figure in the small dome—which, in its whole configuration, in its whole nature, portrays the shining-in of the spiritual world into humanity during the fourth post-Atlantean period, as it was to be at that time. Above this figure you find those who gave the inspiration, of which I have not been able to obtain lantern slides from the photographs. You always find those who inspire, over the corresponding figures, only in the case of the fifth post-Atlantean period of civilisation, Death itself, appears from below and approaching man above is the real Being which inspires.

[ 16 ] Here you see above a kind of God, an Apollo-like form, as the inspirer. That which, through inspiration, is able to enter a human form of the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilisation comes into this figure. Thus you see the actual human history of the inner soul-development is painted in the small dome. Of course you must give up asking inartistic questions. When an artist paints a form on the wall, there is nothing in his soul that,can meet such a question as: What does this or that mean? The inartistic man will stand before this figure and say: What do there two or three heads mean on the left of the principal figure? That it not the question of an artist; it is the question which he who paints it will least of all be willing to answer, because for him visions have to form pictorially, they simply appear in space as forms in a vision. He perceives nothing whatever with which to meet the question: What does that mean?—but he feels a necessity from the creative cosmic forces to place a form, which is inspired just like this one, in the neighbourhood of that which has already been-represented in human form.

[ 17 ] I spoke of the creative forces themselves inherent in the colour-world. At the present time, if one sees any painting, one always has the image in one's mind. This is just what must be overcome. There are many more elementary impressions which must possess the artistic soul. (I will explain more clearly in detail what I have to say). Suppose I simply make a smudge of colour, a yellow smudge, and add to it a blue smudge (see illustration). He who perceives colour as something actually living cannot experience other than, when he so perceives a colour in this way, a yellow smudge with a blue border, to see a head in profile.

[ 18 ] This follows of itself for him who carries the life of colour within him. Just two smudges of colour are, to him who possesses the creative idea of colour, that which at the came time leads to the experience of its essence. But anyone cannot, let us say, paint a face according to colour in such a way that he can say: I have seen a face, or indeed, have a model, and after this model I have formed a face, and it resembles it. Not in this way will painting be done in the future, but colour will be experienced, and the artist will turn away from everything naturalistic, from all copying, and from the colour itself that will be drawn out which already lies in it and which must necessarily be drawn out, if one has a living feeling with the life of colour itself.

[ 19 ] Here you find a combination of what you have seen singly before: here above, the Flying Child, this Figure of the 16th century, below Death, the remainder less distinct. You see here above, the one inspiring, you can recognise him the higher inspirer of the figure you have just seen on this sheet but which is here very indistinct. It is, of course, difficult to reproduce in this rough way of colourless pictures things which have really only been lightly breathed into the colours on the walls. Such can only be understood, I might say, as a description of what is actually intended.

[ 20 ] Here you see the inspiring figures of the third post-Atlantean (the Egyptians) period of civilisation, those which inspire from the spiritual world that figure which will now appear in the next picture.

We have here, inspired by the previous figures, the Initiates of the third post-Atlantean period of civilisation.

[ 21 ] Thus in the small dome the actual psychic evolution of humanity is painted, certainly not according to historical time, that you will see at once, but in an inner way. For now we are not going back simply to the earlier second post-Atlantean period of civilisation, but we are going back indeed to the Persian principle of Initiation, which also had developed out of the primeval Persian principle of Initiation, and is the Germanic principle of Initiation.

So when we pass on to the next picture we have the Germanic principle of Initiation. This Germanic-Persian principle of Initiation is founded on a dualism, and everything depends on the understanding of the fact that the initiation of of the period of civilisation which took its rise in the primeval Persian period, continued its development in the Goethean period of civilisation. It spread geographically from Asia Minor, across the Black Sea northwards into Europe, and this Initiation-stream reaches its fulfilment in recognising the principle of man's effort to seek the balance between Lucifer, whom you see on the right, and Ahriman on the left. The essential point is that we understand that this current of civilisation crust derive all force in the finding of the condition of equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. And an attempt has been made, in this very figure, which is inspired by the Ahrimanic-Luciferic principle itself, by that which you see here on the right as Luciferic, and here on the left as Ahrimanic, to show in the attitude, in the whole physiognomy, that spirituality that must result from the realisation of this dualism, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, between which man has to find the balance.

[ 22 ] The fact that you see here the child as it were held up by the Initiate, for this there is no good foundation. For what flows into man through the inspiration of the dual principle, could not be endured, it would kill him inwardly, if he had not always the vision of youth, of the child. When you see this in the dome, you will observe that an earnest attempt has been made to draw out of the colours just what is meant here. An attempt has been made to draw out of the colours even the contrast between what is Luciferic and what is Ahrimanic. Only you must not analyse minutely, but seek what is essential in the artistic perception.

[ 23 ] Picture 8: Here you see Ahriman presented. There are not two Ahrimans, but Ahriman and his shadow. That is to say, Ahriman does not go about without his constant shadow accompanying him. Ahriman himself would be a much too freezing, too drying-up a principle of he appeared for instance in his full nature. It is most necessary to have near him his shadow which qualifies his freezing influence. If you study the colours in the small dome, you will see that in this particular shade of colour, the brownish-green, an attempt has been made to expr ess the freezing effect of Ahriman; an attempt has been made to bring everything out of the colour.

[ 24 ] Here you see the Lucifer-theme. You will only understand the Luciferic and Ahrimanic principles fully if you see them in connection. If you simply look at Ahriman alone and Lucifer alone you will really understand neither; only when you have them side by side, because really Ahriman and Lucifer create and work in such a way in the universe that always whatever the one accomplishes is taken and made use of by the other, and vice versa. Thus their figures can only be rightly understood if one sees them in their living relationship to each other.

The inspiration that come from these will be shown in the next picture.

[ 25 ] I had hoped to express in this countenance with its adequate colour what is possible to express in a figure standing under the influence of this dual principle. It is the need,of inner stability, and at the same time self-possession in temperament, in character and the joyous inclination towards that which is young and childlike, in order to bear all that which one experiences under the actual inspiring influence of the dual principle.

Here we have the same again in another aspect.

[ 26 ] Here you see that into which our Period of civilisation will resolve itself. This picture is to be found nearer to the central Group, that of the representative of Humanity with Ahriman and Lucifer We have attempted to represent what had to be shown here as an Initiate, i.e. such a man who could embody the spiritual revelation of the coming 6th post-Atlantean period of civilisation, even now in advance, and we have attempted to represent such an Initiate through the medium of form and colour. For this reason we had to picture not a Russian of to-day: but that which is to be seen to a certain extent in every Russian to-day. every such Russian has his own shadow continually as his companion. He has always his second self who accompanies him, and that is what is here expressed.

[ 27 ] But you must realise that that which is here inspiring him is more spiritual compared with the earlier source of inspiration. Hence this angel-like form which here appears in its whole outline growing out of the blue. You will see more clearly in the next picture the kind of centaur-figure which is essentially necessary to the inspiring Being. You see, this inspiration leads at the same time out into the starry world. We recognise again man in his connection with that in the Cosmos which is external to the earth. But the Being which inspires is no longer to be conceived of in human likeness. In our attempt to show form we come to figures which are no longer human-like which have certain qualities of form which recall the qualities and temperament of man but are no longer human as such.

[ 28 ] Here is this inspiring figure which is a figure of the Cosmos and at the same time in connection with that which still tends towards the human, but is an angel-like Being born wholly out of the colour of the clouds. This is what we see as the colour Inspirer.

The same Being; only there is more to see; the Initiates are here to be seen. Of course the whole effect lies in the colour composition, which, naturally, is here wholly lacking.

[ 29 ] Here we see the upper portion of the Central Group. The middle figure shows the Representative of Humanity, above it, Lucifer.

The middle figure is represented in the painting—under it the Group which is the Chief Group stands—is here represented in painting where the space is small, so as to represent the Luciferic and Ahrimanic principles in one figure only; while, in the plastic Group, on account of the weight, on account of the proportions of the space they are given in double form.

This figure is only to be understood through the colours, through the Red colour out of which it is chiefly composed together with some other shades of colour. And here we are shown how man is seeking the state of equilibrium between that which is Luciferic and that which is Ahrimanic. This search for the state of balance is to certain extent to be found in man as much physically and physiologically as also in his soul and spirit.

[ 30 ] From a physiological, from a physical point of view, man is not that simple growing being that he is often represented to be in superficial science. an inclines continually on the one hand towards ossification, and on the other hand towards .a softening gelatinous condition.

The tendency in a man towards softening, which arises when the blood gains the upper hand, comes from Luciferic influences. Where the Luciferic influence tends to gain the upper hand physiologically in the human being, where feverish phenomena appears physiologically in man as actual formative principles, the Luciferic influence is predominant. As a result, the human form approximates more and more to this form. Man had this form during the ancient-moon period. In other words: if that principle which is specially the principle of growth in heart and lungs were alone to rule the human being, man would preserve such a form. Only through the fact that the Ahrimanic principle is found at the opposite pole to the Luciferic, the physiological state of equilibrium is maintained between that which the blood brings about and that which is produced by the ossifying tendency. This is the case viewed physiologically, from the point of view of the physical body.

[ 31 ] From the point of view of the soul one may say: man is continually on the search for the state of balance between excessive enthusiasm, which is Luciferic, and that which is prosaic, materialistic, abstract, which is Ahrimanic. From the point of view of the spirit: man is continually seeking the balance between theca conditions of consciousness which are specially permeated with Light where the consciousness is awakened through the irradiation, through the illumination of the soul; through the Luciferic. And the opposite pole is that through which weight, gravity, electricity, magnetism, in short, all that which holds one down, bring about the consciousness of self, the attainment of consciousness: all this is Ahrimanic. Man is always seeking the balance between these two conditions, and we may observe how that all that man can make man more conscious, that can bring him away, from the middle.path always inclines either to the one side or the other, the Luciferic or Ahrimanic. It would be of immense importance even for the study of human physical organism, if we discarded the merely theoretical principle of growth, that of the One principle, and took into consideration that polarically-opposed impulses of growth are present in man as if interwoven, intermingled with each other. The other impulse of growth is Ahrimanic.

[ 32 ] Picture 17: Here is the exact opposite. In every shape, in every line you will see the exact opposite of Lucifer, in this Ahriman, who as it were grows out of the masses of rock, i.e. out of the solid conditions of the earth. His aim is to approach man and so lay hold of him with his force of gravity, (his solidity) that at the same time he slays him with ossification or presses him to death in barren materialism. This is what is expressed in this figure of Ahriman. He appears as if slain by light, hence the rays of which bind him wit) cords so that he is fettered by them. In between we have man - man himself.

[ 33 ] The real man, who represents the condition of equilibrium, under him Ahriman, above him Lucifer.

I expressly draw your attention to this, that here again it is not essential to aim at the visionary conception of the Christ. The essential is that we feel what is here presented in this figure. Then we shall arrive ourselves, through the art representation, to the Christ. That is, we shall discover the central being of all earth's existence, the Christ, when we experience that which is to be felt in this form. The Christ may to-day discovered purely spiritually. But we must rightly understand man and rightly perceive him.

[ 34 ] On the other hand it may be said: he who to-day understands and smypathises with that which man can suffer, with that which he can enjoy, he who fully realises how man can go astray or raise himself towards one side or the other, he who is striving after a real self-knowledge, if he only goes far enough along the road of feeling, perception and will, he will discover the Christ. And he will then be able to find again in the Gospels, in all historical documents, the Christ he has discovered. We cannot to-day really attain to true knowledge of man without attaining to the knowledge of the Christ.

[ 35 ] Even along physiological, biological lines if we rightly conceive of man in his physical form we shall come to the understanding of the Christ. It is just the task of the fifth post-Atlantean time to attain more and more to this understanding of the Christ. Hence there could not be a visionary Christ-figure, concerning which one merely enquired its significance, in the central point of our Building, but the Representative of Humanity, in which the Christ to a certain extent appears in his essence. This is what I would beg you always to consider concerning these things; not to start out from the prosaic intellectual, but from the symbolic, not from the visionary to set out from that which is really there on the wall, not from that which may be imagined about it. That which should fill our thought should come forth from that which is on the wall itself.

[ 36 ] Of course that which is on the wall is only imperfectly executed, but every beginning must be imperfect; even the gothic architecture, when it first appeared was imperfect. The perfect will undoubtedly follow out of that which has here been attempted. This is not to say that earnest effort has not been made to find the true Representative of, Humanity by every means of the art of occult investigation. You see, that figure of Christ which is the traditional one arose only in the 6th century after Christ. For myself, I only give this out as a fact, but do not require from anyone that he accept it as a dogma of belief, for myself I am quite clear on the point, it is for me a fact, that the Christ Jesus who walked in Palestine had this countenance, which you may see on the carved figure. And the attempt has only been made to represent in the expressive gesture that which one sees more when the etheric body is observed than when one observes the physical body. Hence also, the strongly-marked asymmetry which we have dared to portray. This asymmetry is present in every human countenance, naturally not in this strength, but the human countenance is thus indeed, especially as at present man wears in many respects an untrue mask. When humanity will have reached a certain spiritualisation in the 6th and specially the 7th post-Atlantean period where physical man will no longer live on the earth, then man will wear his true countenance, i.e. will express in his countenance what he is really worth within.

[ 37 ] But all this—I should like to point out—is very difficult for the paint-brush or chisel to represent in the painting and sculpture and that which we have attempted to express as the Representative of Humanity. As imperfect as these things may be, he who studies them will find that the secrets, the mysteries of human evolution are actually sainted in this little cupola. He will certainly find that which is meant to be expressed., may be experienced from out of the colour, and that these pictures can only indicate to you what you are capable of feeling, when, on receiving the information which I have given you to-day, you expect nothing symbolic, nothing about which man can enquire the meaning, but when you—rather, with the information I have given you to-day, seek to feel that which is painted into this little cupola.

[ 38 ] Picture 19: Now I want to show the other view of the heating-house. Yesterday I showed the front view, and you see that this heating-house is thought out as a whole, so that its side-view to a certain extent stands full in harmony with the whole, as I yesterday, through the comparison with the nutshell, explained to you.

[ 39 ] I have tried to give you to-day what we have up to the present in pictures. I should like to say that the actual attempt has been made with this Building to make the conception of the Building as far as possible a unity. For example, you see the Building covered over with Norwegian slate. Once when I was travelling on a lecture tour from Christiania to Bergen, I saw on the mountain slopes the wonderful slate-quarries of the neighbourhood of Voss, and the thought came to me that our Building must be covered with this slate. You will find, if you strike a favourable day, and desire to see the thing, that the particular blue-grey glistening of the dome—the covering of this slate—in the sun, makes an impression which is suited to the Building in its dignity.

[ 40 ] This is what I am able to say concerning the Building, in reference to these pictures. I wanted.to make this Building comprehensible to our friends who are willing to undertake the,risk of making it known to and understood by those to whom the Goetheanum in Dornach is perhaps nothing but a name they have heard, and to whom the place is only a geographical idea. I wanted to give this exhibition for those friends who are willing to bring before the understanding of those who are thus placed what will proceed from the Goetheanum for , the future of the evolution of humanity. It is of great importance that this visible token of Spiritual Science from the point of view of Anthroposophy should be accurately brought to the knowledge of the world, and that it is made to a certain extent the centre-point of our considerations and of our feeling within our anthroposophical world-conception.

[ 41 ] He who truly feels at what a turning-point the evolution of humanity has arrived in the present day, he will really indeed find within himself the necessary stimulus to make known what is here being carried out in Dornach. There are not many to-day who see how strongly the forces of human historical forms, coming from the past, act as destructive forces. We have indeed submitted to the destructive forces in Europe during the last 4 or 5 years; only the very few have wished actually to think over and appreciate what really happened. Those who do appreciate it will surely feel that nothing is to be gained for the further development of humanity from that which has been brought over from old times, that literally the new revelation which presses in upon us since the last third of the 19th century must be received by this world of ours.

[ 42 ] No one can think socially to-day without taking up the impulses which come to us from this knowledge which has been described. We must painfully, really painfully, realise, when we hear that there are to-day men who say: Oh Spiritual Science according to Anthroposophy was very pleasant, as long as it was Spiritual Science ,as long as it did not bother itself with outride things, as for example, “The Threefold State” does. There have arisen individual men among the earlier followers of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science who say: Spiritual Science was very acceptable to us by itself; with the social aspect we cannot and will not identify ourselves. Such an attitude of mind is sectarian, and that is what our movement truly never wished to be; this sectarianism only strives after a certain spiritual voluptuousness. I should like to know how anyone can be so without heart, so terribly heartless in the presence of such impulses as are appearing in the evolution of humanity as to say: I want something that comforts my soul, that assures me of immortality, but I won't touch it if this spiritual striving is to have a practical social result. Is it not heartless in such a time as this, not to wish for a practical result from that for which we are striving spiritually?

[ 43 ] Is it not the most confused mysticism to as it were fold the hands and say to oneself: For my soul I will have Spiritual Science but this Spiritual Science must have no social result. It is heartlessness. For how terrible it is to think that to anyone this Spiritual Science should be the most important thing in life, and that it should have no counsel to give in the present-day burdened social condition of humanity. That is the good of this Spiritual Science if it contains no help towards which humanity to-day may turn! Shall it be quite unfruitful, this Spiritual Science, for life? Does it only exist to pour into men a spiritual bliss? No, only thus can it preserve itself, by creating out of itself actual practical results. And it means that true Spiritual Science is not understood if men will not advance to practical results. And Spiritual Science must not be mere visionary knowledge, Spiritual Science must be actual life. Therefore it is always such a great pain that not very many more human souls are able to rouse themselves out of the impulses of Spiritual Science to the great interests of humanity to-day. To-day that which affects the individual is of such infinitesimal importance as compared with that which is fermenting and working in humanity, and the moment one occupies oneself with anything personal, the thought is immediately directed the great interests of humanity. But how many people think like this? For I must remember, how necessary it really is to communicate certain esoteric truths to humanity, and yet how impossible this is because there is really no set of people in whom really the impersonal objective principles have the value that they should have. It is a pressing necessity to communicate certain truths of Initiation to humanity. Only it cannot be done, when one has to do with men who the whole day long are only occupied with their own personal interests, as if they were of the highest importance. To turn our eyes to the human interests, that is what is of such immense importance. He who does this will see very very much to-day.

[ 44 ] I have to draw your attention again and again to the beginning of this battle-storm which will arise with all sorts of slander and lies against Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. Men do not want to believe this, but it is true; Spiritual Science will not be fought primarily on account of its faults; these would be forgiven it; Spiritual Science will be attacked just when it succeeds in accomplishing something good. And the hottest and most infamous attack will be directed against that which Spiritual Science can do of good.

[ 45 ] Each one must examine himself, whilst continually observing with true inner force that which can only be criticised as relentless opposition to Spiritual Science, whether he does not perhaps carry in himself too much of that attitude which does not attack the failings but rather the good sides of Spiritual Science. Much of this sort might be pondered over to-day: And this sort of thing must continually be pointed out. And the time must certainly come firstly, in which it will be possible not to have to approach closed doors with the communication of certain esoteric truths, because men are only occupied with their own personal interests, and secondly in which it will also be possible to bring the most important things when they are spoken, actually home to the hearts of men. As a rule one may proclaim things of the greatest significance—men take them only as a kind of theoretical knowledge, and hence they do not penetrate into, their hearts and affect them deeply; whilst everyday things, humdrum things even perhaps relatively big things, penetrate easily into the hearts of men.

[ 46 ] This is what we must before all else strive for; that that which is drawn from the Spirit shall truly penetrate right into the heart, into the soul, that it does not remain merely in our understanding. Much of the most important of that which has been spoken to-day, which may already be found in the teachings of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, bears no fruit on this account, that men let it get no further than their understanding, and then they say perhaps: This is something which should only be grasped by the understanding: But that is their own desire—to leave it only to the understanding, because they only take it as a wisdom for the head, and do not let it reach their hearts. This observation I wish to link on to the Introduction I have given you of the Building.

Only when they intervene in the organization, which also affects ordinary remembering - when they have the strength of sensory impressions - within the area adjacent to the sensory sphere - thus on the inward boundary.

The dream is experienced in the etheric body - movement only occurs when the astral body clings to the etheric body.

When the connection between the ego and the astral body becomes conscious, then one experiences in the will - a feeling of emptiness; when the connection between the physical body and the etheric body becomes conscious, then one experiences in the imagination - a feeling of density; the inner being is filled - as if spinning dreams formed this inner being. The imagination, becoming more and more ethereal, forms a picture, either within the senses (in waking consciousness) or behind them (in dreams or imagination).

In dreams, the temporal perspective that is experienced in waking life comes to our perception.

In imagination, the spatial perspective is removed – the images inwardly carry the movement.

The figures of the dream are alienated from the I; the imaginations are assimilated by the I.

The mystic withdraws from the world; the naturalist goes out into the world. The spiritual researcher enters with the world into his inner being and with his inner being into the world.

In breathing, the contact with the outer world is experienced dreamily in the rhythmic system.

In the inspiration that consciousness pours out through the imagination, this interaction is experienced with full awareness throughout the entire body.

But it is not air; it is ether - and with it its content - the soul-spiritual (astral). - Thus the world before and after earthly life is opened. - But with that, the ethical world has also merged with the physical world.

One converses with a dream figure as with a living person, without knowing that he has recently died - (Hartmann). One never does that in the imagination - because in it one lives only in the sphere of reality - one does not take into account in imagining anything that has not been experienced - one learns to live in images. -

One imagines that one has written a book and searches for the manuscript (Hartmann, Psych. p. 88). One does not do this in the imagination because one views the inner process that is present quite differently; not as a wish but as a task that arises. One finds in it the forces of survival. Not the desires are inwardly stimulated – but one remains fixed on the image = the image is not filled by the outer world, but by the activity emanating from within = Ordinary Consciousness: Wish-Image-Reality.

Speaking about occultism and the occult development of the human being, one must first and foremost clarify how the cultivation of occult development relates to actual theosophical work in the world. The latter has, since its inception, performed its task precisely by making a certain number of occult truths accessible to mankind. These truths about the super-sensible worlds, which can be learned from the theosophical literature and lectures, are essentially ancient. However, until the last third of the 19th century, it was neither usual nor necessary to share these truths publicly with the world in the form in which they exist today as theosophical truths. The cultivation of these truths was a matter of the so-called secret schools and secret societies.

One who wanted to learn some of the ancient truths about the inner world, had to be, so to speak, an accepted student, a student of the great teachers of mankind. That someone would have travelled around, as we do nowadays, to share certain elemental truths with the world, wasn't done back then. One who was admitted had to provide certain proofs of his character, his intellectual and other abilities, and within the school, there was a very strict division by degree. It was impossible, for example, to reveal to someone who had just been accepted, secrets of higher degrees. In short, everything was strictly ordered, and the world outside did not know anything about the existence of such a secret science, although this is the only true occultism.

Who were those who found their calling there? Usually, they were not known. One was a smith, one a shoemaker, a privy councillor, a carpenter. What was known was only what he represented in the world. One did not know that these people were wise ones, able to deeply look into the spiritual and super-sensible world. This changed in the last third of the 19th century. Today it is necessary that at least the elementary parts of the secret sciences reflected in theosophical texts, lectures and other writings, be made public. That this is possible and why this is so, we will see right away.

First, we must take a look at this past age, which really basically lasted into the 14th century, and also partly into the last third of the 19th century. What is happening now, the publication of certain elemental teachings of occultism had been prepared by the occult movement. This movement was founded in the 14th and 15th centuries by a high-ranking individual who became known to the world under the name of Christian Rosenkreutz.¹ What ‘Christian Rosenkreutz’ is, or who hides behind it, only the initiates know. One thing only is certain, he belongs to the most developed individuals of the modern era, who had to shape the occult knowledge of the Middle Ages in such a way, that it would fit into modern life.

In the last third of the 19th century, some were meant to go out to announce to humanity, what it needs to know today. Theosophy is nothing else but the elementary doctrine of occultism.

If we now look back at those distant times when occultism was practised in secret, there were three avenues by which a human being could come into contact with the super-sensible worlds: First as an initiate, second as a clairvoyant, third as an adept. In the old days, these three methods were kept strictly apart, and if we really want to understand what the occult development of man is all about, then we must clearly understand these three terms.

It is actually known what is meant by a clairvoyant. I specifically note that the more important one is the clairvoyant because he, after all, possesses higher senses. It is very easy to explain what a clairvoyant is. In every human soul, hidden abilities lie dormant. These can be developed, enabling the human being to look into the world hidden from the ordinary senses. There are such secret scientific methods. If a human being practises these himself, then he will no longer be as unconscious during sleep as an ordinary human being. Practising these methods make it possible that his astral body, when it pushes itself out with the Ego, perceives the spiritual world in his surroundings. Initially perceived like flooding light, like light- and colour-phenomena, he then begins to hear during the night.

This is a real experience the human being has of himself: that he, for the time being in a transitional state, is surrounded by a spiritual world as well as by a physical one. This is the beginning of actual clairvoyance.

One who really wants to achieve the state of clairvoyance, must be able to carry across into his day-consciousness what he now sees at night, because it would only be a half-measure if one could only look at night into the astral world. Once he is able to really tune in, so that he sees not only what exists for the physical senses in humans, animals and so on, but also perceives as shining aura that which the human being and the animal feels and experiences, then the state of modern clairvoyance is reached. Therefore, a clairvoyant is someone who can really see into the spiritual world and speak about it.

Let’s assume, there was an area where people have never seen a railroad and someone from there moves to an area where there were railroads. Then he would learn about it through his own experience. He would be able to talk about it at home based on his own experience, just as the clairvoyant can testify about the spiritual world.

But someone who is such a clairvoyant, is not yet what could be called an adept, nor could he be called an initiate. If a man who, according to the example above, has become familiar with a railway by personal experience, now returns home, he would not be entrusted with the task of building a railway. The same applies to the clairvoyant. He is not able to do what someone else can do who has gained practical and scientific knowledge in the super-sensible world. This is how the clairvoyant, who has only seen what exists in the higher worlds, is in comparison to the adept.

Still different is the Initiate. Here is another comparison: Imagine a human being who can see all colours and lights, and another one who is quite short-sighted. The first one doesn’t know anything about the laws of the world of light, the other one, who can’t see far, but as a trained physicist and scientist knows all the laws well. There are people, who are initiated to a high degree, despite them not being clairvoyant; at least this is applicable to all the old schools, but not to the same degree nowadays. In the old days it was possible to work like this, because don’t forget that to teach clairvoyance or train initiates is a lengthy process. Some require many incarnations to achieve this.

Such cooperation of clairvoyants and initiates is now no longer entirely possible; for this reason the Rosicrucian School no longer keeps these things strictly separate. The selflessness, that used to operate in the secret schools, can hardly be comprehended by people today. Especially, in the Egyptian secret schools individuals worked together in this way. Today, the requisite trust no longer exists, and modern man cannot imagine this anymore. This is why initiates and clairvoyants in the Rosicrucian schools were only developed to a certain degree. In contrast, one has to deal very carefully with adeptship as one could only harm the world. Because people are very disinclined to believe that spiritual powers influence everything. A storm would be unleashed and the consequence of this would be that the preparatory understanding would be jeopardised. First, it is necessary for clairvoyants and initiates to teach the occult knowledge, and only then adepts will gradually appear.

What is an adept? They exist in all areas. Observe man himself. Man consists by his nature of a physical, an etheric, and an astral body and an ego. The various limbs of human nature develop quite differently at certain ages. This is a very important consideration. Because, for the occultist a human being is born repeatedly, first physically out of the physical mother. There the physical body is enclosed by the mother’s physical body; different blood circles and juices are moving from mother to child. Once it is physically born, the mother’s physical body is detached from the child completely. This is the first birth. At this point in time the etheric body has not been born. The second birth only happens after the second dentition begins in the seventh year of life. Until then the etheric body is enclosed by the etheric shell, which does not really belong to the specific etheric body of the child. Only in the seventh year of life will the etheric body really be born. The shell will be pushed back, and the outer expression of this process is the appearance of the adult teeth, which the human being will keep. The clairvoyant sees, how, to the extent in which the teeth appear, the etheric body is being born out of his mother’s shell. Until sexual maturity, the human being is still enclosed by its astral mother, who is there from the beginning and will remain also after the seventh year of life. Then the astral mother will be pushed aside, and only now the astral body will be born, like earlier the physical and the etheric body were born. The reaching of sexual maturity means for man, the birth of the astral body. From age twenty-one to twenty-eight only, the ego will be fully born.

Once people realise how this development proceeds, it will become clear what kind of impact this will have on education. I have given a description of this in my paper The education of the child from the perspective of the science of the spirit.² This brochure contains all the rules that need to be taken into consideration in this context. Now, you see, a teacher, who has mastered this system, would be an adept in the area of education.

This practical work appearing from the spiritual worlds is adeptship. Until age seven a kind of hardening (solidification) of forms is happening inside the human being. All forms of the brain, and the bone structures (skeleton) will be created by the seventh year of life. They will continue to grow, but what doesn’t develop by age seven is irretrievable. So something irretrievable can be neglected by education. From then onwards the etheric body becomes free. Now it becomes obvious how the teeth that a human being gets are an expression of proper solidification and formation processes of the etheric body, which is just being born, and show whether they are in correct proportion to each other. These two things are related, the emergence of the teeth and the emergence of the etheric body. Everything that is concerned with growth and reproduction is connected with it. If one of these is not correct, then the other one will not be correct either. This illustrates how the science of the spirit explains how the teeth and the etheric body are connected. For example, women who have bad teeth, are more likely to have been affected by childbed fever.

Something of the principle of solidification and something of the principle of softening must exist—these hardening and softening principles need to exist in balance. Rickits, for example, occurs when the softening principle is stronger. Let us assume that the hardening principle is predominant, then the germs are laid for tuberculosis, for arteriosclerosis.

The moment in which the human being, by applying super-sensible principles, is able to guide the development of the etheric and physical body, he will be an adept in the area of child education, just like Paracelsus,³ who is no longer understood, was an adept, as he could perceive in any moment the invisible principles. Now you can imagine the kind of storm that would break out if you would approach a university with such teachings. Humankind must be prepared step by step, and then it will come to a point where it will demand that spiritual leaders back up their teachings with works from the spiritual world. The reason for the existence of initiates is, that the spiritual world can be researched and found according to its prevailing laws by means of clairvoyance. However, when one has found it and talks about it, then all things that a clairvoyant says can be understood by common sense, and if someone maintains that he cannot understand these, then the reason is not that he isn’t clairvoyant, but that he does not want to use his common sense enough.

Thus, one can be an initiate, without being clairvoyant, but then one has to rely on the clairvoyant. In a certain respect, the theosophical movement aims to help by requiring that all their public teachings are based on clairvoyants’ experience. What do you then want an audience for? In a way, one wants to turn them into Initiates, who comprehend without being clairvoyant themselves.

This is the mission of the theosophical movement. It is also the correct relationship between the teachings that are being given and the way these are made available to the wider audience. Now, this in-depth penetration of the super-sensible world is based on very particular methods. Here, I have already once mentioned specifically the Rosicrucian method,⁴ therefore I will only add a bit.

To raise a human being up into the higher worlds, to turn him into a clairvoyant, requires him to first develop strengths which are already in him: thinking, feeling and willpower. This already includes a lot of the difficulties experienced in the first elementary grades, which are talked about if one intends to alert of dangers. Clairvoyance is for certain people a far too beautiful thing, and those who hear something about Theosophy are keen to achieve clairvoyance. They are not very thrilled when they are told it is necessary to learn something before one gets results.

The first thing one must do is to develop one’s thinking, thoroughly develop it, and certainly prior to becoming a clairvoyant. It is extraordinarily difficult nowadays, to explain what is meant by ‘develop the thinking”. If you can see into the higher world through the opening of the higher senses, you will see that these worlds look very, very different from what you have imagined here. Normally, someone who cannot yet look into them can hardly imagine what one can experience, what kind of impressions there are, and even less so in relation to the world of clairaudience, the harmony of the spheres. One thing, however, remains constant through all worlds: logical thinking. If you have learnt this here, then it is a safe guide in the astral and spiritual worlds. The impressions are totally different, but logic remains the same. This only begins to change in the highest worlds.

What is offered in the theosophical works and books is sensory-free thinking. If one doesn’t learn to do that, then one exposes oneself to a certain danger. One can enable someone else to look into the astral world, but it should not be forgotten, that, if one is not completely standing on the solid ground of healthy thinking, it is extraordinarily difficult there to tell truth from illusion. One who can’t differentiate is simply deranged, he is not spiritually or mentally healthy and thus exposes himself to the danger of losing his balance when the astral world overwhelms him.

One learns to grasp the astral world gradually, by working on one’s feelings, and this happens through imagination. I will show you how this approaches the human being, teaches him, and introduces him to the astral world. This is facilitated by way of converting all ideas a human has, which are normally expressed as dogmas and abstract concepts, into pictures which appear visually. What we are thinking and talking and learning are abstract concepts, thus initially there is speculation. This will lead no one into the higher worlds. Only when the concepts are transformed into pictures does the human being gradually gain access to the higher worlds.

How is this transformation of thoughts into pictures achieved? In the Rosicrucian school, a teacher would say to the student: Look at this plant. With its roots it strives into the ground, its stem rises up straight, on the top is the bloom and the fruit. And now compare the plant with the human being. Superficially thinking one could be tempted to compare the bloom with the human head, and what is down below in the plant with the feet of the human being. In reality, the head of the plant is the root, and what the plant holds chastely up towards the light are its fertility organs. This is exactly the opposite of what is the case with humans.

The bloom has turned these organs towards the light. Imagine this whole thing exactly—if you wouldn’t turn the plant’s fertility organs up towards the light, but down towards the centre of the earth, then they would be penetrated by desire and passion. Thus, we find in a human being a reversed plant, at once pervaded by desires and passions. Thus, the human body is flesh whilst the plant body, the chaste one, is a body that has not yet developed into flesh.

And now look at an animal: It stands between plant and human. Plant, animal and the human being upwards form the cross that extends throughout the whole of nature. Now the student is told: Look at the plant, how it turns its calyx upwards, is kissed by the sun, by the beam of light called the holy lance of love. The human being had to exchange the plant body with the one of flesh pervaded by desire, but he has a high ideal in front of his eyes.

Here we must observe the human heart and the larynx. There are two types of organs in a human body, those, which are on the path to imperfection, and which will incrementally fall away, and others that are only in the stage of formation. All the lower organs, the sexual organs will fall away. Heart and larynx, on the other hand, are organs which will only be perfected in the future, and will only then be developed.

I am speaking to you. My thoughts are within me. I put these into words that originate from my larynx, and create sound vibrations, and in this way, my thoughts communicate with your soul. The voice box is the apparatus to produce airwaves and bring out that which is in the soul. If someone would invent a device through which these waves could be solidified, then you would be able to pick up my thoughts, and my words. In the future, the larynx will not only produce words, but one day it will become the creative, reproductive organ, and will create future beings similar to humans.

During certain times the plant-like nature of the human was not yet penetrated by the lusting passionate nature of the flesh. Those specific organs, which were the latest to develop out of the animal nature, will first disappear again. These are the reproductive organs. These remained for a long time as plant organs after the human being had already appeared in flesh. For this reason, there exist pictorial collections where pictures of hermaphrodites⁵ with plant organs are on display. When the Bible tells about Eve’s fig leaf, in reality, this is a symbol of the fact that these organs were the last to develop in the flesh. In this way, the religious texts must be interpreted. The sexual organs are declining organs, whilst the larynx is in a process of complete transformation, and once the human being has become chaste again, the larynx will turn itself again towards the spiritual sun. The calyx of the plant developed into the form of the flesh filled with passionate desires, and then the larynx will once again become a chaste, pure calyx, fertilised by Spirit, which will be raised up towards the holy lance of love. This is also the symbol of the Holy Grail, its high ideal.

Compare this, try to feel and re-experience all the shivers those images aroused; then you will have only one of those images which are given to a Rosicrucian student. And while you are wandering through these, then you will realise bit by bit that your feelings become facts for you. You will perceive that these feelings radiate light. It always radiates, but the lower human being doesn’t see it. One who experiences this mystical part of imagination learns to see his feelings. This is the beginning.

Not magic, but an intimate process of imagination happens at the beginning of the rise to clairvoyance. But here one thing needs to become clear because from that moment onwards you will see everything emanating from yourself. When one actually starts to transform the inner life into light, one has to be able to bear what is then seen. This requires a strength of character which hardly anyone can imagine. For example, if you, not being clairvoyant, tell a lie this is bad enough. But if you are clairvoyant and tell a lie, and you then see how the lie becomes visible and what it means on the astral plane, then you will understand why it is said that there a lie is murder. And this is so. Just assume you have seen an event happening, and have formed an idea about it, and then tell something that is incorrect, i.e., something that is a lie. Then from the object emanates the correct and from you the false stream and these two will collide and cause a terrible explosion; and each time you do this, you attach a hideous creature to your karma that you can't get rid of until you have made good what you have lied about.

Everyone who wants to become clairvoyant needs to develop three virtues, which are crucial for him. First, self-confidence is needed to be sure of oneself. Second, self-awareness is needed so one is never allowed to shy away from recognising one’s mistakes. And third, presence of mind is needed since one will encounter many things on the astral plane that, while present around us all the time, are something else to see. For this reason these characteristics must be developed first and foremost, and it is really nonsense that some sort of schools or societies train people to become clairvoyants without guiding them in this way.

If now in a different way, a student will be taught namely through occult texts, he will be guided upwards into the spiritual Devachan world to hearing. There one must immerse oneself into those pictures which exist for the development of the human being. I will place one such picture as an example in front of your soul.

Think of the ancient times, when the human being had just come into existence in his current form. In those days Earth was a warm, glowing fireball, and all metals and minerals were melted in the glowing Earth. The physicist would say human beings could not exist there. In those days the human being climbed down from the Godhead and formed himself in the glowing matter. This transformation was a lengthy process. If you were able to see what the clairvoyant can perceive, you would see that he had wrapped himself into a body of fire.

Where has the fire that was burning on the Earth now gone? Where is it? It is in your blood. All the warmth that has been inside the human beings and the animals was and is the fire glow of the Earth. And once you will be able to transform your blood again, so that it shines—and this will be the case when the human larynx will be transformed into the Holy Grail—then the human beings will once again send out an abundance of light. If someone now immerses himself into a picture like this one, then he can achieve clairvoyance, clairaudience. I wish to point to the introduction to the Apocalypse of John which states: “The revelation of Jesus Christ, that God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.” These are pictures that have been used for development in Rosicrucian schools. The clairvoyant must learn to decipher such pictures. The development of the Earth will be the Word, and the Word will be with man, and man will create human beings through the Word.

• 1. Christian Rosenkreutz: Not recognised by public history as a real historic figure of the 14th/15th century, Christian Rosenkreutz became legendarily known from two anonymous Rosicrucian texts Fama Fraternitatis, ot the Discovery of the Brotherhood of the Highly Laudable Order of R.C., Kassel 1614, and Confessio Fraternitatis or Confession of the laudable Brotherhood of the highly honourable Rose Cross, Kassel 1615. According to this, he was a German of noble birth who lived from 1378 to 1484. The name appears for the first time in a text handwritten and as such distributed in 1604, and in 1616 anonymously published in the text The Chymical Wedding of Christiani Rosencreutz, Anno 1459. Rudolf Steiner presented the author of this text, Johann Valentin Andreae, as the carrier of inspiration of Christian Rosenkreutz. Refer to Rudolf Steiner, The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in Philosophy and Anthroposophy. Collected Essays 1904-1923, GA 35. The essay is also contained in the translation of The Chymical Weddinginto New High German by Walter Weber, Basel 1978., According to Rudolf Steiner, Christian Rosenkreutz was a real historical personality. Compare also, The Esoteric Christendom and the Spiritual Leadership of Humanity, GA 130.
• 2. The Education of the Child from the perspective of Spiritual Science, first published in 1907.
• 3. Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus, 1493-1541, doctor and philosopher.
• 4. Refer to note 1(Chapter 1) above. Obviously, the deliberations of Rudolf Steiner at this point have been only fragmentarily captured by the note taker. For better comprehension it is referred to the presentation in the lecture dated 15 September 1909; Lecture 1 in The Luke Gospel cycle, GA 114.
• 5. Beings who have male and female gender characteristics.

If in this whole lecture course we are to concentrate our efforts on gaining a deeper understanding of the words “Father and Mother of Jesus,” and consequently of the essence of Christianity in general according to the Gospel of St. John, we must first acquire the material for an understanding of the concept, Mother and Father, in its spiritual sense, as it is intended in this Gospel and at the same time in its actual meaning. For it is not a question of an allegorical or a symbolic explanation.

We must first understand what it means to unite oneself with the higher spiritual worlds, to prepare oneself to receive the higher worlds. We must at the same time consider the nature of initiation, especially in regard to the Gospel of St. John. Let us ask: What is an initiate?

In all ages of the post-Atlantean human evolution, an initiate has been a person who could lift himself above the outer physical sense-world and have his own personal experiences in the spiritual worlds, a person who could experience the spiritual worlds just as the ordinary human being experiences the physical sense-world through the outer senses, eyes, ears, etc. Such an initiate becomes then a witness of those worlds and their truths. That is one aspect. But there is also something else very essential which every initiate acquires as a very special characteristic during his initiation, that is, he lifts himself above the feelings and sensations which are not only justified but also very necessary within the physical world, but which cannot, however, exist in the same way in the spiritual world.

Do not misunderstand what is said here and imagine that anyone who is able, as an initiate, to experience the spiritual world as well as the physical world must give up all other human feelings and sensations which are of value here in the physical world and exchange them for those of the higher worlds. This is not so. He does not exchange one for the other, but he acquires one in addition to the other. If, on the one hand, he has to spiritualize his feelings, he must, on the other, strengthen much more those feelings which are of use for working in the physical world. In this way we must interpret those words used in connection with an initiate, namely, that he must, in a certain sense, become a homeless person. It is not meant that in any sense he must become estranged from his home and his family as long as he lives in the physical world, but these words have at least this much significance, that by acquiring the corresponding feelings in the spiritual world, the feelings for the physical world will experience a finer, more beautiful development. What does it mean to be homeless? It means that one without this designation cannot, in the true sense of the word, attain initiation. To be a homeless man, means that he must develop no special sympathies in the spiritual world similar to those he possesses here in the physical world for special regions or relationships. The individual human being in the physical world belongs to some particular folk or to some particular family, to this or that community of the state. That is all quite proper. He does not need to lose this; he needs it here. If, however, he wished to employ these feelings in the spiritual world, he would bring a very bad dowry to that world. There, it is not a question of developing sympathy for anything, but of allowing everything to work upon him objectively, according to its inherent worth. It could also be said, were this generally understood, that an initiate must be, in the fullest sense of the word, an objective human being.

It is just through its evolution upon the earth that humanity has emerged out of a former homeless state connected with the ancient dreamy, clairvoyant consciousness. We have seen how mankind has descended out of the spiritual spheres into the physical world. In the primal spiritual spheres, patriotism and such things did not exist. When humanity descended from the spiritual spheres, one part peopled the earth in one region and another part in another region, and thus the individual groups of human beings of different regions became stereotype copies of those regions. Do not imagine that the negro became black solely from inner reasons; he became black also through adapting himself to the region of the earth in which he lived. And so it was also with the white people. Just as the great differences of colour and race came into existence because human beings have acquired something through their connection with their environment, so is it also true in respect of the smaller differences in folk individuality. But this has again to do with the specialization of love upon the earth. Because men became dissimilar, love was at first established in small communities. Only gradually will humanity be able to evolve out of the small communities into a large community of love which will develop concretely through the very implanting of the Spirit-Self. The initiate had to anticipate whither human evolution is tending in order to overcome and bridge over all barriers and bring about great peace, great harmony and brotherhood. In his homelessness, he must always, at the very beginning, receive the same rudiments of great brotherly love. This was symbolically expressed in ancient times in the descriptions of the wanderings experienced by the initiate, such as those, for example, of Pythagoras. Why was this described? In order that the initiate might become objective toward every thing in the feelings he had developed within the heart of the community. It is the task of Christianity to bring to the whole of humanity the Impulse of this Brotherhood which the initiate always possessed as an individual impulse.

Let us hold clearly in mind that most profound idea of Christianity, that the Christ is the Spirit of the earth and that the earth is His body or vesture. And let us take it literally, for we have said that we must weigh in the balance each separate word of such a document as the Gospel of St. John. What do we learn with respect to the “vesture of the earth” when we make a survey of evolution? We learn, first of all, the fact that the vesture of the earth—that is, the solid parts of it—was divided. One person took possession of this part, another of that part. This part belonged to one person, that part to another. Possession, i.e. the extension of the personality through the acquisition of property, is in a certain sense that into which the garment worn by the Christ, the Spirit of the earth, has, in the course of time, been divided. One thing alone could not be divided, but belonged to all; this was the airy envelope surrounding the earth. And from this airy covering, the breath of life was breathed into the human being, as we are shown in the myths of Paradise. Here we have the first rudiments of the ego in the physical body. The air cannot be divided. Let us try to find out whether the one who described Christianity most profoundly in the Gospel of St. John has anywhere indicated this:

And they parted His garments; but His coat they did not divide.

Here you have the words which give you an explanation of how the earth as a whole, together with its airy envelope, is the body or garment, and the coat of the Christ. The garments of the Christ were divided into continents and regions; but not the coat. The air has not been divided; it remains a common possession of all. It is the external, material symbol for the love which is hovering about the earthly globe, which will later be realized.

And in many other connections, Christianity must bring mankind to an acceptance of some of the ancient principles of initiation. If we wish to understand this, we must now characterize initiation. It will suffice, if we consider especially the three main types of initiation; the ancient Yoga, the really specific Christian initiation, and that initiation which is entirely appropriate for men of the present day, the Christian-Rosicrucian initiation. We intend now to describe what course initiation, in general, takes in all three of these forms; what it is and what it represents.

How does a human being become capable of perception in spiritual worlds? First, let me ask, how have you become capable of observing in the physical world? The physical body has sense-organs that make this possible. If you trace human evolution very far back, you will find that in primeval times, the human creature did not yet possess eyes for seeing and ears for hearing in the physical world, but that, as Goethe says, all organs were still undifferentiated. As proof of this, just recall how certain lower animals today still have these undifferentiated organs. Certain lower animals have points through which they can distinguish only light and darkness, and out of these undifferentiated organs, eyes and ears have been moulded and formed. They have been worked into the plastic substance of the physical body. Because your eye has been moulded, there exists for you a world of colour, and because your ear has been sculptured, a world of tone is audible to you. No one has the right to say that a world does not really exist; he may only say, “I do not perceive it.” For to see the world in the true sense of the word, means that I have the organs with which to perceive it. One may say: “I know only this or that world,” but one may not say: “I do not admit of the existence of a world that someone else perceives.” A person who speaks in this manner demands that others too should perceive only just what he himself perceives, but nothing else; he claims authoritatively that only what he perceives is true. When at present someone appears and says: That is all Anthroposophical imagining, what Anthroposophists declare exists, does not exist,” he only proves that he and those like him do not perceive these worlds. We take the positive standpoint. Whoever grants only the existence of what he himself perceives, demands not only that we acknowledge what he knows, but he wishes to make an authoritative decision about something of which he knows nothing. There is no greater intolerance than that shown by official science toward Spiritual Science, and it will become even worse than it has ever been before! It appears in the most varied forms. People are not at all conscious of saying something which they should not allow themselves to say. In many gatherings of very good Christians, one can hear it said: "Anthroposophists talk of some kind of an esoteric Christian teaching, but Christianity needs no esoteric teaching; for only that can be true which a simple, unpretentious mind can perceive and understand," which means, of course, only what the speaker can perceive and understand. He therefore requires that no one should perceive and understand anything different from what he himself perceives and understands. The infallibility of the Pope is quite properly not acknowledged in such Christian assemblies, but the infallibility of the individual is claimed today in the widest circles even by the Christians. Anthroposophy is attacked as a result of this papal standpoint in consequence of which each individual sets himself up as a kind of little pope.

If we consider that the physical sense-world exists for us because the individual organs have been carved into the physical body, it will no longer seem extraordinary when it is said that perception in a higher world rests upon the fact that higher organs have been formed in the higher members of the human organism, in the ether and astral bodies. The physical body is, in this way, already provided with its sense-organs, but the ether and astral bodies are not yet so provided; these have still to be carved into them. When this has been done, there exists what is called perception in the higher worlds.

We shall now speak of the way in which these organs are built into the ether and astral bodies. We have said that in anyone who aspires to initiation and has attained it, higher organs have been developed. How is this accomplished? It is a matter of understanding the human astral body in the state in which it exists in its purity. During the day this astral body is immersed in the physical body. There the forces of the physical body act upon it; it is not then free. It carries out the demands of the physical body; hence it is impossible to begin the development of these higher organs during the day. It can be begun when the astral body is out of the physical body, in sleep; only then can the astral body be moulded. The human astral body can only have its higher sense organs developed when they are carved into it during sleep, while outside the physical body. But we cannot manipulate a sleeping human being; that would not be possible for the modern man, if he wishes to perceive what is happening to him in sleep. If you have him in an unconscious condition, then he cannot observe this. Here there seems to be a contradiction, for the astral body is not conscious of its connection with the physical body during sleep. But indirectly it is possible that during the day the physical body is acted upon and the impressions which it then receives remain within the astral body when this is withdrawn at night. Just as the impressions which the astral body receives from the surrounding physical world have been impressed upon it, so in like manner we must do something quite specific with the physical body, in order that this something be imprinted upon the astral body and then be formed in it in the proper manner. This happens when the human being ceases to live in his customary way during the day, allowing random impressions to enter his consciousness, and takes his inner life in hand by means of a methodical schooling in the manner described. This is called Meditation, Concentration or Contemplation. These are exercises which are as strictly prescribed in the schools for the purpose, as microscopy is prescribed in the laboratories. If a person carries out these exercises, they act so intensely upon him that the astral body is plastically re-shaped when it withdraws during sleep. Just as this sponge adapts itself to the form of my hand as long as I hold it there, but forms itself again according to the forces inherent in it as soon as I release it, so in like manner is it with the astral body; when in sleep it withdraws from the corporality, it follows the astral forces invested in it. Thus it is during the day that we must undertake those spiritual activities by means of which the astral body, during the night, is plastically formed so that organs of higher perception are developed in it.

Meditation can be regulated in a threefold manner. 1. There can be more consideration given to the thought-matter, to the so-called elements of Wisdom, the pure element of thought. This is the Yoga training which deals especially with the element of thought, Contemplation. 2. One can work more upon the feeling through its special cultivation. This is the specifically Christian course. 3. Again one can work through a combination of feeling and will. This is the Christian-Rosicrucian method. To consider the Yoga practice would carry us too far, and it would also have no relationship to the Gospel of St. John. We shall consider the specifically Christian initiation and explain its basis. You must think of this form of initiation as one which a person belonging to the present social order could hardly undergo. It demands a temporary isolation. The Rosicrucian method, however, is the method by which we can work ourselves into the higher worlds without interfering with our duties. What, however, is applicable in principle, we can also fully explain by means of Christian initiation.

This method of initiation has to do exclusively with the feelings, and I shall now have to enumerate seven experiences of the feeling-life; seven stages of feeling, through the experiencing of which the astral body is actually so affected that it develops its organs during the night. Let us describe how the Christian neophyte must live in order that he may pass through these stages. The first stage is what is called “Washing the Feet.” Here the teacher says to the pupil: “Observe the plants. They have their roots in the ground; the mineral earth is a lower being than the plant. If the plant were able to contemplate its own nature, it would have to say to the earth; it is true I am a higher being, but if thou wert not there, I could not exist; for from thee, O earth, I draw most of my sustenance. If the plant were able to translate this into feeling, it would then bow itself down to the stone and say:—I bow myself before thee, O stone, thou humbler being, for I am indebted to thee for my very existence! Then if we ascend to the animal, it would have to behave in a similar manner toward the plant and say: Indeed it is true, I am higher than the plant, but to the lower kingdoms I owe my existence! If in this manner we mount higher and reach the human being, then each individual who stands somewhat higher in the social scale must incline himself to the lower and say: To those on the lower social level I owe my existence! This continues on up to Christ-Jesus. The Twelve who are about Him are at a level lower than Christ-Jesus; but as the plant develops out of the stone, so does the Christ grow out of the Twelve. He bows down to the Twelve and says: I owe you My existence.”

When the teacher had explained this to the pupil, he then said to him: "For weeks must thou surrender thyself to this cosmic feeling of how the superior should incline to the inferior and when thou hast thoroughly developed this feeling within thee, then wilt thou experience an inner and an outer symptom!" These are not the essential things, they only indicate that the pupil has practiced sufficiently. When the physical body was sufficiently influenced by the soul, this was indicated to him by an external symptom in which he feels as though water were lapping over his feet. That is a very real feeling! And he has another very real feeling in which the “Washing of the Feet” appears to him as in a mighty vision in the astral, the inclining of the Higher Self to the lower. Thus the occult student experiences in the astral world what is found depicted in the Gospel of St. John as an historical fact.

At the second stage, the pupil is told: "Thou must develop within thyself yet another feeling. Thou must picture how it would be were all the suffering and sorrow possible in the world to come upon thee; thou must feel how it would be wert thou exposed to the piling up of all possible hindrances, and thou must enter into the feeling that thou must stand erect even though all the adversity of the world were to bear down upon thee!" Then when the pupil has practised this exercise for a sufficient length of time, there are again two symptoms; in the first he has the feeling of being beaten from all sides, and in the second he has an astral vision of the “Scourging.” I am relating what hundreds of people have experienced whereby they have acquired the ability to mount into the higher worlds.

In the third exercise, the pupil had to imagine that the holiest thing that he possesses, which he defends with his whole ego-being, is subjected to jeers and gibes. He must say to himself:—“Come what may, I must hold myself erect and defend what is holy to me.” When he had accustomed himself to this, he felt something like pricking upon his head, and he experienced the “Crown of Thorns” as an astral vision. Again it must be said that the important thing is not the symptoms; they appear as a result of the exercises. Care was also taken that there was no question of suggestion and auto-suggestion.

In the fourth exercise, the pupil's body must become as foreign to his feelings as any external object—a stick of wood for example—and he must not say “I” to his body. This experience must become so much a part of his feelings that he says: “I carry my body about with me as I do my coat.” He connects his ego no longer with his body. Then something occurs which is called the Stigmata. What in many cases might be a condition of sickness is in this case a result of Meditation, because all sickness must be eliminated. On the feet and hands and on the right side of the breast appear the so-called Stigmata; and as an inner symptom, he beholds the “Crucifixion” in an astral vision.

The fifth, sixth and seventh grades of feeling, we can only briefly describe. The fifth grade consists of what is called “The Mystical Death.” Through feelings which the pupil is permitted to experience at this stage, he feels as though, in an instant, a black curtain were drawn before the whole physical, visible world and as though everything had disappeared. This moment is important because of something else that must be experienced, if one wishes to push on into Christian initiation, in the true sense of the word. The pupil then feels that he can plunge into the primal causes of evil, pain, affliction and sorrow. And he can suffer all the evil that exists in the depths of the human soul, when he descends into Hell. That is the “Descent into Hell.” When this has been experienced, it is as though the black curtain had been rent asunder and he looks into the spiritual world.

The sixth step is what is called the “Interment and Resurrection.” This is the stage at which the pupil feels himself one with the entire earth-body. He feels as though he were laid within and belonged to the whole earth planet. His life has been extended into a planetary existence.

The seventh experience cannot be described in words; only one could describe it who is able to think without the physical brain instrument—and for that there is no language, because our language has only designations for the physical plane. Therefore, only a reference can be made to this stage. It surpasses anything that the human being can possibly conceive. This is called the “Ascension” or the complete absorption into the spiritual world.

This completes the gamut of feelings into which the pupil, during waking day-consciousness, must place himself with complete inner equanimity. When the pupil has surrendered himself to these experiences, they act so strongly upon the astral body that, in the night, inner sense-organs are developed, are plastically formed. These seven steps of feeling are not practiced in the Rosicrucian initiation, but the result is the same as that of which we have just spoken.

Thus you see that the important thing in initiation is to influence the astral body in such a way by the indirect means of the day-experiences, that it may, when it is wholly free during the night, take on a new plastic form. When the human being in this manner, as an astral being, has given himself a plastic form, the astral body has become actually a new member of the human organism. He is then wholly permeated by Manas or Spirit-Self.

When the astral body is thus divided, that part which has in this way been plastically formed is brought over into the ether body. And just as you press the seal upon the sealing-wax, and the name on the seal appears not only on the seal, but on the wax as well, so too must the astral body dip down into the ether body and impress upon it whatever it may now possess. The inner process, the working over of the astral body, is the same in all methods of initiation. Only in the method of transmission into the ether body do the individual methods differ. We shall speak tomorrow of these differences and show how the three methods of initiation, which have proved to be the most profound evolutionary impulses in the course of the post-Atlantean age, differ from each other and what significance initiation, in general, has for human evolution. Then these parts of the Gospel of St. John upon which we have not yet been able to touch will also become clear.

In recent times, the question of the unconscious has come to the fore and is often spoken of in psychology. Everything in human soul life that cannot be reached, observed or explained by ordinary consciousness is relegated to the region of the unconscious. When this unconscious realm is mentioned, it is always supposed—notwithstanding the assumption that it must remain unknown—that it contains forces that do work into the conscious soul life. The emergence of this idea of the unconscious is due wholly to the fact that a certain skepticism, indeed a feeling of impotence, has arisen in recent times in regard to solving specific problems of philosophy, cosmology and religion. The insight that we have described here as imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge has the task now of probing into this undefined reservoir, which figures in so many ways in recent science as “the unconscious.” It is just by means of this supersensible knowledge—by reaching other levels of consciousness in which a different soul condition exists, hence a different perceptual capacity—that the concrete facts, which are not accessible to ordinary consciousness, must be investigated. Today I would like to give you an example of such research in an unconscious region of the soul, namely the experiences the human soul undergoes between going to sleep and waking.

Ordinary consciousness remains quite unconscious of what happens to the human soul in sleep. But we should not believe that these experiences have less meaning or are less decisive in a man's life than experiences of waking consciousness. Certainly, for external life, for our work and activities, for humanity's outer progress, the waking hours are of primary consideration. But for the configuration and the development of man's inner being, the rich experiences of the state of sleep are of the first importance. Even though man remains unconscious of them, these experiences are real, and their after-effects play into waking life. Man's general mood of soul during his waking hours is permeated by the after-effects of sleep. His physical and etheric organizations, which are worked upon by his astral organization and his actual spiritual organization, that is to say his ego organism, are permeated also. They too are influenced during waking life by the after-effects of sleep.

For ordinary consciousness the phenomena of sleep appear as follows: sense perception begins to dim down, in the end it is entirely extinguished; the same also happens in the case of thinking, feeling and willing. Except for the transitional state when we are dreaming, man sinks into an unconscious condition. But what happens to the soul then—and this must be strongly emphasized—is something absolutely real. What remains unconscious to ordinary consciousness in this respect can be illuminated by imaginative, inspired and intuitive cognition. Therefore, I will describe for you

the soul's experiences during sleep. At least sketchily, I will describe how imagination, inspiration and intuition can perceive what, for ordinary consciousness, is unconscious. I will outline the soul's experiences as if they were lived through consciously, for they are experienced consciously through higher cognition. It is not as if the soul were unconscious throughout the night, but what would otherwise have remained unconscious can be seen by means of imagination, inspiration and intuition. Light can in this way be cast upon it so that it becomes visible. The following then comes into view.

When man first enters into the state of sleep, the sense world around him ceases to exist for the soul. He goes into an inner experience that is undifferentiated, in a certain sense indefinite. The soul feels—I say feels but it does not feel; if it were conscious, it would feel—it feels enlarged as in a widespread fog. In this inward feeling and experiencing during this first stage of sleep subject and object cannot at first be distinguished. No separate phenomena and facts are distinguishable; it is a general sensing of a nebulous universality, which is sensed as one's own existence. But simultaneously there appears in the sleeping person what may be called a deep need to rest in the divine essence of the cosmos. With this outflowing of experience into an undifferentiated condition is mixed an indefinite longing—one must use such a word after all—“to rest in God. “ As I said, I describe it as if the events, experienced unconsciously, were passed through consciously. Thus, the external world of daytime, everything the soul receives through the senses, is swallowed up. All the stimuli through which the soul feels in the body are gone and, likewise, all the impulses by means of which the soul sends its will through the body are gone. The soul has at first a general, universal sensation accompanied by a longing for God.

In this condition, which arises initially after falling asleep, dreams can intervene. They are either symbolic pictures of outer experiences, memory pictures, symbolic images of inner bodily conditions, and so on, or they are dreams in which certain true facts of the spiritual world can be intermingled without the ordinary dreamer being able to acquire a definite knowledge of what the dreams really contain. Even for one who views this condition of soul with imaginative cognition—for by means of it one can do this already—dreams do not throw light upon the inner facts, rather do they veil the real truth. For this truth, in relation to what is meant here, can only be perceived by a person, if, out of his own free will, he prepares himself in an appropriate manner through soul exercises such as have been described here. Only as a result of these soul exercises can a clear view of this first stage of sleep be attained.

If you look with such cognitional faculties into this first stage of sleep, when you can divine it, it shows itself to be similar to, but not exactly the same as the unconscious experiences of earliest childhood. Indeed, if man were in a position to bring these experiences to consciousness and pour them into the concepts and ideas of ordinary consciousness, such as philosophy is occupied with, then these philosophical ideas would attain reality. The philosophy to which we should thus attain would be something real. So it can also be said that in the first stage of every sleep man becomes an unconscious philosopher. He attains to what in waking consciousness is cultivated in his soul as ideas, as dialectics and logical laws. If the flowing into the cosmic mists of the etheric world and the soul's longing to rest in God could be permeated with the experience of actuality, if man could bring these two soul experiences to consciousness and pour them into abstract philosophical ideas, then these ideas would come alive. Philosophy would then be as it was in Greece before Socrates, and in still earlier epochs of humanity. It would be an inwardly experienced reality.

We have now learned to know two stages of man's unfolding: that of his earliest childhood, which, if brought to consciousness, would represent the reality of philosophical ideas and the experience of the first stage of sleep, which, as we have noted, is quite similar to the unconscious experience of childhood, and which, when brought to consciousness, could in the same way give a living experience of reality to a philosophy worked out during waking life. That describes the first, somewhat brief stages that a human being undergoes from the time of falling asleep to waking up.

After the soul has been for a time in the state of sleep described above, another condition sets in. This second stage of sleep is such that instead of the experience of his own physical and etheric bodies, which he has when awake, man has a form of experience through which he feels inside himself the cosmos that in daytime surrounds him. While in the first stage the soul experiences no clear distinction between subject and object, this difference now becomes increasingly meaningful except that during sleep man has come into the reverse condition from that of being awake. He now feels and experiences himself in the cosmos and looks back on his physical and etheric organisms as upon an object. Just as he vaguely feels his organs—lungs, liver, heart, and so on—in day consciousness, now, in sleep, he experiences the cosmic content within himself; he himself becomes, as it were, cosmos in his soul. Not as if he extended out into the whole cosmos; rather, he experiences something like a reflection of the cosmos within him.

The first unconscious experience—which even so is wholly real—is, I might say, a fragmentation of this inner soul experience. The soul feels as if it were divided up into many separate parts of a manifoldness. It feels itself not as a unity but as a multiplicity; as if, when awake, we were to experience ourselves in the brain not as a homogeneous being but as a multiplicity of eyes, ears, lungs, liver and so on, and we were missing the sense of unity. Thus, during sleep, we experience, so to say, the cosmic ingredients without at first experiencing their unity. That brings about a condition of soul which, if we were conscious of it, we should have to describe as permeated by anxiety, even fear. The soul, however, really experiences the objective processes that cause this nightly anxiety, just as the organic processes of the physical and etheric organisms underlie what might be experienced here or there by the soul as anxiety coming from within. They are, in fact, fear-inspiring occurrences that the soul has to live through.

In this stage of sleep, occurrences of waking life now reveal their effects. For modern man living after the Mystery of Golgotha there appear the after-effects of what he experiences in waking life as inner religious devotion to Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha. The attention man gives to it, all reverence and worship that he develops for the Christ and that Mystery during his waking life, have after-effects in this second stage of sleep. It was otherwise for those who lived on earth before the Mystery of Golgotha. They received from their religious leaders appropriate measures, religious functions to carry out, whose effects they could carry over into sleep and that worked there in such a way that this anxiety could gradually be overcome. For a person living after the Mystery of Golgotha his inner bond with Christ, his feeling of belonging to Him, the religious rituals directed to Christ Jesus, his whole relation to Him and his actual conduct in reference to this relationship, all this now works into the life of sleep and helps to overcome that anxiety which oppresses the soul.

As I said, I describe things as they appear to inspired consciousness, but they certainly are experienced by the soul as reality. So, while I present concepts taken from conscious life, the actual corresponding processes are really present in the life of the soul. If, in daytime, we have developed a relation to the Christ, we actually meet His guiding power during this second stage of sleep. It is this guiding power of Christ through which we overcome the anxiety that oppresses the soul. Out of this anxiety there develops a cosmic relationship of the soul to the world. As a result of the development of this relationship, but in such a way that the soul experiences it as its inner life, the movements of the planetary system in our solar cosmos stand before the soul. It does not expand out into the planetary world during sleep, but an inner replica of it lives in the soul. It actually experiences the planetary cosmos in a replica. Even if what the soul experiences every night as a small, inner globe, a celestial globe, does not illuminate day consciousness, it does stream into the reality of daily life and continues on in the physical and etheric organizations in the systems of breathing and blood circulation, the whole rhythmic system, we find that these processes are accompanied by impulses and stimuli that live in the physical and the etheric body and work into waking life out of the inner planetary experience which the soul has in sleep. While we are awake, therefore, the planetary movements of our solar system pulse through our breathing and circulation as after-effects of sleep.

During sleep—supersensible vision shows us that astral and ego organizations are outside the physical and etheric bodies—the planetary movements do not work directly. They are experienced by the soul outside the physical and etheric organisms. But within the sleeping physical body the impulses from the previous night echo and reverberate, the same impulses that have pulsated through breathing and circulation during the day. During the following night an after-effect of these impulses is present, and they are renewed the next morning as a consequence of what the soul experienced in the night as an inner replica of the planetary cosmos.

Now in addition to this cosmic experience during the second stage of sleep something else happens. The soul receives distinct impressions of all the relationships it has ever entertained with human souls in its various lives on earth. We actually have within us, I might say, “markings” of all the relationships we have had with other human souls in successive earth lives. They now appear before the soul in a certain pictorial form. Although unconsciously, the soul really experiences everything that has been good or bad in its dealings with other people. Likewise, it experiences its developing relationships with spiritual beings who dwell in the cosmos and never live in a physical body, who always live in a super-sensible existence as opposed to the physical life of man. The human soul in sleep thus lives in a rich network of relations with those human souls with whom it has established such connections. These connections reappear, as does everything that has remained from them as after-effects of the right and wrong a person has done to others, the good and evil he may have caused. In short, the existing destiny of a person confronts his soul in this stage of sleep.

What an older philosophy has called karma appears at this stage every night before man's soul. Since the planetary experiences continue to work as stimuli in the breathing and blood circulation, and thus in man's physical and etheric organizations, it is possible for someone capable of perceiving such things through inspired cognition to observe that this experience of repeated earth lives also plays over into day consciousness, even though it is not directly present. It is clearly evident to inspired cognition, which perceives what the soul experiences, that repeated earth lives are a fact, for to the view of inspiration they present themselves directly together with the relationships established at any time with other people. Man's development through repeated earth lives presents itself because these relationships are beheld. One relationship points back to one certain earth life, another points to another life, and so on. In this way, karma appears before man's eyes as an established fact.

The experiences of the soul during sleep work in such a manner into day consciousness that man's general mood, making itself felt during the day in the form of a dull awareness of himself, depends on what we undergo in this second stage of sleep. Whether we feel happy or unhappy in our dimly perceived inner self, whether we feel lively or languid, is to a great extent the result of what is experienced in this stage of sleep. So, during this stage we find ourselves actually outside in the cosmos, even though what we experience within the soul is a copy of the cosmos; and what we experience of repeated earth lives and karma appears before the soul as images and reflections. These replicas of the cosmos and our destiny that stand before our soul contain what can be called man's inner existence in the cosmos. If you are able to formulate in concepts and ideas what has been attained through inspired cognition by letting it stream back into ordinary consciousness, you arrive at a true cosmology that encompasses the whole of man. Such a cosmology then is an experienced cosmology. We can say that when this stage of sleep is consciously reflected back, man learns to recognize himself as a member of the cosmic order—a cosmic order that is expressed in a planetary sense, as a cosmic ordering of nature.

But now, within this cosmic order, the moral world order arises. This is not as it is in earth life, where on the one side we find the order of nature with its own systems of laws but lacking morality, and on the other side a moral world order experienced as far as earthly existence is concerned only in the soul. Instead, we have a unified world before us. What we experience as a planetary cosmos is permeated and spiritually impregnated by a continuous stream of moral impulses. We live simultaneously in a natural and a moral cosmos.

You realize the full significance of these nightly events for waking life. So, we can say that what the soul experiences in the cosmos between going to sleep and waking is more real and full of meaning for man's outward configuration than what confronts him by day, for the life functions of the physical and etheric bodies, as well as our own moral condition, are results of our cosmic experience during sleep.

The third stage of sleep is characterized by a gradual transition from experiences within the planetary cosmos to an experience of the world of the fixed stars, so that this world is experienced by the soul as a kind of reflection. Yet these are not reflections of those outer sense pictures of the constellations such as we have in waking life. Instead, the soul becomes familiar with those beings of whom it was said in earlier lectures that intuition recognizes as the spiritual beings corresponding to the stars. Here in the sense world in our physical consciousness we experience the physical sense pictures of the stars. When, as I have described, we penetrate the spiritual world with intuition, we recognize that the sun and other fixed stars as perceived by ordinary sense perception are merely the reflected physical images of certain spiritual beings. The soul lives within these spiritual beings of the stars during the third stage of sleep. It feels after-images of the star constellations, that is to say, it feels the relationships that exist between the activities of the spiritual star-beings. The soul experiences such constellations.

Ancient dreamlike science specifically described how the life of the fixed star constellations and zodiac streamed into the soul. This is, after all, the main part of the soul's experience in sleep. In the sense world you arrive at a better correspondence to the single spiritual beings if you look at the constellations as a whole instead of gazing at single stars. In sleep, the soul, being free of the physical and etheric bodies, becomes so liberated that it confronts them both as objects, just as we usually have around us the objects of the external world as perceived by the senses. The soul really finds its way as a spiritual being into a cosmos consisting of other spiritual beings. What it unconsciously goes through there can be illuminated by intuitive knowledge. But the experiences there also have their after-effects in waking life; the general well-being, health and vigor of the human body—not of the soul as in the first stage of sleep—are after-effects of what the soul experiences during the night among star-beings. Especially there comes before the soul, even if unconsciously, the whole event of birth in its broadest sense; that is, the way the soul enters a physical body through conception and embryonic life. Again, there comes before the soul how the body is abandoned in death and how man's spirit being passes into the soul-spiritual world. Every night, the truth concerning the events of birth and death really confront the soul. It is also an after-effect of the night-time experiences that man has a dim feeling during the day that birth and death by no means signify for human life only what they appear to be to sense observation. It is simply not true that a man with sound common sense could believe that birth and death are nothing but the events they appear to be in outer material life. Man in fact does not believe this, but it is not true to say that the reason for his disbelief is only because in his fantasy he imagines that he is an eternal being whose existence persists beyond death. No, man cannot believe it because of the picture experienced every night by the soul of how man enters earth life from the spiritual world and withdraws again into the world of spirit. This picture streams into the soul by day and is experienced by it as a vague feeling about the world and human life.

What appears during waking life as religious longing, as religious awareness, is an after-effect of the soul's experience among the stars. What I have just described is the stage of man's deepest sleep. In actual fact, it is out of his sleep that man derives the religious feelings of his waking life.

Just as religious life can be founded today in knowledge by means of the experience resembling that of primordial humanity but permeated and formulated in intuitions by the fully developed consciousness, it can also be said that man can attain this religious knowledge if, through super-sensible intuition, he is able to perceive and illuminate the condition of deepest sleep. For what rests in the depths of sleep was also the source of what preserved man's knowledge of the divine. Our day-consciousness is only a reflection of the potentialities for consciousness open to man. Likewise, what man bears within him as a natural religious feeling appears as a reflection of the glory and sublimity experienced by his soul, even if unconsciously, in the third stage of sleep. Man sinks into the life of sleep not only to renew his tired body, or to gain the stimuli from sleep that his breathing and circulation need, or to acquire from the spiritual world the other impulses he needs. What permeates him with religious feeling penetrates to the soul's surface, to the region of day-consciousness from the profound depths through which human soul life streams during sleep.

One might say that as man lives a philosophical life during the first stage of sleep, similar to that of earliest childhood—however paradoxical that sounds to present-day consciousness—and as in the second stage he lives a cosmological life, so, in the third stage, he lives a life of being permeated with divinity. From this third stage of sleep, man must then return to daytime consciousness.

Having retraced the above-mentioned stages in backward sequence during the last stage of sleep, man returns again to waking consciousness. Since man's soul and spirit are outside his physical and etheric organizations in sleep, if this phenomenon of sleep is to be comprehended fully, intuitive knowledge must answer the question: Why is man drawn back into his physical and etheric bodies again? What impulse is at work there? If the intuitive perception of sleep is extended far enough, it is possible to recognize this impulse. As man cognizes these spiritual beings who correspond to the sun or the constellations of the other fixed stars, he then recognizes that the impulse comes from the spiritual beings whose reflection in our physical world is the moon. Indeed, the forces of the moon permeate our whole cosmos, and when, through intuition, we recognize not only the physical existence of the moon but also her spiritual correlations, we find that these spiritual beings, who correspond to the physical moon, are the entities who, in their working together, produce the impulses to bring us back into our physical and etheric bodies after we have reached the deepest stage of sleep. It is above all the moon forces that connect man's astral and ego organization with his physical and etheric organisms.

Every night, when out of the spiritual world the soul desires to re-enter its physical and etheric bodies, it must place itself within the streams of the moon forces. It is of no concern here—that will be obvious to you—whether it be new or full moon. For even when, as new moon, the moon is not visible to the senses, those forces are nevertheless active throughout the cosmos that bring the soul back into the etheric and physical bodies from the spiritual worlds. They are active even though the moon's phases appearing to the senses as half-moon, full moon, etc., are metamorphosed sense pictures that correspond to events in the soul being of the moon; these, to be sure, have something to do with man's spirit and soul in the physical and etheric bodies. Indeed, the particular configuration in which man's soul-spiritual and physical-etheric natures are linked is determined by those forces that rule and interweave in the cosmos and come to physical expression in the moon, the sense object, with her various phases that we perceive.

Thus, we can also look into the concealed aspects of man's life of waking and sleeping and inform ourselves concerning what it is that brings him back each morning into his daytime life. He returns through the same stages in reverse order, and while he passes through the last stage, which is permeated by a longing for God, the dreams mix again into his sleep life and he gradually submerges into his physical and etheric organizations.

Why is it that when man goes through the gate of death he is no longer subject to the moon forces? How does he withdraw from them when he spends a long time in the spiritual world? These questions as well as the secrets of birth, death and repeated earth lives will be considered in the next two lectures.

[ 1 ] At the end of the Weimar period of my life I had passed my thirty-sixth year. One year previously a profound revolution had already begun in my mind. With my departure from Weimar this became a decisive experience. It was quite independent of the change in the external relationships of my life, even though this also was very great. The realization of that which can be experienced in the spiritual world had always been to me something self-evident; to grasp the sense world in full awareness had always caused me the greatest difficulty. It was as if I had not been able to pour the soul's experience deeply enough into the sense-organs to bring the soul into union with the full content of what was experienced by the senses.

[ 2 ] This changed entirely from the beginning of my thirty sixth year. My capacities for observing things and events in the physical world took form both in the direction of adequacy and of depth of penetration. This was true both in the matter of science and also of the external life. Whereas before this time the conditions had been such that large scientific combinations which must be grasped in a spiritual fashion were appropriated by me without mental effort, and that sense-perceptions, and especially the holding of such facts in memory, required the greatest effort on my part, everything now became quite different. An attentiveness not previously present to that which appeals to sense-perception now awakened in me. Details became important; I had the feeling that the sense-world had something to reveal which it alone could reveal. I came to think one's ideal should be to learn to know this world solely through that which it has to say, without man's interjecting himself into this by means of his thought, or by some other soul-content arising within him.

[ 3 ] I became aware that I was experiencing a human revolution at a far later period of life than other persons. But I saw also that this fact carried very special consequences for the soul's life. I learned that, because men pass early out of the soul's weaving in the spiritual world to an experience of the physical, they attain to no pure conception of either the spiritual or the physical world. They mingle permanently in a wholly instinctive way that which things say to their senses with that which the mind experiences through the spirit and which it then uses in combination in order to “conceive” things. [ 4 ] For me the enhancement and deepening of the powers of sense-observation meant that I was given an entirely new world. The placing of oneself objectively, quite free from everything subjective in the mind, over against the sense-world revealed something concerning which a spiritual perception had nothing to say.

[ 5 ] But this also cast its light back upon the world of spirit. For, while the sense-world revealed its being through the very act of sense-perception, there was thus present to knowledge the opposite pole also, to enable one to appreciate the spiritual in the fulness of its own character unmingled with the physical.

[ 6 ] Especially was this decisive in its vital effect upon the soul in that it bore also upon the sphere of human life. The task for my observation took this form: to take in quite objectively and purely by way of perception that which lives in a human being. I took pains to refrain from applying any criticism to what men did, not to give way to either sympathy or antipathy in my relation to them; I desired simply to allow “man as he is to work upon me.”

[ 7 ] I soon learned that such an observation of the world leads truly into the world of spirit. In observing the physical world one goes quite outside oneself; and just by reason of this one comes again, with an intensified capacity for spiritual observation, into the spiritual world. [ 8 ] Thus the spiritual world and the sense-world had come before my mind in all their opposition. But I felt opposition to be not something which must be brought into harmony by means of some sort of philosophical thought – perhaps to a “monism.” Rather I felt that to stand thus with one's soul wholly within this opposition meant “to have an understanding for life.” Where the opposition seems to have been reduced to harmony, there the lifeless holds sway – the dead. Where there is life, there works the unharmonized opposition; and life itself is the continuous overcoming, but also the recreating, of oppositions.

[ 9 ] From all this there penetrated into my life of feeling a most intense absorption, not in theoretical comprehension by means of thought, but in an experiencing of whatever the world contains which is in the nature of a riddle.

Over and over again, in order that I might through meditation attain to a right relationship to the world, I held these things before my mind: “There is the world full of riddles. Knowledge would draw near to these. But for the most part it seeks to produce a thought-content as the solution of a riddle. But the riddles” – so I had to say to myself – “are not solved by means of thoughts. These bring the soul along the path toward the solutions, but they do not contain the solutions. In the real world arises a riddle; it is there as a phenomenon; its solution arises also in reality. Something appears which is being or event, and this represents the solution of the other.”

[ 10 ] So I said also to myself: “The whole world except man is a riddle, the real world-riddle; and man himself is its solution!”

[ 11 ] In this way I arrived at the thought: “Man is able at every moment to say something about the world-riddle. What he says, however, can always give only so much of content toward the solution as he has understood of himself as man.” [ 12 ] Thus knowledge also becomes an event in reality. Questions come to light in the world; answers come to light as realities; knowledge in man is his participation in that which the beings and events in the spiritual and physical world have to say. [ 13 ] All this, to be sure, is contained both in its general significance and in certain passages quite distinctly in the writings I published during the period I am here describing. Only it became at this time the most intense mental experience, filling the hours in which understanding sought through meditation to look into the foundations of the world, and – which is the fact of chief importance – this mental experience in its strength came at that time out of my objective absorption in pure, undisturbed sense-observation. In this observation a new world was given to me; from what had until this time been present to knowledge in my mind, I had to seek for that which was the counterpart in mental experience in order to strike a balance with the new. [ 14 ] The moment I did not think the whole reality of the sense-world, but contemplated this world through the senses, there was brought before me a riddle as a reality; and in man himself lies its solution.

[ 15 ] In my whole mental being there was a living inspiration for that which I later called “knowledge by way of reality.” And especially was it clear to me that man possessed of such a “knowledge by way of reality” could not stand in some corner of the world while being and becoming should be taking their course outside of him. Understanding became to me something that belongs, not to man alone, but to the being and becoming of the world. Just as the roots and trunk of a tree are not complete if they do not send their life into the flower, so are the being and becoming of the world nothing truly existing if they do not live again as the content of understanding. Having reached this insight, I said to myself on every occasion at which this came up: “Man is not a being who creates for himself the content of understanding, but he provides in his soul the stage on which for the first time the world partly experiences its existence and its becoming.” Were it not for understanding, the world would remain incomplete. In thus knowingly living in the reality of the world I found more and more the possibility of creating a defence for human knowledge against the view that in this knowledge man is making a copy, or some such thing, of the world.

For my idea of knowledge he actually partakes in the creation of the world instead of merely making afterwards a copy which could be omitted from the world without thereby leaving the world incomplete.

[ 16 ] But this led also to an ever increasing clarity of understanding with reference to the “mystical.” The participation of human experience in the world-event was removed from the sphere of indeterminate mystical feeling and transferred to the light in which ideas reveal themselves. The sense-world, seen purely in its own nature, is at first void of idea, as the root and trunk of the tree are void of blossoms. But just as the blossom is not a disappearance and eclipse of the plant's existence, but a transformation of that very existence, so the ideal world in man as related to the sense-world is a transformation of the sense-existence, and not a darkly mystical interjection of something indefinite from the human soul world. Clear as things physical become in their way in the light of the sun, so spiritually clear must that appear which lives in the human soul as knowledge.

[ 17 ] What was then present in me in this orientation was an altogether clear experience of the soul. Yet in passing on to find a form of expression for this experience the difficulties were extraordinary.

[ 18 ] It was at the close of my Weimar period that I wrote my book Goethe's World-Conception, and the introduction to the last volume that I edited for Kürschner's Deutsche National Literatur. I am thinking especially of what I then wrote as an introduction to my edition of Goethe's Sprüchen in Prosa, and compare this with the formulation of contents in the book Goethe's World-Conception. If the matter is considered only superficially, this or that contradiction can be made out between the one and the other of these expositions, which I wrote at almost the same time. But, if one looks to what is vital beneath the surface – to that which, in the mere shaping and formulating of the surface, would reveal itself as perception of the depths of life, of the soul, of the spirit – then one will find no contradictions, but, indeed, in my writings of that period, a striving after means of expression. A striving to bring into philosophical concepts just that which I have here described as experience of knowledge, of the relation of man to the world, of the riddle-becoming and riddle-solving within the truly real.

[ 19 ] When I wrote, about three and a half years later, my book Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert I had made still further progress in many things; and I could draw upon my experience in knowledge here set forth in describing the individual world-conceptions as they have appeared in the course of history. [ 20 ] Whoever rejects writings because the life of the mind knowingly strives within these – that is, because, in the light of the exposition here given, the world-life in its striving unfolds itself still further on the stage of the human mind – such a person cannot, according to my view, submerge himself with knowing mind into the truly real. [ 21 ] This is something which at that time became confirmed within me as perception, although it had long before been vitally present in my conceptual world In connection with the revolution in my mental life stand inner experiences of grave import for me. I came to know in my mental experience the nature of meditation and its importance for insight into the spiritual world. Even before this time I had lived a life of meditation; but the impulse to this had come from a knowledge through ideas as to its value for a spiritual world-conception. Now, however, there arose within me something which demanded meditation as a necessity of existence for my mental life. The striving life of the mind needed meditation just as an organism at a certain stage in its evolution needs to breathe by means of lungs.

[ 22 ] How the ordinary conceptual knowledge, which is attained through sense-observation, is related to perception of the spiritual, became for me, at this period of my life, not only an experience through ideas as it had been, but one in which the whole man participated. The experience through ideas – which, however, takes up within itself the real spiritual – has given birth to my book The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Experience by means of the whole man attains to the spiritual world in its very being far more than does experience through ideas. And yet this latter is a higher stage as compared with the conceptual grasp upon the sense-world.

In the experience through ideas one grasps, not the sense-world, but a spiritual world which to a certain extent rests immediately upon this.

[ 23 ] While all this was seeking for experience and expression in my soul, three sorts of knowledge were inwardly present before me. The first sort is the conceptual knowledge attained in sense-observation. This is acquired by the soul, and then sustained within in proportion to the powers of thought there existent. Repetitions of the acquired content have no other significance than that this may be well sustained. The second sort of knowledge is that which is not woven of concepts taken from sense-observation but experienced inwardly, independently of the senses. Then experience, by reason of its very nature, becomes the guarantor of the fact that these concepts are grounded in reality. To this realization that concepts contain the guarantee of spiritual reality one attains with certitude by reason of the nature of experience, just as one experiences in connection with knowledge through the senses a certainty that one is not in the presence of illusions but of reality.

[ 24 ] In the case of this ideal-spiritual knowledge one is not content – as in the case of the sense-knowledge – with the acquisition of the knowledge, with the result that one then possesses this in one's thought. One must make this process of acquisition a continuous process. Just as it is not sufficient for an organism to have breathed for a certain length of time in order then to metamorphose what has been acquired through breathing into further life processes, so also an acquiring like that of sense-knowledge does not suffice for the ideal-spiritual knowledge. For this it is necessary that the mind should remain in a continuous interchange with that world into which one has entered through knowledge. This takes place by means of meditation, which – as above indicated – arises out of one's ideal insight into the value of meditating. This interchange I had sought long before this revolution in my thirty-fifth year.

[ 25 ] What now came about was meditation as a necessity for the mental life; and with this there stood before my mind the third form of knowledge. This not only led to greater depths of the spiritual world, but also permitted an intimate living communion with this world. By force of an inner necessity I was compelled to set up again and again at the very central point of my consciousness an absolutely definite sort of conception.

[ 26 ] It was this: [ 27 ] If in my mind I live in conceptions which rest upon the sense-world, then, in my direct experience, I am in position to speak of the reality of what is experienced only so long as I confront with sense-observation a thing or an event. My sense assures me of the reality of what is observed so long as I observe it.

[ 28 ] Not so when I unite myself through ideal-spiritual knowledge with beings or events of the spiritual world. Here there enters into the single perception the direct experience of the status of the thing of which I am aware continuing beyond the duration of observation. For instance, if one experiences the human ego as the inner being most fundamentally one's own, then one knows in the perceiving experience that this ego was before the life in the physical body and will be after this. What one experiences thus in the ego reveals this directly, just as the rose reveals its redness in the act of our becoming aware.

[ 29 ] In such meditation, practised because of inner spiritual necessity, there was gradually evolved the consciousness of an “inner spiritual man” who, through a more complete release from the physical organism, can live, perceive, and move in the spiritual. This self-sufficing spiritual man entered into my experience under the influence of meditation. The experience of the spiritual thereby underwent an essential deepening. That sense-observation arises by means of the organism can be sufficiently proven by the sort of self observation possible in the case of this knowledge. But neither is the ideal-spiritual knowledge yet independent of the organism. Self-comprehension shows the following as to this: For sense-observation the single act of knowing is bound up with the organism. For the ideal-spiritual knowing the single act is entirely independent of the physical organism; but the possibility that such knowledge may be unfolded at all by man requires that in general the life within the organism shall be existent. In the case of the third form of knowing the situation is this: it can come into being in the spiritual man only when he can make himself as free from the physical organism as if this were not there at all.

[ 30 ] A consciousness of all this evolved under the influence of the life of meditation. I was able truly to refute for myself the opinion that in such meditation one becomes subject to a form of auto-suggestion whose product is the resulting spiritual experience. For the very first ideal-spiritual knowledge had been enough to convince me of the reality of spiritual experience: not only the experience sustained in its life by meditation, but indeed the very first of all, that whose life thus merely began. As one establishes absolutely exact truth in a discriminating consciousness, so I had already done for what is here brought forward before there could have been any question of auto-suggestion. Therefore, in the case of what was attained by meditation, the question could have to do only with something whose reality I was in a position to test prior to the experience.

[ 31 ] All this, bound up with my mental revolution, appeared in connection with the result of a practicable self-observation which, like that described, came to have a momentous significance for me.

[ 32 ] I felt that the ideal element in the ongoing life retired in a certain aspect, and the element of will took its place. If this is to be possible, the will during the unfolding of knowledge must succeed in ridding itself of everything arbitrary and subjective. The will increased as the ideal diminished. And the will also took over the spiritual knowledge which hitherto had been controlled almost wholly by the ideal. I had, indeed, already known that the separation of the soul's life into thinking, feeling, and willing has only limited significance. In truth there is a feeling and a willing contained in thinking; only thinking predominates over the others. In feeling there lives thinking and willing; in willing, likewise, thinking and feeling. Now it became to me a matter of experience that the willing took more from thinking; thinking more from willing.

[ 33 ] As meditation leads on the one side to a knowledge of the spiritual, on another side there follows as a result of such self-observation the inner strengthening of the spiritual man, independent of the organism, and the establishment of his being in the spiritual world, just as the physical man has his establishment in the physical world. Only one becomes aware that the establishment of the spiritual man in the spiritual world increases immeasurably when the physical organism does not cramp this process of establishment; whereas the establishment of the physical organism in the physical world yields to destruction – at death – when the spiritual man no longer sustains this establishment from itself outward. [ 34 ] For such an experiential knowledge, that form of theory of cognition is inapplicable which represents human knowledge as limited to a certain field, and considers the “beyond” the “primal bases,” the “thing in itself” as unattainable by human knowledge. That “unattainable” I felt to be such only “for the present”; it can continue unattainable only until man has evolved within himself that element of his being which is allied to the hitherto unknown, and can henceforth grow into one with this in experiential knowledge. This capacity of man to grow into every form of being became for me something that must be recognized by the person who desires to see the place of man in relation to the world in its true light. Whoever cannot penetrate to this recognition, to him knowledge cannot give something which really belongs to the world, but only a copy of some part of the world-content, something to which the world itself is indifferent. But through such a merely reproducing knowledge man cannot grasp a being within himself, which gives to him as a fully conscious individuality an inner experience of the truth that he stands fast within the cosmos.

[ 35 ] What I wished to do was to speak of knowledge in such a way that the spiritual should be not merely recognized, but so recognized that man may reach it with his perception. And it seemed to me more important to hold fast to the fact that the “primal basis” of existence lies within that which man is able to reach in his totality of experience than to recognize in thought an unknown spiritual in some sort of “beyond” region.

[ 36 ] For this reason my view rejected that form of thinking which considers the content of sense-experience (colour, heat, tone, etc.) to be something which an unknown external world calls up within man by means of his sense-perception while this external world itself can be conceived only hypothetically. The theoretical ideas which lie at the foundation of the thinking in physics and physiology in this direction seemed to my experiential knowledge as being in very special degree harmful. This feeling increased to the utmost intensity at the period of my life which I am here describing. All that was designated in physics and physiology as “lying behind subjective experience” caused me – if I may use such an expression – discomfort in knowledge.

[ 37 ] On the other hand I saw in the form of thinking of Lyell, Darwin, Haeckel something which, although incomplete as it issued from them, was nevertheless suitable to a sound mind according to the order of evolution.

[ 38 ] Lyell's basic principle – to explain by means of ideas which result from present observation of the earth's nature those phenomena which escape from sense-observation because they belong to past ages – this seemed to me fruitful in the direction indicated. To seek for an understanding of the physical structure of man by tracing his form from the animal forms, as Haeckel does in comprehensive fashion in his Anthropogenie appeared to me a good foundation for the further evolution of knowledge.

[ 39 ] I said to myself: “If man places before himself a boundary of knowledge beyond which is supposed to lie ‘the thing in itself,’ he thus bars himself from any access to the spiritual world; if he relates himself to the sense-world in such a way that one thing explains another within that world (the present stage in the earth's becoming thus explaining past geological ages; animal forms explaining that of man), he may thus prepare himself to extend this intelligibility of beings and events also to the spiritual.”

[ 40 ] As to my experience in this field also I can say: “This is something which was just at that time confirmed in me as perception, whereas it had long before been vitally present in my conceptual world.”

My dear friends!

On January 29, 1827, Goethe said to his friend Eckermann about the then already advanced second part of “Faust”:

But everything is sensual and, when presented on the stage, will catch everyone's eye. And that is all I wanted. If only the crowd of spectators take pleasure in the appearance; at the same time, the initiated will not miss the higher meaning, as is the case with The Magic Flute and other things.

In this way, Goethe expressed that he himself allows a deeper meaning to be recognized in his works. It is well known that explanations of Goethe's deeper worldview are met with the objection: You yourselves put all sorts of things into the works that Goethe did not mean at all. This objection could easily be refuted. Only someone who does not want to apply all the powers of their soul to get behind the meaning of the poem can say this. We will counter all these objections with what Goethe said in his conversation with Eckermann. Goethe appears to us as one of those artistic figures who did not allow themselves to be inspired by the arbitrariness of fantasy or the randomness of external experience, but rather strove to recognize and explore the great riddles of existence. Goethe was a serious and profound seeker. The direction of his quest can be seen in his very earliest childhood disposition. Nowhere can such a direction confront us as powerfully as in what Goethe told us about the time when he was seven years old. He takes the best minerals and rocks from his father's collection of natural objects and arranges them in a regular form on a music stand. This is the altar on which he wants to offer sacrifices to the god of nature. At the top he places incense cones, which he ignites with the help of a burning glass through the collected rays of the rising morning sun. For him, natural products are the expression of the primal divine forces of nature. Through the rays of the morning sun that he had captured, he had kindled a natural fire, a sacred fire through the essence of the divine forces of nature itself. With this, he wanted to make an offering to the god of nature; in this way, he wanted to come closer to the great god of nature. In this childlike way, Goethe's entire spiritual relationship to the cosmos is expressed. On higher levels, we see young Goethe's confession again in his prose hymn “Nature”, when he was already working in Weimar:

Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her – unable to step out of her, and unable to get deeper into her. Uninvited and unwarned, she takes us into the cycle of her dance and carries on with us until we are tired and fall out of her arms.

Then he addresses all the beings of nature, how they are revelations of the spirit that is present in nature. Finally, he says:

She has brought me in, she will also lead me out. I trust her. She may do with me as she pleases. She will not hate her work. I did not speak of her. No, what is true and what is false, she has spoken everything. All is her fault and all is her merit.

And before that it says:

With a few draughts from the cup of love, she indemnifies for a life full of toil.

After his student days in Leipzig, Goethe had an important inner experience: on his sickbed, he learned to feel the seriousness of life. In Frankfurt, he then undertook all kinds of strange studies with friends and delved into many mystical and alchemical works. He met people who were involved in mysticism and who sought the God, the Christ, within themselves. Then in Strasbourg he met the other great mind, Herder, by whose side he gained a keen eye for nature, which was then expressed in his scientific studies and writings. When Goethe had moved to Weimar, we often find him in Jena, like a student, listening to the lectures of Loder and other scholars in order to get closer to the divine power in nature. He always sees a manifestation of the spirit in everything that presents itself materially. While he was still in Strasbourg, he came across a book by a materialistic French encyclopedist. It made a great impression on him. He says about it in “Poetry and Truth”:

But how hollow and empty we felt in this dreary atheistic half-night [...] Matter was supposed to have existed from eternity, and moved from eternity, and now, with this movement, right and left and in all directions, it was supposed to produce the infinite phenomena of existence without further ado.

Then he continues:

But he knew as little about nature as we do: for having nailed up a few general concepts, he immediately leaves them behind in order to transform that which appears in nature as higher than nature, or as higher nature, into material, heavy, and indeed moving, but directionless and formless nature, and thereby believes he has gained a great deal.

This is a critique that Goethe could also make of today's materialistic science. Those who immerse themselves in Goethe will soon notice that when he talks about nature, he speaks from great depths, from the spirit that we call the theosophical worldview. It was in the fourteenth century when this was already being cultivated in the Rosicrucian current. Nothing reliable about it has been reported by outsiders. Only the initiates knew what really mattered.

There is a poem by Goethe, “The Mysteries”, where a personality comes to a kind of monastery and meets a gathering of enlightened personalities, twelve in number. A thirteenth is with them, who is about to die. His twelve brothers speak of him in the most beautiful, appreciative terms. Some traits of this great man, who stands as the knower of the world, are then told. It is said that as a boy he had already killed the adder, which signifies the overcoming of the lower nature. Then, after many meaningful words, the lines follow:

From the power that binds all beings,
The man who overcomes himself is freed.

One who has overcome himself is presented in this poem “The Secrets” by Goethe. The whole situation in which the brother, to whom this greatness is being told, is led into, appears to the knowledgeable as the Grail or Parzifal situation. Goethe could not complete the poem, the material was too great. He once gave a student an explanation of it. He hinted at a league of enlightened people who had joined together in a brotherhood. Each of them represents one of the great religious systems of the world. The great emissaries of these are united in a brotherhood, where there must be one of the leaders who sees the unity, the core of wisdom, in the religions. What Goethe says here could be made the principle of the theosophical movement. Goethe points here to what every initiate knows, that there is a secret union. Goethe lets the newcomer see the mysterious symbol at the gate: the cross with the roses entwined. Goethe wanted to point out that there is such a mystery within the modern world, as there have been such initiates in all times.

Goethe then sought God further as an artist during his Italian journey. He sought God in the universe, in all his creations that breathe the divine greatness; he also sought him in the creations of men, in art, which was a continuation of nature for him. He wrote on September 6, 1787 in the diary of his Italian journey:

These great works of art, which are also the greatest works of nature, have been created by man according to true and natural laws. All that is arbitrary and imagined collapses; there is necessity, there is God.

Of Greek art, Goethe says:

I have a suspicion that they proceeded according to the very laws by which nature proceeds and which I am on the trail of.

He expresses the connection between man and nature beautifully in his book about Winckelmann:

When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole, when harmonious comfort gives him pure, free delight – then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult as if it had reached its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being. For what is the purpose of all the effort of suns and planets and moons, of stars and milky ways, of comets and nebulae, of worlds that have come into being and are still in the process of becoming, if not ultimately for a happy human being to unconsciously enjoy his existence?

That which lives in man, in the depths of man, as a spiritual-mental entity, that is Nature herself, and for man she becomes conscious in the soul of man. It was this intuitive perception that guided Goethe when he attempted to shape the legend of Faust in a new form. This legend expressed what a number of people felt at that time. In the medieval Faust, we see a man who wants to recognize the divine in nature itself. In the Middle Ages, the search for the divine in nature was seen as apostasy. The divine was only to be found in the religious record of the Bible. On the other side was the legend of Faust, who seeks the divine in nature and makes a pact with the devil. On the other side was Luther, who, as the legend goes, threw the devil's inkwell at his head. Faust falls prey to the devil; he became a worldly man and a physician who wants to recognize the great God in nature. In the Middle Ages, such people were called “sons of the devil”. Goethe brings something new to the Faust idea; his guiding principle is:

Whoever strives, we can redeem.

A striving person who seeks the sources of nature, who seeks the spirit of nature, must reach the goal. Goethe is serious about the interpretation. Where man not only seeks something soulful and spiritual in himself, but where he rises to the realization that everything around us is ensouled, there he is on the right path. When we look at the human being, we have to say that our finger, for example, is only conceivable as a limb of our entire organism. Man lives under the illusion of personal self because man devotes himself to the idea that he is independent and self-sufficient, and not a member of the whole earth organism. But if man were to be lifted several miles above the earth, he would no longer be able to live; he would have to [suffer a miserable death by] suffocation and wither away like the finger of my hand if it were to be cut off. Goethe recognizes the earth organism. There is a deep recognition in his desire to let Faust penetrate to the sources of life and to characterize the spirit of the earth with the words:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
weaving back and forth!
Birth and grave,
an eternal sea,
a changing weaving,
a glowing life,
so I create at the whirring loom of time
and weave the living garment of the Godhead.

How Goethe has placed himself in the spirit of the cosmos, how he feels and senses the spirit in the cosmos, and how he also lives in the human heart, is shown when he has Faust speak with the same Earth Spirit elsewhere. There we recognize that Goethe sees the same work in every tree, every plant, as in man:

Exalted Spirit, thou hast given me, given me everything
I asked for. Thou didst not turn thy face to me in fire in vain.
Thou gavest me the glorious kingdom of nature
and the power to feel and enjoy it. Thou dost not
allow only cold, astonished visitors,
granting me to look into her deep chest,
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
past me, and teach me my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
the giant spruce toppling, crushing neighboring branches
And neighboring trunks squashing down,
And her fall dull hollow the hill thunders,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Then myself, and my own chest
Secret deep wonders open up.

We will find the theosophical ideas in Goethe again, without compulsion.

There is talk of Pythagorean music of the spheres. At higher levels of human development, there are experiences that are similar to those of a person born blind who undergoes a successful operation and suddenly gains sight – only much more magnificent and powerful. Such a spiritual operation does exist. In it, we learn about things and beings that are all around us in the world. The world of the spirit, of which Fichte spoke to his audience in 1813, then opens up for us. He says: “A new sense is needed for this.” When one speaks of these worlds to people, it often happens to those who speak as it happens to a seeing person among a group of blind people, to whom he speaks of color, shine and light. Everything that is said theosophically about this spiritual world is spoken entirely in the spirit of Fichte. The theosophist does not speak of a beyond. How many worlds we perceive around us depends on how many organs we have for perceiving these worlds. As many dormant abilities as are awakened in us open up as many new worlds for us. For the human being of today, there is initially a level of consciousness through which he perceives sensual and externally perceptible things. Then there is another level of consciousness for those who have attained the ability of higher vision. A new world of color, splendor and light opens up before their mind's eye. This world is called the astral world. An even higher world can be perceived when one attains continuity of consciousness, where the manifestations of a higher world manifest themselves in a way called sounds. The devachanic world is a sounding world. This world is then taken over into everyday consciousness so that one can also perceive it when walking among everyday things, among tables and chairs. The theosophical worldview speaks of a world of the soul, the astral world, and of a devachanic world, the world of the spirit, which can be perceived by those whose spiritual eyes and ears are open. Where Goethe has Faust placed between the forces of good and evil, he lets the words resound:

The sun resounds in the ancient way
In the spheres of the brothers' song,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderclap.

When most people say that this is a poetic image, they misunderstand the poet if they think he is making up a phrase. A true poet does not do that. The physical sun does not resound. But if we look at the sun as the expression of a spiritual organism, then we can speak of the sun resounding. In the second part of Faust, Goethe lets him encounter a similar situation. It says:

Hark! Listen to the storm of the hours!
For spiritual ears,
The new day is already being born.
Rock gates creak and rattle,
Phoebus' wheels roll and clatter,
What a roar is brought by the light!
It drums and trumpets, eye blinks and ear is amazed,
unheard-of things are not heard.

These are the depths of wisdom from which Goethe draws. Those who do not know that Goethe sought to draw from the sources of esoteric wisdom do not understand Goethe well. He himself said that the deep meaning of his poetry would not remain hidden.

The second part of “Faust” has always been a big problem for people, also the fact that Mephistopheles, the representative of evil forces, is associated with Faust. Goethe researchers have also written an infinite amount about Mephistopheles. The word is composed of “Mephis” – is equal to Verderber – and “Tophel” – is equal to liar. At the same time, this leads us to the fact that Goethe was able to draw from sources where exactly this meaning of Mephistopheles could be found. We get to know the esoteric Goethe from the second part of “Faust”. People have thought a great deal about the homunculus. Some interpreters of Faust suggest that the homunculus represents humanistic research. Faust scholars can also be seen grappling with the question of what the “mothers” represent.

Occult teachings have always distinguished between the physical, mental and spiritual nature of the human being. Even today's materialistic science regards the physical nature. The soul world belongs to what we have characterized as the astral. The spirit belongs to the devachanic world. As in all mysticism, for Goethe the physical body is the transient one. The soul is that which forms the connection between what is transient in time and the spiritual eternal. For Goethe, the human being is also composed of three parts: body, soul and spirit. For the one who thus considers the structure of human nature, what happens to him when a person enters this world? He comes from the eternal sphere of Devachan. The source of spiritual existence is spoken of as the “Mothers”. The threefold source of the human being is with the Mothers. The eternal corresponds to the spirit. The soul also has an eternal archetype. In Theosophy, this is referred to by the Sanskrit words: Atma, Budhi, Manas. This is referred to as the divine trinity, which is with the mothers, of which man is a threefold image. Goethe wants to depict this, the way in which the threefold nature of man is composed of spirit, soul and body. A long-dead person is to stand before Faust: Helen. The example of Helen is to be used to illustrate the development of humanity. The re-emergence of the spirit in a new form is to be shown there. The three parts of the human being are to come together again.

Goethe depicts the soul itself through the homunculus, which is the astral body of the human being; it longs to be embodied. The spirit must join it; it is with the mothers. Now Goethe actually describes the journey to the mothers in a very appropriate way. Mephisto says to him as Faust enters the realm of the mothers:

Sink away! I could also say: rise!

There is no difference between up and down in Devachan. Then he shows him the tripod, which shows him the way to the mothers, the threefold nature of man. Faust succeeds in bringing up the ghost of the deceased Helena. Faust is not yet ready to fully understand this. When he wants to embrace Helena passionately, an explosion follows.

Homunculus is created; this is precisely the human astral body. This astral body is to receive a physical body. Goethe has him guided down to the ancient Greek philosophers. He wants to have the “thoroughly practical” for the astral soul. Now he is to learn from the Greek philosophers how to come into being and develop. The entire development through stones, plants and up to the human being is then described. The process of passing through the plant kingdom is aptly described as “it grunts so”. Finally, we see the possibility arise that the body connects with the soul when Eros comes. Homunculus is dashed to pieces against the shell carriage of Galathea; as a spirit he no longer exists, he has connected with the elements.

In the great world poem, we see how Goethe embodied his view in it. Goethe describes his view differently in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. The way the “fairy tale” was created should make it clear that what is expressed here is possible. During the time of their friendship, Goethe and Schiller published the Letters on Aesthetic Education as a kind of dowry. Schiller asked Goethe to make a contribution. Goethe wrote to him that he could not express what he had to say in a philosophical way, but that he would present it in a pictorial form. So he wrote the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. If we want to understand what Goethe meant by the “fairytale”, we only need to read what Schiller wrote to Goethe at the time. Schiller sees in the realm of beautiful appearance, in the realm of artistic appearance, an intermediate realm that elevates people from the realm of necessity, of sensual nature, to inner freedom. He sees in the artist the person who finds the spiritual in the physical, so that the sensual is spiritualized. In this way, art can help people to rise above the sensual world. It is a means for them to purify and spiritualize their instincts. People may then follow their instincts when they have been so purified that they no longer go against the spirit, so that people cannot help but want the ideal. Goethe presents this in a great image, but one that is drawn from infinite depths. In the will-o'-the-wisp in the fairy tale, who cross a river and have to promise the ferryman to pay for their journey with three onions, three artichokes and three cabbages, we recognize the lower self of man , the ego nature, which has the potential to develop the three-part, higher, future nature, namely the wisdom nature or manas, the kind nature or budhi, piety and the strength nature or atma, strength. The development of man to this higher trinity is called initiation, which is carried out in the mysteries. Gradually, in the great process of evolution of humanity, all people will become initiates.

In all esotericism, water is used to describe the astral world.

Human soul, how like thou art to water!

says Goethe. There are two types of human nature: one that acquires wisdom in selfishness, the other that acquires wisdom by working from experience to experience. If the astral — the river — is to accept the gold, the wisdom acquired in vanity, then it will flare up. In esotericism, the original is represented by the lotus flowers, by something that can be peeled off so that a germ remains. The will-o'-the-wisps represent the human ego that only wants to shine; the snake represents the human ego that identifies itself with wisdom. Goethe once said:

If the eye were not solar
How could we see the light?

When the snake glows from within, it can enter the temple, where humanity acquires the three highest goods, which are represented by three kings: wisdom, piety or beauty and strength. The old man with the lamp represents the way in which most people are now enlightened. Religion is symbolized by the old man's wife. The beautiful lily represents the eternal, which man can only attain when he has been purified. The highest kills all that is living and immature. But through mystical death, man attains the highest spiritual gifts. In this fairy tale, Goethe has embedded the deepest truths of esotericism. In it, he shows how man attains the highest goods of humanity through the sacrifice of his lower nature. The same idea is expressed in the saying that appears in the West-Eastern Divan, in the poem that begins:

Tell no one, only the wise,
Because the crowd would scoff.

In the end, he speaks of the sacrifice of the lower nature and the spiritual rebirth of man:

And so long as you do not have this,
this: Die and become!
If you are only a dull guest
on the dark earth.