The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If you ask people outside of their everyday consciousness: What is it that can be called the self? — the answer would be that you have to look for this self-awareness within the boundaries that the skin encloses. Our view can be proven by the fact that the seat of the soul is to be found in the head and heart. But in the sense of spiritual science, it is different, only this is not easy to recognize.

One comes closer to spiritual reality when one tries to make the supersensible facts clear. With the concepts and words that man uses without these researches, he does not come closer to the truth. One will get a good concept if one ties into a unified picture.

Let us think of a sailor navigating the seas. All external factors form the essentials, the determining factors; for the purpose of navigating the ship, it is important to know whether the sea is calm or agitated, whether islands are emerging in the sea, whether the sky is clouding over, and much more. The captain and the sailors take action based on all these external facts; all external facts are the essential ones for them. Now some might think that when the ship has entered the harbor, it is at rest and all work is over for a while. But that is not the case. Another kind of work begins. The ship no longer performs work, but work is done on the ship. What has suffered during the voyage is repaired. The hold is filled with a new cargo and so on. In this way, the voyage and the ship's layover in port can be compared to human life, to life during the day and to life during the night. There is only one major difference, and that is that people do not care about the night work. During the work in port, the ship must be made useful for the onward journey by workers and sailors. But everything that drives man to act through the senses during the day, ceases to work at night. Our senses, which have carried out the work in our body during the day, rest during the night. The work of the day rests like the ship in the harbor. And yet a work is going on in man that enables him to start a new day's work.

This brings us closer to the concept of what the actual spiritual part of a person is. It is not enclosed by the skin of the person, but extends beyond the physical person. The actual spiritual part extends its feelers into the person; it sends the essential, the spiritual part into the person.

Where is the actual I located in the human being? Outside of the human being, around the physical human being, one finds the spiritual human being, the supersensible I-human being. And if we look at the human aura, which is shaped like an egg, then the I-consciousness will be most effective in the shell, in the auric egg. This fact leads to the correct solution of the problem.

I have pointed out twelve points on the horizon. The occultist must know them. They exist there even if they are not recognized by everyone. These twelve points continuously send their forces into man; he is attacked by these twelve points in the various points of his aura. Only by surrounding himself with his ego is he able to make the cosmic forces one with himself. Man must feel that he belongs to the universe. Through this he enters into the faculty of perception, and through this it becomes possible for him to acquire the abilities to perceive that correspond to the points mentioned. He is embedded in these twelve points. The divine spiritual forces work through these points on man. If you can bear this in mind, you will understand the ways and aims of the spiritual man.

Man must be able to integrate this feeling into his life. Through spiritual science he will become acquainted with a sum of forces through which he can accomplish these transformations in himself. Let us think for a moment about everyday life. People rush through the world, and many things come their way that they could reflect on, that they could process in their minds, but they make no effort whatsoever to put their experiences into practice or even to reflect on them more deeply. They just want to experience and chase from one sensation to the next.

There are other people who go through life without paying the slightest attention to the external world. They brood and speculate about their own thoughts. They do not notice what is going on around them; they brood over and over again. Neither of these extremes is good for a person. But there is a middle way, and that is to interweave everything you experience with your own thoughts. This middle state is the most beneficial for the human being of the external world.

Suppose a young man is preparing for an exam. He has been working hard, the exam time is approaching and with it the exam anxiety. Again and again, the young person realizes that on the day of the exam, the questions could be about the things he is least sure about, the things he does not know for sure. This works in his thoughts. The exam went well, it is crucial for the whole of life. It is the gateway to his future life. Now it may happen that he is haunted by an 'I' space in the further course of his existence, and in this dream the exam anxiety of his youth emerges in him, everything that he did not believe he knew at the time. The soul is intimately connected with it, and the occult observer sees the fabric that is woven in the dream. What is woven into it did not contribute to the life that has passed. But the occultist knows that it can become a useful force in the next life.

It can also happen differently. From the age of forty-five, dreams cease. The one who observes himself finds that completely new character traits emerge. For example, it may be experienced that in advanced years he has far more courage than he ever possessed in his youth. The states of fear in his youth and the will to conquer them have done their quiet work in the inner man; after forty-five years these forces have been transformed into reverse forces. Something is always weaving and working within the human being, and what works there is the astral body. It works in the etheric body until the experience has spun itself into the etheric body and really become a quality. Under ordinary circumstances, it only appears as a quality in the next life, but there may also be quite abnormal cases, such as the one just mentioned.

This is how a person processes his external experiences, and it is the same with the extrasensory circumstances of life, which demand that we process them with the ego. How does the spiritual person work in relation to his external circumstances? The external circumstances approach us, but the fabric that transforms our abilities is spun from within. We weave into the person what comes from the eternal spiritual. We must go to the external, but the spiritual comes to us.

Let us assume that a person, for one reason or another, takes an interest in something, for example, that he wants to take a closer look at a tree. He must then approach the tree, he must go to the tree to get a result. But it is different with spiritual results. These come to us, we have to wait for them to come.

The essential thing about external experiences is that they are of a transitory nature. But those that come to us through the path of 'Theosophy are grounded in spirituality. We weave them into our inner being as something imperishable. We must go to the external, but the spiritual must approach us, and the more we make ourselves capable of receiving the spiritual within us, the more it comes to us from the spiritual worlds and becomes our property. Those people who live among us as poets and have created and produced something are always those who in times gone by have allowed the supersensible to flow into them. We must learn to reflect more. We must be able to think logically and reasonably and then keep our soul completely still. Then we will not have to wait in vain. The corresponding spiritual substance will flow into our soul, for which we ourselves have paved the way. We must learn to maintain the expectant mood. Not what we brood over is best. We should want to attain everything through our thought work, not through ourselves. Only through sharp thinking and subsequent waiting can we fertilize our spirit. It must flow to us when we have learned to observe the right processes, and these processes must work together with thinking, feeling and willing.

There are three aspects to our soul life: thinking, feeling and willing. A person sees a rose. Through his thought life, he recognizes it as such. He admires the shape and the color; this awakens certain feelings in him. He stretches out his hand to grasp the rose, thereby expressing an act of will. However, important results, which can be decisive for a person's entire life, depend on how he or she treats these qualities.

For example: A person meets another who instills a pronounced antipathy in him. He sees that he cannot free himself from the person who arouses antipathy in him, and the feeling that is caused him by the compulsion makes him angry. Thinking, feeling and willing are involved in this process.

In our daily lives, we can often observe how differently these processes unfold. The anger of one person quickly disappears; they may not dwell on such feelings for long, and the better feelings gain the upper hand in them. Another person, on the other hand, carries their anger around with them all day long; they cannot find the resilience to shake it off. The first person, who quickly fights his emotions, will remain mentally healthy and may reach a ripe old age. The other person, who flies into a rage over every trifle and carries this rage around with him for a long time, will age prematurely. The constant emotions will take their toll on his body.

A proverb says: “Don't take anger to bed with you.” This is where the affects begin to weave in the soul, and we weave the passions into the human being. What we experience from the spirit will have an effect on our soul, and it makes a significant difference whether our experiences remain only in theory or whether they pass over into feeling.

Let us assume that a person absorbs much that is spiritual, and that what is absorbed penetrates into the person. It will only bear fruit for the spiritual person when he embraces what he has absorbed with enthusiasm and love. Only then does the work also become a work of the inner man, only then does he extract the spiritual and make it part of his spiritual self. It is feeling that helps us to make the spiritually acquired our own.

Man lives in his aura, and when the theosophical truths are absorbed by the spiritual man, the aura is strongly agitated. The I is the motor of this movement. How does this process present itself to the clairvoyant eye? When love and enthusiasm for great spiritual thoughts take hold of man, everything in the aura comes to life, and the result of this higher thought life is that it has a purifying effect on the aura. All material desires and thoughts, which are expressed in the human aura, clump together into balls, and with increasing spiritual work these balls condense more and more, becoming smaller and smaller, until the purifying light of spiritual thinking has dissolved and driven them away.

When the clairvoyant eye observes a person watching a sunrise, similar phenomena can be observed. The devout joy that a person can feel at the natural spectacle causes a similar process to take place in the aura of the person watching. As long as such a person allows beauty to affect his inner being, the effect of this process is a dissolving one in the aura, and much that is bad is transformed into good. The ability to rejoice and to immerse oneself has a purifying effect on the soul, and in such moments the soul is capable of absorbing new spiritual things because the stream of higher forces has found an entrance.

But the opposite can also take place. If a person does not dwell on a great natural spectacle that has affected him in his thoughts, if none of the beauty remains within him and he turns to other things after a fleeting enjoyment, the following can occur: everything in the aura of such a person becomes concentrated. A spiritual-soul task that came his way has been carelessly set aside and is now working itself out in the dark. It may happen that lies find their way into his inner being. To develop the ability to let something resonate and to empathize is the work of a spiritual person.

If we all learned this, spiritual science would lead to paths and goals that would create widespread blessings. If only intellectual work were done, if quarrels and discord prevailed among the theosophists, little would be transformed from bad to good. The law of karma will show man how to work in the right way.

For those who can feel Theosophy with enthusiasm and know how to draw comfort from it, the higher spiritual sciences are beneficial, for they bring comfort and strength in all circumstances. No one leaves these sciences without consolation. The greater our aims, the more our striving will be imbued with ideals, and man carries them out into the world. We pursue spiritual science and interweave it with our inner being. It permeates us, and we can carry it out to others.

We must work towards these goals as much as we are able. We have no right to ignore the paths and goals of the spiritual human being. It is our duty to weave the soul into the physical world. The human being is the gateway, the only gateway of spirit into the physical-material world, into which heaven is to flow. We can loosen the lead of materialism by allowing spiritual truths to penetrate it. Only by working on the development of humanity does man contribute to life and not to death. To walk in the ways and to strive for the goals of the spiritual man means to pursue the task of making the supersensible soul-like.

Etheric body (etheric body). A coarser (externally perceptible) human body (and that of other living beings) underlying finer body (body). It is characterized by the newer theosophy as the system of forces, which have their lawful content from the spiritual basis of the world and which find their expression (objectification) in the organic forms of the physically perceptible body. The etheric body has nothing in common with the speculative-mystical “vital force” of the old vitalists. However, it does coincide with the “inner man” of earlier philosophies, referred to as the “scheme”, and also appears in the world view of Origenes and Augustinus. In more recent times, it found a representative in the philosophers Troxler, I. H. Fichte, among others. In Kant, it is found, albeit surrounded by skepticism, in the dreams of a spirit-seer as a soul-like inner man who bears all the limbs of the outer man within him as a possibility. For modern theosophy, the etheric body is a reality that can be perceived when the “inner senses” of the observer are awakened and brought to perception through appropriate soul training from their latent state in which they are in ordinary human life. It then reveals itself as a system of forces that changes its forms (never taking fixed forms), flows through the physical body and merges into the indefinite (into the forces of the cosmos) in the area of the anterior physical body (like a kind of mirror image of the spine). It forms an intermediate link between the physical body and the higher components of the human being, the soul and the spirit. In the state of sleep, the etheric body remains fully connected to the physical body, while the soul and spirit detach themselves from the region of the sensory organs and the central nervous system (but not from the other organs and the sympathetic nervous system). During dreaming, the spirit is detached from the sense organs and the central nervous system, but the soul is not detached from them. (This detachment is not to be thought of as spatial, but as dynamic). In death, the etheric body, soul and spirit (the soul is also called the astral body, the spirit of man is called the “ego body”) detach themselves from the physically perceptible body (spatially and dynamically); these three parts of the human being remain connected for a short time (several days); then the etheric body detaches itself from the soul and spirit. It then passes over, in accordance with natural law, into the general cosmic forces: one part into the etheric sphere of the earth, another part into the etheric world that does not belong to the earth. This dissolution of the etheric body takes place at different times and also varies in character according to the individual. An observation of the laws of this dissolution is one of the most difficult problems of spiritual science. This kind of dissolution is connected with the character of the physical life on earth and forms part of the causes of destiny that affect soul and spirit after they have passed into the spiritual world after their separation from the etheric body.

Esoterics' progress is hindered because they think that the experiences they should have are much more tumultuous than they are. Whereas it's mainly a matter of paying attention to very subtle happenings. Imagine going into a forest on a quiet evening. One would hear the slightest sound—the falling of leaves, a sled's approach, etc. And now imagine a big city. One wouldn't hear them in its noisy streets, yet all of these slight, fine sounds would also be present there.

I often hear the complaint: I can't free myself of the many images and thoughts that arise when I'm meditating. But one can definitely look upon this as progress in meditation. For as the astral body and ego loosen their connection with the physical and etheric bodies during meditation, an esoteric is enabled to objectify his other human being, as it were. He should take a close look at his soul and spiritual part that weaves and works there without his help.

Lucifer's temptation approaches an esoteric from within and that of Ahriman from outside. An example: Say that one is living in a moral and quiet family, but that there are people in the adjacent apartment who read and tell each other a lot of tall tales. Even if one did not hear any of this with one's physical ears it nevertheless becomes imprinted on one's etheric body and then appears during meditation. Another example: One happens to see a dog being run over. Yelping and whimpering can arise in one's own body and continue to work after one experiences such an accident. Or a whole witches' sabbath can arise during meditation out of other connections. The meditator shouldn't despair about this but should be glad, since he can have an inkling of the connection, and thereby learns to look at himself ever more objectively and at everything that worked upon him previously.

It's like a palpation of one's whole body during meditation. Painful feelings will arise here and there as a result of egoism and other things. In this probing one begins above the head and goes down the whole body, one small part at a time.

If one starts from symptoms one will learn to draw conclusions about previous experiences. Thus an inflammation of the middle ear permits one to infer the strangest impressions that were made upon the etheric body through the fact that one heard tall tales as a child without full consciousness, but which had a very vivid effect nevertheless. If someone falls asleep in theosophic talks or similar events, then what he heard continues to work in his etheric body, and this especially if he feels pangs of conscience or if he reproaches himself for having gone to sleep; this often works very strongly in the subconsciousness.

If one reproaches oneself for still being so bad because ugly images repeatedly arise during inner concentration and meditation we can be comforted by the Gospel word: Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Notes by Alice Kinkel, first degree

The first prayer distinguishes us from all other such endeavors, which are based on documents or on a traditional wisdom. We do not refer to anything like that, we only tie in with the work that has been done, with what has actually been achieved.

In the near future, among other things that will be undertaken against us, our occult movement will also be tried to be suspected and vilified, so we should know this, to which we are joining.

In the spiritual realm, a community like ours exists, but it has only as much justification as souls profess it as the truth. And if someone does not like something about it, they do not need to be part of it. We do not claim to be an order, a Rosicrucian movement or anything of the kind, but our aim is to represent the truth in such a way that we do not claim wisdom as our own, but we do want to appropriate the work that has flowed from it as wisdom.

Wisdom is there; there was an ancient wisdom treasure of humanity, as shown in the “Guardian of the Threshold” by the Grand Master. And how one has to relate to this, that is, how one advances in the occult life, is shown to us by Maria in the second scene with Thomasius. It would be more convenient to give a prescription for all, but it had to be shown in our Western movement how people of the special kind of Thomasius, Strader, Capesius and Maria go the initiation way.

“Compasses and Rule” means: We adopt your customs. Such prayers contain in words everything we need, as do the Mystery Dramas of Dr. Steiner. Every word is there in its place and full of occult meaning. Nothing, nothing is set and said for a reason other than its spiritual meaning and power, as it is.

The opponents of spirituality, such as Haeckel, carry their spiritual darkness deeply hidden within themselves and their rage and anger is actually directed against themselves. Because they cannot access their deepest soul life in life, they show themselves quite differently towards spirituality after death and are most easily summoned, for example, in spiritualistic séances.

Nietzsche is very interesting in this respect; he found it difficult to let go of his material side and that is why he presented such a strange picture to the seer during his illness. The man Nietzsche, this strange personality, lying on the sofa and the aura around him. The split in the ego comes to expression in such personalities; while the consciousness is materialistic, the subconscious is spiritual.

“Brethren of the Future…” – We have no name either, because Lucifer is the patron of every external foundation of an association or society.

Upon admission to the first degree, it is also said: The sign of the first degree will be the expression in the future of self-knowledge or of what is understood by “know thyself”.

Berlin, February 10, 1913

Notes by Alice Kinkel Fourth Degree

A.o.L.o.L.A.

The human being is connected to the self in thirty-three ways. We have to overcome this self through our I. This self is anchored in the human body in the 33 currents in the spinal cord.

The shearer sees how currents emanate from the etheric and astral bodies, which can then be expressed in the movements of the limbs, which are half held back in the speech organs, in the larynx, where the sound is formed, and then held rigidly in the human head, brain and skull, brain lobes. The brain, the symbols for it in the lodge...

Starting with the left hand: I - an outward striving. The sound I - direct the right eye into the indefinite.

Stretching = A - both eyes into infinity.

Embrace = O - Look firmly at a specific point. Cross = E - Place your right hand over your left hand, and your feet in the same way, crossing your right foot over your left - just as the optic nerves are crossed in the human head.

Cupped hand = AO - Bend the body in a semicircle. Fist or clench = U

You should not carry out the movements, but inhibit the movement, press the limbs firmly against the body, but feel the same as if you were carrying out the movements.

We are the lost word of creation. The holy word is to be used only in the sign.

Where are we? In the sign of four.

Name the four: earth, water, air, fire.

The Cassiazweig has been discussed.

You are all half human; you are to develop the other half that belongs to you through the exercises that have been given to you, gradually. That is the task.

The [Pillars of] Hercules.

The task is this: for six to eight to ten weeks or more of the year, completely switch off the ego in words and thoughts. Only when you have accomplished this will you understand all of this.

Be The following also belongs to the explanations about the four:

The four can also be understood in terms of the four sentences that are always spoken in the lodge and that we know: 1913

Learn silence and you will have power.

Give up power and you will have will. Give up will and you will have feeling. Give up feeling and you will have knowledge.

The four is complemented to the seven: salt, sulfur, mercury.

Now the holy word is broken down again into the four;

earth, water, air, fire

gnomes, sylphs, salamanders

One column is the sun, the other the moon; both make up the earth.

In a former lecture I pointed out that Christianity is wider in reach and compass than the sphere of religion as we normally understand it. I said that when, in future times, men have outgrown what they are now wont to call religion, the substance and content of Christianity will have thrown off the outmoded forms of religious life and will have become a potent spiritual influence in the whole of human culture. Christianity has the power in itself of transcending the forms in which, in the cultural development of our day, we quite rightly express our religious life.

Since that lecture, many significant expressions of cultural life have come to my notice. I have had a brief period of lecturing in the Northern countries—in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The week before last I had to give a lecture in Stockholm, among other towns in Sweden. Because of the low rate of population—remember that London alone has as many inhabitants as the whole of Sweden—there is much unoccupied territory, and people are separated by far greater distances than is the case in our Middle European countries. This will help you to understand what I mean when I tell you that the influences of the old Nordic Gods and Beings are still perceptible in the spiritual environment of those districts. To one who has some knowledge of the Spiritual it is in a sense an actual fact, that wherever the gaze turns one can glimpse the contenances of those ancient Nordic Gods who appeared to the Initiates in the Northern Mysteries, in times long before Christianity had spread over the world.

In the very heart of these lands, enwreathed as they are by myth and legend, not only in the poetic, but also in the spiritual sense, another symptom came into evidence. Between the lectures in Stockholm I had also to give one in Uppsala. In the Library there—in the very midst of all the evidences of spirituality dating from the times of the ancient Gods—lies the first Germanic version of the Bible; the so-called ‘Silver Codex,’ consisting of the four Gospels translated in the 4th century by the Gothic Bishop Wulfila. During the Thirty Years' War, through strange workings of karma, this remarkable document was taken as booty from Prague and brought to the North, where it is now preserved in the midst of the spirit-beings who, in remembrance at least, pervade the spiritual atmosphere of those regions. And as though it were right and proper that this document should lie where it does, a strange occurrence played a part in the story. Eleven leaves of this Silver Codex were stolen by an antiquarian, but after some time his heir suffered such pricks of conscience that he sent the eleven leaves back again to Uppsala, where they now lie, together with the rest of the first Germanic translation of the Bible.

The subject of the three public lectures in Stockholm was Wagner's “Ring of the Nibelungs,” and, walking along the streets, the announcements of the last performance at the Opera of Wagner's Ragnarök, the “Götterdämmerung” (Twilight of the Gods), were to be seen on the kiosks. These things are really symptomatic, interweaving in a most remarkable way. Underlying the old Nordic sagas there is a note of deep tragedy, indicating that the Nordic Gods and Divinities would be superseded by One yet to come. This motif and trend of the Nordic sagas reappears in a medieval form in Wagner's. Siegfried is killed by a thrust between his shoulder-blades, his only vulnerable part. This is a prophetic intimation that here, at this place in his body, something is lacking, and that through One yet to come it will be covered by the arms of the Cross. This is no mere poetic image, but something that has been drawn from the inspiration belonging to the world of saga and legend. For this same note of tragic destiny was implicit in the Nordic sagas, in the Mystery-truth underlying them, that the Nordic Gods would be replaced by the later, Christian Principle. In the Northern Mysteries the significance of this ‘Twilight’ of the Gods was everywhere made plain.

It is also significant—and here again I mean something more than a poetic image—that in the very hearts of these people to-day the remembrance of those ancient Gods lives on in peaceful reconciliation with all that has been brought there or made its way thither from Christianity. The presence of the Gothic Bible amid the memories of ancient times is verily a symptom. One can also feel it as a symptom, as a foreshadowing of the future, that in lands where more intensely than anywhere else the ancient Gods are felt as living realities, these Gods should be presented again in their Wagnerian form, outside the narrow bounds of ordinary religion.

Anyone in the slightest degree capable of interpreting the signs of the times will perceive in the art of Richard Wagner the first rays of Christianity emerging from the narrow framework of the religious life into the wider horizons of modern spiritual culture. One can discern quite unmistakably how in the soul of Richard Wagner himself the central idea of Christianity comes to birth, how it bursts the bonds of religion and becomes universal. When on Good Friday, in the year 1857, he looks out of the Villa Wesendonck by the Lake of Zürich at the budding flowers of early spring, and the first seed of “Parsifal” quickens to life within him, this is a transformation, on a wider scale, of what already lives in Christianity, as a religious idea. And after he had reached the heights of that prophetic foreshadowing of Christianity to which he gave such magnificent expression in the “Ring of the Nibelungs,” this central Idea of Christianity found still wider horizons in “Parsifal,” becoming the seed of that future time when Christianity will embrace, not only the religious life, but the life of knowledge, of art, of beauty, in the widest sense of the words.

This is the theme that will be presented to you to-day, in order to kindle the feeling of what Christianity can be for mankind in times to come.

In connection with this, we will penetrate deeply to-day into the evolution of humanity, for the purpose of discovering the real relation between religion in the ordinary sense and Christianity. The present point of time is itself not unsuitable, lying as it does just before the great Festival symbolising the victory of the Spirit over Death. The Festival of Easter is close upon us and we remember, perhaps, those Christmas lectures in which we endeavoured to grasp the meaning of Christmas in the light of the Mystery-knowledge. If from a higher vantage-point we think of the Christmas Festival on the one side and the Easter Festival, with its prospect of Whitsuntide, on the other, the relation between religion and Christianity, if rightly conceived, is brought in a most wonderful way before the eye of spirit.

It will be necessary to go far, far afield in laying the basis of this study, but by doing so we shall realise what has been preserved in such Festivals and what they can bring to life in the soul. We shall go far, far back in evolution—although not so far either in time or space as in our last lectures, when we dealt with the Spiritual Hierarchies. Those lectures, however, will have been a help, because of the vistas they opened up of the earth's evolution and its connection with that of the Beings of the heavens. To-day we shall go back only to about the middle of the Atlantean epoch, when the ancestors of present-day humanity were living in the West, between Europe and America, on the continent now lying beneath the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. In those times the face of the earth was quite different. Where now there is water, then there was land, and on this land dwelt the early ancestors of men who now constitute the civilised humanity of Europe and Asia. When the eye of spirit is directed upon the soul-life of these antediluvian, Atlantean peoples, it is seen to have been quite different from the soul-life of Post-Atlantean humanity. We have learnt, from earlier studies, of the mighty changes that have taken place in earth-evolution since that time, including changes in the life of the human soul. The whole of man's consciousness, even the alternating states of waking consciousness by day and sleep by night, have changed. The normal state to-day is that when a man wakes in the morning he comes down with his astral body and Ego into the physical and etheric bodies, making use of the physical senses: the eyes for seeing, the ears for hearing, and all the other senses, in order to receive the impressions coming from the material world around him. He plunges with his astral body down into his brain, into his nerves, combining and relating his multifarious sense-impressions. Such is the life of day. At night, the Ego and astral body draw out of the physical and etheric bodies, and sleep ensues. The physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed, but the Ego and astral body have passed out of them and all the impressions of the sense-world and of the waking life of day are obliterated; joy, suffering, pleasure, pain—everything that composes man's inner waking life of soul passes away, and in the present cycle of human evolution darkness enshrouds him during the night.

At approximately the middle of the Atlantean epoch it was not so. Man's consciousness in those times was essentially different. When in the morning he entered into his physical and etheric bodies he was not confronted with sharply outlined pictures of the outer, material world. The pictures were much less distinct and definite, rather as when street lamps in thick fog appear surrounded with an aura of rainbow-like colours. This homely illustration will help you to envisage what the mid-Atlantean man saw and perceived, but you must remember that these colourforms surrounding and blurring the sharp outlines of objects, and also the tones resounding from them, revealed a great deal more than the colours and tones familiar to us to-day. These encircling colours were the expressions of living beings—of the inner, soul-qualities of these beings. And so when a man had come down into his physical and etheric bodies he still had some perception of the spiritual beings, around him—unlike to-day when, on waking in the morning he merely perceives physical objects with their sharp outlines and coloured surfaces.

Moreover, when at night the Atlantean left his physical and etheric bodies, the world into which he passed was not a world of darkness and silence; the pictures were hardly less numerous than by day, with this difference only, that whereas in the waking life of day man perceived outer objects, belonging to the mineral-, plant-, animal- and human kingdoms, at night the whole space around him was filled with colour-forms and tones, with impressions of smell, taste and so forth. But these colours and tones, these impressions of warmth and cold of which he was conscious, were the garments, the sheaths, of spiritual Beings who never descend to physical incarnation, Beings whose names and images are preserved in the myths and sagas. Myths and sagas are not just folk-songs; they are memories of the visions which in olden times came to men in these conditions of existence. Men were aware of the spiritual alike by day and by night. By night they were surrounded by that world of Nordic gods of which the legends tell. Odin, Freya, and all the other figures in Nordic mythology were not inventions; they were experienced in the spiritual world with as much reality as a man experiences his fellow-men around him to-day. And the sagas are the memories of the experiences actually undergone by men in their shadowy, clairvoyant consciousness.

At the time when this kind of consciousness had evolved from a still earlier form, the sun in the heavens rose at the vernal equinox in the constellation of Libra (the Scales). As the Atlantean epoch took its further course, the kind of consciousness that is ours to-day gradually developed. The impressions received by man during the night when his Ego and astral body were outside his physical and etheric bodies became dimmer, less and less distinct; whereas the images of waking life coming to him when he was within his physical and etheric bodies by day, increased in clarity and definition. Paradoxically speaking, night became more intensely night, day more intensely day.

Then came the Atlantean Flood and the dawn of the later, Post-Atlantean epochs of civilisation: the ancient Indian civilisation when the Holy Rishis themselves were the teachers of men; the epoch of ancient Persian culture; the epoch of Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian-Egyptian culture; the epoch of Greco-Roman culture, and finally our own. These epochs of civilisation followed one another after the submergence of Atlantis. And the mood-of-soul prevailing in men during early Post-Atlantean times, and to some extent also during the last phases of the Atlantean epoch itself, can be indicated by saying that among the peoples everywhere, including those who, as the descendants of the Atlanteans, had wandered across to the East and settled there, the ancient memories still survived, as well as the old myths and legends describing the experiences of the earlier form of Atlantean consciousness. These legends and myths which originated in Atlantis had come over with the migrating peoples, who preserved and narrated them. They were their inspiration, and the oldest inhabitants of the North were still vitally aware of the power flowing from these myths, because their ancestors remembered that their own forefathers had actually seen what was narrated in the legends.

Something else too had been preserved, namely the things that had been experienced, not it is true by the masses of the people, but by those who were the Initiates in olden times, the priests and sages of the Mysteries. Their eyes of spirit had penetrated into the same depths of world-existence that are disclosed to-day through spiritual investigation. The Initiation-consciousness of man's early forefathers worked in the spiritual world as powerfully as the Folk-Soul. Clairvoyance, although dim and shadowy, was still a real and vital power in those olden days. Folk-lore and saga preserved and proclaimed, in revelations often fragmentary and broken, realities that had once been experienced. What had been seen in vision and cultivated in the Mysteries was preserved in the form of an ancient wisdom. It was then possible, in the Mysteries, to infuse into the individual consciousness of those who became Initiates, a wide, all-embracing vista of the universe. But forms of consciousness which had been natural in remote ages had in the later times of the Mysteries to be artificially induced.

Why was spiritual vision a natural condition in the far distant past? The reason is that the connection between the physical body and the etheric body was different. The connection existing to-day did not develop until the later phases of the Atlantean epoch. Before that time the upper part of the etheric head extended far outside the boundaries of the physical head; towards the end of Atlantis the etheric head gradually drew completely into the physical head until it coincided with it. This gave rise to the later form of consciousness which became natural in Post-Atlantean man, enabling him to perceive physical objects in sharp outlines, as we do to-day. The fact that man can hear tones, be aware of scents, see colours on surfaces—although these are no longer expressions of the inmost spiritual reality of things—all this is connected with the firm and gradual interlocking of the physical body and etheric body.

In earlier times, when the etheric body was still partly outside the physical body, this projecting part of the etheric body was able to receive impressions from the astral body, and it was these impressions that were perceived by the old, dreamlike clairvoyance. Not until the etheric body had sunk right down into the physical body was man wholly bereft of his dim clairvoyance. Hence in the ancient Mysteries it became necessary for the priests to use special methods in order to induce in the candidates for Initiation the condition which, in Atlantis, had been natural and normal. When pupils were to receive Initiation in the Mystery-temples, the procedure was that, after the appropriate impressions had been received by the astral body, the priests conducting the Initiation induced a partial loosening of the etheric body, in consequence of which the physical body lay for three and a half days in a trancelike sleep, in a kind of paralytic condition. The astral body was then able to imprint into the loosened etheric body experiences which had once come to Atlantean man in his normal state. Then the candidate for Initiation was able to see around him realities that henceforth were no longer merely preserved for him in scripts, or in tradition, but had become his own, individual experiences.

Let us try to picture what actually happened to the candidate for Initiation.—When the priests in the Mysteries raised the etheric body partially out of the physical body and guided the impressions issuing from the astral body into this released etheric body, the candidate experienced in his etheric body the spiritual worlds. So strong and intense were the experiences that when he was restored from the trance and his etheric body was reunited to the physical body, he brought back the memory of these experiences into his physical consciousness. He had been a witness of the spiritual worlds, could himself bear witness to what was happening there; he had risen above and beyond all division into peoples or nations, for he had been initiated into that by which all peoples are united; the primal wisdom, primal truth.

Thus it was in the ancient Mysteries; so too it was in those moments of which I told you in connection with the Christmas Mystery, when the boundaries which were to characterise the consciousness of later times disappeared before the gaze of the Initiate. Think for a moment of the fundamental characteristic of Post-Atlantean consciousness. Man is no longer able to see into the innermost nature of things; between him and this innermost core of being a boundary is fixed. He sees only the surfaces of things in the physical world. What man's consciousness in the Post-Atlantean epoch could no longer penetrate, was transparent and clear to the one who in olden times was about to receive Initiation. And then, when the great moment came, in what is called the “Holy Night,” he was able to see through the solid earth and to behold the Sun, the spiritual “Sun at midnight.”

In essentials, therefore, this pre-Christian Initiation consisted in re-evoking what in ancient times had been the natural condition, the normal state of consciousness. Little by little, as civilisation advanced, these memories of olden times receded and the power to experience reality outside the physical body became increasingly rare. Nevertheless, in the earliest periods of the Post-Atlantean epoch there were still many in the ancient Indian, Persian, Chaldean civilisations, indeed even in ancient Egypt, whose etheric bodies were not yet so firmly anchored in the physical body as to prevent them from receiving the impressions of the spiritual world—in the form of atavistic remains of an earlier age. Later, during Greco-Roman times, even these vestiges disappeared and it was less and less possible for Initiation to be achieved in the same way as before. It became increasingly difficult to preserve for humanity the memories of the ancient, primal wisdom.

At this point we are drawing near the time of our own Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch which denotes something of peculiar significance in the evolution of humanity. In the Greco-Latin epoch it was still true to speak of an equal possibility, on the one side of remembering the visions arising in the ancient, shadowy clairvoyance, and on the other, of living wholly within the physical body, and of being thereby completely cut off from the spiritual worlds. Individuals here and there had this experience. The whole trend of modern life goes to show that the man of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch has descended still more deeply into the physical body—the outer sign being the birth of materialistic concepts. These made their appearance for the first time in the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, with the Atomists of ancient Greece. Then, having passed from the scene for a time, we find them cropping up again, and during the last four centuries their influence has so greatly increased that man has lost, not only the content of the old memories of the spiritual worlds, but, gradually, all belief in the very existence of those worlds. There you have the true state of affairs. In this Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, man has sunk so deeply into the physical body that he has lost even belief! In a very large number of people, belief in the existence of a spiritual world has simply vanished.

And now let us look from a different point of view at the course taken by evolution. Looking back into those ancient Atlantean times of which we have been trying to form a concrete picture, we can say that man was still living with and among his gods. He believed not only in his own existence and that of the three kingdoms of nature, but also in the reality of the higher realms of the spiritual worlds, for in the Atlantean epoch he was an actual witness of them. His spiritual consciousness by night and his physical consciousness by day did not greatly differ; they were in balance, and it would have been foolish of a man to deny the reality of that which was perceptibly around him—for he actually beheld the gods. There was no need for religion in our modern sense. What now forms the content of the various religions was a perceived reality to the majority of human beings in the times of Atlantis. Just as little as you yourselves need religion in order to believe in the existence of roses or lilies, rocks or trees, as little did the Atlantean need religion in order to believe in gods, for to him they were realities. But this immediate reality faded away, and more and more the content of the spiritual worlds became mere memory—partly preserved in traditions of the visions of very ancient forefathers, partly in the myths and sagas, and in what a few individuals gifted with special powers of clairvoyance had themselves witnessed of these spiritual worlds. Above all, however, this content of the spiritual worlds was preserved in the Mysteries, guarded by the priests of the Mysteries. The secret knowledge under the guardianship of the Priests of Hermes in Egypt, of Zarathustra in Persia, and the sages of Chaldea, the successors of the Holy Rishis in India, was nothing else than the art of enabling human beings, through Initiation, to witness what men in days of yore had seen around them in a perfectly natural way. Later, what the Mysteries preserved was expressed in the form of the folk-religion—here in one, there in another religion—according to the constitution of a people, according to its particular faculties and powers of perception, even according to its native climate. But the primal wisdom was the basis of them all, as the one great unity. This wisdom was one and the same, whether cultivated by Pythagoras in his School, by the Chaldean sages in Western Asia, by Zarathustra in Persia, or by the Brahmans in India. Everywhere it was the same primal wisdom—expressed in varied form according to the needs and conditions obtaining in the folk-religions of the different regions. Here, then, we see the primal wisdom as the fount and basis of all religion.

What is religion, fundamentally speaking? It is the intermediary between the spiritual worlds and mankind when men are no longer able to experience these spiritual worlds through their own organs of perception. Religion was the proclamation, the announcement of the existence of spiritual worlds, made for the sake of men who could no longer experience spiritual reality. Thus was the spiritual life spread over the earth as religious culture in the several epochs of civilisation, in ancient India, ancient Persia and the rest, down to our own time.

As I have already said, the purpose of man's descent into a physical body was that he might gain knowledge of the external world, experiencing existence through his physical senses, in order, finally, to spiritualise what he thus experienced, and so lead it to future stages of evolution. But at the present time, having plunged deeply into the physical body, and having already passed the middle point of the Post-Atlantean civilisations, we are facing a very definite eventuality.

The whole evolution of mankind has a certain strange quality. It goes forward in one direction until a certain point is reached and then it begins to stream in the opposite direction. Having streamed downwards to a certain point, it turns again upwards, reaching the same stages as on the descent, but now in a higher form. To-day man stands in very truth before a fateful future, that future when, as is known to everyone who is aware of this deeply significant truth of evolution, his etheric body will gradually loosen itself again, freeing itself from its submergence in the physical body, where the things of the physical world are perceived in their sharply outlined forms. The etheric body must release itself again in order that man's being may become spiritualised and once again have vision of the spiritual world. To-day humanity has actually reached the point when in a great number of individuals the etheric body is beginning to loosen.

A destiny in the very highest degree significant is approaching us, and here we come near to the secret of our own epoch of civilisation.

We must realise that the etheric body, which has descended very deeply into the physical body, must now take the path upwards, carrying with it from the physical body everything that has been experienced through the physical senses. But just because the etheric body is loosening itself from the physical, everything that was formerly reality—in the physical sense—must gradually be spiritualised. It will be essential for mankind in times to come to have conscious certainty that the spiritual is reality. What will happen otherwise? The etheric body will be freed from the physical body while men still believe only in the reality of the physical world, and have no consciousness of the reality of the spiritual, which will be manifest in the loosened etheric body as the fruit of man's past experience in the physical body. In such conditions men may be faced with the danger of losing all relationship to this loosening of their etheric bodies.

Let us consider the point at which a man's etheric body, which has been firmly anchored in the physical body, begins to loosen from it again and to emerge. Suppose that this happens to a man who in his physical existence has lost all belief in, all consciousness of, the spiritual world, and has cut himself off from any connection with it. Let us assume that he descended so firmly and deeply into the physical body that he has been able to retain nothing save the belief that the physical life is the one and only reality. Now he passes into the next phase of human existence. Relentlessly the etheric body emerges from the physical body, while he is still incapable of realising the existence of a spiritual world. He neither recognises nor knows anything of the spiritual world about him. This is the fate which may confront men in the near future, that they do not recognise the spiritual world which, as the result of the loosening of the etheric body, they must inevitably experience, but regard it as a phantasy, illusion, vain imagination. And those who have experienced most ably, with the utmost perfection, the physical body, the men who have become the pundits of materialism and are full of fixed, rigid notions of matter, it is they who, with the loosening of the etheric body, will face the greatest danger of being without a single inkling that there is a spiritual world. They will regard everything that then comes to them from the spiritual world as illusion, fancy, as so many figments of dream.

If in times to come, when the etheric body has again loosened itself from the physical, man is to live his life in any real sense, he must have consciousness of what will then present itself to the etheric body. In order that he may be conscious that what then comes to him is knowledge of the spiritual world, it is essential that realisation of the existence of the spiritual world shall be preserved in humanity and carried through the period when man is most deeply immersed in the material world. For the sake of the future, the link between the religious life and the life of knowledge must never be lost. Man came forth from a life among the gods; to a life among the gods he will again return. But he must be able to recognise them; he must know that in very truth the gods are realities. When the etheric body has loosened he will no longer be able to rely on remembrances of ancient human times. If meanwhile he has lost consciousness of the spiritual world, has come to believe that life in the physical body and things to be seen in the physical world are the only realities, then for all ages of time he must dangle, as it were, in mid-air. He will have lost his bearings in the spiritual world and will have no ground under his feet. He will be threatened, in this condition, with what is known as the “spiritual death.” For around him there is only phantasy, illusion, a world of whose reality he has no consciousness, in which he does not believe, and so ... he dies! That is the death in the spiritual world. It is the doom which threatens men if, before passing again into the spiritual worlds, they fail to bring with them any consciousness of those worlds.

At what point in the evolution of humanity was attainment of consciousness of the spiritual world made possible for man? It was at the point where man's descent into the physical body was countered by victory over that body, and there was placed before men the great Prototype of Christ Himself. The understanding of Christ forms for man the bridge between the memories of his ancient past and the foreshadowings of his future. When Jesus of Nazareth had reached the age of 30, the Christ came down into his body. For the first and last time Christ lived in a physical body. And His victory over death—when it is rightly understood—reveals to man what the manner of his own life must be if, for all ages of time, he is to be conscious of the reality of the spiritual world. That is the true union with Christ.

What will the Christ Mystery, the Christ Deed, come to mean in the life of man in the future? The man of the future will look back upon our present epoch, when he lived wholly within the physical body, just as Post-Atlantean man looks back to those Atlantean times when he was living together with the gods. As he ascends again into the spiritual world, man will know that through the Christ Deed he has gained the victory over what he experienced in the physical body; he will point to the physical as something that has been overcome, surmounted. We should feel the Easter Miracle, then, as a mighty Deed, a foreshadowing of the Future.

Two possibilities lie before the man of the future. The one possibility is that he will look back in remembrance to the time of his experiences in the physical body, and he will say, “These alone were real. Now there is about me only a world of illusion. Life in the physical body—that was the reality.” Such a man will be gazing into a grave and what he sees in the grave is a corpse. But the corpse—the physical thing—will still be for him the true reality. That is the one possibility.

The other is that man will look back upon what was experienced in the physical world, and will know that it is a grave. Then, with deep consciousness of the import of his words, he will say to those who still believe the physical to have been the one and only reality: “He Whom thou seekest is no longer here! The grave is empty and He Who lay within it has risen!”

The empty Grave and the Risen Christ—this is the Easter Mystery, the Mystery that is a foreshadowing, a prophecy. Christ came to establish the great synthesis between the Easter Mystery and the Christmas Mystery. To the Christmas re-enactment of the ancient Mysteries is added the Mystery of future time, the Mystery of the Risen Christ. This is the Mystery enshrined in the Festival of Easter. The future of Christianity is that Christianity will not merely proclaim the existence of higher worlds, nor be mere religion, but an inner affirmation, a powerful impulse in life itself. It will be an inner affirmation, because in the Risen Christ man will behold that which he himself will experience through the ages of time to come. This Mystery is a Deed, a reality of life, inasmuch as man looks up to Christ not merely as the Saviour but as the great Prototype with whom his life conforms, in that he too will eventually overcome death. To live and work in the spirit of Christianity, to see in Christ not merely the Comforter but the One Who goes before us, Who is related in the deepest sense with our innermost being and Whose example we follow—this is what the Christ Idea will be in the future, pervading all knowledge, all art, all life. And if we remind ourselves of what is contained in the Easter Idea, we shall find there a Christian symbol of true Deed, true Life.

In times when men will have long since ceased to need the teachings of religion to tell them of the ancient gods, because they will again be living among gods, they will find in Christ that source of strength which enables them to find their own firm centre among the gods. Men will no longer require religion in order to believe in gods whom they will once again behold, any more than they required religion in former times when they lived and moved among gods. Themselves spiritualised, men will live consciously among spiritual Beings, fulfilling their tasks in communion with these Beings. In a future by no means far distant, man will find that the physical world is losing its importance for him, that physical things are becoming evanescent. Their reality will have already paled long before man's existence on the earth has drawn to its close.¹ But when the things of the physical world of sense cease to be all-important and fade into shadow, man will either find that the physical is losing its importance while he is still incapable of believing in the spiritual realities before him, or he will be able to believe and preserve for himself the consciousness of these spiritual realities—and then for such a man there will be no spiritual death.

To confront a reality that is unrecognisable, means to be shattered in the spirit. And men would come to this pass if, with the loosening of the etheric body, the spiritual worlds were to appear before them without being recognised and known as such. Many a man to-day could have consciousness of the spiritual worlds but has it not. Therefore these worlds take vengeance, and this shows itself in man's restlessness, his neurasthenic condition, his pathological fears, which are nothing else than the consequences of failure to unfold consciousness of the spiritual worlds. Those who realise the significance of these things feel the necessity of a spiritual Movement which, for those who are outgrowing the substance of ordinary religion, preserves belief in man, in the whole man, including, therefore, the spiritual man.

To know Christ means to know man as a spiritual being. To be filled with the Christ Mystery in the future will mean that Christianity as mere religion will be surmounted and will be carried as knowledge to infinite horizons. Christianity will permeate art, will broaden and inspire it, will bestow in abundance the power of artistic creation. Richard Wagner's “Parsifal” is the first foreshadowing of this.

Christianity will flow into all life and activity on the earth and when the formal religions have long ceased to be necessary, mankind will have been strengthened and invigorated by the Christ Impulse which had once to be given in the middle of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, during the Greco-Latin epoch, when Christ came down among men. Just as it was man's destiny to sink into the deepest depths of material life, so must he be lifted again to knowledge of the Spirit. With the Coming of Christ this Impulse was given.

These are the feelings that should inspire us in the days when we have the Easter Mystery in symbols around us. For the Easter Mystery is not merely a Mystery of Remembrance. It is also a Mystery of the Future, foreshadowing the destiny of those who free themselves more and more from the shackles, ensnarements and pitfalls of the purely material life.

• 1. This is the answer to the scientific prognostication of the end of the human race.

When spiritual science is discussed today in the sense in which it is meant here, one can often experience that people not only express opposing views on this or that conceptual point, but also turn against it in an almost passionate way, as if it were something that would arise from the arbitrariness of this or that person and should only be brought into the world through this arbitrariness. Anyone who has a little overview of intellectual life as it has developed up to the present day, as it has been preparing for a long time, will very soon be able to see that this spiritual science or spiritual research is not just about something that merely needs to arise from the arbitrary intentions of some mind, but something that wants to meet the urge, the longing of the time. And anyone who is perhaps able to look a little deeper into this urge, this longing of the time, will also be able to perceive, with some attention, how those impulses that lead, indeterminately and still today as if instinctively, , will in the future become ever more definite and definite, ever more significant and ever more intense; so that spiritual research, in the way it is meant here, corresponds to an urge of the times. It is the task of today's and tomorrow's lectures, which I have the honor of giving to you, to present this.

It is basically quite easy to understand that today people carry around many popular beliefs and ideas that they have constructed for themselves in order to build a world view; but they object when spiritual research wants to enter into the spiritual life of the present day and assert that, in addition to what human understanding can comprehend, in addition to what the ordinary mind, which finds its fulfillment in the comprehension of scientific research, can comprehend, that in addition to all this, there is something in man that is designated by names that are so horrible for many, such as “etheric body,” “astral body,” and “ego carrier,” so that man does not only consists of the substances of the external world, but that he should also carry within himself supersensible elements, such as the supersensible etheric body, or the astral body, which is completely supersensible and underlies the physical organization, and the carrier of the actual ego, the deepest fundamental essence of man.

It is just as easy to scoff, just as easy to construct apparent refutations from popular concepts against such knowledge; and when, in addition, spiritual scientific research wants to use its methods to explore the conditions of life and existence of human nature, wants to show that it wants to reach beyond birth and death, beyond what the senses and ordinary science can explore, then such an assertion seems to contradict everything we are accustomed to reading or hearing today.

And yet, through this spiritual research, attention must be paid to what Lessing has already more or less externally incorporated into our spiritual life; and it must be enlivened by spiritual research.

This spiritual research must show man that in his supersensible members there are powers to be found that extend beyond this earth-life; so that one has to speak not only of one, but of repeated earth-lives, so that man man, in his entire existence, has to survey his being through spiritual science: forward beyond birth, initially into his spiritual existence; then into earlier earth lives, and again into the future, into later earth lives.

For spiritual science, the entire existence of a person can be broken down into successive earthly lives, which are separated from one another by that which lies between death and a new birth: by a purely spiritual existence in supersensible worlds.

At first, modern man may have many objections to this penetration into the spiritual world; it seems quite fantastic to him. And precisely those who know the conditions and foundations of spiritual science will find it understandable that much resistance can arise in the modern soul against such assertions. And so we find among the objections the assertion: We overlook existence, and what first presents itself to our senses shows us that we have a closed world in sense existence, which can be known from within ourselves.

That was the endeavor of a number of great, serious thinkers in the second half of the nineteenth century: to exert all the powers of thought to explain from within what presents itself to the intellect of man! Much has been done in the course of the nineteenth century to establish such a worldview, to give it moral supports, moral goals, and also to give comfort to the human soul from it. And it is not the worst souls that have striven for a materialistic, positivistic worldview.

This is one of the types of resistance that one encounters when talking about spiritual research or spiritual science.

The second is something that one finds in people who have a different conviction, namely that behind this sensual world lies a supersensible world, people who recognize such a supersensible world but who cannot admit that the powers of human knowledge and the possibilities of human research are suitable for penetrating into the supersensible existence.

Whether they are doubts or objections from the philosophical side, esteemed attendees, the great philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte said everything necessary against all these objections many years ago, a century ago, , when he, in the way that one could say it at the time, gave lectures at the newly founded University of Berlin in 1811 and 1813 and clothed in words that which can be seen through the spirit. Right at the beginning, Johann Gottlieb Fichte said to his audience: Imagine a crowd of people who were born blind and still live as blind people, and one of them would be a seer who speaks of light and colors. Then these people would say: He is talking about something fantastic that does not exist.

From their point of view, they are right, because what can be known about a world depends on whether the person has the organ to perceive it. A supernatural world can only be admitted by someone who, as Goethe put it, has the spiritual eye to see this world as a reality.

Now, the way in which this spiritual science or spiritual research is presented in modern literature is not limited to merely presenting the results, or what has just been indicated in a few words. The literature not only presents the results of the research, but you can also find, for example, in my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds,” and in the second part of my “Occult Science in Outline,” how the human soul comes to truly develop within itself the organ to look into the spiritual world. And this organ is accessible to everyone if they only go the right way.

If someone is born blind, it can be said that he may be denied the ability to recognize light and colors for life. With the spiritual eye, however, it is possible for everyone to awaken it; there are powers within everyone that are dormant.

Since today we are to speak about the “task of spiritual science for the future”, we can only briefly touch on what the goals and nature of this spiritual science itself are. Something of what is pushing towards this spiritual science is, so to speak, everywhere [decided], wherever you look, especially in the best minds of the preparing new time, the preparing spiritual future.

Among the many things that could be mentioned, let me just quote the well-known saying of Goethe, where he says, based on a long life of experience, through a penetrating observation of the reality of existence – you can find the passage in “Conversations with Eckermann” – he said: “One may have gone through many things in life, may have faced existence in many ways – in old age one will become a mystic.

And because Goethe held this view, he also had his Faust end as a mystic at the end of the second part of “Faust”, even though he also portrayed him as a practical soul.

What does Goethe actually mean when he says that people become mystics in old age? Basically, anyone can experience this by comparing the whole mood, the whole state of their soul, in their youth and then when they reach a certain age: you have gone through life, formed a certain view, certain inner views, to which you develop a very specific relationship, an emotional and sensory position.

In youth, [goals and] ideals, worldviews can gush forth – views of the world gush forth; one can have the feeling: they are there, raised up out of you. And when one looks back to childhood in particular, one can see how one cannot yet speak of how the soul and the body give rise to activity and expressiveness. What the human being can observe in himself in youth emerges from the indeterminate foundations of the soul life.

Later on, we can see that what we have achieved within ourselves emerges from the soul. But then comes the time when more and more of what is unfolding in the world around us is consciously reflected in the soul, and we know that what we have experienced is now drawing together in our soul in such a way that it can shed light on other things. You become richer inside.

How fresh you feel inside in old age indicates what kind of views you projected out of yourself in your youth. In old age, you become much more independent of the physical. One has an inner experience that every human being can have, even without spiritual science: the experience of becoming independent of one's soul, of one's physicality, of one's personality. And this inwardness, Goethe sensed it when he said that one becomes a mystic in old age. He meant: one has a spiritual form from which one can shed light on the outside world.

And if you examine, I would say, the intention of this Goethean soul, especially at this point, you can say: He felt it, as in youth, so to speak in the earlier human ages, one lives in harmony with what one is also externally, physically. The body grows, becomes stronger and stronger; all the individual functions become stronger. This happens in every life. Every human being reaches what can be called a peak in life, and every human being reaches what can be called a decline. We all feel the decline of life. But it is precisely during the decline of physical life that we feel more and more this inner richness, as we are allowed to ascribe more inner judgment to the world; we feel the inner independence from the outer decline.

If we have developed healthily, we feel that we become fuller, richer in content, when we describe the descent of life. That is where the question comes from, independently of all things, the question of what comes after death, after we have passed through the gate of death - after we pass through the gate of death into the spiritual world?

The objective, independent of the personal, is precisely that you say to yourself: You accumulate a wealth in your entire life that is ever increasing. And when life has become richer and richer, more and more full of content, then it loses the body. Does what one has collected go through one's whole life, does it go into nothingness? That is the question - not the one that is caused by the fear of death, or by some subjective feeling, but when such forces become ever richer and richer, then the question arises: should they disappear into nothingness when a person walks through the gate of death? No. We can perceive in ourselves how, basically, something within us, which is our inner soul core, works on our outer, physical existence throughout our entire life. We can best recognize this when we observe the changing states between waking and sleeping and ask ourselves what occurs there.

An external, experimental science cannot answer this. But how does spiritual science answer it? We enter the human being as he falls asleep, and he feels how he becomes more and more alienated from the forces through which he moves his limbs; he feels himself escaping from the earthly-bodily. But at the moment this happens, consciousness is extinguished. Spiritual research says: something very special is happening: the physical body and the etheric body remain in bed; but what we call the astral body and the ego carrier withdraw from the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking up. Only the inner forces of these are not awakened; that is why the darkness of unconsciousness then spreads around the person.

Spiritual research shows that the forces in this astral body and this I-bearer of the human being, which are so weak in ordinary everyday life that the person cannot be aware of them during sleep, can be kindled.

This is done by means of real spiritual methods. It is done through what is called meditation and concentration. If a person brings it upon themselves to make themselves an instrument for the truths of the spiritual world, they can do so through meditation and concentration.

Much is needed for this. Only one example will be given here. Imagine that you have a glass that is empty and one that is a quarter full of water, and you pour water from the full glass into the empty glass, and you now imagine that that this happening does not bring about what usually happens, namely that the glass from which he pours becomes emptier, but that by pouring into the other glass, the glass from which he pours becomes fuller and fuller!

We have to form such allegorical ideas ourselves, without claiming that they are real. If a person always remains within his reason and is aware that his idea is allegorical, he can have a certain feeling about it. This can then express a higher truth, for example about human love.

Love is a concept that is virtually impossible to penetrate. But you can express individual qualities of love in symbols.

He who pours the mild powers of his love into a heart in need of love will notice that he loses none of his power of love, but that through this giving his power becomes greater and greater. He will be able to use the symbol of the glass for this love, which does not become emptier by pouring into another, but fuller.

And when man then draws together all his thoughts, concentrating them on such a symbol, when man has the patience to concentrate his soul forces again and again on such an inner life of thought, then he evokes the slumbering forces from his soul and attains a state in which he becomes a true instrument for beholding the world behind sense perception.

In this state, the human being then comes to truly experience, outside of his body, that in which he otherwise only exists in sleep; and he can bring about states that are not sleep but are similar to sleep in that he is outside of himself, having moved out of himself with the astral body and the ego. Then he is in the spiritual world. The spiritual world then reveals itself to him. The self-experiment is then also proof that he lives in the supersensible reality. And then the person realizes that he is that which does not depend on the instrument of the body, but rather forms this very form of the body.

And when this spiritual eye opens, then he notices, as the child enters the world through birth, this supersensible working and forming in man.

Only then are the things that external research brings to light explained, when we are able to notice how the more and more distinct physiognomy of the child develops out of the more and more distinct physiognomy of the child, how speech develops, how the brain develops more and more, how the upright gait is achieved.

The spiritual researcher shows who is actually the real worker in the whole process of human development.

The spiritual does not develop out of the physical, [not out of a single germ] at birth or conception, but the spiritual researcher can observe how the spiritual emerges from the spiritual world and how it first creates the physical body.

In this way, one follows the human being beyond the bounds of life, as one does in nature, as one does with plants, where one follows the germ from one year to the next; one follows the end and connects it to the beginning. One follows the germ as it develops into the plant. The spiritual researcher does not merely follow the supersensible human being in its life between birth and death, but follows it beyond the gate of death. What Goethe says, the mystical, is followed by the person who knows that what reproduces itself is the spiritual. And he sees how it becomes more and more independent and independent when the body decays.

Just as the seed remains when everything else withers and then develops into a new plant, so it is with the spirit. And while more and more of our physical shell is lost with age, this spiritual part becomes stronger and stronger, and in such a way that it has become rich through all its experiences, and is now able to do what it could not do at the beginning of life.

At the beginning of life, it has built a [certain] body. During life, one experiences that one can no longer use this in death. But in the inner soul, there are the seeds for building a new life. And by passing through the gateway of death, we can see how the forces for building a new life have grown stronger.

And so, through spiritual research, we can see how man is ready to build a new body by gathering strength between birth and death to build a new body for himself.

The spiritual researcher applies exactly the same methods that are used to observe nature externally; only he applies them in such a way that the person who wants to apply them must develop the organs for supersensible vision. Then what he explains becomes comprehensible to those who cannot yet see into the spiritual world, comprehensible from everything that is in harmony with the phenomena of external life.

Thus it becomes comprehensible that this teaching of the return of man, of the creative soul that lives in him and is not limited by birth and death, may at first seem fantastic. Then, from today, man reaches a certain point in his view of the world, to that point that is like the dawn in which Giordano Bruno stood.

How did he stand there - Giordano Bruno - when he made his knowledge independent of science? If today natural science must rely on that which is based on the external, then one need only say: Even before Copernicus, before Kepler, before Galileo, people directed their minds out into space and found the law of the world just as it took place outside their external senses; and he - Giordano Bruno - replaces the external law with his inner vision. They stopped at the sensory view, those who observed the spreading of the wide celestial spheres and saw the blue vault of heaven as resting on a disk.

What did Giordano Bruno say against this view? He said: What you see as the blue vault of heaven is only through the limitation of your eye. From every point, the eye looks into an infinite world! He said that on the basis of Copernicus. And Copernicus had not prepared a system based on sensory experience, but what Copernicus gave in his system, he had through thinking, through the inner power of the human soul.

Thus the soul must not rely on what science presents as knowledge. And on the basis of the inner powers, Giordano Bruno was able to say: What you perceive with your senses, this outer vault of heaven, is nothing more than the boundary of your vision!

The spiritual researcher says: the boundary of birth and death, and that we believe that human beings are enclosed within these boundaries, can certainly be compared with the “borders” in the sky that were assumed on the basis of sensory perception before the Copernican worldview. And just as Giordano Bruno does, spiritual science points out into the infinite vastness of the human soul. And just as the blue vault of heaven comes from the fact that the senses do not see further, so the belief that life is limited by death comes from the fact that limited vision does not see further than physical death.

Many today stand with spiritual science at the same point where natural science stood three centuries ago; and the longing of the present time, of our time, pushes against these processes. Whoever follows the course of thought in recent times sees how natural science and thinking have progressed from triumph to triumph - thinking that is linked to natural science and to external perception. Anyone who follows this path will certainly be an admirer of natural science when it comes to the development of the scientific, and nowhere is the spiritual science concerned with struggling against the wonderful successes of natural science. But when this natural science comes before your soul, then something else comes before the human being in relation to human life.

I do not want to theorize here; let us consider a specific case. It was in February 1901 when a star suddenly appeared in the sky, only to disappear the very next day. After appearing brightly lit, the next day it had hardly any perceptible light left.

No matter how right the scientific hypothesis may be, how does the scientific mind view this star? It imagines that there is a double star, that one star will collide with the other and spray and dissolve into a nebula. A bright flare-up from the collision, then a brightening, a dimming from the spraying.

And how does the scientific mind approach this strange mystery? If we think entirely in the stream of thought that has been woven through Giordano Bruno and Copernicus, then two world bodies collide. Giordano Bruno describes the view into the infinite vastness, the sun with its planets, on which beings live. Worlds collide there. Millions of creatures may perish in such a collision. All this life is founded in what is a flicker and in the spraying and is destroyed. What does science possibly tell us about what is going on up there in the external mechanical collision? There, cosmic bodies disintegrate into nebulae, and from this nebula a new solar system will form, plants will develop, later animals, human forms - until such a collision occurs again.

Such knowledge is available to the thinking that is linked to science. - One should not say anything against the greatness of this thinking. How can one not admire this thinking — what has been achieved in the nineteenth century through spectral analysis, through the advances in biology. But in addition to this, which we have just placed before our souls, there is something else that can show us how powerless all thinking is, which has just formed itself on this flashing and dispersing star event.

When we see a mother living with her child, we see her experiencing how the soul of the child works its way up; we see this mother connected with the first stages of maturation, the attempts at speaking and walking; we see her united with the child in love; we then see this mother at the child's deathbed, seeing the child die. We see the mother's grief and feel the question arise within us: Why was it born? And what is it about the soul that entered into the birth, that gave me such intimate joy, that has now disappeared into nothingness?

There we have the question of life. And we know, my dear attendees, that we encounter such questions at every turn, questions that cannot be answered by the outer senses, but that can be seen living in a corner of the soul.

And now let us look beyond what natural science can tell us about the entire world system, and we feel powerless in the face of the questions concerning the human soul. Such things cannot be dispelled by impassive staring; such things are what life repeatedly presents to our soul.

When millions of living beings are dead, perish through a collision - what science can tell us about all this coming into being and passing away of beings and what they are, it does not come close to what a human heart asks when it sits at the deathbed of a loved one and wonders about the fate of life!

If we observe the thinking and activity of the time, today, in relation to these things, a great change presents itself to us in comparison to the past. We need only go back to the time of Goethe to see how even the most enlightened researchers - apart from the French moralists - affirm something similar to the history of creation and say: It was simply the life of what is presented today as knowledge. What was in the Mosaic creation story then?

Man is in the spiritual world, and only later is the material added. This world view gave man a picture of the world in which man was already in it, and it was such that it said to this human soul: What so wonderfully enters into life belongs to the first substance of the earth - and you yourself belong to it.

And more and more, a world view is emerging in its place that only sees mechanical world events. You see a star formation disintegrate and imagine that a new world is forming, just as you imagine that a new planetary system is forming. I have often used the image of what happens when you take a certain substance, an oily substance that forms drops, cut a sheet of paper in half and push it through the large droplet as an equatorial plane, then stick a needle into the sheet of paper, start turning it, and then see how small droplets actually separate. And in this way you actually see something like a planetary system unfolding on a small scale, as it unfolds on a large scale outside. And who wouldn't believe in it?

It has only one fault: when showing something, one must not forget the most important things, one must not forget that nothing would come into being if the teacher were not there and turning! So one does not fully represent it if one forgets the main factor: the driving force! So even theoretically this “world system” has a hole.

But then it becomes completely inexplicable how this world soul can tie itself to what is developing, so that it may one day step out of its nothingness onto this scene.

And more and more, this view has developed that only the mechanical is called upon to explain the world. From ancient times until our own, it has become more and more a kind of belief that all phenomena need only be explained mechanically. The whole of human life itself has gradually become mechanical.

And so it has come about that the time has come when the soul, with its questions, stands incomprehensibly before what modern thinking is able to see, and knows of no bridge to what science says. And while the soul wonders – spiritual science has an answer!

There was a time in the nineteenth century when it was seriously believed that thoughts arise from the brain, when one spoke of thoughts as brain vibrations. How could it ever come about that movements in the brain could be directly related to thoughts? Where did all this mechanical science come from in the first place?

And so it came about that in more recent times, due to the necessary conditions of this time, the ability of the old times to look into the spiritual was lost. People did not recognize the essence of thoughts; they did not know how to look at a thought. And so one could believe that in the physical body, where the soul is embedded, alone the essence of man lies. But even if one disputes this soul away, it is still there, and it presents itself in the modern progress of the world. - Therefore, in the course of time, the urge had asserted itself to consult other effective beings than the mechanical ones.

How did an important historian and art connoisseur, Herman Grimm, face life in his time? He knew nothing of spiritual science, but he had set himself a great task, which he shared with those who wanted to listen to him. He once explained this plan to me; everything he gave us in detail was only to be part of a larger plan. He wanted to work on a great work in which he wanted to explain that it is not mechanical forces that are at work in the whole of the existence of the world, but “creative imagination”! That which is creative imagination in man is creative power outside of him - so he said.

And there was a philosopher in the nineteenth century: Jakob Frohschammer, in Munich, who sought to present this human imagination as the most essential thing. When he shows that not only the forces in which the microscopist believes today are formed in the embryo, but also suspects creative imagination as a formative force, this corresponds to the urge at that time to also find something spiritual, to turn one's gaze to the active, the creating spirit, which shows itself as going beyond arising and ceasing, in the midst of the triumphs of science. For arising and passing away is tied to the appearance of nature; while the creative spirit is that which remains.

And in our time we see how serious people feel that, although one must proceed in accordance with modern science wherever natural phenomena are concerned, the soul cannot but rise up into the spiritual that lives and permeates the world.

Today, one can observe an interesting phenomenon. In every train station bookstore, you can now get a strange book: This book, despite containing many inaccuracies, is an important phenomenon of the time; it is called: “On the criticism of time,” by Walter Rathenau. This book was written by a “practitioner of life” who sees this mechanization everywhere in scientific and intellectual life with the naked eye and who, especially in the first chapters of this book, presents a magnificent account of how human concepts have become mechanical, how social life has become mechanical.

He presents all this with the stylus of the man of sense, of the man who looks at reality. But it is precisely such a practitioner of life, who is seized by the living essence of the soul, who shows us the urge and yearning for the spiritual in our time. There you will find, for example, meaningful passages. The soul calls out for what is spiritual:

It longs for a meaning that lies beyond what can be proven [...]. The time is looking [...] for its soul.

It is looking for its soul, the time - so he thinks,

and will find it; admittedly against the will of mechanization. This epoch

—ours—

was not interested in developing the soul in man; it aimed to make the world usable and thus rational, to push back the boundary of wonder and to conceal the otherworldly —

to understand the truths.

Nevertheless, we are surrounded by mystery as ever. It emerges from every smooth surface of thought, and from every everyday experience it takes just one step

to penetrate

to the center of the world. The three emanations of the soul: love of creature, of nature, and of divinity, could not be robbed by mechanization of the individual life; for the life of the whole, it was volatilized into insignificance. Humanitarianism sank to cold pity and compulsory welfare, and yet it signifies the ethical summit of the entire epoch; love of nature became a sentimental Sunday pleasure; love of God, obscured by the regimentation of mythological-dogmatic rituals, entered into the service of interests in this world and the next and was thus suspected not only by ignoble natures.

There is probably no single path by which it would not be possible for a person to find his soul [...]. But humanity will not take any detours. There will be no prophets and no religious founders [...]. No unified art of the world will bring its soul, because art is [already] a mirror [...] of the soul, not its originator.

So a “life practitioner” speaks of the soul's yearning and longing. Much in the book is wrong; but one thing is true: those who feel this way feel that the truth of the soul is no longer spoken of in our time. Religious founders are rejected. He feels that even an exoteric teaching is no longer accepted.

But the striving of the time itself is to reconnect the soul to the spiritual.

And this longing is met by what spiritual science has to offer. Spiritual research shows that man can find within himself such an unfolding of the forces slumbering in his soul that he can directly immerse himself in what surrounds us supernaturally. And then the gaze into these vastness conquers the material.

We look out and feel not only the human body embedded in physical existence, but through it the soul embedded in spiritual existence. We expand our view beyond birth and death.

Just as natural science has broadened our view beyond the blue vault of heaven – just as natural science says: this limit that man has set for himself must be broadened, so spiritual science says: what the mechanical science, what the mechanical worldview — which only comes from limited human knowledge itself —, expanded human knowledge will go beyond that, will go beyond this boundary, just as natural science went beyond the boundary of the blue vault of heaven.

Just as spiritual science sees the urge and yearning for its soul in our time, just as “time seeks its soul”, so it will continue to develop the life of this soul, will strive for a further development of it.

A world view built on fantasy cannot endure; Herman Grimm's problem could never have been solved. But we see how, in those who have retained the freshness of this yearning of the soul, the desire arises to look out into the spiritual and soul that is outside in the world. And we know that we are part of it, just as our body is part of the material.

Spiritual science wants to give people what the soul desires. And if we ask: What will spiritual science have to do in the future? When all people who feel a longing in themselves for the soul's origin and destiny ask questions, we will point not to abstract concepts, but to the hungry souls, and seek to give these hungry souls what they clearly show they desire.

Spiritual science does not speak of vague brotherly love, but of standing by people in such a way that it wants to give what is longed for by the human soul. Then one may hear this or that objection, ridicule and worse – one will find it understandable precisely as a spiritual researcher, will be able to understand the people who, from their point of view, cannot do otherwise today than the opponents of natural science did centuries ago: holding heresy trials. Of course, they do not build bonfires anymore, but they act according to the fashions of the time: they treat people who are striving for the truth as fantasists and seek to vilify them through ridicule and blasphemy.

But that does not bother those people, because for them, the only thing that matters about the truth is that it - the truth - shows itself to the soul as justified through its own essence, and that it can indeed promote, fertilize, and elevate this life, and endure before life.

That the latter can happen will be the subject of tomorrow's lecture, which will in a sense be a continuation of today's.

With regard to the truth, it can be said that the one who presents the truth as has just been discussed can say to himself: Of course, all human striving has always been subject to error, and much of it will easily be able to creep into what the spiritual researcher seeks, even for him, as an error. He is well aware that error can creep in more easily than in the external world of the senses. But no matter — if only the mind is there to seek the truth, then even the smallest thing that happens in this field can be compared with the great things that have happened in the service of science. Whether people ridicule the truth or not is not important. For only two things are possible: either what is being spread is error – then it will be eradicated by the striving, truth-seeking mind, by the truth-seeking mind of man, for the truth-seeking human will not tolerate error – or if it is the truth, then no ridicule, no unjustified personal objections, nothing at all will be able to stop this truth, which has the power to triumph!

In world history, it is also the case that [it sometimes happens that] things [and] beings can be proclaimed. But with regard to the truth, it may be said: No matter which way you turn your back on it, no matter where people may oppose it, and however deeply the truth may be buried in the deepest shafts, all this will be overcome! For the truth has always found a way to penetrate back into humanity and be useful and beneficial and continue its triumphal march through the development of the human spirit.

I would like to briefly sketch again what we started last time, in order to build on it further. You will recall that I tried to explain the various degrees of higher vision to you, and to break them down into the activities that lead us up into the higher realms, into the realms of the higher beings, which we must consider if we really want to go through the entire human history of development through the various planets. I ask you to bear in mind that such a consideration must necessarily remain quite sketchy, that one has to discuss many things that are really quite difficult to express in ordinary everyday terms, because one is dealing with things for which ordinary language is not really created. Ordinary language is there to describe what is real to the senses, what surrounds us. It is therefore quite inadequate for all the things for which we want to evoke an idea today.

In schools in Europe where, for centuries – or more precisely, since the fourteenth century – ideas such as we are now allowed to discuss publicly in elementary terms have been developed in the same way, it was certainly not the case – especially in the higher grades – that the words of ordinary language were spoken, but rather in a so-called symbolic language. First, a certain language was acquired. First one acquired a certain way of expressing oneself, which then offered the possibility of characterizing in that peculiar way that is necessary if one wants to penetrate into such supersensible realms.

Now let me briefly repeat what I hinted at last time. I told you that at first our ordinary, everyday way of looking at things - and that is also the one that our science has - is the so-called material knowledge. This has its object outside of ourselves. It has its object in the sense world, and it then builds up knowledge with the help of the image, then goes from the image to the concept and from the concept to the I. So in our material knowledge we are dealing with: object, image, concept and I. These four things are to be considered.

When we now have to move on to the first stage of higher knowledge, the object must remain away, the external sensual object must fall away. So of what we have within our ordinary knowledge, only image, concept, I remain. The fact that external objects no longer stimulate us, that external objects no longer affect our sensuality, that the sensation is no longer there, is replaced by illumination, which forms images from within for our ordinary images, so that they are not visions, not illusions, but become what mystics of all times have called imaginations. If one wants to form a correct concept of what is meant here by imagination, then one must already be able to see, to see correctly, everything that still demands a connection to an external object. I think I mentioned last time that this often causes great disappointment to students who are to be trained in this kind of knowledge. Man expects that when a higher knowledge is to present itself, which appears to be the case in ordinary life, that it will approach him from the outside. That was also the mistake with spiritualism. I do not want to say anything against spiritualism. The mistake lay only in the method. The mistake is that the spiritualist has the things in front of him like an earthly object that stimulates his senses. That is why it is basically not a good preparation for a higher desire for knowledge if one goes through spiritualism, although I know very well that many of our best Theosophists have gone through spiritualism. But in the times before the Theosophical Society popularized these higher insights in their elementary stages, there were no schools. They did not build on the spiritualist method at all. They set out directly to reeducate people so that they would be able to truly rise into the supersensible world without external inducement. The spiritist tries to bring the supersensible world down to his ordinary capacity for perception. He says to himself: I can recognize that external objects stimulate me; if the higher world is to have reality, then the essence of a higher world must appear to me in the same way as ordinary things. They have to adapt to my capacity for perception. But the occultist says: No, the objects and beings of a higher world do not descend here, not where one sees with the eyes and reaches with the hands, but one must ascend to them, one must develop within oneself the organs necessary to see in the higher world. Therefore, for today's humanity, a much better training than any external event to come to the higher vision is the passage - as strange as it may seem to those who expect something different - the passage through the arts. What man should make use of, if he does not go directly through the school of clairvoyance, in order to come again to a deeper vision, to an imagination, that is the deepening in what art can give him, and that is art in all fields. We must be clear about the role that art has played for a long time in the development of our humanity. Through such things, many things also become clear to us that would otherwise be extremely difficult to understand.

Follow the advice for the purpose of getting a vivid idea of what I have to say. Follow me into what are called the Greek mysteries, the Greek mysteries, in the time before Homer wrote his poems. Those times when this Greek spirit and seer performed long primal dramas that the best minds sought. But because they were not able to look back clairvoyantly, did not find any positive science in it, what they achieved appears more like a hunch than real knowledge. But if we go back to these earlier times, into which Nietzsche, for example, wanted to look when he conceptually grasped the Dionysian in contrast to the Apollonian, if we go back to these times, we see how teachers led their students to hidden cultural sites and prepared them to see the primal drama there. What did they see there? They saw the secret of the existence and development of the world. What we endeavor to explain in many words, these pupils experienced in astral vision, in real vision: the descending deity that descended into the material, that has descended into the material before time began. And then the transformation of this original formation of matter into the forms that surround us today — into minerals, plants and animals. It was shown how the invisible, supersensible Deity was once creative in the universe, and how it formed and condensed those fruits from which our creation proceeded, how, as it were, the physical emerged from the spiritual as from cloud formations, and how the initial formations gradually developed into the complicated and ultimately into the microcosmic human being. The entire process of the evolution of the world was presented to the student. This was called “the great world tragedy.” First, the great living divinity that descended into matter, was buried in it, and then resurrected in man. And now it was made clear to the student: this process takes place within yourself, it has taken place within you and continues to take place within you. You were already involved in those formations that took place before time began. In those formations you were in the beginning of becoming, and they changed and changed until your present form was reached. Today you feel how that which lives in you as soul, as spirit, rises up again, how that which has sunk into matter, the divinity, rises again as if from a grave, from which the divinity rises, and that when you then say 'I', the divinity speaks within you. All this was explained in complete vividness. And in this way, things were united that have long since been lost to today's humanity. This was possible by placing these students in a completely different state of consciousness than the one in which people find themselves in everyday life, so that they were surrounded by the living images of the whole process of world-becoming. It is therefore a matter of the students, so to speak, feeling the consciousness shining within them, making the objects of everyday life visible to them. The external objects passed around them, but what they were trying to show them appeared in them in much more vivid colors than the objects of nature would ever be able to present themselves. The fire of the deity stood before their soul. And the fire that metamorphosed so that everything else emerged from it, that was there in a way similar to how the dreamer has a superficial knowledge of the dream.

If you translate this dream into something that has regularity and harmony and largely as what surrounds us in the outside world, then you have a weak idea of what was going on in the soul of such a student of the primal drama. It was said of such a student that he had seen the world in the twilight. The world event, this whole world becoming, then sounded into these images. The visible arts are an imprint of such imagination, of such images around us. They relate to this imagination, to this vision, as a silhouette relates to the real object. They are thus related to clairvoyant imagination, while our material vision has no relation to clairvoyant imagination.

The artistic imagination is a shadow of the true imagination. This is not to say that I consider artistic imagination to be of lesser value than clairvoyance. Back in the days when people could still awaken their clairvoyant abilities, when they could see into ancient times, there was no art. What was experienced was religion and art and science at the same time. Everything that led people to the higher worlds was offered in it. Later these three separated. Mankind had to go through this state. And since that time, art has been an external shadow image. External art is an internal imaginative vision. It is part of the process of development that humanity has lost this original vision for a while. What was awakened as a result is another state of consciousness. And in a later present, this introduces art in a tangible, visible form. That is why artistic vision is so beneficial for imaginative vision. That is the first stage: illumination.

The second stage was the one where the image also disappears, where we are only dealing with concepts and the ego, and where inspiration occurs [in place of the image]. Inspiration is there for the person when the so-called continuity of consciousness occurs. Continuity of consciousness means: the person not only has consciousness during everyday life, but also continues this consciousness into sleep. As you know, one partial brightening of sleep is the dream consciousness. The ordinary person has this dream consciousness only in a chaotic way. In the one who develops to clairvoyance, to illumination, the dream images begin to become regular, lawful. He sees truths in dreams that he would not see without developing this dream life into regularity. In such undeveloped people, there is always the dreamless sleep as a state of consciousness. So there are clairvoyant individuals who have developed to the point where they have filled part of their sleep with regular dreams that reveal new worlds. This is the beginning of this stage of illuminative clairvoyance, of imagination. Then you also see how other people, in whom they do not have this, live in their dreams.

Now the person who guides such a person must bring them to the point where they, the student, can bring their dream visions into everyday reality; that is, that they can perceive in everyday life what they perceive in their dream vision. Let's be clear about this. The ordinary dreamer: what do they see? He has experienced something during the day. This appears to him in his dream as a reminiscence. It is an echo of the experiences of the day. Or, he perceives his surroundings in some way. He hears a train rushing by. He wakes up and realizes that he has symbolically perceived the ticking clock next to him as a train. Or the moods in which a person finds himself can also be expressed symbolically in a dream. For example: a person becomes feverish and dreams of a boiling stove. I am telling you facts here that really happened once. I ask you to bear in mind that I am only giving examples of events that really happened. Now let's assume that a person dreams of ugly animals. The chaotic then ceases under the guidance of the secret teacher, and the student perceives things that do not come from everyday life. Things are revealed to him that he does not know from our world. Only when the student is able to transfer this into everyday life, then we make what he experiences the subject of occult wisdom.

So how do we regularize what I have characterized as chaotic? We start at the very beginning. You dream, for example, under the guidance of the teacher. The exercises are done as meditations, and they have the effect that you actually see a person suffering in your dreams. The person is in front of you in a certain situation. You are very soon convinced that you were not dreaming, nor that it is not real, but you convince yourself that you were with a friend who is suffering or has suffered. You have not seen anything sensual, but you have experienced the soul, the real soul life. You then experience not only one such individual soul life, but soon soul life in abundance. You have to familiarize yourself with the diversity of stories. You have to learn to grasp them in an orderly fashion. This is a long and patient task, but we have to do it. Then we dream this into our everyday life.

You will then be able to see the same thing in everyday life with a fully alert consciousness. You will not see what is sensual, but what is spiritual. You must imagine that you will be surrounded by the soul. When you, as a clairvoyant, are confronted with a person, you will at first see nothing differently than any other person sees. But when you turn your attention to his soul, he becomes spiritually transparent to you. But the right dream state must have preceded this. Then the other will follow, because there are very definite stages.

The next stage is where consciousness no longer fades, or at least does not need to fade, where you are therefore aware during dreamless sleep, where you are able to wake up in the morning knowing that you have had experiences, have really lived, throughout the night. This experience of dreamless sleep is not in such images. It cannot be compared with the world of images that are around us in dream-filled sleep. What occurs first in dreamless sleep is a world of sounds and speech, a world of tones and words. Dreamless sleep is first filled with words. You see, in the first stages of this clairvoyant development, you experience this quite sporadically and individually. You simply know in the morning that something has been said to me. You remember what was said to you. You know quite well that something like this could not be said to you in your present life, in ordinary life. It is perhaps a great truth that you could not experience in ordinary life. This calling and hearing was something spiritual. This is spread more and more until finally the whole life of dreamless sleep is a continuous conversation with other entities.

However, a prerequisite for not indulging in illusions in this world is that one has already attained a certain higher degree of inner selflessness. Someone who criticizes a lot, who likes to say a lot of derogatory things about the world and its phenomena, may very often be exposed to the most terrible, deceptive ideas at this stage of development. Therefore, the teacher will, above all, impress upon the students again and again. He will tell the student: Try, over and over again, to ask only questions and to let the answers be given to you from this state. This is quite different from what one actually does in ordinary life. In life, one is quickly finished with an answer. Try to look at life from this point of view. Today, everyone says, “I think so,” or “That is my opinion.” That is what people say today. But the occultist who wants to rise to this level should never speak that way. But when he has prepared himself, he should be able to speak differently within. He should ask questions of the world and learn to refrain entirely from giving an answer himself. This is a mood that Goethe, who knew it, describes in simple words. He says: We are not made to answer the problem, but to pose the problem, to pose it quite clearly, and then to await the further development in reverence. Creating this mood is extremely important for the student at this stage of development. Therefore, it is very useful at this level if he has the self-control and selflessness to set himself a very important task and to refrain from forming any opinion. After all, what he can say is usually only what corresponds to his ordinary level of intelligence. He already has this point of view. But he wants to go beyond this, and so he should completely refrain from answering and wait to be given the answer. In this state of dreamless sleep, it will be whispered to him. From this state, an ever deeper and deeper world arises, which is a world of conversation.

I would like to draw attention to a passage of this kind, to the profound saying of one of our exquisite minds, Goethe. Those who have read or heard Goethe's fairy tales will remember a passage that goes:

“What is more glorious than gold?” asked the king. “Light,” replied the snake.

“What is more refreshing than light?” asked the king. “Conversation,” replied the snake.

At this point, Goethe points out that he knew everything we have discussed here. This conversation, which is about light, is what he is referring to. Then one brings what one has experienced in this way in a dreamless state into everyday life. Some will be tempted to believe that the clairvoyant no longer sleeps without dreams at all, but sees all the time. That is not necessarily so. It does not depend on how much of the night is filled with such experiences. There can be long periods of dreamless sleep in between.

It is true – I think I have already hinted at it: anyone who can experience something in dreamless sleep in this way hears all the objects around him. He hears the glass of water, he hears every little thing that whispers something to him. This is the third stage of knowing, inspiration.

In this way, the scriptures that are called inspired were created. Today, theologians and scholars dispute the method of inspiration in the writings of initiates. Imagine what has been written about whether or not the gospel is inspired – by teachers who have no idea that there is such a thing as revelation. Inspired writings are for those who one day will be made to disappear as painlessly as possible. The greatest parts of the three synoptic gospels and the gospel of John were written in a state of clairvoyance. They are inspired. We are not dealing with a miracle, not with a dictation from a god, but with this state. Therefore, only those who know something about how truths come in such states can understand them.

The next stage is intuition. It expresses itself clearly to you through feeling: you are now inside things, no longer outside them. You now crawl into every thing. This is the state of intuition. The ordinary person only has the state of intuition with his ego. When a person is developed enough, he is inside every thing.

The human being perceives the spirits of twilight at the first level, at the level of imagination. At the level of inspiration, the human being perceives the spirits of fire or of fire nebula. At the level of intuition, he perceives the spirits of personality, the spirits that lie hidden everywhere as the basis of the world-Iche. When he has reached that point, he can truly immerse himself in the depths.

But there is also a raising above this state. This consists in the fact that man no longer merely perceives, but that he participates with humanity. This is even something where understanding itself easily ends with those who still go along to the level of intuition. They will no longer go along so easily from there. It is only through comparison that one can get closer to what I am saying now.

It is also a passive state in intuition. The person submerges, but in a certain respect remains passive. They only begin to become inwardly active when they rise higher inwardly. They now participate in the world. The state that I am now describing can only be reached if one has already reached the state of intuition. When someone has reached the point where they can completely immerse themselves in the object, where they feel that it is themselves, and where they feel as if they have entered the body of a dog or a tulip, so that they not only hear it but also feel what it is inside themselves, then they can move on to something else. He can first rise to the animal kingdom. When he does this, he initially has the task of selflessly observing the animal world around him, and he has to focus his attention on the different animal species. Then, while he has been in individual animals through intuition, a stage will now arise for him where he steps out of the individual animal again, but remains within the animal being itself. Let us say, for example, he has been observing a dog. Through intuition, he is able to completely immerse himself in the dog, to experience all its sensations, and to empathize with all the pleasure and pain that it feels.

Now there is a higher level. Here the person goes beyond things without losing all of this. But the special existence is lost in the process. He rises above the individual being, but in the animal nature he remains in it. He loses interest in the individual being, the special characteristics of this individual being disappear. As he gradually rises above it, but the essence of this being remains present, forms appear in his mind that he has not seen before. He first grasps the ego of the individual being and then takes this ego out of the being like an extract. It takes shape and forms itself, and now he gets what Plato called “ideas”. These are Plato's ideas. You no longer have a single dog, but you have a spiritual, living form before you. This gives you more than the individual being. You have the model for all these beings. You have what is called the soul of the species, and not as an abstract concept, but as a living reality. You are surrounded by the souls of the animal species. You now live with these as you previously lived with the merely sensual animals. Space is not empty around you. But the beings you see there do not look like the beings that walk around us. They are completely new beings, and they do not fit the individual being, the individual dog, but they do fit all of the same species. It is something much more abstract and much more alive than the physical. What you see there are the spirits of form. They belong to a higher spiritual world. One of these form spirits was Jehovah. He was the form spirit that constituted the generic soul of humanity. The generic archetype of humanity was the god Jehovah. It is at this level of the spiritual world that one can reach him, that one can rise to that which in the Jewish mystery teaching is called Jehovah, to the spirit of the human form.

Another spirit had to join this spirit of the human form if a new, different one was to develop. This spirit of the human form had only made man such that he was like the soul of the species. Individual life would not have emerged. Individual life emerged when man struggled to recognize good and evil. This is powerfully and impressively depicted in the Fall of Man. Jehovah did not want to go further than the form. Until then, he guided man. In connection with other entities, man then took over his guidance through the Jehovah principle. So you see him sinking with man's arrogance over the animal world into what is called the world of forms.

When man has reached the point where he begins to sense this entity, then he can rise to the next level. This consists in the fact that he now learns to recognize in these beings that which he has learned to see and recognize at a lower level, in the natural beings, when he goes beyond the form to the life. The first thing you perceive, and why I have to call it that, is that you first see this generic soul in the form. But you have to rise to a higher level of insight if you want to see this world of forms in motion, in action. You cannot do that by merely immersing yourself in the animal world. This gift will only be granted to you when you immerse yourself in the plant world with devotion and do the same with it as I have described with the animal world. When you immerse yourself in the plant world with intuition, but do not lose the essence of the plant, so that the essence of the plant remains and you know how to merge with the whole nature of the plant, when you succeed in experiencing the suffering and rejoicing of the great natural world through the plant world.

When these things are spoken of to a modern man – and the more scientific he is, the more – he laughs at you. But it is nevertheless true that in the plant world, joy and suffering can be perceived by those who can live with the plant world, not as a mere comparison, not as a symbol, but in such a way that they know how to perceive the expression of the inner feeling, just as a person perceives a feeling when a tear comes out of the eye. There is therefore a real level of perception where the dew beading on a plant announces real life to you, a life like that in a tear welling up from an eye. When you are able to see in the sap flowing out of the tree when you cut it, a manifestation of life in nature, just as you cut yourself and know that it then hurts, then you are where you can ascend into the world of activity, into the world of movement. Then you can perceive that the beings, which you previously only saw in form, are alive inside. That's when the beings start to talk. The generic souls say something to you.

The next stage is reached when a person is able to feel the same way about the mineral kingdom as I said for plants, about inanimate nature. Kant said: two things fill him with a sense of awe, the starry sky above him and the moral law within him. But that remains abstract as long as the abstract sky fills us with awe, so that it is still enough for us that the inanimate starry sky speaks to us. But the materialistic view already shows us that the dead crystal is not just dead and mute, but that it also speaks to us the secrets of nature. These secrets can be reached by lovingly immersing ourselves in nature.

Anyone who has done what I have described, who has suffered and rejoiced with the plant world, will also find it easy to understand the dull language of inanimate nature – although there is also a gulf there. It is relatively easier to understand the language of plants than the language of stones. Even at these higher levels, it remains true that we understand best that which is akin to us. We are akin to human feeling, human pain and human joy. Even though the joy and pain that appear in the plant world are very different from human joy and

human pain, they still have something faintly related about them that we do not recognize in the mute world of stone. But the new thing that we recognize in the mute world of stone is precisely what would elevate us so highly [above] what makes us so weak. The mute stone world has no more desires. The world of desire is silent there, it ceases, before we pass from the plant world to the stone world. The plant and animal worlds end here. The plants still have something analogous to desire, which increases in animals and is strongly evident in humans. This is what makes them unchaste, while the stone is chaste. Those who understand stone come to know beings that are chaste and desireless. One comes to know a life without desire or longing in the stone kingdom. When we can feel and perceive something similar in the stone kingdom, as I have described in the plant world, we come to recognize what it means to be a being that is chaste by nature. The chaste, mute world of stone, of which we no longer say that, as with the dewdrop, as with the dripping pitch of the tree, it expresses joy and pain, but must say that it, in discreet, completely restrained silence, faithfully preserves itself within itself and does not, if I may express myself trivially, flaunt what it experiences internally. That is the tremendous thing that we recognize in the interior of the stone world. The stone world reached perfection so many years ago. In truth, the stone world is the greatest. What we see today as rock crystal once went through its time of unchastity when we look back billions of years. The greatest wisdom of nature appears to us when we examine it in the soundless world of the stars, the stones and crystals.

The stage of form leads us to the spirit of form. The second stage, which starts from the plant world, leads us to the spirits of movement and activity, and the same stage of observation leads us to the spirits of wisdom. We do not reach them until we bring to life within ourselves the mute, chaste, self-contained entity, the living entity of the stone kingdom.

If you would like a brief description of what happens in a person, the following may be said. The person must first let the outer light around him disappear; he must first stand before inanimate nature and disregard everything that his senses tell him. Then there is darkness at first. When he now rises to the contemplation that I have described, then all beings shine from within. An inner light shines through and radiates through all these beings and radiates from them. And this is the light of wisdom. These are the stages of contemplation that lead us up to what I have described as the spirits of wisdom.

Now, as you know, at the very beginning of Saturn's development there are the spirits of will. If you want to learn to recognize these, you do not have to turn to animals, plants and minerals in general. Rather, to grasp the spirits of will, you must have something very special. No matter how fantastic you may consider what I am about to say, I hope that will not be the case. If you want to rise even higher - after you have more or less mastered the other levels - you have to approach something - it seems paradoxical - such as an anthill, in which not only animals of the same species are united, but also live in wise connection, and delve into the spirited interaction of these little creatures. The rational scientist does not do that. But the clairvoyant lives with the males and females and workers, all organized in their own way, and they interact in a wonderful way, so that he is inwardly identical with them.

This is the method for getting to know the will. Schopenhauer wrote a lot about the will. But he could have written this chapter if, as a clairvoyant, he had stuck his head into an anthill. There you learn to recognize what the will is by its very nature. There you learn to recognize what it means when you yourself pronounce the word 'I will'. This word lives deep within your own nature. Many things in your own nature come together there. But you only perceive the result. The natural scientist gives you a completely different view. What I am describing to you is taken from life. If, on the other hand, you choose a beehive instead of an anthill, you are doing something completely wrong. What lives in the beehive is quite different from what lives in the anthill.

We have spoken of the spirits of will, of wisdom, of form, of motion, of personality, of fire, of twilight, then of humans, animals, plants and minerals. These entities are not plucked out of thin air, they are not inventions, they are not speculations that are presented to you in elementary occultism, which passes itself off as theosophy, but they are things that are acquired through experience.

I could only make suggestions as to how something like this comes about, what is referred to as elementary theosophy or elementary occultism. In this way, one acquires the higher abilities that grant insight into the higher worlds.

This, you see, is something of what must be revived in the future. There is really a lot around us today that can cause concern, and I believe that what can really worry someone who is enthusiastic about real human progress is also the fact that many do not keep their eyes open. Man should be a pioneer in keeping his eyes open. What matters is not that individuals call themselves Theosophists, but that we find the means and ways in the great development of humanity to give a new foundation to what would otherwise really have to collapse.

Let me conclude the reflections of the old year with this reference, which I have made before. Much destruction is being wrought around us, much that might indicate to the attentive observer, even if he is not clairvoyant, that we are at the beginning of a great work of destruction in terms of external material things, which has developed over the past century, for material development only goes so far.

Supplement from notes of unknown authorship

But what is most worrying is that so many of our fellow human beings do not keep their eyes open for what is needed by humanity. The theosophist, however, should be a pioneer in this work of keeping their eyes open. It is not important that individuals sit down and develop, but to work together in the great development of humanity, to find ways and means to give new content to what would otherwise really have to collapse. Much destruction is being wrought around us today. Much that will alert the attentive observer to the fact that we are at the beginning of a work of destruction, of the material culture of the nineteenth century; for this has not been accompanied by a corresponding spiritual development. We are capable of wireless telegraphy; now imagine this ability of man developed just a little further, so that here in Berlin you could take a cab and drive through Friedrichstrasse with a wave generator, in order to destroy the entire Louvre in Paris by means of the corresponding wave excitations. No one would be able to prove the assassin in such a case. All our legal concepts will be completely powerless in a time that can easily be imagined; a time will come when purely material culture will, by and large, lead itself ad absurdum, where it has a destructive and devastating effect.

Only by the inner soul culture now moving up, so that people no longer depend on the external, and although the worst is done, but only the right thing happens, only by this can help. The path of development of today's humanity shows the first beginnings already. Only the path of inner, spiritual development can lead out again, and Theosophy is a necessary new beginning of a cultural direction, to which, so to speak, the necessary inner morality can be found to counteract the overwhelming external culture, which can only lead out, because man has the soul, the spirit, in addition to the material. That is why the renewed spiritual movements of today are so necessary, so that the forces that would otherwise wither away can be practised and cultivated again.

We have spoken of two spiritual streams, flowing through different peoples, and passing from old Atlantis towards the East. We saw the difference in their development and how they were enabled to prepare future events; and we observed how the southern stream more particularly tended to deepen the power of penetration to the spiritual world which lies behind the soul world of man, while the other more northerly spiritual stream directed man's attention to his earthly environment in order to make him aware of the spiritual world behind the world of the senses. Mention has been made of the development in the southern stream of qualities which led to spiritual beings connected with the Luciferic principle, and of the gradual approach to earth, on the other side, of the kingly spiritual being behind the sun in order finally to incarnate in a physical body, which, through many incarnations of a certain individuality, had been so purified that the Godhead found in it not merely an image of itself, but was able actually to incarnate within it. The incarnation of the Christ, the sun spirit, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth was the great event which took place in the northern stream of peoples. Now these two streams of peoples may, be said to have moved towards each other in order to be mutually enriched, and during their progress there arose, in the first epoch after the great Atlantean catastrophe, the ancient Indian race in the south of Asia, a race in which the human soul was in a certain sense able to look out towards the external world of the senses as well as into itself to find the spirit, because it instinctively recognised the unity between the spirit in the external world and the spirit within man. Let us picture to ourselves the feelings of the ancient Indian when he looked out at the sense world, at the earth with its mountains and forests, its tapestry of plant life, its animal and human kingdoms.

Possessed in high degree of spiritual sight, this ancient Indian soul perceived, underlying everything, a spiritual world consisting of beings of etheric substance, who did not descend to the density of a physical body. In the mountains, trees and stars the soul of the ancient Indian saw not only the dense elements but also the finer, etheric nature, in the shape of the external world of the gods. It should not of course be imagined that these spirits were composed merely of ether but just as the etheric, the astral and the ‘I’ principles are within the physical body of a man, so these spirits had an etheric body for their lowest principle and their other, higher principles in higher worlds. The Indian, looking into this world, felt that he stood upon the Earth; that as man he had through long periods of time developed from the first germ of human existence on ancient Saturn down to the Earth evolution; that it was necessary for him to descend to dense physical matter in order to acquire self-consciousness within it. He said: ‘I, speaking to myself, am an Ego being; formerly I was a companion of all those spiritual beings visible around me to spiritual sight from the etheric world upwards. I have descended from these worlds to denser matter, yet in them all human perfection's are to be found, not only those now possessed by man, but those which he will have to attain through his own efforts. But there is one thing which no being who does not descend to the physical plane can attain. There are in the universe other lofty perfections as well as the recollection peculiar to human consciousness. There are other kinds of consciousness, but in order to develop that of a man on earth, it is necessary for a being to descend to this earth and for a number of incarnations to be embodied in dense matter.’ The soul of the ancient Indian further realised that whatever infinitely higher perfections than man on the Earth these spiritual beings possessed, there was one thing they had not in their world, namely, the human ego consciousness that to say ‘I’ as a man does, was not natural in those higher worlds. The Indian felt himself to originate from these realms and everything existing in the spiritual worlds to be summed up for him in his human ‘I’ consciousness. He knew that to speak of a human ego consciousness in the spiritual world had neither meaning nor content. Hence only a word which excludes this ‘I’ can be applied to everything that in a spiritual sense is spread out in the surrounding world, a word which is not in contact with the ‘I’ ... And the Indian consciousness named that which spread itself out externally, the ‘Tat,’ the ‘That’ in contradistinction to the ‘I.’ In order to express the fact that man is of the same nature and essence as the ‘That,’ the ‘Tat,’ or the ‘It’—that the ‘I’ or ego had only developed because of the descent to the Earth—the Indian said: ‘I am Tat, Thou art That.’ Thus man's relationship to the surrounding spiritual world (to this clairvoyant penetration of the ultimate nature of our world) was combined in the words: ‘It exists; but thou thyself art that.’

But the ancient Indian realised at the same time that the reality without designated as ‘Tat’ is also to be found by a man looking into his own inner being, that this reality manifests at one time from without, at another time from within. Therefore men of those ancient times knew that by sinking down into the soul they came to the same primordial spiritual reality as the external ‘Tat,’ but that the right relationship between them and what was living within them as their original ‘cause,’ so to speak, veiled by the life of the soul, was expressed by saying instead of ‘Thou art That,’ ‘I am Brahman,’ and ‘I am the All.’ And they took the two together to mean the following: ‘When I look out into the world of “Tat” I find a spiritual world, and if I dip down into my own soul life I find a spiritual world, and the two are one.’

As we have seen, in ancient India, a perception of the unity of the outer and of the inner was the typical outlook of the soul; and it is to be expected that the other extreme will consist in turning the gaze outwards, and in penetrating through the tapestry of the sense world to the spiritual world lying hidden behind it. And this is what actually happened to a different people. They saw the outer spiritual world, but could not realise immediately that it was the same as the inner spiritual world. Hence it is not surprising that religious conceptions and philosophical thoughts spring up, all fervently directed to the gods and spirits behind the sense world; that mythical and other descriptions for these divine spiritual beings behind the tapestry of the sense world were given to the people; and that in the mysteries of that age men were led into the spiritual world which is behind the sense world. Nor will it be a matter for wonder that side by side with such mysteries and such racial gods something else is to be found; that at the same time there were mysteries leading man along the path through the inner soul life to its deepest foundations. And in very fact we find a region of post Atlantean civilisation where those two kinds of mysteries existed contemporaneously—a region where on the one side the so-called Apollonian culture and mysteries were developed, and on the other the culture and mysteries of Dionysos. Such a division is to be found in ancient Greece. There we have on the one hand the path which was shown to the people as well as to the Initiates, the path leading out into the spiritual world, to what is behind the senses, to the spiritual world behind the sun. So far as the Greek knew this world, he gave it the name of the realm of the Apollonian beings. Apollo, the Sun god, was the representative of the divine spiritual beings which exist behind the tapestry of the sense world. But there was also a class of mysteries pointing the way through the soul life into its spiritual foundations, mysteries concerning which we already know that man may enter them only, after careful preparation, and after having attained a certain degree of maturity. For this reason the second kind of mysteries was more carefully guarded against immaturity than were the Apollonian. The Apollonian gods were indicated to the masses of the people, whereas the spiritual beings to be found along the path through the inner nature were reserved for those who, through spiritual, intellectual and moral training of their inner life had reached a certain state of maturity. This second kind of mystery cult was known as the Dionysian mystery and its central spiritual being was Dionysos. So it is natural that in Dionysos, this central figure of the inner circle of gods, men perceived a being standing in near and intimate relationship to the human soul; a being not unlike man, but one who did not descend so far as the physical plane; a being to be found by sinking from the physical plane into the depths of the soul life. Here we have in point of fact the deeper causes of the Apollonian and the Dionysian division in the spiritual culture of the Greeks. In more modern times a dim consciousness that something of the kind had existed in Greece made its appearance in several places. The group gathering round Richard Wagner realised the existence of something of the kind although without definite knowledge of its spiritual foundations. And Friedrich Nietzsche, a member of this group, founded his first remarkable and inspired work: ‘The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music’ on this very division of Greek spiritual life into the Apollonian and Dionysian mystery cults. These occurrences were a dim realisation of what may be known to an ever-increasing degree through spiritual meditation. In the minds of many men today there is a kind of yearning for such a deepening of the spiritual life. There is a widespread feeling that this deepening alone can give an answer to man's yearning. Thus in ancient Greece these two divine spiritual worlds are side by side. In ancient India they appeared as a unity, in a state of reciprocal permeation.

Now let us turn again to evolution. We have already seen that only the most advanced group of the northern stream of nations, namely the ancient Persian civilisation of Zoroaster, could originate the ideal of creating a body in which the spiritual being approaching humanity and the earth from outside could incarnate. And Zarathustra took upon himself the task of passing through his incarnations in such a way as to take later re-birth in a body spiritualised to such a degree that it was able to receive into itself the sublime sun-spirit in its most perfect form, in its Christ form. Zarathustra was reborn as Jesus, having made himself ripe through his various incarnations to be the vehicle of the Sun spirit for the space of three years.¹

We may now ask: What is the relation of Apollo to the Christ? When a Greek uttered the name of Apollo, he referred to the spiritual realm behind the sun. But men's conception of a being or of a fact differs according to their capacities. The man who has cultivated a rich inner life within his soul is capable of seeing in a truer form things which a less developed person also sees, so when the Greek uttered the name of Apollo he was indeed referring to the being which later was revealed as the Christ, but he could only conceive of it in a kind of veiled form, as Apollo. Apollo is in a certain sense a garment of the Christ, resembling in its form the being within it. Veil after veil had to fall from that figure conceived of by the soul as Apollo before the Christ could become visible and intelligible to the intuition of men. Apollo is an intimation of the Christ, but not the Christ Himself.

Now what is the most essentially characteristic quality of the Christ so far as our cycle of evolution is concerned? To consider all those divine spiritual beings to which men of ancient times looked up to as the upper gods behind the tapestry of the sense world, as the rulers and lords of the spheres and functions of the universe, is to realise that their characteristic quality is that they do not descend so far as the physical plane; they only become visible to the consciousness of the seer, which transcends the physical plane and is able to see on the etheric plane. There Zeus, Apollo, Mars, Wotan, Odin, Thor, who are all real beings, became visible. It was characteristic of these spiritual beings not to descend so far as the physical plane, but at the most to manifest temporarily in some kind of physical embodiment, a fact which is cleverly indicated in the myths when mention is made of momentary appearances of Zeus or other gods in human or some other form, when they descended to the world of men in order to carry out some purpose. It is not permissible to speak of a permanent physical incarnation of these spiritual beings behind the sense world. We may say that Apollo is a figure incapable of descending into physical incarnation. For this descent requires a higher power than Apollo possessed, namely, the Christ power. And in the Christ all the qualities of the other beings out in the universe were united, all the qualities which are revealed to the consciousness of the seer; but above and beyond all these He possessed the ability to break through the barrier separating the world of the gods from the world of man, and was able to descend into a physical body and become man in a human physical body that had been prepared for Him upon the earth. In the divine spiritual world this ability was possessed by the Christ alone. Thus one being, and one being only of the divine spiritual world descended so far as the stage of taking up its abode in a human body in the sense world, and living as man among other men. This is the great and mighty Christ event, and this is how we have to conceive it. Whereas therefore all gods and spirits can be found only by the consciousness of the seer and beyond the physical world, the Christ is to be found within the physical world, although He is a being of the same nature and essence as the other divine spiritual beings. The other gods can only be found in the external universe: the Christ is He who was born within the human soul, Who, as it were, leaves the outer world of the gods and enters into the inner nature of man. This has been an event of great significance in the evolution of the world and humanity. Before the Christ event it—had been necessary to descend to the sub-terrestrial gods hidden behind the veil of soul experiences if an inner god was sought; the Christ is a God Who may be found without as well as within. This is the essence of what happened in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, after the Indian, the Persian and the Egyptian periods. The contemplative vision and abstract perception in ancient India of the fact that the divine spiritual world was a unity, and that Tat and Brahman, streaming to the soul from two sides, were an unity, became a living life through the Christ event. Formerly men could say that the divinity to be found on the outward path and the divinity to be found on the inward path were one. After the Christ event it was possible to say that if the soul participates in the Christ, a descent to the inner life will reveal a being which is Apollo and Dionysos united in one.

Another question arises here. We have seen that divine spiritual beings of the external world are, for man, represented by the mightiest of them, by the Christ, Who, as an outer being, at the same time becomes an inner being. But what of those other beings designated in the last lecture as ‘Luciferic?’ Knowledge gained as the result of spiritual development teaches us that it would not be correct to say that the beings under the leadership of Dionysos work themselves through into the human soul life, and that, as it were from the other side, a Dionysos—a Luciferic being—incarnated as a man. Here we arrive at something vitally and essentially connected with the evolution of humanity and of the universe. If we go back to very ancient times, we find that the soul looking outwards sees the external spiritual world, and looking inwards, sees the inner divine spiritual world; the Apollonian world objectively, and the Dionysian world subjectively, to use the Greek expressions. Later on in evolution matters change somewhat. In the most ancient times, when a vast majority of men were possessed of spiritual vision, facts were as I have just described them. Objectively the upper gods were seen; subjectively, the lower gods; and there were these two paths into the spiritual world. In later times man's capacity for spiritual vision decreased; he gradually lost his original dim clairvoyance. But let us take a period in which a few men still possessed a natural spiritual vision. We need not go so very far back, for in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch such natural sight still existed. At that time men, on penetrating through the tapestry of the sense world, saw the upper gods, and on descending into the depths of their own souls, the lower gods. Those who had passed through a certain degree of initiation felt these impressions more clearly and powerfully. I should mention of course that at all times there have existed initiates with full knowledge of the unity of these two worlds; but they are men who have reached the apex of humanity. Centuries therefore before the appearance of Christ on earth, there were men who still had the old spiritual sight, and initiates who by following one path were able to find the upper gods, or following the other were led to the lower gods. But there came an age where the region which we call the world of the lower gods gradually withdrew from human life and was difficult of attainment even for those who had passed through the early degrees of initiation; but in this period it was comparatively easy at an early stage of initiation to attain to what we call the upper gods behind the outer world of the senses. Take, for instance, an initiate of the ancient Hebrew people. Such an initiate could, even if he had not attained a very high degree of initiation, look into a region where Jehovah was not merely an idea, a concept, but an etheric reality, a being which spoke to them as a man in their spiritual consciousness.

While therefore the existence of Jehovah was proclaimed to the people, to the initiates he was a reality. On the other hand it had become more difficult for an initiate of the ancient Hebraic world to find anything by dipping down into his own soul life, and searching there for the domain of the lower gods. In that region he would have felt no solid ground, but everywhere would have encountered the thick crust of his soul life through which he could not penetrate to the lower gods. The lower gods had withdrawn into a certain unknown obscurity. This was the time of the Christ's descent to the earth, when the Luciferic spirits had to a certain extent withdrawn into the darkness. And at that time men in the outer world only knew that the mysteries existed, and that those initiated into them acquired the faculty of penetrating through the forces of the soul life into the Dionysian world. There was just a vague inkling of the deep secrets which could be investigated by man in the mysteries. But the subject was merely alluded to and very few people had a clear idea of it at the time when the Christ was expected. Their ideas of the outer gods were much more definite. There were many men who still had living experience of these gods. But the evolution of humanity progresses. And with what result? There is a history of outer humanity, and in the future there will also be a history of the mysteries. Outer humanity will transform its spiritual culture and the Christ will enter into it more and more. In the mysteries, too, the nature of the Christ being, which today is hardly appreciated at all, will come to be understood. The god who could be perceived at the time of Zarathustra when spiritual sight was directed to the sun, and who descended to the earth, will be understood with ever growing intimacy by the human soul. The god who was the ruler of the outer world will become more and more an inner god. The Christ traverses the world in such a way that from a cosmic god who descended upon earth, He becomes an inner mystical god, Whom man will gradually be able to experience in the depths of his soul life. Therefore it was, that at the time of the descent of the Christ there could be accomplished what His disciples, the Apostles, described in the words: ‘We have laid our hands in His wounds, and have heard His words on the mountain.’ The essential point is that the Christ was on earth in a physical body. At that time He could not have been experienced physically within, or understood in His Dionysian nature; He had first to be experienced as the outer, historical Christ. But the progress of man's consciousness of the Christ consists in His ever deeper descent into the soul, and it will become possible for man to live through his own soul experiences subjectively, finding the mystical Christ within his own soul, in addition to the knowledge he has of the outer Christ. It will be observed how in the so-called mysticism which arose in the early days of Christianity, through Dionysius the Areopagite, a friend and pupil of St. Paul, the Christ is first understood by external occult faculties. And all the descriptions of this first occult Christian school are of a kind that depict the Christ essentially as having those qualities which he unfolds in the external worlds, and which may be experienced by instinctive spiritual sight when it is turned outwards. Then let us proceed a few centuries further in human evolution and see what has come about; let us enquire into mediaeval mystical development, into the deep inner experiences of Meister Eckhart, of Johannes Tauler, etc., and to our more modern mystics. Here are men who look down into their own souls. Just as in ancient times men looked within themselves in order to penetrate through this inner life to Dionysos, so the more modern mystics, piercing inwards, could say like Meister Eckhart: ‘The historical Christ is in very truth a fact; His development takes place in outer history but there is a possibility of descending into one's own inward life, and of there finding the inner mystical Christ.’ Thus the human soul developed the capacity of finding the Christ not only in the outer world, but also within, of finding the mystical Christ in His Dionysian nature. First the historical Christ came into being, and then through the work of the historical Christ, influences were brought to bear on the human soul of such a nature that a mystical Christ within human evolution has become possible. Therefore we may, with regard to modern times, speak of an inner mystical experience of the Christ; but we must also understand that the Christ was a cosmic god before His descent upon earth. If, in those former times, man plunged into his inner soul life, he found not Christ, but Dionysos. Today if development has come about in the right way, we find an inner Christ Being there. The Christ, at first a divinity external to the soul, has become a divinity within the soul, who will take fuller possession of it, the more the soul experiences draw near to the Christ. Here we have an example of a transformation of principles during the development of the world. When modern men speak of the mystical Christ within the soul, they should not forget that everything in the world has developed, and that mystical consciousness has not been the same through all time, but has also evolved to its present state. When the holy Rishis of antiquity looked up into the spiritual worlds they spoke of Vishvakarman, who was the same cosmic being to whom Zoroaster referred when he spoke of Ahura Mazdao. It was the Christ Being. Today this being may also be found in the inner life as the mystical Christ. This is the result of the Christ's own deed on the earth. This is the true relation of the cosmic, astronomical Christ to the mystical Christ. The outer god has gradually become an inner god.

But since every event in the external physical world is an effect of a spiritual occurrence, this penetration of the soul by the Christ has also its effect upon the other life. This effect will manifest first of all in the mysteries, and has already partly done so since the foundation of the Western mystery schools of the Rosicrucians. When by means of the discipline of the old mystery schools a man had sunk more deeply into his soul and descended to the lower gods, he found Dionysos, which is only another name for the world of the Luciferic gods. But at the time when the Christ in His glory was approaching the earth, the Luciferic reality sank into darkness even for spiritual consciousness, if the latter had not attained the very highest stages. Only the highest initiates were still able to descend to the Luciferic gods. Other men had to be told that if they descended while yet unpurified and immature, these Luciferic beings would only appear in distorted images, as wild demons who would tempt them to all sorts of evil. This is the original of all the terrible descriptions of this subterranean realm, and of the fear of the mere name of Lucifer at a certain time. And as everything is transmitted hereditarily to men who do not progress with evolution, there are still some who have inherited the fear of the name of Lucifer. But for spiritual consciousness the Luciferic world emerges again after the Christ principle has for some time been working in the soul. As soon as the Christ has worked in the soul for a while, the soul, permeated by the Christ substance, becomes mature enough to penetrate again into the realm of the Luciferic beings. The Rosicrucian initiates were the first to be able to do this. They strove to understand and see the Christ in such a form that as the mystical Christ He permeated their souls, and lived within them, and that this Christ substance in their inner being became a bulwark of strength against all attacks. It became a new light within them, an inner, astral light. Historical experience of the Christ in His true being illuminates the soul to such an extent that men again become able to penetrate into the realm of Lucifer at first only the Rosicrucian initiates were capable of this, and they will gradually carry out into the world what they have been able to experience with regard to the Luciferic principle, and will pour out over the world that mighty spiritual union which consists in the fact that the Christ, Who has poured Himself as Substance into the human soul is understood henceforth by means of the spiritual faculties that mature in the spirit of individual men through a new influx of the Luciferic principle. Let us consider an initiate of the Rose Cross. He first prepares Himself by the continual direction of the feeling, conceptions and thoughts within his soul to the great central figure of the Christ, by allowing the mighty figure of the Christ, as depicted by the Gospel of St. John, to work upon him, and in this way he purifies and ennobles himself. For our souls change fundamentally when we gaze in reverence upon the figure depicted by the Gospel of St. John. If we receive within us what streams forth from this figure, as described by St. John, the mystical Christ comes to life within us. And if we further this process by the study of other Christian documents, the soul is gradually permeated by the spiritual substance of the Christ, is cleansed and purified and reaches higher worlds. Feelings more especially are purified in this way. We either, like Meister Eckhart and Tauler, learn to conceive of the Christ in a universal sense, or else to experience Him with the tenderness of Suso and others; we feel united with that which streamed to the earth from the wide expanse of the heavenly worlds through the Christ event. Thereby a man makes himself ready to be led as a Rosicrucian initiate consciously into those regions which in ancient times were called the Dionysian worlds and may now be called the Luciferic worlds.

What is the effect upon modern Rosicrucian initiates of this introduction into the Luciferic worlds? If their feelings glow with enthusiasm for the divine as soon as they are permeated with the Christ substance, the other faculties through which we understand the world are illuminated and strengthened by the Luciferic principle. In this way the Rosicrucian initiate ascends to the Luciferic principle. His spiritual faculties are intensified and elaborated through initiation, so that he not merely feels the Christ mystically within His soul, but can also describe Him, can speak of Him and picture Him in spiritual images or thought pictures; so the Christ is not merely dimly felt and experienced but stands before him in concrete outlines, as a figure of the outer sense world. It is possible for man to experience the Christ as soul substance when he directs his gaze to that figure of the Christ which meets him in the Gospels. But to describe and understand Him in the way that other phenomena and events in the world are understood, and thereby to gain an insight into His greatness, His significance and His causative connection with world evolution, is only possible when the Christian initiate advances to knowledge of the Luciferic realms.

Thus in Rosicrucian science it is Lucifer who gives us the faculty for describing and understanding the Christ.²

What the centuries have been able to do is to propagate the Gospels; so that the Word streaming forth from them enabled hearts and souls to be warmed by their message, to be permeated by the fire and enthusiasm which flow out from them. Today we stand at a stage of human evolution when it can no longer suffice to receive the Gospels as a tradition in the old way; today men need something else. Those who decline to accept this new teaching will have to bear the Karma of opposition to the introduction of the Luciferic principle into the interpretation of the Gospels. There may be many who say: ‘We are content to accept the Gospels as simple Christians; we feel that they satisfy us; the Christ speaks through them, and He does so even when we receive them as traditionally handed down for centuries in religion.’ Although these people may imagine themselves to be good Christians, they are in reality enemies of the Christ, who on account of their personal egoism, and because they still feel themselves satisfied by what is offered in the traditional interpretation of the Gospels, would sweep away that which in future will bring Christianity into glory. Those who today believe themselves to be the best Christians are often the most effective exterminators of real Christianity. Those who today understand the development of Christianity think quite differently. They say that they do not wish to be the egoists who think that the Gospels suffice and assert that they will not have anything to do with abstractions. What spiritual science has to offer is far removed from being an abstract teaching. Real Christians today know that humanity needs something more than the Christianity of the egoists; they realise that the world can no longer be satisfied with the old Gospel tradition, and that the light from Lucifer's kingdom must be thrown upon it. They listen to the teachings proceeding from Rosicrucian schools of initiation, wherein the spiritual faculties have been intensified by the Luciferic principle, in order to penetrate more and more profoundly into the Gospels, and these initiates have found the Gospels to be of such infinite depth that it is impossible to imagine that they can ever be exhaustively dealt with. But today the time has already arrived when the Rosicrucians must let their teachings flow out into the world; they are called upon to spread abroad what they have gained from the Luciferic world in the form of intensification of spiritual forces and faculties, and to pour this into the Gospels. The spiritual science of the West consists in letting the light which streams forth and may be gained from Lucifer's kingdom be cast upon the Gospels. Spiritual science should be an instrument for the interpretation of the Gospels. So it is part of our work to bring to man the joyful message about the substance of the Christ Being, which permeates the world, and to allow the light which may be gained in Lucifer's kingdom on the path of Rosicrucian initiation to fall upon the Gospels. Thus we see that the Christ, Who formerly was a god living in the outer world, became the mystical Christ, and that by His ennoblement of the human soul, He has brought it back again to the realm called in ancient times the Dionysian world, which for awhile had to be shut off and which will be re-attained in the future by man. The interpretation of the Christ by spiritual faculties illuminated by Lucifer, is the inner and essential kernel of the spiritual stream which must flow through the western channel. And what I have said represents the mission of Rosicrucianism in the future.

What is it therefore that comes to pass in human evolution? Christ and Lucifer, the one as a cosmic god and the other as a god within the human soul, dwelt side by side in ancient times, one to be found in the upper regions and the other in the nether regions; then the evolution of the world progressed and for some time it was known that Dionysos or Lucifer, was far away from the earth; on the other hand the cosmic Christ was felt to be penetrating the earth to a greater and greater degree; Lucifer again became visible, and was once more able to be known. The paths taken by these two divine spiritual beings may be pictured more or less in the following way: they approached the earth from two different sides; Lucifer became invisible at the time when his path cut across that of the Christ—his light was overpowered by the Christ light. The Christ entered the human soul, became the planetary spirit of the earth, growing more and more to be the mystical Christ within human souls, and can be felt and realised through inner experiences. In this way the soul becomes gradually more capable of again beholding the other being, who took the reverse way, from within to without. Lucifer, from a being within man's inner nature, a purely earthly being such as he was when he was sought in the mysteries leading to the underworld, becomes a cosmic god. He will appear in ever-greater radiance in the outer world which we behold when we look through the tapestry of the sense world. Man's vision will become reversed. In the past Lucifer was seen behind the veil of the inner soul world, and the Christ, as by Zarathustra, behind the veil of the sense-world, but in the future the Christ will to an ever greater degree be realised by inner spiritual meditation and Lucifer will be found when the gaze is directed outwards into cosmic regions. Thus we have to record a complete reversal of the conditions by which man can acquire knowledge in the course of human evolution. The Christ, an erstwhile cosmic god, has become an earthly god, who is henceforth the soul of the earth; Lucifer, an erstwhile earthly god, has become a cosmic god. And when in the future, man desires again to ascend to the external spiritual world hidden behind the veil of the sense-world, and is not willing to stop short at the external and material, he must penetrate through the sense-world into the spiritual world and must allow himself to be borne to the light by the ‘Light Bringer.’ No faculties for penetration into that region can arise in man if he does not create them out of the forces flowing to him from Lucifer's kingdom. Men would be drowned in the sea of materialism, would persist in the belief that there is nothing except the outer world of matter, if they did not ascend to inspiration through the Luciferic principle. Just as the Christ principle exists to strengthen our inner being, so the Luciferic principle intensifies and develops those faculties by means of which we have to penetrate into the spiritual worlds fully and completely.

Lucifer will intensify our understanding and comprehension of the world; the Christ will strengthen us perpetually within.

• 1. Dr. Steiner has in many lectures gone more fully into the difference between the Jesus of Bethlehem and the Jesus of Nazareth, and explained to some extent the deep mystery here referred to. The translation of a small work by Dr. Arenson on this subject, and called the “History of the Child-hood of Jesus,” is strongly recommended to those interested. It is published simultaneously with this volume by the Anthroposophical Publishing Company, price 2p.
• 2. It is easy to see how, conformably with the use of the ordinary word ‘Lucifer,’ ill will or ignorance may throw calumny on what has been here said; that however cannot prevent these things being stated. Anyone, who understands by Lucifer what is here meant, must necessarily have other conceptions.

We will begin the lecture today by thinking of what is implied by the word “chance.” We say that certain happenings in the world are comprehensible to us because they take their course “in accordance with law” in them we recognise certain laws, “natural laws.” Of other happenings it is said that they seem to be governed by no law; the time at which they occur, the sequence of circumstances connected with them ... all must be attributed to “chance.” Modern science, recognising only those abstract laws which it calls the “laws of Nature,” will certainly be prone, where these laws prove inapplicable, to speak of “mere chance,” of something, that is to say, in regard to which conformity to law cannot be admitted. When modern science speaks of “chance” in cases to which its laws do not apply, it really puts a ban upon any suggestion of conformity to law. Both generally and in particulars, there is hardly anything more intolerant in human life than the “scientific attitude.” I do not, of course, refer to scientific facts, for they are presented in a way which does science the very highest credit, and intolerance does not come into question here. I am speaking of the “scientific attitude” which arises on the foundation of these facts. The attitude of materialistic thought today is an example of almost the greatest intolerance to be found in history.

If in the light of Spiritual Science, we consider “chance” in relation to the life of feeling, our first question will be: How does chance befall the human being? How does it present itself to him? ... When something happens “by chance,” “fortuitously,” it seems as though a man could not possibly, out of his own thoughts—whatever they may be—ascribe any meaning, any inner conformity to law, to this “chance” event. It looks as though reason must simply let it go at that, without bothering to ascertain whether any conformity to law could possibly be attributed to it. People are usually unwilling to bring reason or intelligence to bear upon unforeseen occurrences which, as such, are apparently quite inexplicable. Where feeling is concerned, however, the attitude is very different, although this is not generally realised. Feeling does not always allow itself to be dominated by intellectual preconceptions or by the reasoning mind, but rises out of hidden depths of the soul where man is wiser than he is in his intellect and reason. Thus it may well happen that in his life of feeling a man is attracted or repelled, pleased or displeased by what his reason and intellect call “pure chance.” We will take a definite example. A schoolboy is wrestling with a sum he has to solve; he pores over it and struggles hard but still cannot get it right. After persistent efforts he solves it, to his great delight. But he says to himself: “To be quite certain that I have got it right and shall not be kept in and be given a bad mark, I must go through it all again.” So he makes up his mind that after supper he will work it all out again. Then, quite by chance, and owing to entirely unrelated circumstances, a classmate turns up at his home and asks him what solution he has reached. They compare results and find that they agree. In this way the boy is spared from an additional strain; not needing to pore over the sum any longer, he is free and can go to bed at once. Now if the father is what is called an “enlightened” man, he will say: “The other boy did not call in unexpectedly just to save my boy an hour's study which might have injured his health, but was sent by his mother to bring something I had left behind.” The father calls it “chance.” But the boy has a feeling of happiness, although he will probably not go to the length of believing that an Angel brought this school friend to him; the reaction of his feelings, at any rate will be quite different from that of his reason and intellect. The father will certainly not be inclined to accept the idea that an Angel from Heaven sent the friend to his son, yet he too will feel glad about what happened.

That is what I mean when I say that when feeling rises out of hidden depths in the life of soul, it may well be cleverer than the intellect and the reasoning mind which have to develop independence in the course of the Earth's mission, to develop in such a way that they are thrown back entirely on themselves; reason and intellect are, so to speak, “God-forsaken,” and can therefore easily fall into the error of believing that in what presents itself to them as chance, there is no Divine-Spiritual conformity to law, nor anything like it. Therefore we may say that what rises out of the depths of the soul makes us—as in this case—cleverer in our feelings than we are in our life of intellect and reason. This indicates quite clearly that Spiritual Science is right when it asserts that what lies in the depths of the soul and rises in the feelings from these depths, originates from an epoch when the human being was not thrown back entirely upon himself; that the element of sympathy or antipathy in the life of soul is something that came over from the Old Moon period. Therefore, during the course of Earth-revolution, the human being has to become as clever in his life of intellect and reason as he became in his life of feeling during the Old Moon period of evolution. Someone may say at this point: “But I have observed that feelings are by no means always clever; they can also be the very reverse!” The reason for this is that our feelings as men of Earth are influenced by the intellect which works down into the feelings. If our feelings are stupid, they have become so only because they have been influenced by the intellect. If the life of feeling had remained immune from this influence, despite the circumstances connected with incarnation and the general evolution of mankind, then the feelings would, in fact, be cleverer than the intellect and the reason.

Considered from this point of view, something of peculiar interest concerning “chance” presents itself, something that is extremely instructive. The question might indeed be raised: “Is there not also significance in the very fact that certain things can be regarded as fortuitous, accidental? Is not that in itself significant?” The question is a natural one, for it is precisely during Earth-evolution that the human being must develop intellect and reason—in other words, what is called the “normal” consciousness. At the end of Earth-evolution man should have reached the stage of perceiving law in those happenings and facts which today he considers fortuitous; they seem to him to be examples of pure “chance”; he can see in them no immediate evidence of the law manifested by happenings in Nature; their conformity to law is wholly concealed. But precisely in those things which during the Earth-evolution conceal all evidence of law, seeming to be pure chance, man will learn to perceive a deeper conformity to law; when Earth-evolution has run its course—but not until then—this law will present itself with the same inexorable “necessity” now associated with the laws of nature. If what are now called “chance” happenings appeared to be subject to the necessity of natural law, man would learn nothing from them. He would not be able to bring himself to say of some event: “I can either regard it as full of significance—or as chance!” And so because it is given into the hands of man and is a matter of his own free will whether he will apply intelligence and reason to what looks like “chance,” he learns to find his way through earthly incarnations, to permeate with reason and intelligence what seems to be subject to no rule and to be brought merely by chance: so that what cannot, by its very nature, appear to him as an evidence of rigid conformity to law, appears, finally, as evidence of spiritual law.

We are able, here, to glimpse a very wise provision in world-evolution, one which, if we grasp its significance, shows us that with extraordinary wisdom, certain things were ordained to appear as “chance.” We have therefore, ourselves to unravel the threads of the law which has, first of all, to be discovered within them. In order that for the sake of our own development, we might be taught self-knowledge and learn to weigh ourselves in the balance, it was left to our own will either to be wise or foolish, either to recognise conformity to law in so-called matters of chance, or to acknowledge only the inflexible laws of Nature. As time goes on it will be found that certain branches of science will refuse to apply anything except the abstract, laws of outer Nature and will insist upon labelling everything else as “chance.” These branches of science too, of course, represent activity in the life of soul, but if, as Goethe indicates at the end of Faust, man has turned his gaze to a higher world and has drawn nearer to what is spoken of by all true mysticism as the “Eternal Feminine,” the realm in which the “Feminine” is the symbol for the eternal laws of Nature and the sciences ... if that has come to pass, these particular branches of science will, at the end of Earth-existence, be regarded as the “Foolish Virgins.” On the other hand, Spiritual Science and what develops from it will be able to act in accordance with wisdom and law in those domains where the external sciences—the “Foolish Virgins”—are incapable of doing so. This will enable certain branches of science to be the “Wise Virgins” at the end of Earth-evolution. And the beautiful parable in the Gospel indicates what will happen to the Wise and Foolish Virgins in due time. (Matthew 25:1-13)

These things can lead us more deeply into the secrets of world-evolution; and if we connect direct observation of the outer world with what we learn from Spiritual Science, a very remarkable factor comes to light. I will ask you now to accompany me in your thoughts.

You know that during the Earth period, more and more of the content, the data of knowledge, the achievements, the experiences of the normal consciousness, will become an integral part of man's being. But all evolution proceeds slowly and by degrees, and it will occasionally happen—indeed it sometimes happens now—that something which only in the future will be normal for man, projects itself into the life of abstract reason and intellect, into the domain of the various branches of natural science; something not derived from the normal consciousness but connected with higher forms of consciousness projects itself into life. It is naturally veiled from the normal consciousness, but it points, nevertheless, to the deeper backgrounds of existence. Hence it is to be expected that whenever there is a projection of something which transcends the normal consciousness, it will also, strangely enough, be too striking to be lightly put down to “chance.” In other words: As long as a man lives among his fellows with his normal consciousness only, he can speak lightly of “chance.” As long as in mutual dealings among human beings there is no question of any element other than reason and intellect playing into their words and actions, so long will it be possible to speak glibly of “chance.” For then, everything in their intercourse with one another and in external life which does not appear to be subject to law, will look so much like chance that it will be difficult to realise that even in what is, apparently, quite fortuitous, there is a connection regulated by law. But suppose something comes into our earthly life which cuts across the ordinary form of intercourse between human beings, based as it is, merely upon intellect and reason—something which indicates a great deal more! So that you may see what I mean, I want to quote a special case which is to be regarded merely as an example but from which a great deal may be learnt if it is viewed in the light of Spiritual Science. It is an unpleasant, disagreeable case, but one from which we can learn, as in an experiment, what is actually in operation.

In a certain place it happened that a clergyman had alienated a woman's affection from her husband. He had had a kind of love-affair with this woman, causing the husband deep grief. In the same place there lived two men, friends of each other, who were devoted to the clergyman, not merely in their intellectual life, but in their hearts and feelings. They were in his power, in the sense that his influence worked not only through the life of intellect and reason but also through the religious services and rites, through the element of spiritual life in religion. That the rites in this case had not produced any very good effect, is not the point here; the point is the method adopted by the two men and the fact that the clergyman was their spiritual pastor ... The two friends finally decided to do the clergyman a good turn and they consulted together as to how to get rid of the husband. The case has ugly features about it because the spiritual element is mingled with egoistic, human interests, bringing the whole thing near to the region of black magic. The two friends agreed to murder the husband, and actually did so. Thus they both incurred guilt, not merely by their intellectual decision but also because they had come under the sway of a psychological influence which affected the whole parish. We have therefore a curious case of human connections in which not only reason and intellect are operating but also something lying behind reason and intellect—because the clergyman, being what he was, was able to work with means connected with the spiritual life. What is to be expected, in the light of the principles of Spiritual Science known to us? Because events are causes and, as such, bring consequences, we can expect to find something else happening as a result of what then took place. In most occurrences connected merely with the operations of the reason and intellect, you will find many “chance” happenings, and you will speak of them light-heartedly as such, if you know nothing of Spiritual Science. But it will not be possible to speak of “chance” when there is definite evidence of a psychic influence having been involved in the causes of certain happenings. Here were two friends who had co-operated in the murder. In such a case, karma may be expected to work in a very definite way and all the circumstances oblige us to think of something more than “chance.” Something very special must have been at work, for in this case there is evidence of an influence which might be termed “grey” or “black” magic. And what did, in fact, happen? The two murderers fell ill unaccountably, each with a different illness, and both died within the same hour. Those who insist upon speaking of “chance” will naturally want to do so here too; but those less determined to attribute everything to chance will try to reflect a little more deeply. What has been said in connection with this striking example will be confirmed in many ways if you are willing to probe thoroughly into incidents suggesting the interplay of something more than belongs specifically to the Earth-mission and Earth-consciousness; in this case, something rooted behind the sphere of external existence is in operation, indicating by the peculiar course of events, “abnormal” conditions—as common parlance would express it. But those who observe events from the standpoint of Spiritual Science will say: Here is a direct indication that because there is something different in the actual causes, the karmic course taken by the consequences of those causes will be strikingly significant.

Thus when we know of the power of the Supersensible behind the world of sense, the very way in which the external facts present themselves is an indication that such happenings differ from those in which there is no suggestion of any interplay of the Supersensible. Ordinary science would do well to investigate matters other than the pointless subjects which are dragged to light nowadays and which Friedrich Theodor Vischer—in some respects a very shrewd writer—ridiculed in the following way. He said: There was once a learned scholar who went to Goethe's house and burrowed in all the dust that had been accumulating for years, examining every scrap of paper still lying in the wastepaper baskets; then he searched in all the corners, turned over the dirty rubbish heaps, and finally produced a treatise on “The Connection between Frau Geheimrat von Goethe's Chilblains and the symbolical characters in the Second Part of Faust!” That is a rather radical example but in the catalogues of the most learned publications, similar things are to be found. It would be well if external science, instead of occupying itself with such matters as Vischer had in his mind, were to turn to happenings like the one quoted, which provide striking evidence that occurrences attributed to “chance” but indicating the existence of psychical elements, clearly hint at meaning. The same thing applies, of course, to cases where no psychical factor is in evidence and which may therefore lightly be put down to “chance,” only then it is not so easy to perceive the meaning, and spiritual observation is required to discern the presence of law. And so if we study life, in what confronts us as “chance,” as an antithesis to law, we can see the clash of two worlds, literally the clash of two worlds.

What do I mean by this?

Man has his Earth-mission to fulfil, that is to say, he has to develop and elaborate what is now called the “normal” consciousness. A wise World-Order has made it possible for many happenings to appear to him as chance; it therefore rests with his free will, whether or not he will recognise in them the presence of law. But several currents, not only one, are always in operation. Everywhere there is an inflow of the Spiritual, the Spiritual of which man, too, is part. The Spiritual would have been operating in an occurrence of the kind described above, even if the central figure had not been a clergyman; but in that case his own life of soul would not have been implicated to anything like the same extent.

This episode provides a clear illustration of the operation of another element, side by side with reason and intellect. Both elements play continually into life. Do not imagine for a moment that people who claim to be “Monists,” in other words, materialists, have emancipated themselves altogether from the Spiritual, or that they “believe” in nothing at all, as they pretend. Monism is nothing but belief—belief, moreover, which obscures the Spiritual. What is all important is to see through the illusion, the maya. Human prejudices being what they are, it is, of course, difficult always to see through maya; when people are deeply imbedded in maya it is by no means easy to see through it. Those who look at history today from the standpoint of materialism, may say: “The course of evolution is such that on account of certain purely materialistic contrasts in the social life of man, some kind of collapse is inevitable, and out of this collapse a new order of society will grow.” This is now being taken for granted in the domain of “historical materialism.” It has been prophesied that the clash between classes and ranks will result in a collapse of the social order, and that a new order of society will arise from the ruins. A materialist who speaks in this sense will certainly be ready to admit that he believes in nothing, but bases his judgment upon historical facts; and he will refer with a kind of inner satisfaction, even with glee, to “queer fellows” who spoke of an “Apocalypse,” a “kingdom of a thousand years,” a “millenium,” of a different shaping of the future brought about by the spiritual worlds! He will look down upon them as eccentrics. But it never once enters his head that he is merely accepting another belief, substituting materialistic belief for belief in the Spiritual. Those who are seekers after truth, however, must see through such things and emancipate themselves from maya.

Within us there is a clash of two worlds: one is connected merely with the operations of intellect and reason, resulting from the mission of the Earth as such; the other is connected with spiritual happenings which even in their apparent fortuitousness, speak an eloquent language (as in the instance given and in innumerable other cases).

What is it, then, that can help us, while adhering to the purpose and mission of Earth-existence, to seek for the working of law in “chance,” recognising the wisdom with which world-evolution has made it possible for certain things to appear as “chance,” in order that when we ourselves become a little wiser, we shall wish to discover the operation of law in them? Without exonerating the weaknesses of the times, let us face the facts clearly.

With dauntless scientific daring, men of the present age place their reliance upon the laws of Nature and are not afraid to bring the facts and happenings of Nature into the framework of these laws. In this respect men are truly courageous And why? It may sound harsh but in a certain sense it is true to say that they are courageous because after that there is nothing more to do! No special courage is needed to recognise natural laws or to anticipate laws where external phenomena themselves speak so forcibly. In these days, as a matter of fact, there would be an inclination to pay greater respect to those who are bold enough to deny natural laws than to those who recognise them If someone were to say: “People maintain that natural law exists, but after all, it, too, may well be only “chance ” ... this might evoke greater respect because it would be a radical and audacious step to admit the possibility of chance in the sphere of natural law. Nietzsche was one who came very near to the point of regarding everything as chance. Again, someone might say: “Even if hitherto the sun has risen every morning, that might likewise be a matter of chance; the daily sunrise may be regarded as chance as justifiably as other happenings.” Such a statement might be forcible and audacious—but it would be false! In their recognition of natural laws operating in chemical and physical processes men are undoubtedly courageous—the courage is certainly there ... but it is cheap! The facts of Nature do not readily lend themselves to being regarded as chance. Courage evaporates in the face of things generally designated as “chance,” Just where it is most needed and when man ought to say to himself: “Although the happenings confronting me here seem to group themselves together quite haphazardly, I shall try to find a deeper meaning and purpose in them!” To see meaning and purpose in external chance means that the outer facts are being confronted with a strength of soul which also endures in the face of seemingly quite fortuitous happenings. The modern weavings of phantasy in regard to chance are the outcome of inner weakness, because men do not trust themselves to recognise law in the things which seem to be fortuitous. It is really cowardice on the part of science to accept the factor of chance and to be chary of introducing law into what presents itself as disordered chaos simply because law does not make itself immediately apparent. Hence the science of today which really lacks courage and is willing only to concern itself with natural laws, must be counteracted by the forcible and courageous science of the Spirit which makes the soul strong enough to perceive law and order in apparently fortuitous happenings. This is the side of Spiritual Science which must make the human being strong enough not merely to recognise law where the external circumstances themselves compel him to be courageous, but where he must call upon all his inner forces and let them speak with the same compelling power with which Nature happenings speak to him. Nature confronts the human being as a finished work. Within Nature and by the side of Nature, “chance” presents itself. Man himself is involved in this “chance” and much of what he calls his destiny is rooted in the laws underlying it. What is it, then, that is needed? We will now try to answer this question.

Something must take place of which the exoteric world has absolutely no idea. What is needed is an invigoration of the impulse which has led to the scientific method and attitude of today—an invigoration which cannot possibly be drawn from the domain of science alone. External science must receive an impulse deriving from spiritual research. For since external science allows itself to be coerced into accepting natural laws, it will be incapable of unfolding the courage that is necessary for the perception of spiritual law in the realm of the seemingly fortuitous. Spiritual Science must constitute a new impulse which calls for the steeling of courage in the souls of men, an impulse which leads to something absolutely new in the world, even though this amounts merely to a new understanding of what has already been imparted to mankind but remains more or less unconscious; from our time onwards men must become conscious of it. The need for a new impulse is everywhere apparent—even to those who resist it. They themselves realise the need quite clearly but they often proceed in a very strange way. They do not directly admit it, but lacking the courage to adopt the attitude of which we have spoken, they are willing, strangely enough, to be reconciled to all sorts of philosophical opinions concerning the spiritual world which make some slight compromise with the prevailing scientific mentality. Here and there you will find that commendable “tolerance” is extended to teachings concerning a spiritual world although it is not difficult to attribute this tolerance to likes and predilections which have a habit of persisting in sincere and scientifically-minded people ... but you may be quite sure that somewhere or other there will be exceptions. Those who think they have an unconditional right to judge, may say: “Yes, it is possible to come to terms with advocates of idealistic philosophy when they base their acceptance of a spiritual world upon reason.” But when they hear about Spiritual Science or Theosophy, these people adopt a curious attitude and act very strangely, for it makes them uneasy! They cannot altogether account for it, but one thing they know, namely, that they do not want to have anything to do with this kind of thing! On that point they are unyielding and then they are not quite so tolerant; they abuse Spiritual Science, say that it is fantastic and has no reasoned foundations. Even those who from superior heights occasionally extend tolerance to other forms of idealistic thought, adopt an attitude to Spiritual Science which almost confounds the saying of Goethe: “The little fellows never notice the devil, even when he has them by the collar!” ... for Theosophy seems to them to be the very embodiment of the devil. They do not usually say as much, but that is how things are.

There has lately been a striking example of this among our own ranks; attention may be drawn to it for it is mentioned in the current German periodicals. For his Doctorate at a northern University, one of our members submitted a thesis on “The Relation of the Ego to Thinking.” If the man in question had been in the position in which I was lucky enough to be when I wrote my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—which was before I was presenting, under the name of “Theosophy,” the world-conception I now hold—nobody would have any idea, any “false” idea, that this thesis on the relation of the Ego to Thinking has any connection with Theosophy; for there is absolutely nothing about Theosophy in it, any more than there is in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, or in my Truth and Science. People had no inkling of what was behind these two works and from time to time remarkably favourable opinions were expressed. I can give another example too. One day, because of my publications on Goethe, I was commissioned to write a chapter on Goethe's relation to natural science. The manuscript lay in the hands of the editor for a long time and the work did not appear. In those days it was practically a foregone conclusion that this particular section would have been trusted to me and not one of the persons concerned had any doubt about it. But you see, I had begun to use the word “Theosophy” and at the time I actually held an official position in the Theosophical Movement. The treatise was returned to me as “unusable”! You can see what was going on behind the scenes then, and also in the present case. If our friend had not been a theosophist, nobody would have failed to recognise that here was a logical, dialectical thesis on The Relation of the Ego to Thinking ... but the university town where this episode took place is not very big. The writer was known to be a theosophist and so the professors had no use for his work. As the professors themselves happened also to be engaged in experimental psychology, their attitude was: We recognise law only where external compulsion holds sway. If any body recognises law where there is no external compulsion, as is the case in the relation of the Ego to Thinking, his thesis is rejected as a matter of course! And so the thesis was turned down. But something else transpired. The thesis is written in a northern language with which very few people are conversant, and it was sent to an old German professor who “by chance”—I say this advisedly—understands this language. He gave his verdict quite objectively and it was an extremely favourable one.

I mention these incidents—there are many others as well so that you may know how things are, and form your own judgments. Among theosophists too there are people who are ready to admit: Here or there spiritual teaching is to be found ... although they ought to realise that it is not a question of looking for a really new impulse “here or there,” but in Spiritual Science itself. The impulses leading to progress in the world can only flourish when they are grasped in their full force. The human being, too, must lay hold of all the forces within him if he is to realise that apparent fortuity in the world is permeated with meaning and divine purpose. This is the impulse that must be given by Spiritual Science. Men must recognise that in the course of human evolution a point was once reached which must now be understood in a new sense, and in full consciousness. Significant allusion is made to it in the First Chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark, in the words: “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; know yourselves, pay heed to the new message.” And then, a few verses further on, a remarkable statement occurs concerning Christ Jesus.¹

In our Movement it is not a question of advocating orthodoxy or dogma but of indicating, in the evolutionary process of mankind, the coming of the impulse which leads to the strengthening of those inner forces whereby the human “ I ” attains self-knowledge, learning also to behold itself in the world and to draw into its own realm of law, what otherwise appears as “blind chance.” Why is it that the phenomena of Nature give no suggestion of chance? Why does man speak of law in the phenomena of Nature? It is for this reason. After the expiration of the Saturn-, Sun- and Moon-periods of evolution, the Exusiai, the “Spirits of Form,” the “Spirits of Revelation,” began their operations; and the manifested laws of Nature are not abstract laws but, in a spiritual sense, the Deeds of the Exusiai, of the Spirits of Form! When man observes the course of Nature-happenings he beholds, in the laws of Nature, the Deeds of the Exusiai. But his courage has failed. And where the Exusiai are not articulate, where they do not palpably indicate what they have laid into the facts and happenings of Nature, man has no longer any inkling that there, too, the Spiritual is in operation, in the shape of Law. But he must strive to reach the stage where he speaks of those happenings which today he still ascribes to “chance,” as the Exusiai speak in the facts of Nature. Human courage has broken down. How does man speak of destiny, of destiny in humanity? He speaks just like the grammarians who have eyes only for the words and are not interested in the connections between the words, thinking, often enough, that there is no active, living power within them. Man must learn not only to see connective purpose in the facts of Nature, in the Deeds of the Exusiai, but out of an inner impulse he must learn to speak of events in the life of humanity as though the Exusiai were being made manifest in what today seems to he pure chance. In order that this might be, there came One Who spoke very differently from those who are ignorant of what lies behind apparently fortuitous happenings. The One Who came, spoke not as the grammarians but as the Exusiai speak out of the facts of Nature. Thus did Christ speak out of the mouth of Jesus! The Gospel indicates this in a wonderful way in that to the abstract words: “And they were amazed at His teaching” ... it immediately adds: “For He taught as the Exusiai teach!” Where do the Exusiai teach? In the facts of Nature! And with this same Nature-necessity, Christ spoke out of the mouth of Jesus concerning those realms of existence over which the laws of Nature seem to exercise no sway.

Such is the impulse that must enter into men. Then, in the “chance” happenings of today they will find the courage to recognise the kingdom of spiritual law and gradually to learn to speak of it as the Exusiai, the Spirits of Form, speak in the facts of Nature.

The great Easter-Impulse given to humanity consisted in this: There dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth the Power of a Being Who spoke with the same inner necessity with which the laws of Nature speak in the facts of Nature, from the mineral kingdom of Earth, up and beyond the realm of the clouds, to the very Realm of the stars. Thus did Christ speak in Jesus of Nazareth! And when man is able to fire his courage with this impulse he will recognise conformity to law in all the facts of world-existence, in the realm of Nature and also in the realm of the Spirit, where “chance” is thought to operate. There must come to men—free from all preconceived thoughts—a new understanding of where the might of the Christ-Impulse lies, and of the heights to which the Christ-Impulse can raise them.

With such thoughts we pass towards the Festival held as a memorial that this Impulse was vouchsafed to mankind. Much of what has been said in this lecture may well serve as a kind of Easter Meditation, and you will then find that such thoughts can help to promote the true mood of soul in which to celebrate the Festival.

• 1. See: The Gospel of St. Mark, by Rudolf Steiner.