The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The whole cycle of these talks is dedicated to the knowledge of spirit, and if one wants to speak about the knowledge of spirit and soul, this happens, because we can come to an understanding with each other about the concept of the spirit relating it to the concept of the soul. Since for those who deal with spiritual science it is especially annoying that one mixes up the concepts “soul” and “spirit” considering the human being.

You all probably know that we have a so-called psychology or soul science that is today conducted to a relatively high degree just like in school. In the schedules of lectures at the universities, you find lectures on psychology that is literally the doctrine of the soul. One has to note that with all people who talk of psychology or soul science in such a way no distinct consciousness exists of the fact that one has to speak of soul and mind with the human being. One summarises the human inner life—thinking, feeling, and willing—under the concept of the soul. Soul is almost considered as the contrast to the bodily and physical, and one says—if one deigns generally to such a thing, if one is not completely addicted to the materialistic way of thinking—the human being consists of body and soul.

At first, we want to regard those opinions only that have the point of view that the soul is a real being. If one says that the human being consists of body and soul, one is mostly not aware of the fact that one falls a victim to dogmatics that relatively late, in the course of the Christian development originated. Even the older Christianity that has still gone out from the teachings of wisdom distinguished, as all teachings of wisdom of the different times and people did, body, soul and mind of the human being. Only later decisions of Councils have abolished, so to speak, the mind, and only since the (fourth) Council of Constantinople (869/870), one speaks of body and soul. The modern scholarship which deals with such a thing which thinks not materialistically believes to stand on the ground of absolutely free research and has no idea that it has taken up this later Christian concept of the soul, which refrains from the mind, as a prejudice, as a preconceived opinion. This applies to many concepts generally which play a role in our scholarship and are accepted as if they were results of research, while they signify only an ancient prejudice.

We will now have a look at the general psychology in the most different directions. However, I do not criticise here, but only characterise. Psychology has suffered—we are allowed to state this—mostly and most thoroughly from the materialistic attitude and way of thinking. Not only the outer science of the sensory phenomena has lost the concept of mind gradually, but also psychology has even lost the concept of soul, that is its own object. The cultural life went through an interesting development there.

A daring researcher and thinker who performed many quite extraordinary things in some fields had the courage to pronounce what is, so to speak, only a basic attitude and basic sensation within the modern psychology with others. This daring thinker was Friedrich Albert Lange (1828–1875, German philosopher). You can buy cheap his History of Materialism (1866) from Reclam's Universal Library. It is an excellent book because just someone who studies it thoroughly must come to the conviction—I have explained it in the last talk—that materialism as a worldview is to be compared to a man who draws himself upwards with his own shock of hair. This Friedrich Albert Lange has pronounced in relation to psychology something that can be summarised in three words: “psychology without soul.” This is from Friedrich Albert Lange. Other researchers did not dare to pronounce this consequence; but they act and do psychological research in such a way, as if a concept of the soul did not concern them. Also today, you find all kinds of concepts about the soul in the most famous works of the academic psychology. However, if you want to get to know something about the soul, you ask for advice in vain, because this psychology has lost—this should be no criticism, but only a characteristic—the concept of the soul completely even if this is not always pronounced. Whether you ask advice from Wundt (Wilhelm W., 1832–1920, German physiologist, psychologist, philosopher) or another about those questions in which the human beings are interested concerning the soul life, you nowhere get information. You find all kinds of questions answered about the way in which the human being perceives objects in his surroundings. You also find all kinds of speculations about the relation of perception to consciousness.

For example, one asks, how long does it last, until the human being becomes aware of it, after he has received a stimulus? You find questions about attention, questions in which way the human being judges in which way he compares the things with each other, how he remembers and so on. However, who could deny that the impartially feeling soul—in the usual sense—if it asks for its own being has in mind above all: what is the nature of my soul? Does it share the fate of the physical to disintegrate and to end if death occurs? Does it only take share in the life of the sensuous surroundings or does it take share in a far higher one, in an extrasensory life that does not wear out itself in the physical world? You will search these questions in vain, which are vital matters for the human being in the modern psychology even as questions. Everything in the human life points to them; but if the real nature of the soul is considered, one says, this goes beyond the limits of human knowledge.

If you have a little bit patience and have a look at such psychology, you become aware of the fact that it applies quite the same methods of research as the natural sciences. If one applies these methods, just nothing else can result than what faces us in this psychological literature. More than in any other field it concerns in the soul research who does these researches. Where one thinks materialistically, one has come more and more to the conviction that the research results can be only of the kind that they face everybody from the outside. Who does understand the sense of the nice Goethean saying completely and thoroughly still today?

Unless the eye were like the sun,
How could we see the light?
Unless God's own strength were in us,
How could delight us the divine?

Nothing faces us in the outside world if we are not related to the concerning thing or being or to the concerning force in the outside world if we do not carry something related in ourselves. Thus, only someone can investigate the soul who searches something beyond his self that he has experienced in himself. Not everybody—this must be stressed in particular in relation to psychology—can be a psychologist; for the human being notices only so much of the secrets of the other souls as he has experienced in himself.

Spiritual science deals with the spirit as such, as we said at the beginning. All the talks are dedicated to the consideration of the spirit. Howsoever the titles are called in detail, the spirit has to be searched everywhere. As it arises already from the talk, which I have held two weeks ago here, spiritual science has to show that behind everything that faces us the spirit lives and works.

What is matter to spiritual science? It is only another form of the spirit. If spiritual science speaks of matter, material, and body, it speaks of it in such a way as it speaks of ice and water. Ice is water in another form. Now, however, somebody could come and say, then spiritual science denies the matter and corporeality if it asserts that everything is spirit—and then there is no matter for spiritual science. Spiritual science stands on this weird point of view by no means. We remain with our comparison of ice and water. What come into consideration for life are not empty words, not empty definitions, but effects that you meet in life. Even if one says, ice is water in another form—and one is right with it completely-, are, nevertheless, the effects of the water different from those of ice as everybody can perceive if he puts a piece of ice on his hand instead of pouring water on it.

Someone who wanted to deny that ice is water in another form would make a fool of himself. Thus, spiritual science does not dream of denying the matter. It exists; it is only spirit in another form. In which form? In the form, that one can observe it from the outside by the senses. These are the essentials of matter. This talk links to the talk eight days ago where we could show how any materialistic view disintegrates into nothing before the progress of the natural sciences as the fantastic concept of the matter dissolves in smoke and fog due to the new researches. Concepts like ether, matter scatter today in light of the other researches. What remains to us of that which approaches us in the outside world? What we see and hear, tone, colour, warmth et cetera: what we perceive. We should soar the view that behind the warmth, behind the tone, behind the light nothing is of this terribly crude whirl of atoms that was the only real during the long time of materialism. Real is in this sense what we see what we hear what we feel as warmth. If we look behind the colour, behind the tone, behind the warmth, as we feel it, what do we find behind them? We find behind them if we take the tone, as long as it remains in the sensuous world, moved air. However, we are not allowed to go behind the sensuous world with our speculations. We have to stop in the sensory world. Someone pronounced something most important whom the scholars did not take seriously, who was not only a poet but also a great thinker: “Never search anything behind the phenomena; they themselves are the teachings.”

If we go behind the tone, behind the light, we do not find material atoms that dive into our retina, which impregnate it and create the mental picture of the colour and the light. If we really look behind, what do we find there?—Spirit! Colour relates to the spirit like ice to water. Tone relates to the spirit like ice to water. Instead of that fantastic world of whirling atoms the true thinker and spiritual researcher finds spirit, spiritual reality behind that what he sees and hears, so that the question of the nature of matter loses all sense. For how does the question of the nature of matter answer itself for the spiritual researcher? What surrounds us outdoors in the world and appears to us as matter? It is spirit! We know the spirit! We must visit its nature in ourselves. What we are in our innermost being, these are all things outdoors in the world, only in other forms. They are it in such form that one can look at them from the outside if the spirit gives itself a surface. Let me pronounce something that every scientist regards as madness: if the spirit goes outwardly, he appears as colour, tone. Nothing else is colour and tone than spirit; it is completely the same what we find in ourselves if we properly understand each other. Thus, every mineral is spirit to us in spiritual science. The true being of the lowest member of the human being, the physical body, is spirit for us in the form in which it exists just also in the apparently lifeless nature.

In what way does the human spirit differ from the spirit that faces us outdoors as mineral and plant, as mountain, as thunder and flash, as trees and bodies of water et cetera? By the fact that this spirit in the narrower sense appears as mind in its very own figure, in the figure that is due to itself as mind. What one normally calls nature, indeed, is spirit, but spirit, which turns its outside to the senses, and what one calls spirit or mind in the narrower sense, is exactly the same. According to its form, nature is what turns to the core of our being. If we search the spirit outdoors in nature, we find it lifeless in the minerals, animated in the plants and feeling in the animals. The human being combines this triple figure of the spirit in himself in three members of his being, as we know them from the point of view of spiritual science. Thereby only, you come to a real knowledge of the human being that you look at his complex nature and are not content with the abstract differentiation between body and soul, but ask yourselves, how is the human being built up?

At first spiritual science distinguishes the physical body of the human being that he has in common as materials and forces with the entire so-called lifeless nature. In the physical body of the human being are the same materials and forces that we find outdoors in the mineral world. However, he has a second member, which we call etheric body or life body. If we speak of ether, it has nothing to do with the fantastic ether that has played a role in science so long and that one will dethrone in the next time. In relation to the etheric body, we cannot get involved in the methods of the higher beholding. However, we understand the etheric body best of all saying: if we take a plant, an animal, the human being, the physical body has the same materials and forces, but in an endlessly complex mixture and variety, so that these materials cannot form the physical body by themselves. No plant body can be what it is by the physical forces, no animal body, and no human body. There is the complication, the variety of the mixture that would make the body destroy if it were left to its own physical and chemical forces. At every moment of life, its so-called etheric body or life body works against the decay of the physical body. A permanent struggle takes place in it. At the moment of death when the etheric body or life body separates from the physical body, the materials and forces of the physical body follow their own principles. Hence, spiritual science says, the physical body is physically and chemically an impossible mixture, it cannot survive. The etheric body is that which struggles against the decay of the physical body permanently.

The third member of the human being is that which we have often called the bearer of desire and pain, of joy and grief, of instincts and passions. If the life starts becoming internal, then we start in spiritual science speaking of an astral body. This is the third member of the human being and of the animal.

Today one has such an unclear concept of that what constitutes the single being that certain researchers cannot make a distinction between an animal and a plant. Of course, there are transitions; but they do not interest us here. You can read in the popular works that are otherwise very meritorious that the plant shows the same manifestations as an animal or a human being, and one talks there about a “plant soul” in the usual sense. One confuses the animal soul and the human soul with simple manifestations of life in the plant. When do we speak of an animal or human soul or of an astral body? If to the outer appearance inner life, inner experience is added. It depends on the inside. If you see a plant, if you touch it, and it contracts its leaves, a stimulus is exercised on the plant, and this shows a certain response to this stimulus. Calling this answer a soul manifestation is the most unbelievable dilettantism. One is not allowed to speak already of soul or astral body if any counter-effect takes place; otherwise, you must also attribute a soul to the litmus paper if it turns red in the acid. It does not depend on any outer reaction, but on the fact, whether anything happens inside of such a being.

If you push a being and it shows a change of form or, otherwise, any outer reaction, you may call that a manifestation of life. However, talking of sensation or soul in this case means to turn all concepts upside down. One can speak of soul or astral body only if to that what goes forward outside a new event, a new fact is added inside if because of a push or pressure pain or because of another stimulus joy is experienced. The outer manifestations do not make a being a soul being, but the processes which it experiences in its inside. Only where sensation starts where life itself is transformed internally into joy and sorrow where any object outdoors not only exercises an attraction on any being, but where inside of the being an experience appears in relation to the outer object, only there we can speak of soul or astral body. If a plant twines spirally round a rod, an effect responds to the stimulus, it is a manifestation of life. Even if it seems with some plants that—if you bring a finger in their nearness—it follows the finger and not the rod, you are not concerned with an inner process. It can be talk of such a thing only if a desire inside of the being exists and it follows the stimulus because of this influence. He who does not distinguish these matters strictly is incapable to rise to the concept of the soul, the astral body. The human being has this in common with the animals, however, not with the plants.

Then we have, as often mentioned, the fourth member by which the human being experiences something in himself that makes him the crown of the earth creation, that what we call “I” or ego. It is an exceptionally important matter for any knowledge to recognise this ego in its nature. In former talks, I have drawn your attention to the fact that there is in our entire language only one word, one name that differs from all other names. You can call any other object with its name, the clock, the table, the notebook. You cannot call that in such a way that is the “I” with its name. Try to say “I” to another being! You can say I only to yourselves. Any being is “you” for the other, and for any being is the other “you.” Should the name I be pronounced, this name must sound from the core of the being. The religions that were based on spiritual science felt this too, and, therefore, said correctly: here the divinity speaks the first tone, the first word in the human soul in its very own figure, and thus the expression for the ego was something holy for them. They called it the ineffable name of God. What the Hebrew religious doctrine called with the expression Yahveh is nothing else than for the ego which calls itself. This is the fourth member of the human being.

Considering this four-membered being—physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego—we have to say: with these four members, which no other being has on earth than the human being, everybody faces us, the uneducated savage and the high developed human being. In what way do the individual human beings differ on earth, if they all have four members? This is because the one has worked more, the other less on his three members from his ego. If we compare the savage who follows any desire, any passion with a high-minded moralist who has pure holy moral concepts and follows these who only accepts that of his desires and passions to which the mind is able to say “yes.” In which way do both differ? By the fact that the high-minded man worked on his astral body from his ego. The uneducated savage has worked less on his astral body; he has it still in such a form as he has received it from nature, from the divine powers. The high-minded moralist and idealist has transformed and purified it.

An astral body consists of two parts; of one part that the human being has got without his co-operation, and the other part that is the work of his ego. Human beings who stand on such a height as for example Francis of Assisi have brought the whole astral body under the control of the ego, so that nothing happens in their astral body that the ego does not control. How does such a human being differ from the savage? In the savage, everything happens without the ego; in the high-minded human being, everything happens by what he has done from his astral body. As much as the ego has transformed the astral body, as much spirit self or manas exists in the human being.

We have five members of the human being now: physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego and spirit self. Then we have the possibility to transform, to purify and to improve not only our astral body, not only the sum of our desires and instincts but we have also the bigger ability to transform our etheric body. In the usual life, the human beings work in the spiritual development on improving their astral bodies gradually, already with the usual impulses of life, the moral concepts, the intellectual mental pictures. Everything that we learn transforms the astral body. If we want to imagine the contrast of the transformation of the astral body and the transformation of the etheric body by the ego, we must remember how we were as eight-year-old children. Then we did not know many a thing that we know today. We have learnt a lot. With the sensations which we have taken up in such a way the astral body has transformed itself, it has incorporated the spirit self or manas. However, everything that constituted our temperament, our inclinations etc. when we were eight years old have not transformed themselves in the same way. If you were a hot-tempered contrary child at the age of eight years, you are probably hot-tempered or contrary sometimes even today. The change of the temperament and the inclinations advances much slower. One can compare the progress of the astral body to the advance of the minute hand and the progress of the etheric body to the advance of the hour hand. However, the inclinations change only if the etheric body changes, and stronger impulses are necessary than for the change of the astral body. The human being who stands in spiritual science has such strong impulses and can already have them if he exposes himself to the impression of a piece of art, behind which he realises the infinite sense, we say of Wagner's Parsifal or of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. These impulses not only have effects on the astral body, but they are so strong that the etheric body is purified and transformed. The same applies standing before a picture of Raphael or Michelangelo, and an impulse of the everlasting penetrates us due to the colours. However, the strongest impulses are the religious ones. They have transformed the human being so strongly that they have seized their etheric bodies, so that the human beings bear two parts of their etheric bodies in themselves, the untransformed one, received from nature, and the transformed one. One calls the transformed part life spirit or buddhi.

If that approaches the human being which we get to know in the talk on the initiation, it becomes more prominent what transforms the etheric body. The initiation consists in giving the means to the human being to transform the etheric body more and more. Hence, it also applies to the student of occultism that any intellectual learning, everything that he can take up just like in school is only a preparation. More important than any intellectual taking up is for that who submits himself to a spiritual-scientific training to transform only one single inclination consciously into another, and if it is only a movement of the hand. Transforming such a thing has more value than any acquired theoretical knowledge. The initiation consists in the impulses that purify the human etheric body. Then these impulses go on purifying the physical body, and this is the highest that the human being can attain in this life.

One could say that the physical body is the lowest; if the human being works on the physical body, is this something particular.—Just because the physical body is the lowest member, one has to apply the strongest forces to transform it into its original form, into the form of the pure spirit. The purification of this physical body begins with certain methods to adjust the respiratory process. Therefore, one calls the part that is converted atman or the spirit man; atman means breathing (German atmen). When the body is transformed—which keeps being as before—the spiritual-scientific training takes place on the highest level. Then the human being attains not only the ability to live consciously in his physical body, to know any blood corpuscle, any nerve he also attains the ability to work on the big nature, to become a human being having an effect on the forces of the universe from a human being that was enclosed in his skin before. Thus, the human being changes into that stage by which he becomes one with the universe. Any other talk of becoming one with the universe that does not happen on the way of proper training and development is gossip and phrase. The human being thereby becomes one with the universe transforming his astral body first, then the etheric body and, finally, the physical body. He becomes one with the entire universe, as the small finger is one with the physical body. This is a quite regular course of the human development which many human beings have gone through, which we all experience already to a certain degree, and which all human beings experience in the future.

What happens there, actually? Let us visualise it: what is the astral body? It is nothing else than the sum of desires, drives and passions, of joy, sorrow, and pain. Everything that co-operates there in the human being is a phenomenon of the spirit, spirit in any form, because everything is spirit. In what way is it possible that the ego works on the astral body? It is possible because the spirit discloses itself to the ego in its very own figure. In the passions, drives and desires the spirit is hidden, there it appears in its phenomena. It flows into the ego in its very own figure, and the ego lets flow it again into the astral body, so that the ego mediates between the very own figure of the spirit and its manifestations. The same applies to the etheric body and, finally, also to the physical body, and thus a perpetual spiritualisation takes place during the transformation of the three human bodies or members. As true it is that any mineral is spirit—but spirit in its outer effect-, as true it is that the human being is on the way to spiritualisation by that which his ego pours into the lower being. Only because the ego is between these manifestations of the spirit, his physical, etheric and astral bodies, and the members of the spirit, which illumine the three bodies, this transition of the spirit into the three bodies is possible. The ego has to be in between. Then the upper can work on the lower.

In what way did we get to know the nature of the ego? We got to know it already in its name. The name of the ego can never sound from the outside to our ear if it means us. With it, one says more than with all phrases that you read in the books of the usual psychology. If one understood substantially what the ego is because this name can never come from the outside to us, then one would have performed more than any academic psychology. The philosopher Fichte already said: the human being as an ego is the nicest. However, most people would prefer to regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an ego because they need own energy to look at it.

We shall see in the talk on the animal soul that the animal also has an ego, but not in the physical world. The human being thereby differs from the animal that he has his ego in the physical world. The ego is something that lets the spirit flow from the inside into another form of spirit, into the different matters, even into the soul, into the astral body. Hence, we can call the being of the ego almost an internalisation. This internalisation is only prepared with the animal. Because we will still speak of the animal soul, I only suggest this today. One must not forget that also the animal has an ego, but not the single animal, but the animal species. All lions together, all tigers together have an ego, and this ego is in the supersensible world. It is in such a way, as if from an animal, which belongs to a species, invisible ropes or threads run to the common group soul in the supersensible world. Such a group soul has become the individual human soul. Any individual human being has what an entire animal group has.

Hence, the internalisation only prepares itself with the animal. We realise it if we study the so-called animal soul, the astral body. The real internalisation of this soul, the first irradiating of the spirit is possible in our world where the ego exists as an individual soul. The soul that has the ego in itself is thereby able to let the spirit flow into the matter. Thus, we see how mind and body or also spirit and matter are two beings; however, one being is the same as the other, only in another form. Matter and body are spirit in other form. They are different from each other in the world generally as ice and water. They are different, even though they are the same. In the middle, the soul exists. It connects mind and body. Hence, we understand the human being only if we understand him in this tripartite composition, consisting of the physical, etheric and astral bodies and consisting of nascent spirit: manas, buddhi, and atman or spirit self, life spirit and spirit man. The soul is the being that transforms one into the other that participates in the body and in the mind. We can understand the soul in the right light only if we see it working from the mind on the body. If we study it from this viewpoint, spiritual science answers just those questions that the human being must put to the real soul being. We realise that the human soul is positioned between body and mind at every moment. With the savage, the soul is only able to take up a droplet of the spirit in his body. Hunger and thirst, the manifestations of the etheric body, almost animal instincts, and desires still completely influence him. The soul of the sophisticated idealist, as for example of Schiller or Francis of Assisi, tends to the spirit, attains a higher consciousness, and frees himself from the material existence. Spiritual science shows that there is transformation of forms what we call matter. That often will meet us in the winter talks but nobody can expect that he can absorb all concepts of spiritual science in one talk.

If we look at the world round ourselves from this spiritual-scientific viewpoint, it appears in a continual transformation as also nature appears in a continual transformation. We see the flower arising from the seminal grain in the spring. In autumn, we see it wilting, but the being is preserved in the seminal grain to arise again. Thus, spiritual science also shows how the spirit builds up the body, and how the being of this spirit is preserved as a spiritual seed when the body disintegrates. It appears again and again.

We can transform ice into water and water into ice. Similarly, spirit also changes into body. The body disintegrates, but the spirit remains and appears in always-new forms. There we are led to the principle of transformation in the human life. The human being lives here in the physical, etheric and astral bodies. However, he still has a second life that existed before this life and will be after this life. There he lives, as well as he lives here in these three bodies, in the spiritual world. From there he brings the forces that build up his bodies, which give him that form which he has, even if the life in spirit is different. We get to know this if we understand spiritual science in the right way.

It becomes apparent that the human being leads a life by turns: a life in the body between birth and death and a life in the spiritual between death and a new birth, until he prepares himself for a new incarnation. What lives here in the body and there in spirit and changes between the life in the body and the life in spirit is the soul. However, every time when it has gone through an incarnation, the human being has worked on his body and comes back to the spirit land as a soul enriched with the fruits of the earth-life. The soul keeps on developing higher and higher. Hence, it is also the mediator between spirit and body. Thus, we are led to the border which shows us—considering mind, soul and body correctly—how the relation of the three human parts is to each other. We get to know everything that disintegrates that scatters as a transformation of that which constitutes the innermost being of the soul as we recognise everything temporal as a form of the everlasting. Spiritual science leads to a science, which really the questions of the temporal and of the everlasting answers and of the human destiny after death. The human heart has these questions generally if it wants to know something about such a science. A science that sets limits to itself cannot see the most important. Hence, our academic psychology is limited. In a certain sense, it is important to learn what it offers. Spiritual science does not disdain it, but it finds it insufficient, as long as one does not go into the being of the spirit and the soul. This is the right way to the knowledge of the spirit and the soul: the soul is connected with its bodies in the temporal life, it is involved in these bodies, and that which attracts it to these bodies is that part which is an obstacle for the pure, purified life in spirit between death and a new birth. There we learn to understand gradually where the obstacles of the soul are for the new birth. We also learn to understand that the soul must free itself completely not only from the body—by death—but from the longing for the body. By the right concepts of mind, soul, and body, we also come to the destiny of the soul during its bodily and spiritual pilgrimage.

I have today tried to show how one gets correct concepts of the soul and spirit using the ordinary human mind. I did it without taking into account what one can attain by the methods of clairvoyance and initiation. I speak about them in the next talks. We must hold on this: what faced us in the course of this winter will be results of the spiritual research. One can only discover them with the methods as I gave them in the talks on initiation et cetera. However, one can understand them by the ordinary logic and thorough thinking. Someone who says, what does the spiritual science concern me, because I am no clairvoyant? He turns away from the spiritual science not because of lack of clairvoyance, but, because he does not apply his thinking thoroughly and extensively enough to it. Just psychology has suffered a lot in our time of materialism—which some people regard as finished and is also dismissed in philosophy, but flourishes just in the way of thinking of psychology. Today the concepts of soul and spirit have suffered mostly from this materialism. Spiritual science has the mission to bring pure, purified concepts of the soul and the spirit again to humanity. Thereby it will be the best servant of the high religious traditions that distinguish between the human mind and the world enclosing spirit that the religious traditions call the Holy Spirit. We understand these scriptures as means of understanding only if we comprehend them deeply enough and consider everything in great enclosing pictures which are the expression of facts.

We spiritual scientists still know many things that humanity knows in future and only anticipated due to its most significant spirits in former times. Many strange feelings go through the human soul, if it immerses itself in the spiritual activities. Some people say to the spiritual scientist: you give us something for the mind, but nothing for the soul; we search soul and you give us spiritual achievements. They do not know that they reject just that which gives the soul what they require. They covet the will impulses of the soul. However, the soul can be only happy if it lets the spirit flow in itself and develops the bodies from the spirit.

What faces us from the outside is formed spirit, and what shapes the matter flows from the spiritual world down. What the eye sees in the figure as colour is, so to speak, compressed spirit, and the force that causes the figure in the matter comes from the everlasting. Thus, someone who does not have the clearness of spiritual-scientific concepts but feels and anticipates the surrounding world says. everything appears to me as shaped by the spiritual world. The figure appears to me as the holy that flashes in the mere matter, and if I see the figure, it seems to immerse itself in the matter and to withdraw again from the matter. The poet anticipated this of spiritual science when he put up the contrast between the body, the human soul, and the spirit that both work creatively in the body. Schiller (Friedrich Sch., 1759–1805, German poet) anticipated how the soul lets the spirit flow in the matter in reality whereby the matter disappears to the view. Considering this, he let the sensation flow out in the nice words:

Only the body appertains to those powers that braid the dark destiny. However, far from any temporal power, the playmate of blessed spirits walks aloft in the acres of light, divine among divinities: the shape.

[ 1 ] Of all substances in the organism, fat proves least of all a foreign body when taken in from the outer world. More readily than any other substance, it passes over from the quality it brings with it when taken as a food, to the mode of action of the human organism itself. The 80% of fat contained, for instance, in butter, passes unchanged through the domains of ptyalin and pepsin and is only transformed by the pancreatic juice into glycerine and fatty acids.

[ 2 ] This behaviour of fat is only possible because it carries with it as little as possible of the specific nature of a foreign organism (of its etheric forces, etc.) into the human organism. The latter can easily incorporate it into its own activity.

[ 3 ] This again is due to the fact that fat plays its part above all in the production of the inner warmth. Now the inner warmth is the element of the physical organism in which the ego organization prefers to live. Of every substance to be found in the human body, only as much is appropriate for the ego organization as gives rise to the development of warmth. By its total behaviour fat proves itself to be a substance which merely fills the body, is merely carried by the body, and is important for the active organization through those processes alone in which it engenders warmth. Derived as foodstuff, for example, from an animal source, fat will take nothing with it from the animal organism into the human, save only its inherent faculty of evolving warmth.

[ 4 ] Now this development of warmth is one of the last processes of the metabolism. The fat received as food is therefore preserved as such throughout the first and middle processes of metabolism; its absorption only takes place in the region of the inmost activities of the body, beginning with the pancreatic fluid.

[ 5 ] The occurrence of fat in human milk points to an exceedingly significant activity of the organism. The body does not consume this fat, it allows it to pass over into a product of secretion. Now, into this secreted fat the ego-organization also passes over. It is on this that the form-giving power of the mother's milk depends. The mother thereby transmits her own formative forces of the ego-organization to the child, and thus adds something more to the formative forces she has already transmitted by heredity.

[ 6 ] The healthy process occurs when the human form-giving forces consume the fat store present in the body in the development of warmth. On the other hand it is unhealthy if the fat is not used up by the ego-organization in processes of warmth, but carried over, unused, into the organism. Such fat will then give rise at one point or another in the body to an excessive power of producing warmth. The warmth thus engendered will mislead other life processes by interfering in the organism here and there without being grasped by the ego-organization. There may arise what may be called parasitic foci of warmth. These bear within themselves the tendency to inflammatory conditions. The origin of such must be sought in the fact that the body develops a tendency to accumulate more fat than the ego-organization requires for its life in inner warmth.

[ 7 ] In the healthy organism, the animal (astral) forces will produce or receive as much fat as the ego-organization is able to translate into warmth-processes and, in addition, as much as is required to keep the mechanism of muscle and bone in order. The warmth that the body needs will then be created. If the animal forces supply the ego-organization with an insufficient quantity of fat, the ego-organization will experience hunger for warmth. The necessary warmth must be withdrawn from the activities of the organs. The latter then become internally stiff and fragile. Their essential processes take place too sluggishly. We see the appearance, at one point or another, of pathological processes for an understanding of which it will be necessary to recognize if and how they are due to a general deficiency of fat.

[ 8 ] If on the other hand, as in the case already mentioned, there is an excess of fat, giving rise to parasitic foci of warmth, organs will be taken hold of in such a way as to become active beyond their normal measure. Tendencies towards excessive nourishment will then arise, so as to overload the organism. It need not imply that the person becomes an excessive eater. It may be, for instance, that the metabolic activity of the organism supplies too much substance to an organ of the head, withdrawing it from organs of the lower body and from the secretory processes. The action of the organs thus deprived will then be lowered in vitality. The secretions of the glands, for instance, may become deficient. The fluid constituents of the organism are brought into an unhealthy relationship in their mixture. For instance, the secretion of bile may become too great compared with that of pancreatic fluid. Once again it will be important to recognize how a syndrome arising locally is to be judged in that it may proceed in one way or another from an unhealthy activity of fat.

I would like today to try as it were to round off our introductory studies, so that we may be able, from tomorrow onwards, to pass on to the practical consideration of particular cases; for it is indeed so, that a faithful study of the nature of so-called illnesses of the soul will of itself afford clues for the discovery of their right treatment.

The treatment of adult patients by our methods still presents difficulties. As I explained yesterday, the treatment would require certain conditions for the patients which, so long as things are in the world as they are today, cannot be realised within the work of our Society. For children, on the other hand, a very great deal can be achieved—by education.

It will already be clear to you, dear friends, that in illnesses of the soul we have to do with karmic connections which come to manifestation in the illness. This is, of course, true of other illnesses too, but it is true in a much deeper sense, and more specifically, of illnesses of the soul. We are therefore perfectly justified in asking the question—we do not formulate it in so many words, but it is bound to arise in the unconscious, and we must have a feeling for what lies behind it—the question, namely: how far can we expect to bring about an improvement? Any degree of improvement that we are able to bring about is so much gain for the patient. We must never take refuge in the thought that, owing to the patient's karma, things are bound to take their course in such and such a way. We can say this about the external events; that a person encounters on the path of destiny; but it is never possible to speak so in regard to the free flow within him of his thoughts and feelings and deeds. For here karma can take different roads; karma can even be turned aside, so that the fulfilment comes in some quite other way. Not that it ever fails to come, but karma can be fulfilled in many ways. I have frequently said, when people have raised the question of pre-natal education—meaning education in the embryonic time—that so long as the child does not yet breathe, it is the education and whole manner of life of the mother that is of importance. For the rest, we should not intervene in the work of God. In the embryonic period, it is entirely a matter of how things are with the mother.

We can now usefully carry further the study we began yesterday when we were considering the epileptic disorder—the study, that is, in regard to physical body, ether body, astral body and ego organisation. What conclusion did we come to as regards all those forms of illness in children, that are of an epileptic nature? We found that in these illnesses we have to do with a congestion of astral body and ego organisation in some organ. The surface of the organ does not allow the astral body and ego organisation to make their way out, and they become congested. They are, as it were, jammed in the organ. An astral and ego atmosphere of high pressure arises there. This causes fits. For what is really taking place, when a fit occurs?

Suppose you have an organ with its ether body within it. For each single organ there is a definite relationship that should obtain between physical body and ether body on the one hand and astral body and ego on the other hand. Now I assume of course that all of you are familiar with the fact that in inorganic external Nature, substances combine with one another in certain definite relationships. The descriptions of this that you find in the chemistry books are not correct; nevertheless there are these well-defined relationships. I purposely do not say relationships of weight, nor do I say atomic relationships for there we would come into the realm of theory; nevertheless it is a fact that hydrogen and oxygen, for example, combine in a certain definite relationship. If we have sulphuric acid (H₂S0₄), we have in it hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen in a particular relation to one another. If this relation were to change, then the combination might under certain circumstances give rise to an altogether different substance. We can, for example, if we have a certain relation of hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen that is different from the relation in sulphuric acid, obtain sulphurous acid (H₂S0₃)—obtain, that is to say, a different substance, although composed of the same three original substances.

In a similar way, physical body and ether body stand in a certain definite relation to astral body and ego in the so-called normal human being. (I say “so-called”, because the expression “normal human being” is a purely conventional one, founded on the belief that there is a fixed boundary dividing human beings into normal and abnormal.) This relationship is, within limits, a variable one. But if it exceeds a certain limit of variability—and this again can be individual for the particular human being—we have abnormality, a state of illness; in some organ astral body and ego organisation will be present, but in such a way that they cannot fill it in a right relationship. This will mean, that they are unable to come forth from it, they cannot get out. You will remember, we recognised yesterday the necessity for astral body and ego organisation to come forth again out of an organ, out of the physical body. When the astral body and ego are jammed and squeezed in this way in some organ, then there is too much astral body, too much ego in that organ; there is not the proper amount, there is a surplus—with the result that the organ cannot help feeling the astrality. If the organ has in it the right and proper amount, it does not perceive or feel the astrality, it does not sense the presence of astrality within it. But if there is in an organ an activity of astral body and ego organisation that does not belong there, then the organ is bound to feel it. If something is there in the organ that does not pass over into consciousness, if there is congestion, so that a great amount of astrality and ego organisation is present which does not go over into consciousness, then a fit takes place. The very description I have given you contains an indication of the accompanying phenomenon—namely, disturbance of consciousness. Disturbance of consciousness is bound to occur whenever this congestion happens in an organ that is in any way connected with consciousness.

When such congestion of astral body and ego organisation takes place in an organ that has not direct positive connection with consciousness—for there are organs that are not directly but inversely connected with consciousness, organs that in fact hinder or arrest consciousness—then we have, not loss of consciousness, but pain. Pain is heightened—not lessened—consciousness. A fit as such is not painful, as you know; that is simply a fact. Pain occurs when the congestion takes place, not in an organ that promotes consciousness, but in an organ that retards or arrests consciousness. Here the congestion will lead to enhanced consciousness—to pain. That is the real nature of pain.

We have now arrived at some understanding of all those forms of disorder which, occurring in childhood, lead to epileptic and related illnesses; we shall afterwards have to speak more specifically of these illnesses, but that we can do better when we have individual cases before us.

But now you will easily see that we may also have a quite different state of affairs. Instead of an organ whose surface holds back within the organ the ego organisation and the astral body, we could have an organ whose surface lets too much through, an organ that does not, as it were, keep back sufficient for its own use. Here the astrality, with which is associated also the ego organisation, is not dammed up, but tends, on the contrary, to overflow the organ. The surface becomes, as it were, porous for the astrality and the ego organisation; they “leak” out of the organ. With imaginative consciousness we do actually see rays streaming forth from the organ. In an organ that “leaks” in this way you will always find also the physical correlate of secretion; even where the secretion is not strikingly present, you will find that it can occur and can be detected. We shall have more to say about this later. When a human being is affected with this condition in childhood, the condition can be healed only if we are able to hold fast the astral body and ego organisation—bring them back, as it were, into the organ.

To what forms of illness, to what outwardly perceptible complexes of symptoms does such an inner condition lead? Here we come to a chapter in our study, where the phenomena that show themselves differ according as we are dealing with children or adults. For we come to illnesses that are bound to assume quite special forms for the period in human development between birth and puberty. We come, in effect, to the various kinds of hysteria. Now it is just in the realm where we are concerned with the forms of hysterical disorder, that the deplorable lack of clarity in modern science proclaims itself. Words are coined to name the various forms without any regard for reality. This shows itself at once in the first picture people begin to make of the matter; for in conformity with the modern way of looking at such things they are, of course, bound to bring this hysterical condition into connection somehow or other with the sexual life, and more so in the case of the woman than of the man; and then the forms of illness are named accordingly. The words by which the various forms are designated are of no importance. What is important for us is to make sure whether all the cases that are today reckoned under these names really deserve to be called hysteria, in the way the word is understood, or whether we do not rather need to have recourse to a much wider classification.

Now, as a matter of fact, the child who has not yet attained puberty cannot possibly have the form of disorder from which he is frequently said to suffer. He cannot have hysteria—if it is assumed that hysteria is associated with sex. The child can, however, certainly have in his earliest childhood what I have described as a protrusion of astral body and ego organisation beyond an organ. That he can have, but only that. We must turn a deaf ear to the various descriptions that have been given for the better comprehension of hysterical disorder. All these descriptions are made with reference to one ruling idea; and when an idea is set up in this way and all descriptions are made with reference to it, then these descriptions cannot but be false. Countless descriptions in psychiatry today are false just on this account. You cannot do things that way.

Let us see what it is we really have before us in a young child who is said to be suffering from hysteria. He has difficulty in making contact with the external world. I explained yesterday what this means. He has difficulty in taking hold rightly of the equilibrium that belongs to the fluid element, of the equilibrium that is associated with air, of the differentiations in warmth, in light, in chemical action, and in the universal cosmic life. But instead of grasping all these too weakly, as is the case with the epileptic, the child takes hold too strongly, he puts his astral body and Ego into his whole environment—into weight, into warmth; he seizes hold of all the elements more intensely than is really possible for a so-called normal person. And what is the result?

You have only to remind yourself how it is with you when you have grazed your skin at some spot. Suppose you then grasp hold of some object with the sore surface, where the skin has been rubbed away. You know how it hurts! The reason for your being so sensitive is that at that spot (where the surface is raw) you come up against the external world too vigorously with your inner astral body. Only in moderation are we able to contact the external world with our astral body (and ego organisation). The child who from the first brings his astral body right out—such a child will touch and take hold of things delicately, just as though he had been wounded. Nor shall we be surprised to find in him this hyper-sensitiveness, this hyper-sensitive response to the world around him. A human being in this condition is bound to feel his environment much more keenly, much more intensely; and he will moreover have within him a much more powerful reflection of his environment.

And now ideas will begin also to arise in the child which are painful in themselves. It comes about in the following way. The moment he begins to develop will in any direction, the child has to reach out into something in regard to which he is hyper-sensitive. And then as soon as the will begins to develop, a strange condition arises in the conscious part of him. He becomes super-conscious of the unfolding of the will; in other words, the unfolding of the will causes him pain. Pain is present in nascent state as soon as the will begins to appear, and the child tries to hold back the pain. This happens with great intensity. He makes restless, struggling movements, because he is trying to hold back the pain. Here, you see, I have given you descriptions of inner conditions which find their outlet in life in a clearly recognisable manner. A child wants to do something but feels a pain and cannot do it; instead of the soul-life flowing out into action, he has a terribly powerful inward experience before which he shudders—he shudders at himself. But now it may equally well be a question, not of an outward action, but of a concealed or disguised action in the sphere of thought—for the will lives also in the sphere of thought. When it is a question of an action in the life of thought, when it is ideas that should unfold, it may be that in certain forms of illness these ideas, at the moment they should develop, evoke fear, evoke anxiety and fear and are unable to arise in the mind. Every such idea which, at the moment when it should come to consciousness, evokes fear—every such idea simultaneously causes the life of feeling to develop below it; feelings surge up, and depression invariably sets in. Feelings which are not comprehended, not taken hold of by ideas, give rise to depression; only those feelings are not of a depressing nature, which, as soon as they arise, are immediately apprehended by the life of thought and ideation.

The condition that has been described as arising out of the nature of the case can be seen in the patient; it is there before us as a complex of symptoms. If we have learned to know an abnormality for what it really is, then we shall find that this true and essential nature of the abnormality shows itself to us quite plainly in the patient. And that is how it should be, when we take with us into the practical spheres of life perceptions that have been arrived at in Spiritual Science. When speaking to those who will have to intervene in illnesses of this kind with practical help, descriptions must leave the realm of the abstract entirely and enter right into the realm of living reality, so that the person who listens to the description can see it taking place in the patient before him. And in such a case as we are considering, you do actually see what is happening; in some organ, or nexus of organs, you perceive an outflowing of the astrality or ego organisation.

A phenomenon in a child, which brings the complex of symptoms to expression with somewhat rude plainness, is nocturnal enuresis. It happens quite naturally; but only in the light of what has been explained will you see the phenomenon of bed-wetting in a child in its right perspective. For it has its origin in the condition we have been describing. Whenever you have a case of bed-wetting, you can assume that the astral body is running out, is overflowing. As a matter of fact, secretions and excretions of every kind are always connected with the activity of the astral body and ego organisation. These must therefore be in order, if we want the secretions and excretions to be in order.

Now it is through the physical body that the ego organisation and astral body are connected with the four elements (as they are called), whilst in the etheric body, the ego organisation and astral body are connected more with the higher elements, with a part of the warmth, with the light, with the chemical ether and with the universal life-ether. If now we may borrow from the physical realm a word which can be most expressive when we extend its application to the spiritual (as was continually done in earlier times, when men had instinctive clairvoyance and made no such sharp distinction as we do between physical and spiritual), let us take the word “soreness” and speak of a child having soreness of soul. The child is sore in his soul, and this soreness of soul becomes a dominant idea in him, overriding everything else. If it cannot be made better by means of curative education, then, when the child attains puberty, either the feminine or the masculine form of this soreness will appear. The feminine form will have the character of hysteria, as it was called when there was still a true perception of it. The masculine form will have a different character. We shall be able to speak about that also; we shall find that it assumes quite other forms.

Whenever therefore you have a case where the conditions are the opposite of what are found in epileptic or epileptoid trouble, you will always have to give your attention to the excretions. And you will find you need to observe particularly how the child sweats. Whenever you want to bring something home to the child, to call up ideas in him, then watch carefully to see whether the inner soreness of soul, that is experienced at the origination of an idea, does not express itself in conditions of sweating. There is a certain difficulty here. In the ordinary way, one might imagine that when something like sweating had been stimulated by an inner condition of soul, the sweating would be noticeable immediately afterwards. It may be so in some circumstances but it is not necessarily so. For, the peculiar thing is that the inner anxiety or shrinking, the feeling of tenderness and soreness, does not work as does an outer feeling of soreness; but what arises as the result of it is first of all “digested” in the human being, and will sometimes take then the strangest paths in the interior of the human being, making its appearance not at all quickly but, curiously enough, only after some time, in the course of the next three to three and a half days.

Now, everything that is caused by expansion of astral body and ego organisation, is connected with what meets us in the normal expansion of astral body and ego organisation at death. When it is a question of congestion, the opposite condition from dying sets in. In epileptic phenomena there is the attempt to damn up life within the organism, to imitate, under abnormal circumstances, the process of creeping into the physical organism when the descent to earth takes place. But in the condition of which we are speaking now, we have to do with an imitation of what happens at death. After death the astral body and ego expand at the same time as life flows away; and it is with an imitation of this condition that we are here concerned. When once we are able to feel this, we come to acquire, little by little, something that is important in the observation of such cases. We acquire, namely, an organ of smell for what is present in the child; we smell this outflow. For it can really be smelled, and it belongs to the esoteric side of our work to acquire this perception and to experience how the aura of these children smells differently from the aura of normal children. There is actually something faintly corpse-like in the auric sweatings of these children. Such a fact can help to bring it home to you that we do indeed have here a kind of imitation of death; the accompanying phenomena of “dying” appear, in the sweatings that occur in consequence of this or that symptom. Such phenomena can make their appearance in the course of the next three days, approximating to the period during which the backward review after death takes place, when the astral body and ego organisation are expanding.

Working with this knowledge, you will have to accustom yourselves to imprint in your memory something you have noticed in the connections of mind or will of such a child, and then go on observing him for the next three or four days. This will enable you to discover whether you have before you the form of abnormal soul-life of which I have been speaking. And now we are at last rightly equipped for tackling the question: How am I to treat such a child?

The soul of the child lies open to my view in his every action. His soul flows into everything I see him doing around me. In such a case, where the soul of the child comes streaming towards you, you will realise that the education must more than ever depend upon what the teacher, on his part, is able to bring to the child in his own attitude of soul—in his whole mood, when he is dealing with something in his own surroundings, when he is himself doing something. Suppose you are a very nervy teacher, a person who is continually doing things in such a way as to give a shock to other people. This quality of character or temperament is much more widespread than one imagines; it is exceedingly frequent among teachers. If I may use a frivolous expression—are not most teachers today inclined to be “jumpy”? This state of nerves, where people are so easily put out or upset, simply cannot be avoided, so long as the training of teachers continues to be as it is today, where the student is overloaded with an enormous amount of undigested knowledge. Those who take teachers' training courses (we are concerned here with the training of teachers, so I say nothing about other courses of training!) ought never on any account to have to go in for an examination. The examination in front of them puts them into the frame of mind which leads to this nervy condition.

You will see at once in what a difficult position we are placed when we have to develop our work on the background of present-day conditions! We are at this moment faced with the question of organising the Lauenstein Home for backward children. In view of the government regulations, those who are to take charge would be well advised to take the examination. One of them, at any rate, will have to do so. And yet there is no sense in it; because it is, of course, only another opportunity of becoming nervy. This is a situation which we must face quite dispassionately—unless we want to go through the world blindfold! There is nothing to be done but to take the examination, and after it gradually get rid of the nervous tendencies. That is, however, what most people do not succeed in doing.

Anything in the environment that may cause even a slight shock to the child—if it originates in the unconscious, in the temperament, of the teacher—must be avoided. And do you know why? Because the teacher must also be capable of inducing shock, consciously and deliberately; shocks are often the very best remedy for these conditions! They take effect, however, only if they do not proceed from unconscious habit, but are given consciously and deliberately, the teacher watching intently all the time to observe the effect on the child.

Suppose you have observed this complex of symptoms in a child. You must take the child and get him to write, or read, or paint. Well, and what then? Having first tried to bring him to do as much as he with his particular constitution is capable of doing, then, at a certain point, try to bring the work into a quicker tempo. This will mean that the child is then obliged to let, not the feeling of soreness, but the anxiety connected with the soreness, retire, because you are there in front of him and he cannot help getting into a fresh state of anxiety on that account. The fact that the child is at this moment compelled to come into a new state of anxiety, compelled to enter into an experience that has been artificially promoted and is different from the previous one, brings it about that he strengthens within him, consolidates within him, the ego and astral that are trying to flow out. If you repeat such things systematically with a child, over and over again, a consolidation of ego and astral body will take place. But you must not grow tired! You must do the thing over and over again, preparing your whole teaching in such a way that, as it proceeds, at certain moments it suddenly takes a new turn.

For this, it is, of course, essential that you have the arranging of the teaching in your own hands. If, let us say, every three-quarters of an hour you are obliged to take a different subject, then all your plans will be frustrated. A form of teaching for abnormal children can be built up on the basis of what we have introduced in the Waldorf School—period lessons where, during the main teaching hours, one subject is continued for weeks at a time. For we have, as you know, no set curriculum for the early morning hours between 8 and l0 a.m.; the teacher can take what he chooses, what he sees to be right, in accordance with the principles on which he works. On this basis you can also work out what you must do for abnormal children. You will be able, for instance, to introduce such a method as I was describing, where you are continually changing the teaching, altering the tempo. By such means you will find you can work very strongly indeed upon glandular secretion, and therewith on the consolidation of the astral body in the child. But you will have to practise a certain resignation, for where this kind of treatment has been given and healing has begun, people will not notice that the children have begun to grow healthy. They will notice only that in a particular case there has been in their view no healing, since “becoming normal” is regarded by them as the right and natural thing to expect. What the world calls “becoming normal” is however not at all a thing to be so taken for granted.

So you see, whereas in cases of epileptic or epileptoid trouble it was a question (as I explained yesterday) of adopting rather methods that call for bodily activity, or else methods that work purely in the moral sphere, it is mainly didactic methods that will be needed for combating this other trouble of which I have been speaking today. To give these “shocks”—that is one thing you must do. And the other is as follows.

Observe carefully how the condition alternates between depression on the one hand, and on the other hand a kind of excitement or mania, outbursts of mirth and cheerfulness. What is the cause, when they occur in these forms of illness, of such alternation between states of depression and mania? Owing to the inward soreness, there is a perpetual longing not to let the will come to expression. If the will fails to unfold in the life of ideas, then conditions of depression arise. But when this has been happening for a long time and the child can no longer restrain himself but must give vent, there arises—because the inner soreness is repressed and the child can now flow right out, together with the astral outflow—an enhanced feeling of well-being. So we have in this way alternating conditions of sadness and hilarity, which, when they occur in a child who has also the other symptoms of sweating and bed-wetting, should be carefully watched. For this is where we must intervene as teachers.

Suppose we are faced with depression in the child. The first step will have been taken, the moment the child feels that we are strongly united with him inwardly, that we understand him. But because we are dealing here with a kind of hypertrophy of the life of thought and will, what the child needs is more than that we simply share his sorrow. If we are merely dejected and sorrowful with the child—that is no good to him! We can help him only if we are ourselves competent to cope with the depression we are experiencing with him, and able therefore to give him effective consolation, so that he feels comfort and relief.

A teacher who can understand these things will learn to find for himself the methods he can use. He will know, for example, that a constant idea in such children is that they think they ought to do something, and yet they cannot do it. It is a complicated idea, but one must be able to study it and understand it. They ought to do something and cannot do it; but they have to do it notwithstanding, and then it turns out differently from how they would have liked. Examine the soul-life of such children and try to get hold of the idea in their soul. One could express it in the following words: “I want to do it. I cannot do it. And yet I must do it ... And then it turns out differently from what it ought to be.”

In this complex of ideas the whole of the child's illness is really contained. The child detects in himself the peculiar constitution which consists in the out-flowing of astral body and ego organisation. It manifests as a kind of working outwards-into-the-world of the astral body—“I will do it.” But the child knows that then he comes immediately up against the external world and its reagents. Here is the soreness, here it hurts. The child is forced to perceive: “I cannot do it!” Then he knows that it has to be done, nevertheless. He feels: “I have to reach out with my astral body into the agents of the world. But I have no control over what I take in hand, I am so unskilful with my out-flowing astral body. The thing turns out different, because I am not in full control; the astral body flows out too strongly.”

It is precisely in such children that we can observe, in the most wonderful way, what the sub-consciousness, which reaches up into the life of feeling, is really doing. The sub-conscious is so terribly clever! It stamps into the clearest concepts what is going on in the inner constitution of the child, and in his relationship with others as well as with his environment. All this is, so to speak, disentangled in the child's sub-consciousness. But it does not rise up into consciousness. We have to go in search of it. We have to put forth all our efforts to discover these inner, unconscious complexes of ideas in the child. And now suppose the moment comes when such a complex shows itself to you. You notice it. As a matter of fact, it is there almost every time the child is about to begin something in the way of outer action or even also in the way of thought; it is nearly always there. If you intervene at this moment by gently helping in what the child has to do—doing it with him, feeling, as it were, every movement of his hand in your hand, then the child will have the feeling that the second stage is being corrected for him by what you are doing. Naturally the child is not helped at all if you simply do for him the things he has to do. You must intervene only fictitiously. Say, you get the child to paint. You do not paint yourself; but you sit down by him and move your paint brush, accompanying with your brush each movement he makes with his. The child will have the idea that you are gently guiding him, while thus, with love in your heart, you do with him what he has to do; the fact that you are there beside him in this way—he will feel it like a gentle caress in his soul. Even down to intimate details of this nature, we shall be able to find, if we practise a really careful observation, the right thing to do.

In everything Spiritual Science can give, you will always find that there is at last this summons to the individual human being; he must do his part. People are for ever wanting prescriptions: Do this in this way, do that in that way! But the fact is, anyone who sets out to educate abnormal children will never have finished learning. Each single child will be for him a new problem, a new riddle. And the only way he can succeed in finding what he must do in the individual case, is to let himself be guided by the being in the child. It is not easy, but it is the only real way to work. And this is the reason why it is of such paramount importance that, as teachers, we should take in hand our own self-education.

The best kind of self-education will be found to consist in following the symptoms of illness with interest, so that ever and anon we have the feeling: there is something quite wonderful about that symptom! Not that we should go about the world, proclaiming with a flourish of trumpets that it is the insane who are the really divine human beings. One must not do that—not in our time! We should however be fully awake to the fact that when an abnormal symptom makes its appearance, something is there which, seen spiritually, stands nearer to the Spiritual than the things that are done by man in his healthy organism. Only, this standing-nearer-to-the-Spiritual cannot become active in the healthy organism in the corresponding way. If we have once grasped this, then many intimate truths will reveal themselves to us.

It is, as you see, indeed the case that in every domain diagnosis and pathology lead—of themselves—to a real therapy, provided the diagnosis can succeed in penetrating to the essence of the trouble.

In the lecture today we shall make a rather far-reaching sweep into cosmic space. This will reveal to us, in broad outline, the inner course of world evolution, and at the same time its intimate connection with human evolution on the Earth. Everything in the universe is interconnected. To be able to follow these complicated connections naturally takes a long, long time, and it is only very gradually that man can find his way, so to speak, into the intricate workings of the cosmos.

In previous lectures you have heard how certain beings who have their abode on other cosmic bodies exercise an influence upon our own life, how they are related to what we call lymph, to the digestive fluids, also to our sense-perceptions. This will have given you a picture of the wide-spread operations of the spirit throughout cosmic space. We shall study a different aspect of these things today, reminding ourselves, to begin with, that our Earth, like man himself, has passed through different embodiments and will pass through others in times to come.

We look back to three previous embodiments of our Earth: to the immediately preceding embodiment which we call the Old Moon (not to be confused with our present moon); then to that of the “Sun”; and still further back to that of “Saturn.” And looking forward we see prophetically that our Earth will be transformed into a “Jupiter,” a “Venus” and a “Vulcan.”

These are the successive embodiments of our planet Earth. If you give a little thought to these stages of our Earth's evolution, you will realize that what in occult science we call a “Sun” is—like our present sun—a heavenly body around which a number of planets revolve. When, apart from this, we also speak of a planetary Sun-existence, saying that our Earth itself in an earlier state of evolution, was “Sun,” we imply, in a certain respect, that the sun which is today the centre of our planetary system, was not always a sun. It has advanced, so to speak, to the rank and dignity of a sun in the Cosmos. It was once united with the substances and forces contained in our Earth and then, taking away, as it were, what was the best and most capable of the highest development, it separated from the Earth, leaving us, together with certain forces which were destined for a slower evolution, behind. The Sun took with it certain higher beings and together with these higher beings established itself at the centre of our system. Therefore two stages earlier, what is contained in the sun today had a planetary existence only and it has risen from this to the form of existence belonging to the fixed stars. This will show you what mighty changes in evolution take place in the universe. At the outset, a sun is not a sun. A fixed star has not, from the very beginning, been a fixed star, but has had to pass through the lower school of planetary existence.

Now you may quite naturally ask me: What, then, happens when a fixed star evolves to a further stage? As truly as the Sun-existence—a fixed star existence—has risen from a planetary existence, so truly does its evolution proceed to further stages of life in the cosmos. We shall of course understand this evolution still better if we study the further evolution of our Earth.

It is true that for a certain period of its cosmic evolution our earth has been separated from the sun. The sun and its beings advance along a more rapid evolutionary path. Our earth and the beings belonging to it take a different course. But these beings, and the earth as a whole, will one day have progressed to the stage where union is again possible with the sun—after a separate existence has enabled them to complete and perfect their present phase of development. For our earth will again unite with the sun. During the stage of Earth-existence itself, the earth will reunite with the sun, just as during the same phase of evolution it separated from the sun. But during the Jupiter-stage there must again be a separation. The earth-beings must again be separated from the sun during the Jupiter-condition. Again there will be a reunion, and during the Venus-condition our earth will be united permanently with the sun, will have been taken up for all time into the sun. During the Vulcan-condition our earth will itself have become a sun within the sun and have contributed something to the sun-evolution, will have added something which, in spite of their higher rank, those beings who have always remained in the sun, could never themselves have achieved. Earth-existence was necessary in order that men might evolve as they have evolved, with a consciousness that alternates between waking and sleeping. This is connected with the separation from the sun. Beings who live always in the sun do not have day and night. The sense-consciousness which we call the clear consciousness of day and which in times to come will evolve into higher conditions, carries with it into the sun-evolution the fruits of experiences connected with the things of outer physical space. In this way the earth-beings give something to the sun, enrich the sun. And out of what is thus acquired on the earth, augmented by what is acquired on the sun, the Vulcan-existence comes into being. This Vulcan-existence is actually a higher condition than that of our present sun-existence. The earth evolves, the sun evolves, until they can unite to constitute the Vulcan-existence.

You may ask me: When a planet has evolved in this way to a sun-existence, what does this sun become in the course of further cosmic evolution? When our earth reaches the Venus-condition it will itself have become sun, and all the beings on Venus are sun-beings—actually at a higher stage than the beings of the present sun. What, then, is the further stage of such planetary evolution?

The following will seem grotesque, even preposterous, to those whose concepts are rooted in modern astronomy. Nevertheless it is a truth of cosmic evolution that when a planet like our earth has risen to sun-existence, when it has gradually achieved union with the sun and even sun-existence is transcended, there arises, as a still higher stage of evolution, something that in a certain sense you can perceive in the heavens: there arises what we today call a “Zodiac”—it is the stage higher than that of a fixed star. Thus when beings are no longer restricted to the form of existence belonging to a fixed star but have expanded their evolution so powerfully that it extends beyond fixed stars and the fixed stars lie like bodies embedded in it—then a higher stage is reached, the stage of Zodiac-existence. The forces which work from a Zodiac upon a planetary system themselves evolved, in former ages, in a planetary system and have advanced to the stage of a Zodiac.

And now cast your minds back to the old Saturn evolution, the first embodiment of our Earth. This Saturn once glimmered, as it were, in cosmic space, as the first herald of the dawn of our planetary existence. You know, too, that on this old Saturn the first germinal inception of our physical body was brought into being. Even at its greatest density this Saturn was not nearly as physically dense as our earth. It was a condition of utmost rarefication. That which today permeates all beings as warmth—known in occultism as “fire”—was the matter of Saturn. We may picture to ourselves that around this Saturn, this first, dawn-condition of our planetary system, there were the constellations of the Zodiac—but not yet as they are today. The single stars composing the Zodiacal constellations around that ancient Saturn were scarcely to be distinguished from each other. They glittered only very faintly, like beams of light streaming out from Saturn. The best way to picture this is to think of ancient Saturn encircled by beams of light, just as our earth is encircled by a Zodiac. And in the course of Earth-evolution itself these light-masses developed into the present star clusters comprised in the Zodiac. So that the Zodiac—to use an abstract expression—has differentiated out of that original ocean of flame. And from what did this ocean of flame itself arise?

It arose from the planetary system which preceded our own. Saturn itself was preceded by planetary evolutions in an age which, speaking in the sense of occult astronomy, can by no means be described as “time” as we understand time, for its character was rather different. But for the human mind today the concept is so fabulous that we have no word with which to express it. Speaking in analogy, however, we can say that the forces which preceded our planetary system in an earlier cycle of planetary existence went forth in the light-streams, and out of a small portion of matter gradually gathering together at the centre, this first, dawn-condition of the Earth arose; this was ancient Saturn and the forces contained in the Zodiac radiated down upon it from the cosmic All.

Something rather remarkable comes to light when we compare planetary existence with zodiacal existence. The occultist makes use of two words to indicate the difference between them. He says: Everything that is contained in the Zodiac is under the sign of “Duration”; everything that is comprised within planetary existence is under the sign of “Time.” You can get an idea of what this means if you remember that not even the farthest reaches of the mind can conceive of changes having taken place in the Zodiac. Each single planet may have undergone considerable change through long and greatly differing periods of evolution; the forces working in the Zodiac remain, relatively speaking, fixed and permanent. These concepts can, in any case, be only relative. The only difference in these changes of which we can conceive is in respect of the speed. Changes in the Zodiac take place slowly; changes in the planetary world and even in the existence of a fixed star take place rapidly—in comparison, that is to say, with what happens in the Zodiac.—The difference is always relative, only relative. As far as human thinking is concerned, we can say that planetary existence belongs to the sphere of the Finite, whereas Zodiacal existence belongs to the sphere of Infinitude. This, as already said, must be taken in the relative sense, but for the present it is sufficiently accurate.

And now I would ask you to pay special attention to the following: What has been achieved in a planetary existence and has become sun, ascends to “heavenly” existence, becomes zodiacal existence. And having reached zodiacal existence, what does it do? It offers itself in sacrifice! Please take account of this particular word. The first dawn-condition of the Earth, ancient Saturn, arose in a mysterious way as the result of sacrifice on the part of the Zodiac. The forces which caused the first, rarefied Saturn-masses to gather together were those which streamed down from the Zodiac, producing on Saturn the first germinal inception of physical man. This continued without cessation. You must not picture it as happening only once. Fundamentally speaking, what is happening continuously is that within what we call a planetary system the forces which evolved to a higher stage after having themselves passed through a planetary system, are sacrificed. We can say in effect: what is at first contained in a planetary system evolves to a “sun” existence, then to zodiacal existence and then has the power to be itself creative, to offer itself in sacrifice within a planetary existence. The forces from the Zodiac “rain” down continuously into the planetary existence and continuously ascend again; for that which at one time became our Zodiac must gradually ascend again. The distribution of forces in our earth existence may be conceived as follows:—on the one side forces are descending from the Zodiac and, on the other, forces are ascending to the Zodiac. Such is the mysterious interplay between the Zodiac and our earth. Forces descend and forces ascend. This is the mysterious “heavenly ladder” upon which forces are descending and ascending. These forces are indicated in various ways in the different scriptures; you find them indicated, too, in Goethe's Faust:

“What heavenly forces up and down are ranging,
The golden vessels interchanging.”

As far as our human understanding goes, these forces began to descend during the Saturn-existence of our Earth and when the Earth-existence proper had reached its middle point, the stage had arrived when they gradually began again to ascend. We have now passed beyond the middle point of our evolution, which fell in the middle of the Atlantean epoch; and what human beings have lived through since then is a phase of existence beyond the middle point. In a certain sense, therefore, we may say that at the present time, more forces are ascending to the Zodiac than are descending from it.

When, therefore, you think of the whole Zodiac, you must picture that some of its forces are descending and some are ascending. We think of the forces which are now involved in the ascending line of evolution, collectively, as Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra—because they actually belong to these constellations. These seven constellations comprise the ascending forces. The descending forces are comprised, approximately speaking, in the five constellations of Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. Thus forces rain down from the Zodiac and ascend again: seven constellations of ascending, five of descending forces. The ascending forces also correspond, in man, to the higher members of his being, to his higher, nobler attributes. The forces which are in the descending phase of evolution have first to pass through man and within him to attain to the stage at which they too can become ascending forces.

In this way you will realize that there is interaction between everything in cosmic space, that everything in cosmic space is interconnected, inter-related. But it must never be forgotten that these operations and activities are going on all the time, that they are ever-present. At any given moment in our evolution we can therefore speak of forces which are going forth from man and forces which are coming in; forces are descending and forces are ascending. For all and each of these forces there comes, at some point, the moment when from being descending forces they are transformed into ascending forces. All forces which eventually become ascending forces are at first descending forces. They descend, so to say, as far as man. In man they acquire the power to ascend.

At the middle point of its evolution, when our Earth had passed through the three planetary stages of Saturn, Sun, Moon, had reached the fourth planetary condition, having in front of it the stages of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan (as Earth, therefore, it is midway in the span of its existence)—it had passed through three “life-conditions” (also called “rounds”). It has passed through three of these life-conditions and is now in the fourth; it has passed through three “form-conditions”—the arupic, the rupic, and the astral, leading down to physical existence. Therefore in respect of the “form-conditions,” our Earth is in the middle phase of its evolution. As physical Earth, in the fourth form-condition of the fourth life-condition of the fourth planetary existence it has had upon it three great races: the first, the Polarian race; the second, the Hyperborean race; the third, the Lemurian race. The Atlantean race is the fourth. In the Atlantean race, humanity was in the middle of those phases of evolution of which we are speaking. Since the middle of the Atlantean epoch humanity has passed beyond this middle point. And since the middle of the Atlantean epoch there have begun, for men in general, those conditions in which the ascending forces preponderate. If we were speaking of the proportion of forces descending from and ascending to the Zodiac before the middle of the Atlantean epoch, we should have to say: they were in equal proportion. We should have to speak differently of the conditions then prevailing, enumerating as the ascending forces: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo—counting Libra with the other descending forces.

But something else is connected with all this. You must realize that in speaking of these cosmic processes, we are not speaking of physical or etheric bodies but of beings in-dwelling the several heavenly bodies. When we speak of man in terms of Spiritual Science we say that the whole man—and we think of man only in this sense—is a seven-fold being, consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, spirit-self, life-spirit, spirit-man. His development is not yet complete but will be when his sevenfold being has fully developed. But in the great cosmic All there are beings other than man, beings of a different nature. There are, for example, beings in the cosmos of whom we cannot say that, like man, they have the physical body as one of their members. There are beings of whom we must speak differently. The members of which man is composed can be enumerated as follows:

7. Spirit-Man
8. Life-Spirit
9. Spirit-Self
10. Ego
11. Astral Body
12. Etheric Body
13. Physical Body

Now there are beings whose lowest member is the etheric body; they too are sevenfold, having an eighth member, higher than spirit-man. We begin to enumerate thus: etheric body, astral body, and so forth, finishing with a member above our spirit-man (Atma). There are other beings whose lowest member is the astral body; above spirit-man they have an eighth and yet a ninth member. Again there are beings whose lowest member is the ‘I,’ the ego, and who therefore have not a physical nor an etheric nor an astral body in our sense but whose Ego streams outwards without the three sheaths. They are therefore beings who send forth ‘Egos’ in all directions. These Beings have an eighth, a ninth, and a tenth member; they are described in the Apocalypse as beings who are “full of eyes”. Then there are beings in whom spirit-self (Manas) is the lowest member. They have yet an eleventh member. And finally there are beings whose lowest member is the life-spirit and who have yet a twelfth member. You must therefore think of beings who, just as man's lowest member is a physical body, have life-spirit (Budhi) as their lowest member and above, a highest member best designated by the number 12. These are most sublime beings, far transcending everything that man is able to conceive. How is it possible to form any kind of idea of these most wonderful, most sublime beings?

When we try to characterize man, in one aspect, it is obvious that with respect to the universe, he is a being who receives. The things and beings of the world are outspread around you; you perceive them, you form concepts of them. Just imagine that the world around you were empty, or dark. You could have no perceptions, nor would there be anything of which you could form concepts. You have to rely upon receiving from outside the content of your inner world. It is characteristic of man that he is a being who receives; he receives the content of his soul-life, his inner life, from outside; things must exist in the world if his soul is to have content. The nature of man's etheric body is such that it could experience nothing in itself were it not beholden to the whole surrounding universe for all experiences, for everything that enters into it. These beings of whom I have just told you, who have life-spirit as their lowest member, are in an entirely different position. In respect of their life, these beings are not dependent upon receiving anything from outside; they are “givers,” they are themselves creative. You know from what I have often told you, that the ‘I,’ the ego, works in the etheric body and that ‘Budhi’ is nothing else than a transformed etheric body. In respect of substance, therefore, the life-spirit too is an ether body. The twelfth member of these sublime beings is also an ‘ether body’ but one which pours forth life, which works in the world in such a way that it does not receive life but gives it forth, offers life in perpetual sacrifice.

And now let us ask: Can we conceive of a being who is in any way connected with us and who radiates life into our universe? Is it possible to conceive of life that is perpetually streaming into the world, imbuing the world with life?

Let us think for a moment of what was said at the beginning of the lecture, namely that there are ascending and descending forces—forces that are ascending to the Zodiac and forces that are descending from the Zodiac. How has man reached a position which makes it possible for something to stream from within him? What has happened to man that enables something to stream forth from him? He has reached this position because his ego, after long, long preparation, has steadily unfolded and developed. This I, this ego, has been in course of preparation for long, long ages. For truth to tell, the object of all existence in the Saturn-condition, the Sun-condition and the Moon-condition when the sheaths into which the I was to be received were produced—was to prepare for the I. In those earlier conditions, other beings created the dwelling-place for the I. Now, on the earth, the dwelling-place was at the stage where the I could take root in man and from then onwards the I began to work upon the outer, bodily sheaths from within. The fact that the ego is able to work from within has also brought about a surplus, a surplus of ascending forces; there was no longer a state of parity. Before the ego was able to work within man, the ascending forces gradually evolved until the middle point had been reached; and when the, ego actually entered into man the ascending and the descending forces had reached the stage where they were in ‘balance.’ At the entry of the ego, the ascending and the descending forces were in balance and it rests with man to turn the scales in the right direction. That is why the occultists have called the constellation which was entered at the time when the ego itself began to operate, the ‘Balance’ (Libra). Up to the end of Virgo, preparation was being made for the deeds of the ego in our planetary evolution, but the ego had not itself begun to work. When Libra had been reached the ego itself began to participate and this was a most important moment in its evolution.

Just think what it means that the ego had reached this stage of evolution:

From then on it was possible for the ego to participate in the work of the forces belonging to the Zodiac, to reach into the Zodiac. The more the ego strives for the highest point of its evolution, the more it works into the Zodiac. There is nothing that happens in the innermost core of the ego that has not its consequences right up to the very Zodiac. And inasmuch as man with his ego lays the foundations for his development to Atma, or spirit-man, he develops, stage by stage, the forces which enable him to work upwards into the sphere of Libra, the Balance, in the Zodiac. He will attain full power over Libra in the Zodiac when his ego has developed to Atma, or spirit-man. He will then be a being from whom something streams out, who has passed out of the sphere of Time into the sphere of Duration, of Eternity.

Such is the path of man. But there are other beings whose lowest sphere of operation is man's highest. Let us try to conceive of these beings whose lowest sphere of operation is man's highest (Libra in the Zodiac). When we relate man to the Zodiac, he reaches to Libra. The Being whose innermost nature belongs wholly to the Zodiac, whose forces belong wholly to the Zodiac, who only manifests in planetary life through his lowest member, which corresponds to Libra (as man's lowest member corresponds to Pisces)—this is the Being who spreads life throughout the whole of our universe:

Just as man receives life into himself, so does this Being radiate life through the whole of our universe. This is the Being Who has the power to make the great sacrifice and Who is inscribed in the Zodiac as the Being Who for the sake of our world offers Himself in sacrifice. Just as man strives upwards into the Zodiac, so does this Being send us His sacrificial gift from Aries—which is related to Him as Libra is related to man. And just as man turns his ego upwards to Libra, so does this Being radiate His very Self over our sphere in sacrifice. This Being is called the “Mystical Lamb,” for Lamb and Aries are the same; therefore the description ‘Sacrificial Lamb’ or ‘Ram’ is given to Christ. Christ belongs to the cosmos as a whole. His I, his Ego, reaches to Aries and thus He becomes Himself the “Great Sacrifice,” is related with the whole of mankind and in a certain sense the beings and forces present on the earth are His creations. The configuration of forces is such that He could become the Creator of these beings in the constellation of Aries, or the Lamb. The designation “Sacrificial Lamb” or “Mystical Lamb” is drawn from the heavens themselves.

This is one of the aspects revealed to us when from our circumscribed existence we look up into the heavens and perceive the interworking of heavenly forces and beings in cosmic space. Gradually we begin to realize that the forces streaming from heavenly body to heavenly body are akin to those forces which stream from one human soul to another as love and hate. We perceive soul-forces streaming from star to star and learn to recognize the heavenly script which records for us what is wrought and effected by those forces in cosmic space.

If we take note of many an observation which is made on the relation of man to Life and Death to-day, we may be reminded of a sentence which Shakespeare gives to the gloomy Hamlet:

Imperious Caesar, dead, and turned to clay,
Might block a hole to keep the wind away;
O, that the earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!

Such an utterance might be made by many an one who is subject to the suggestive effect of the many conceptions of the times which are acquired in the field of natural science, and who, might feel himself moved to follow up all the movements after death of the separate substances which compose the human body. He might feel himself justified in asking first of all: “What becomes of the oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, etc., which build up the human body after the death of man?” Quite apart from the fact that there are many people to-day who are influenced by the suggestive phrase “the indestructibility of Matter,” there are, again, others who entirely lose the ability of imagining anything in the whole vast unending space other than matter and its operations.

We can see from many an observation on the nature of death, or one which establishes the idea of an antithesis between life and death, how much depends, in expositions of this kind, on establishing conceptions and ideas in the most exact manner possible. It happens again and again that no account is taken of the fact that “death” and “life” form an antithesis which depends on the nature of that to which it refers, and that, one who makes a closer observation dare not speak in the same way of the death of a plant or an animal as of a man. To what extent this is the case shall be explained in this lecture. How little we understand the expressions used in this sphere may be shown by the fact that in the physiology of the great naturalist, Huxley, for instance, the following is to be found. It is there said, that we must distinguish between the local death and the death of the tissue in an organism, and it is expressly stated that the life of man depends on the brain, lungs and heart, but that this is a threefold condition which we could really reduce into a twofold one; that, in fact, if we could maintain the breathing by artificial means, we might quite well remove the brain of a man and he would continue to live. That means that life would continue, even if the brain were taken away. That is to say, that when a man is no longer able to form a conception of what is around him or of what is taking place within him, and if life could be maintained merely as a life-process in the organism through artificial breathing, the organism would still continue to live in the sense of this definition of natural science, and we could not really speak of death, although no brain were there at all. That is an idea which ought to make clear to anyone who—though he might not care for a life without a brain, at least find such a definition plausible—that this explanation just shows that the definition of life given by natural science is not at all applicable to man in this form. For no one would be able to call the life of an organism—even a human one—the life of man himself, even if in other respects the facts hinted at were quite correct.

Now to-day we are, perhaps, somewhat further advanced even in the field of natural science than ten years ago, when one was almost embarrassed in speaking of life at all, and when all life was traced back to the life of the smallest living creatures. This life in the smallest organisms was looked upon as a complicated chemical process. According to this view, if this definition were extended to a conception of the universe, one could only speak of the smallest parts of life as living on, so that only a conservation of matter could then be spoken of. Now, to-day, on account of the investigations on radium, for instance, the idea of the indestructibility of matter has become a more uncertain one.

I will now only draw your attention to the fact that natural science to-day is already attempting to speak of a sort of independence, at least of the smallest living creatures. It states that the smallest living creatures propagate themselves by fission; one divides itself into two, two into four, and so on. There we could not admit of a death, for the first lives on in the second and when these die they both live on in the next ones.

Now those who wished to speak of the immortality of unicellular beings have sought for a definition of death, and just this definition of the nature of death is extremely characteristic. They have found the main characteristic of death is that it leaves a corpse behind, and as unicellular beings leave no corpse behind, they, therefore, cannot really die. Thus the characteristic of that which has to do with the deepest foundations of life is sought in what life leaves behind. Now it will be clear without further explanation, that what remains behind of life passes over gradually into lifeless matter. So lifeless matter now becomes in death the outer organism of the smallest, most complicated living creature. Yet if we wish to take into account the significance which death has for life, we must not look at what is left, at what becomes lifeless matter; but must seek the cause, the principles of life, in life itself, while it is there.

I said that one cannot speak in the same sense of death in plants, as in animals and man, because an important phenomenon is not taken into consideration there. It is also found in certain of the lower animals, for example, in the ephemera; and consists in the fact that most plants and lower animals have the peculiarity that as soon as the process of fructification is established and the possibility of a new living being is created, the dying off of the old one then begins. In the plant the backward process, the process of dying off, begins the moment it has taken into itself the possibility of forming a new plant. One can therefore say quite certainly of those plants in which this can be observed, that the cause which has taken away life from them lies in the new living being or beings, which have left no life behind in the old being.

Through simple reflections one could convince oneself that this is so. There are certain plants which endure, which blossom again and again and bear fruit; and on which ever new plant-forms, like parasites, are, as it were, planted on to the old stem. But there you can convince yourself that they purchase the possibility of recreating themselves by thrusting certain parts of themselves into the realm of the lifeless, into death,—that is to say, they surround themselves with bark. We are quite justified in saying of a plant which can surround itself with bark, which can bear lifeless matter and yet continue to live, that it has a surplus of life; and because of this superfluity which it will not give up—only giving up what is necessary for the young organism—it must make itself secure by thrusting death outside. Thus it can also be said that every living being which possesses the possibility within itself beyond the bringing forth of a new creation, is confronted with the necessity of continually mastering life within itself, since it takes up inorganic lifeless matter. This can be adequately observed both in the animal and in man.

There we have a separation between life and death in the being itself. We have an exchange between a living member which develops in one direction, and a continual sinking-into itself of another member which is developing in the direction of death. If we now wish to draw near to the inmost being of man from this point of view, we must certainly bear in mind something of what has often been said before, but which is never superfluous, because it does not as yet belong to the ordinary recognised truth.

If we rest on quite ordinary conceptions—as we will to-day in the first half of the lecture—and then proceed to the question of life and death from the point of view of Spiritual Science, we must remember that what is taken into account here is certainly very little recognised to-day, for it has to do with a truth which is just as new to the man of to-day as another truth, which now belongs to the trivialities, was new, and even unknown, to the world of three centuries ago. I have often, pointed out that it is taken for granted to-day by the natural scientist, or by one who builds up his observations on natural-scientific conceptions, that it is an acknowledged fact that “everything living is born from the living.” (Of course, I am speaking here with the limitation which this sentence bears in the world of natural science. We need not embark on the question of primeval generation for instance, for it can be noticed right away that the analogous sentence which is mentioned there is also made use of in the world of Spiritual Science). Not long ago the great natural scientist, Francesco Redi, had to fight for this sentence, “Everything living is born from the living,” with all his energy. For before the appearance of this Naturalist of the 17th century, it. was considered quite possible, not only in lay circles. but even in scientific ones, for new organisms to generate from putrefying river-mud or from decaying organic matter. This was believed of worms and fishes. The idea, that the living can only develop from the living is not yet old, for only a few centuries ago Francesco Redi called forth such a storm of passion that he only just escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. When we consider how the “fashions of the time” alter, we can judge of the fate of this truth that we must again proclaim here. For this truth, “Life can only originate from life”, called forth at that time a storm of anger. Those who feel themselves impelled to draw from the well of knowledge similar truths in other spheres, are no longer delivered to the flames of the funeral pile to-day. That is no longer the fashion. But they are made fun of and a man who communicates such things is ridiculed; those who are impelled to proclaim such things as relate to spiritual development, are condemned to suffer a Spiritual death. But the fate of the above-mentioned truth also consists in its having become a self-evident fact, a, triviality, for him who is capable of judging.

What error, then, was the cause of this truth, “Life can only originate from life”, not being recognised? A quite simple error in observation! The scientists looked at that which was immediately before them, but did not try to penetrate to the fact that the origin of a living creature lies in a seed left behind by another living creature; so that a new living organism of a certain kind can only originate because a former living organism leaves behind it a seed of a similar kind. That is to say, they looked at the environment of the developing organism, but should really have looked at that which was left behind by another living organism which was developing within this environment. This was done all through the centuries, up to the time of Francesco Redi. Quite interesting details might be gathered from books which had just as much weight in the 7th and 8th centuries as the authoritative writings of the most modern natural scientist of to-day, and in which was noted and classified quite exactly how, for instance, hornets develop from the decaying carcase of an ox; wasps from a donkey's carcase, etc. That was all nicely set out. Exactly in the same way in which mistakes were made in those times, mistakes are being made to-day in regard to the soul and spirit of man. How is this?

A human being enters into existence and his individual development, begun at birth, is observed on into later life. It is seen how the form, the different capacities and talents develop. (We will speak more exactly of this development in a later lecture). But if the scientists wish to know the nature of the human form, the nature of that with which we are dealing, they ask the question: “What are the hereditary relationships? From what sort of environment was the man born?” That is just the same method as when they look at the mud surrounding the worm which is coming forth from it, and not upon the egg. In what is formed as disposition, as different capacities in man, an exact distinction must be made between what is characteristic, what is brought over from parents and grandparents and so on, and a certain kernel which he who observers truly will not fail to recognise. Only he who approaches the spirit and soul-element as did the naturalists before Francesco Redi will be able to deny that there is a kernel in man which presents itself clearly and which cannot be referred back to what is inherited from parents and grandparents, etc. In what is developing in a man we therefore have to distinguish that which comes from the environment from that which can never be produced from that environment.

As regards the exterior of a living plant or animal, we shall always find that the new being coming forth is in reality concerned with developing according to the species of its predecessors. Take the highest animals. How far do they carry that out? As far as is in accordance with the species, and for this they are planned. Certainly many will say: “Has, then, a horse, a dog or a cat no individuality?” And they will suppose that one might just as well describe the individuality of a cat, a horse and so on—perhaps even write their biography—as we could that of a human being. If anyone likes to do this, let him do so, but we should not take it as real, but only as symbolical, as when, for example, a school task is set for pupils, such as was set for myself and my school-fellows, for which we had to write the biography of our pens! One could, then, even speak of the biography of a pen. But where truth is concerned it is not a question of attending to analogies and comparisons, but of laying hold of the essentials. What is individual in man is not that which makes him one of the species, but that which makes of him the quite distinct individual that every man is. Every man is working towards the formation of what is individual in him, just as the plant works towards the formation of the species. Every development, every advance in education or in historical evolution, rests on the fact that man goes a stage further than the mere species, in the development of the individuality.

If there were in each man no individual spirit and soul kernel which develops in a Spiritual way, as the animal develops in his species, there would be no history. One could then only speak of an evolution of the human race, but not of a history or of a cultural development. Therefore, natural science speaks of the development of the species, of a kind of evolution in the horse, but not of a history.

In the development of every man we have to see a spirit and soul kernel which has the same significance as the species for an animal. The species in the animal kingdom corresponds to the individual in man. Now in the animal kingdom every creature which tends towards what is according to species, repeats the species of his ancestors and can only originate on the basis of the physical nature of the seed of his ancestors; so the individual part of each separate man cannot originate from anything which is here in the physical world, but solely from something which is of a Spiritual nature. That is to say that a Spiritual kernel, which enters into being at the birth of man, does not merely refer back to the species “man”, in so far as man goes back to a Spiritual ancestor, to a being who has progressed, who does not belong individually to the species “man”, not, indeed, to any “species”, but to this same human individuality. If then, a man be born, there is born with him an individual kernel which is not attached to anything else than to this individual human substance. As the animal seeks his species so does man seek his own individual human being. That is to say that this individual kernel when it appears at birth has been here before, just as the germ of the species was there for the animal. We must look in the past for the spirit and soul-substance, which is the Spiritual—not physical—kernel of this individuality which is developing Spiritually. Only a man who cannot see that the soul and spirit do not develop from within the general human organism, will deny that the conclusions just drawn are correct.

Every individual human life thus carries within itself the proof that it already existed before. We are, therefore, led back from an individual human life to an individual Spiritual seed and from this again to another Spiritual seed; that is, we are led from our own individual life back to a former individual life—and then, of course, to our next life. An unbiased observation of human life proves this to be just as much a necessity as the truth proclaimed in the sphere of natural science. Suppose anyone with an unprejudiced mind were to say: “Nothing can be known about that”, then if he draws this conclusion again and again he might end by saying: “I cannot do otherwise than accept this conclusion; if I do not I am sinning against all observation and logic.” In spite of this, however, this truth about the repeated earth-lives is still but little recognised; but this truth that the Spiritual can only originate from the Spiritual, will certainly make its mark in human cultural life and will be more quickly accepted than the other truth which has been characterised. The time will come when men will realise that beliefs have changed in this respect, just as we do not now believe that lower animals, fish, etc., could originate from river-mud.

If we follow, in the further course of its life, this individual kernel of the human being which one can see, as it were, come into being at birth, it appears to a certain extent in a two-fold aspect; and this more especially in the growing human being, in youth. It appears there as something which requires a progressive development of the whole man. And he who can truly observe the intimate life of youth, who has learned to observe the child, not only from the outside but also from within, who remembers what he himself experienced in this respect, will admit that what is in him now was not there up to a certain age, but only showed itself later as a feeling of power, as a feeling of life, as a content of life which works in an extremely elevating way. What we carry within us as the individual core of our being works not only on the outer living form, but continues to work even into the most elementary formations and functions of life. When man arrives at a certain maturity and has the opportunity of taking up many things in the outside world, then this individual kernel of his being works so that he enriches himself, adapts himself to the outer world and gathers experiences. When, however, we observe this correlation between the individual core of man's being and what comes to pass in the course of his life—not only through what he learns and hears but also through experiences such as happiness and sorrow, pain and joy, we shall then see in this Spiritual life itself the same correlation on a higher plane, to that between the new embryo of the plant which develops in the blossom of the old one and the old plant whose life is taken away from it by the new seed.

If we extend this observation to the tree, we shall be able to say: “There, also, life is ever taken away, in that the tree turns into wood in the plant kingdom, but in its place certain things in the tree change into dead lifeless products: inorganic bark surrounds the tree.” In the same way we see, when we look at human life more closely, not only a progressive development but one which allows the Spiritual being of man to advance and grow, allows it to unite itself to the outer world; and as it grows ever more and more, we see it coming into conflict with the old condition; that is to say, it comes into conflict with its own self. That happens because it could in its youth build up and form organs according as it required them, while now in the further course of life this process is no longer possible; it must now go on living in a hardened life condition. So we see that when our life enriches itself by development in the course of time, when we take in what is new and thereby enrich the individual core of our being, we come into conflict with what envelops this kernel, with what we have built around it, and which is in process of growing. As long as we grow, and in so far as we thus grow, we do not take up into ourselves any Spiritual process of death. Only when we receive what is exterior to ourselves do we take in the Spiritual process of death. That is really the case throughout the whole of life, though it is less apparent in childhood than in later life. So we can say that in the realm of the spiritual, a Spiritual growing and dying takes place in the inner being of man. But in what does that process which takes place there consist? We can understand it well if we look at it for once in a lower form and take under observation anything from the realm of ordinary life, in order to form, as it were, conceptions and ideas concerning the higher realms of being. Let us take fatigue, for instance. We speak of fatigue both in the animal and human being. We must first gain an idea of the nature of fatigue. I cannot now go into all the ideas which have been collected on the subject, but we will observe the whole process of fatigue in relation to the life process. We can say that man becomes tired because he uses his muscles, and therefore fresh forces must be carried to the muscles. In this case we might say that man tires because he uses up his muses through work of some kind. Such a definition appears very plausible at first sight, only, it is not true. But it is the case to-day that we work with ideas which just merely touch the surface of things lightly, we do not wish to penetrate to the depths. For just think, if the muscles could really become fatigued, how would it be then with the muscles of the heart? They do not tire at all; they work day and night continuously, and the same is the case with other muscles in the human and animal bodies. This gives one the notion that it is not correct to say that in the relationship between work and muscle there is anything which can explain fatigue.

When does an animal or a man become tired? When their work is not occasioned through the organism nor through the life-process, but by the outer world itself; that is to say, by the world with which a living being may come into relationship through its organs. Thus, when a living being carries out work by means of it consciousness, the organs concerned becomes fatigued. In the life-process itself there is nothing which could occasion fatigue. So that the life-process, the whole of the life organs must be brought in contact with something which does not belong to them, if they are to become fatigued.

I can only draw your attention to this important fact. In the development of which some extremely fruitful points of view can be found. Thus, only that which is brought to a living being by way of a conscious process, of an incitement to consciousness, can occasion fatigue. It would consequently be absurd to speak of the fatigue of plants. We can, therefore, say that in everything that can fatigue a living being something which is foreign to it must really be present, something which does not belong to its own nature must be introduced into it.

We, can therefore, say that every disturbance of the life-process which comes about though fatigue, points to the fact, even in a quite inferior realm, that that which we have in our soul-life is not born simply from our physical life, rather does it stand positively in contradiction to the laws of that life. The contradiction between the laws of the life of consciousness and those of life and the life-process alone explains what is present in fatigue—of this you can convince yourselves if you consider it more exactly. For this reason we can say that fatigue is an expression testifying that that which comes to a life-process must be foreign to it, if it is able to disturb it. Now, the life-process can really equalise what is used up through fatigue, by sleep and rest. What is used up is compensated for by something new, which enters in place of the life-processes.

Now, an inner process of exhaustion appears in the individual human life, for the reason that man enters into relationship with the outside world. The old, which was present in the germ, enters into an exchange with the new. The result is expressed in that the individual life-kernel is transformed during individual life, but it must also for this reason throw off what has become wooden, as it were, what it has itself formed from its birth onwards. The cause of death is the calling to a new life within the human soul, just as in the animal organism the disposition to fatigue can only be caused by its entering into exchange-relationship with what is new and foreign to it. We might, therefore, say that the process of death, of gradually dying off, is one which is better understood if one takes its opposite into consideration, in which the soul stands in relationship with the organic, and which expresses itself in fatigue. Hence, we really have the seed of death in our innermost being during the whole of our individual life. We could not develop further, however, we could not possibly carry what we already are at birth a step further, if we did not in ourselves associate death with life. As fatigue is connected with the execution of exterior work, so is the thrusting off, the killing of the outer covering, with enrichment and higher development of the individual life-kernel. The psychic and Spiritual process of life and death—represents with great clarity what we might express thus: “We purchase the higher form, the further development of our life, by the beneficial act of thrusting off from us what we were before. No development would be possible if we could not thrust-off the old, for we advance through, and together with what we have worked into the new of our soul and spirit. What forces are in that? Such forces as are the fruits of our past life!” We certainly can experience the seeds of these fruits, and can experience our observations of life, we can do much else in life, but we cannot organise these into ourselves nor really carry them over into our external covering. For we do not build our covering of what we learn in one life—or at most only to a limited extent—we build it according to what we have become in our last life. We can, therefore, only build up our life by making use of what we have acquired in our past life, and we can continue to develop by thrusting off the old from us—as the tree does its bark—and passing into death. With what we then take with us through death, we are able to build up our next life, for it contains in itself the same forces as have built up our Spiritual growth when we develop freshly and happily in our youth. It is of the same nature as these. We have absorbed it from our life experiences and with it build ourselves a future living organism, a future bodily covering, which will carry within it as the germ of a future blossom, what we have gained in one life. With regard to such things as these the question is always asked, over and over again: “What help is it, after all, to man, to hear about repeated earth-lives, if he is not able to remember his former lives, if the memory of his former lives is not present?”

It lies, indeed, in the nature of the Spiritual culture of to-day that we are not yet in a position to meditate and reflect upon questions of the soul and spirit life as freely as over the things of natural life. But we must make it clear to ourselves that it is possible to develop ideas and conceptions on these questions of the soul and spirit life, in exactly the same way. We can only do this if we really observe it more exactly, if we ask ourselves what must be the position of the human memory in general; what is the nature of the human memory? There is a point of time in the personal human life, which can lead very easily to the gaining of opinions on these questions. It is the following:

We all know that there is a time in the normal life of man to-day, of which there is no memory in later life. It is the time of his earliest childhood. In the normal life of to-day man remembers up to a certain point of his childhood, then memory disappears.

Although it is quite clear to him that it is his own Spiritual I, or ego, which has built up his life, yet he lacks the power of stretching his memory beyond this point. He who examinee many children's lives, will be able to make one observation from them. It can of course only be substantiated in external life, but notwithstanding this, it is correct. From the observation of the soul of a child we discover that remembrance goes back just as far as to the point of time when the idea of “I,” the conception of his own Ego, arises within him. That is an external important fact At the moment when the child, of his own accord, no longer says: “Charles wants this,” or, “Mary wants that,” but says “I want this,” from the point of time when the conscious conception of the Ego begins, remembrance also begins. Whence comes this remarkable fact? It comes because something else is necessary for remembrance, besides the coming into contact, as it were, once or always with an object. We can come into contact with an object ever so often without any recollection of it being necessarily called forth. Remembrance rests, namely, on a quite definite soul-process, a quite definite Spiritual inner life-process, of which we can become aware if we take the following into account.

One must distinguish between the perception of an object or experience, and the conception or idea of this object or experience. In the process of perception we have something that can always recur if we stand before the object again; but in the experience we have something else besides. When we come into contact with something, and have taken in an impression of it through the eye or ear, we have then taken into ourselves something more than an inner impression of it; what we take with us is that which remains in the conception or idea and which can embody itself in the memory. That, however, must first come into being. I know that what I have just said will be very much doubted by valiant followers of Schopenhauer, by those who assert that our conception of the universe is only our idea of it. But that lies in the confusion of perception with idea. Both must be emphatically differentiated. The idea is something which is reproduced. No matter how often the outer experience can arise, if it does not receive the inner impression of the idea, it cannot be incorporated in the memory; when, on the other hand, it is stated that the idea is nothing more than what presents itself to the perception, we need only bring to notice that the idea of a hot piece of steel, no matter how hot, will quite certainly not burn any one; but the sense-experience of it will. There we have the difference between idea and sense-perception. Therefore we can say that the idea is a sense-experience turned inwards. But with this turning inwards, with this outer rebound of the object, which is in reciprocal relationship with the inner being of man, and through which the inner impression is occasioned, something else comes into consideration. Whatever is experienced inwardly in our sense-life is embodied in our Ego by every sense-impression, and by everything that we can experience in the outer world. A sense-perception can even be there without being incorporated in the Ego. In the outer world it is impossible for an idea to be kept in the memory, if it be not received inwardly into the realm of the Ego. So that in every conception we form from a sense-experience and which can be retained in the memory, the Ego stands as the point of departure. An idea which comes into our soul-life from outside, can in no way be separated from the Ego. I know, indeed, that I am speaking figuratively; but all the same these things signify a reality, as we shall see in the course of the next lectures.

We can imagine that the experience of the Ego presents something like the inner surface of a sphere, seen from outside; then the sense-experiences come along and the self-mirroring of these experiences within the sphere give rise to the idea. For that, however, the Ego must be present in every single sense-perception. The Ego-experience is in everything which can be embodied in the memory; it is actually like a mirror which rays back the experiences to us within; but the Ego itself must be there. From this we learn that as long as the child does not receive the perceptions of ideas in such a way that they become conceptions, as long as they only approach the child from the outside as sense-perceptions, and are only experienced externally between the Ego and the outer world without being transformed into an Ego-experience, as long as the child has no conception of the Ego, then no Ego-mirror, as it were, veils from him what is round about him. Just as long as that lasts, one notices that the child imagines into the surroundings many things which adults do not understand. Only through the memory of what is past, can that emerge which the Ego has already taken up, so that it is thereby pressed into the memory. When the Ego-perception appears, the Ego places itself before the ideas as a mirror; but what lies before the time of the Ego-perception can not be called forth into the memory. Therefore man always comes into touch with the outer world in such a way that his Ego experiences all the events with him, his Ego is always there. This does not imply that everything must enter his consciousness, only that his experiences do not remain merely as sense-perceptions but are transformed into ideas.

So we can now say that the inmost kernel of man, from whose centre has developed that which has now been described as passing on from incarnation to incarnation, is veiled by the Ego-conception, as is usually found in man. Man places himself before his memory with his Ego-development of to-day. It is thus quite explicable that his memory only extends as far as the sense world.

Now, can a proof be offered, through experience itself, that this can become other than it is? Can we speak of an “Extension of Memory” back into former incarnations? That is self-evident from the mere definition, if it is grasped, of what lies behind the individual Ego centre, which we ourselves cover over, as it were. If we begin to grasp it we them also perceive our inmost nature and being, we see what man does in human life;—not only what he does in common, but in his own individual life. Is there a possibility of looking behind the Ego, as it were? Yes, certainly there is. This lies in that inner soul-life of which I have already spoken, in the introductory lecture. If a man really undertakes to develop his Soul, by a severe and methodical training, in such a way that the slumbering forces within it begin to germinate, and the soul stretches out beyond itself, he can only do so by appropriating, with a certain inner renunciation, ideas which are not such as those in which the ego-experience is immediately present. The Ego-experience places everything in which it takes part before the kernel of one's being. For the training of the soul man must therefore appropriate ideas in which the Ego-experience is not present. For that, reason the inner soul exercises which a man undertakes must be done in a quite definite way. What he embodies in his soul-life depends on the content of the meditation, and he must embody something that certainly is acceptable to the inner nature of the soul, but which does not, relate to anything external. What is there that is not related to anything external? Only meditation; but meditation is as a rule applied to the outer world, therefore it is not serviceable to him who wishes to rise to the higher worlds. A life of idea must therefore be developed which calls forth, in pictures and symbols which are continually placed before the soul, such an activity in the Ego that it would form ideas it never could have formed before when it wished to acquire the truth of the ordinary sense-world. The soul must therefore incorporate into itself pictures and symbols which do not appear when we survey the external through out Ego-experience.

When we observe this, we have the following experience, about which we can only say something definite by pointing to that condition into which men enters again and again, namely, the condition of sleep. Through falling asleep, all ideas, all pain end sorrow, and so on, which man has experienced during the day, sink into indefinite obscurity, The whole conscious life of man goes down into indefinite obscurity and returns when the man wakes up again in the morning. Compare the life of consciousness in waking-up and in going to sleep. So long as man obtains only conscious impressions from the external life of the senses, he brings back with him in the morning, only what he had in his consciousness in the evening. He wakes up again with the same content in his consciousness; he remembers the same things, thinks the same thoughts, and so on. But when a man undertakes, in the specified manner, an inner training in which the Ego is not present, the position is different. He then notices, certainly, that his first step in progress consists in feeling on awaking, enriched through sleep; he feels that what he had taken up before going to sleep comes back to him with a richer content. So that he can now say: “Now I have looked behind the Spiritual world which the Ego does not cover up and, as a fruit of that, I embody into the life of my consciousness something that I had not gained from the sense-world, for I have brought it with me out of the world of sleep.”

Such are the first steps of progress in one who is leading a Spiritual life of the soul.

Now, the further possibility steps in that he may now, even during the waking-day life, fill himself with a content not permeated by the Ego-experience, although the Ego is there. The Ego-experience must take its place beside this content, just as it does with the content of all physical experiences. If we take this into account we must say that he alone who is able to look behind the Ego can gaze into the Spiritual content of a human being—he who treads such a path will often come near to developing certain feelings. The nature or these feelings will also show the nature of the way. Thus we must learn to be free from desire and especially to overcome fear and anxiety as regards coming events. We must learn to say in a calm and passionless way: “No matter what comes to me, I will accept it.” And we must not only put this to ourselves as a dry abstract conception, but must make it part of our innermost feeling. We need not become fatalists on this account (a fatalist thinks, that everything happens of itself), but we must use this means of intervening in life. If we are able to instil into the Ego this absolute balance as regards feeling and sensation, it drives with such force towards the Spiritual being of man that it separates the Ego from the perceptions which are already in our consciousness. So we remain standing within the Ego-world, yet receive a new world of inner soul-experiences. These make it alone possible for us to see, in its true individual form, the inmost kernel of man's being, which certainly develops from birth onwards as that which springs from a former life, but which could not be recognised before in its true reality. We must first see it as it is, as it really is in the present, and how it works. Now can we remember something towards which we had never turned our eyes? Just as the child has not that in his consciousness which took place before the development of his Ego-perception, so can man not keep in his memory those experiences of his former births which are not based on a knowledge of the inner kernel of man's being, on the feelings and sensations of the soul and spirit kernel, which is in every man.

He who really goes through this, who learns above all to purchase for himself a retrospect into former lives by looking towards the future with equanimity and resignation, will see that the former earth-lives are not merely a logical sequence, but that they prove to be a reality through a newly-born memory, which is really called forth. For that, however, one thing is necessary. The possibility of looking into the past can only be purchased by desirelessness, equanimity and passivity towards the future. To the extent to which we are prepared to experience the future in our feelings and sensations and are able to shut out our Ego with regard to the experience of the future, so far are we in a position to look into the past. The more man develops this equanimity, the more nearly does he approach the point of time when the past earth-lives will become a reality for him. Thus we can give the reason to the objection often made, that for the ordinary human life no remembrance is there. This objection is just as if a child of four were brought to us, with the remark: “This child cannot count”, concluding from this that consequently a man could not count either! To this one could only reply: “Wait till the child is ten years old, he will then be able to count; therefore, man can count.” The recollection of former lives is a question of development! Therefore is it necessary that one should learn to think over what, through the force of logical conclusion, has been taken as the point of the lecture to-day. It will then be found that a living spiritual soul-kernel may be present in man and that we carry it through death into a new life, as we have carried it through birth into this life.

So Spiritual Science points in no simple way, yet in a way that is substantially correct, to what, is eternal in man as regards “life” and “death.” And we may say that the logical conclusion about death and life in regard to the human being informs right away that in this human individuality the possibility is also present of gaining the memory of past lives. Then people need no longer say that unless we can remember our past lives they are of no use! Is only that which we can remember of use to us? We bear in us the fruits of past lives; we develop in ourselves in the present life without our knowledge, what we have brought over from former lives; and when we begin to look back into former earth-lives, the memory of them is certainly there. We can then say to ourselves what a good thing it was that in former times we were unable to remember back. This memory of the past can only be won in the way I have characterised as regards feelings and sensations towards the future life, but that is not all; it can only be made endurable by an attitude of soul such as has been described. Should it be aroused by artificial means and should man at the same time lead a life of desires and appetites permeated by egotism, then his soul and spirit-life must lose its balance and he must become unhinged. For certain things belong together, and others repel each other.

What is eternal in man, what comes into life through birth, that goes over from life into the Spiritual worlds through death and reappears in new embodiments; and bound up with that is the fact, that we can only evolve higher in new embodiments if we make use of the fruits of the former life. To-day I wished to point out the relations to the kernel of man's being and these two ideas. When we have this in view we shell no longer give as our answer to the question as to the nature of life and death: “The nature of death is to be learnt from the corpse”. Rather shall we say: We sought in the innermost being of man that which must bring forth new life; but in order that new life may come into being, the old must gradually die off and finally be quite extinguished, just as the old plant when it is one year old dies off, so that the new plant may take life from it. He who observes the world of death in this manner will not consider that which remains behind as a corpse, but will look in every being for those characteristics of life which are carried over into a new life. Although Shakespeare may make the gloomy Danish Prince utter that which to many appears evident from the absolute facts of the science of to-day:

Imperious Caesar, dead, and turned to clay,
Might block a hole to keep the wind away;
O, that the earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!

If such a remark is applied to the process of dying, we will yet turn, while observing man from the point of view of Spiritual Science, to the Spiritual kernel of man's being which goes through birth and death and through ever new life. We then gain the assurance, if we do not follow the ways of Oxygen, Carbon, and Nitrogen, but seek the ways of life by considering what the real kernel of Man's being experiences, that we may place opposite the words of Shakespeare this other point of view.

The humblest man on Earth,
Is a son of Eternity,
And overcomes in ever new life
The ancient death.

We have been able, in the course of these lectures, to form the impression that the different systems of organs and structural parts of the human being participate in the greatest variety of ways in the combination of processes within the organism. We have referred to various facts in this connection, and have found ourselves already compelled to ascribe as a preliminary the activities at work in the different systems of organs to higher, super-sensible members of the human organism. We had to assert, for instance, that in man the circulation of the blood bears an intimate relation to what we call the human ego, so that we had to speak of the blood as an instrument of the human ego; and, further, we have been able to attribute to the nervous system everything which as conscious life comes to meet this ego. We have at the same time shown how one special portion of the nerve-system, the sympathetic nerve-system, has a function to a certain extent contrary to that of the rest of this system, a function which consists in holding back everything that goes on in the depths of man's organisation, everything that is brought about by the activity of the members of the inner cosmic system in man, so that for the normal consciousness it does not at first force its way up to the horizon of the ego. Yesterday, moreover, we attempted to arrive at an approximate understanding of the fact that what has constructed itself into the firm bony scaffolding, withdraws itself most of all from this conscious life of man; yet at the same time we had to emphasise the fact that, even in this solid scaffolding, a quality of Being must be active such as enables man to evolve an organ for the life of his ego, namely, the circulation of the blood.

We may, therefore, draw the conclusion that the significance of the depositing of the bony system in man, as related to his whole organisation, consists in the fact that he can maintain a human form at all; and that everything expressed in the processes which take place in this solid bony system is kept in the subconscious. We have always to do with something of this kind in the human organisation, and we must be especially clear that something within it is shielded from the influences that play a part in our environment in the great world. We have stated, for example, that the seven members of the inner cosmic system, especially that most spiritual one among them, the spleen, restrain the working of the external laws natural to what we take in as nourishment; that they convey the nutritive substances into the organism in such a manner that they are finally filtered into a form which enables them to exert their powers in conformity with laws and a vital activity of their own. This shielding of the inner processes, this transforming and implanting of outside matter, is most visible and obvious in the warmth of the blood. This blood-warmth, which operates within strict limits of temperature, is regulated by conformity to its own inner laws; and, in this conformity it is, in normal life, independent of what takes place in the warmth-processes of the macrocosm, of the great world about us. Here in the stability of the temperature of the blood we have a perfectly obvious fundamental phenomenon. We must point out, therefore, that one of the most essential elements in the inner organisation of man is that something possessed of Being is cut off within set limits from the macrocosm and develops a vital activity of its own.

Now in order to advance still further in our understanding of the human organism, it will be well for us to-day to proceed for a short while from another direction, so as to direct our attention briefly to the conscious life. We know already from the preceding lectures that the conscious life of man employs the instruments of the blood and the nervous system. We have not, however, been able to go into the finer processes; for this investigation is something, we must frankly confess, still liable to startle the outside world which so depends upon present-day customary science. On the other hand, anyone who has a basis of genuine and true occultism will tell you that the tendency of modern science is leading toward a confirmation, in the course of the next few decades, of those things which we are able to bring forward at the present time, though, to be sure, only through occult observations. If I could hold lectures for half a year, instead of this short series, it would be possible out of the findings of modern science alone to bring forward all that is necessary for external proof of what must be only briefly intimated to-day.¹ As it is, however, I must leave very much to the good will of my audience. It is possible, indeed, in the case of everything stated here, to trace our way to external science which is already in a position, provided it begins with facts and not theoretical prejudices, to discover confirmation, on the basis of its present-day findings, for what may be learned in the sphere of occultism.

Now if we are to start out from our conscious life—and I beg you to understand all these discussions as having such a basis and to consider the relation of the more or less conscious soul-life to our organism—we must keep in mind, as indeed is done in ordinary physiology, all that we call our thought-activity in its most comprehensive sense. We do not need in this connection to go into all the niceties of logical and psychological distinctions, but must simply realise that we have here to do with the thought-life of man, and furthermore, within the realm of our soul's life, with the life of feeling and willing.

You will never find any contradiction among those who have a foundation of true occultism, when it is asserted that all processes in our soul-life which take place on the physical plane, and which fall into any one of the categories of our thinking, feeling, or willing life, are accompanied, in a normal state of consciousness, by actual material processes in the organism, whether endued with life or not. We may find, therefore, that for literally everything which takes place in our soul there are corresponding material processes within our organism. And it is precisely this fact that is of the very greatest interest. For it will be for the first time possible in the next few decades, as a result of certain tendencies in contemporary science, for the present still only tendencies, actually to discover these correspondences between soul-processes and physiological processes, and thus to confirm what we have attained through occultism.

For every thought-process there is a corresponding process within our organism; and the same is true in the case of every emotional process, and every process which may be denoted as an “impulse of will.” We might put it in this way: whenever something takes place in our soul-life it produces a wave which repeats itself as far down as the physical organism. Let us take first the process of thinking, what occurs in thought. And here I wish to call attention to the fact that it is best to fix our minds upon a thought process that is either purely mathematical, or one which is equally objective and which leaves our feeling and willing in a certain sense uninfluenced; that is, we shall first consider thought-processes in pure and unalloyed form. What happens in our organism when such thought-processes go on within our soul-life? Every time we fix upon a thought, there takes place in our organism a process which we may compare with another one of a different kind; by this I do not mean that what I am here stating is an analogy, for it is not an analogy, but an actual fact; and, when I say “we may compare” I mean that this comparison is to lead us to the facts of the matter. We may compare it with what takes place when we dissolve any kind of salt in a glass of water heated to a certain temperature, and by allowing this water to cool cause the salt to crystallise, thus bringing about the very opposite of the process of solution. When the salt is entirely dissolved the water is transparent; but when the water has cooled again, and the opposite process takes place in it, the salt separates itself from the water and crystallises again. There comes about a re-formation of the salt, a depositing of salt in the water. And when we observe water which at first was warm and then is brought to a state in which the salt re-crystallises in it, we see that there within the liquid a solid substance takes form. Something solid settles again, a salt-deposit. (As I said before, I have taken it for granted that these statements as to results of occult research will at first startle anyone who accepts quite pedantically, and in a purely conventional way, the facts recorded by external science.)

Now exactly the same process takes place within our organism when we think. This corresponding process of thinking is a salt-depositing process, so to speak, which is caused by a certain activity in our blood and which irritates and reacts upon our nerve-system, a process, that is, which goes on on the “frontiers” between our blood- and nerve-systems. And just as we can look at the water in the glass and observe the formation of the salt as it separates and crystallises, so we may see, when we observe a human being exercising thought, that just such a process, supersensibly perceptible in all its exactness to the clairvoyant eye, actually does take place. Thus we have here brought before our minds the physical correlative of the process of thought.

At this point we may ask what is the nature of the corresponding correlative of feeling? Here we do not have to do with a depositing of solidifying salt, which is the opposite of the process of solution; but we find that within our organism what we may call refined processes take place which are somewhat like that of a fluid becoming semi-solid. Let us imagine, for instance, a fluid which is just solid enough to take on form—about as much form as there is in very thick albumen: a coagulation, that is, or the thickening of a fluid. Whereas, in the case of thought-processes, we have to do with the direct production of a salt-substance which is deposited out of a fluid, in everything pertaining to feeling we have to do with a transition from an inwardly more fluid state to a semi-fluid one. The substance is here transformed into a somewhat more dense condition which, with clairvoyant sight, may be identified as the formation of small flakes, just as if, in a glass containing a fluid, you were to bring about through certain processes the process of a flake-formation, or an inner changing of a fluid substance into tiny semi-liquid drops.

When we go on to what we may call the cherishing of a will-impulse in the soul, we find that the physical correlative of this again is different. It is, moreover, even easier to grasp; in fact, we come here to that aspect in which the physical is considerably more manifest. The physical correlative of what conforms to will-impulse is a sort of warming-process, a process, indeed, which in some way or other produces certain degrees of heightened temperature within the organism, a becoming hot, in a certain sense. Now we may also conclude from this, since this becoming warm is connected with the whole pulsation of our blood, that it is precisely and altogether with this that the impulses of will are connected. It is not very difficult, if one has even only a moderate capacity for true observation, to be able actually to see that such processes, both in the human and also in the animal organisation, can have their physical correlatives.

Thus we may to a certain extent characterise in this way the physical correlatives which accompany the inner soul-processes. What I have just been characterising is obviously not something of a crude physical nature, but rather extraordinarily fine and minute processes, fine to such a degree, indeed, as cannot usually be imagined. With the exception, perhaps, of the processes of warmth, they are of such a nature that, in comparison with all that we know of similar processes in the outside physical world, they manifest an extreme delicacy. They are processes which the organism carries out by means of all its forces, when the ego is active, with the help of the instrument of the blood: from the process of salt-depositing to the coagulation of fluid and the producing of warmth. They are in part of such a nature that we might say the entire organism is affected by them; or, in the case of the thinking process for example that one part of our organisation, the brain or the spinal cord, is chiefly affected by them. Moreover these processes, which are the results of the influence of soul- processes, are distributed in the most varied way possible in the human organism. When we gradually learn to know that these are facts we come to the point where we are compelled to admit that what we call thoughts or feelings are actual forces, which have a real influence within the physical organisation and which express themselves in real effects; so that, as a result of purely occult observation, we are obliged to speak of a real action of the soul upon the human organism. These real effects in the finer processes will, during the next few decades, reveal themselves gradually and ultimately become entirely accessible to the more refined methods of science, even to external investigation. There will then be an end to that opposition which, arising not out of the facts of science but obviously out of certain preconceived theories with reference to these facts, combats such affirmations as may be based upon occult knowledge.

Now we have also pointed out that what we look upon as a conscious activity of the ego is after all only one part of man's being; and that, below the threshold of what enters in this manner within the horizon of our consciousness there are processes which occur in the subconsciousness, and which are held back from our consciousness, by means of the sympathetic nervous system. We have been able to indicate from various points of view that these processes which take place below the level of consciousness have also a certain kind of connection with our ego. We have said, with regard to the most unconscious part of us, our bony system, that it is organised throughout in such a way as to be able to give to the instrument of the conscious ego the basis for an ego. Thus, out of the unconscious, an ego-organisation arises to meet the conscious ego-organisation. Man is thus divided, as it were, into two parts: from one direction the conscious ego-organisation works into the organism, and from the other there flows into man the unconscious ego-organisation. We have seen that the blood-system and the bony system really form a certain antithesis; they act like opposite poles. The blood in its inner activity responds to and follows, as an instrument, the activity of the ego; on the contrary, that part which is organised as the other pole of the ego so that the ego is able to express itself in the blood, namely the bony system, withdraws itself from the quickened inner life of the ego to such an extent that the ego has no consciousness of anything that goes on within this bony system, and the processes here take their course below the surface of what goes on in the actually conscious ego-life. These are processes, therefore, which correspond to our ego-activity yet at the same time are as truly dead as our blood-processes are living; and they are, as a matter of fact, only one portion of those processes which remain unconscious to the ego, and which only gradually rise more and more up into the conscious.

If we study this bony system thoughtfully with regard to its functioning as a whole in the human organism, we cannot but be struck by the fact that it really withdraws itself, as it were, from all conscious life, and that it does this to a greater degree than any of the other systems of organs. If at the same time we go on from this bony system to the other organic systems, for example, to that inner cosmic system of the liver and spleen, the heart and lungs, etc., we are compelled to affirm that the processes within these systems are also to a very high degree withdrawn from our conscious life, although not so completely as those in our bony system. We certainly need to give far less conscious thought and attention to our bony system than to these other organs just mentioned. Some of these latter make known very clearly in their functions, in the case of some people at any rate, that they do reach up into the plane of consciousness. Just as beings which dwell in the waters of the ocean push the waves up to the surface, so does much of what goes on in the heart or the other organs belonging to these systems push its way up into our conscious life. We know how hypochondriacs, to their own injury, naturally, are partly aware of these things even though in an entirely different way, to be sure, from that in which they actually take place below. I do not here refer at all to the fact that a certain degree of illness may be developed in these organs, for then it is, of course, something quite different which causes the person to become conscious of them. I mean that one need not come anywhere near that borderline which a healthy man may designate as “bordering on being ill.” This border-line, unfortunately, gets very much displaced nowadays, to the great injury of humanity. We know, at the same time, that we are protected from becoming conscious of what goes on below by means of the sympathetic nervous system opposing these inner processes.

If we recognise in the bony system something that so builds man up, as regards his form and structure, that the blood-system can be a fitting instrument within it for the ego, we must have a certain understanding, after what has just been stated, of the fact that the other organs, for example, those organs belonging to the inner cosmic system, are in their turn in a certain sense in the process of growing to meet the conscious life of man which is destined to unfold itself as the flowering of man's organisation. We must see clearly that all of these organs, although they are not permeated with fully conscious life, do nevertheless contain that something which is growing toward our soul-life, just as we have seen that our bony system is growing toward the ego-life.

Now we must ask ourselves at this point: to what extent then, does this inner system, which we may designate as an inner cosmic system, grow toward man's conscious soul-life? If, on the one hand, it is clear to us that in the bony system we have our surest support for what brings order into the blood-system, enabling this blood-system to evolve into an instrument of our ego, and its separate parts to occupy the right places, we must admit, on the other hand, that the function of the bony system as the fundamental basis of our organisation is such that it also supports, at the same time, those organs constituting an inner cosmic system, and brings them into the right position. For the same thing in the bony system which is advantageous to the blood-system is also advantageous to these organs. And, if we make even a purely external study of these organs, we shall be especially struck by the fact that we can discover nothing in them, either in their disposition or even in their form, that is so intimately related to the outer limits of man's form as is the bony system.

We have something then, in man, which we may describe by saying that the bony system is the foundation, and whatever is disposed around it can be thus disposed only because it gives man his basic form. If we recognise in man's skin his external boundary, we must affirm that to a great extent this external skin-boundary is already forecast by the whole structure of the bony system, a fact which led to Goethe saying in such impressive words, not merely aesthetically impressive but wonderfully fine also as a scientific expression: “There is nothing in the skin which is not also in the bones.” That is to say, in the external skin-formation, by means of which man's being is expressed in form, is demonstrated what is already there as a model in the bony system. This we cannot say with regard to our inner cosmic system. Yet, on the other hand, the fact that the functioning of this inner cosmic system thrusts itself up into lower levels of consciousness shows us that it has something to do with our astral body; for the astral body is the bearer of consciousness. And the reason why the astral body as the bearer of consciousness does not consciously experience what goes on in this inner cosmic system is that the sympathetic nerve-system holds it back. This we have already mentioned.

We must affirm, therefore, that this inner cosmic system does not appear to be an expression of the subconscious self, that self which is to be found as a model deep down in the foundation of man's being but, rather, that it is so incorporated in us through the universal cosmic process, that its relation to our astral body is similar to that other relation which enables the human form as expressed in the bony system to offer a basis for the most comprehensive form of the ego. We may say, therefore, that in the bony system, but deep down in the unconscious, we have an already highly developed pattern of the human ego; and that in what we call our inner cosmic system we have the pattern of our so-called astral body. It is important to keep this disposition clearly in mind: the bony system serves as a basic model for all that we call our ego—naturally, we mean this in the sense in which we are here discussing it—and the inner cosmic system for what we call our astral body.

Of course this inner cosmic system, in its entire organisation, since it still lies almost wholly below the level of consciousness, does not in any way derive from the conscious soul-life but is implanted in us, through our external organisation, out of the cosmos. This means that something we may call a cosmic astral element merges with us in such a way that it expresses itself in our inner cosmic system. In our bony system, there is merged into our whole organism, here again out of our whole environment, that which the cosmic process is able to bestow upon us. Since this is connected with the entire form of our physical organisation, we must say that this bony system is really, as a result, the basis of our physical body so far as this appears before us within the boundary of its physical form. A macrocosmic element or, to put it plainly, a cosmic system, which has given us the physical form we have as human beings, has been deposited in our bony system; a macrocosmic astral world-system is deposited in our inner cosmic system. The ego, in so far as it appears as a conscious ego, has the blood-system for its instrument; but, in so far as it is forecast as form, as structure, there lies at its foundation a cosmic force-system which presses into the ego-organisation, into the firm ego-formation, and which sets its deepest imprint in our bony system.

Let us grasp the matter clearly from still another point of view. We know that everything which manifests itself in the ego as a thought-element comes to expression through a kind of salt-deposit, if I may use such an expression as this; for you can well understand that ordinary expressions are scarcely to be found for things which are not in the least understood by the ordinary human consciousness, yet are known by clairvoyant consciousness to be a process of salt-deposit of the finest possible kind. In our bony system, in which our ego was modelled beforehand out of the cosmos, and where it has its firmest support so that the whole organism possesses this support, there also we may accordingly expect to find that a “salt-deposit” must have been forecast for us as thinking beings, and here again through the physical process of salt-depositing. In other words we may expect to find salt-deposits in the bony system. And, in actual fact, we do find that the bones consist of phosphate of lime and calcium carbonate, that is, of salt-deposits.

Thus we have, here again, two opposite poles. Man is a thinking being, and it is the thought-process that makes him inwardly a stable being (for, in a certain sense, our thought-system is our inner bony system; we have definite, sharply-outlined thoughts; and though our feelings are more or less indefinite, wavering, and different in each one of us, the thought-systems are inserted in stable form in the feeling system). Now whereas these stable insertions of thought in the conscious life manifest themselves through a sort of animated, mobile process of salt-depositing, that which prepares the way for these in the bony system, giving them the right support, expresses itself in the fact that the macrocosm out of its own formative processes so builds up our bony system that a part of its nature consists of deposited salts. These deposited salts of the bony system are the quiescent element in us: they are the opposite pole to those inner vital activities which are at play in the process of salt-depositing corresponding to the principle of thought. Thus we are made capable of thought through influences acting from two sides upon our organisation: from one side unconsciously through the fact that our bony system is built up within us; from the other side consciously in that we ourselves bring about, after the model of our bone-building process, conscious processes which manifest themselves as of like nature in our organism, and of which we may say that they are inwardly active processes. For the salt that is here formed must again at once be dissolved by sleep, must be got rid of, for otherwise it would induce destructive processes, causing dissolution. Thus we have processes that begin with salt-depositings and then are followed by destructive processes, constituting a sort of reactionary process. In the re-dissolving of the deposits, beneficent sleep acts upon us in the way we need, to the end that we may ever anew develop conscious thought in our fully awake life of day.

If we proceed further, we can understand that all processes which occur within the human organism must take place between these two polar-extremes of salt-formation. It is with the process of salt-formation in the spiritual sense that we have here to do, but this must be conceived as I have to-day explained it. It will not do simply to say: “Thinking is a process of salt-formation”; for people will then imagine what is now popularly conceived by the untrained person as the process of salt-formation; and then it will be easy to say that Spiritual Science maintains absurdities and nonsense. Between these processes, which must be conceived only in the sense we have indicated, there lie all the other processes to which we have called attention. For, if we have salt-formation occurring in a vitally active thought-process, and the opposite pole of this in the salt-formation of our bony system which has to a certain extent come to rest, we can likewise affirm that we have all through our organs the opposite pole of what we may designate as the liquefying process, as inner coagulation, as a flocculent process, albumen-like insertions or something similar. In this case, again, it is not to be found only under the influence of our own feeling life, which takes its course more in the depths of the soul, but from the bone-building process also. In this connection we must say that all processes which are more inward in character (which belong more to the soul and to the central processes of our organism than does the bone-forming process) are involved in the unconscious liquefying processes and thickening of substances which are formed and deposited as we have described. Now the first thing we come upon here is something in which the bone-building process is actually involved, namely, those liquefying processes to be found in what is mingled with the bone-salts as the so-called bone-glue. In these processes the other pole of our bony system participates and thereby meets that which forms the physical correlative of our feeling process. The process connected with the will impulse expresses itself in a warmth process, an inner warming process, so to speak. Processes of combustion, the formation of combinations which we call inner processes of oxidation, occur throughout our entire organisation; and, in so far as these go on below the threshold of consciousness and have nothing to do with the conscious life, will-impulses and the like, they belong to that other part of our organisation which is shut off by the corresponding organs and is susceptible to influence from the subconscious life.

The human being is thus protected inwardly on one side by a part of his organism in which these processes take their course much as they do outwardly in the macrocosm; and on the other side his protection is such that these processes are connected with his soul-processes, and are of a finer kind as has been explained. And so these physiological processes take place in our organism, salt-forming, liquefying, and warmth producing processes, which are the result of our conscious life; and others which take place outside our conscious life, in such a way that they furnish the basis for what prepares itself beforehand in the human organism in order that the processes adapted to the conscious life may take place. Our organism as a whole is thus a texture woven of those processes which we must describe as belonging in part to our conscious life and in part to the unconscious. It is an extraordinarily significant fact that our organism actually does represent a union formed out of two polaric extremes: that processes of coarser nature take place in such a way that they radiate into the organism, as it were, out of the macrocosm; and that, on the other hand, there are processes of a finer sort which arise out of our conscious life.

Now, since the organism is a single whole and all these parts interpenetrate and influence one another, the situation in this organism, as we have it to-day, is such that all these processes likewise play into one another and that we cannot so separate them one from another as to fix definite boundaries between them. One process plays into another. You need consider only the blood, the most vitally active and finest element. In this element you may perceive a stimulator of the salt-forming process, the process of condensation of a fluid, and the warming process. And likewise in all the systems of organs you may perceive how these processes take their course, and how they are stimulated. Let us therefore say, for example, that when we take nutritive substances from without into our digestive canal these nutritive substances have within themselves what I have called “external vital activity.” They pass through what we may call the first stage of filtering by being taken in and digested by the stomach and what pertains to it; and they are then worked up in more special details by the inner cosmic system, and conveyed to where they can also nourish the finest instrument of the organism, the blood. Thus it is the inner cosmic system which undertakes this first filtering of the nutritive substances, which then have to be conveyed to all the other systems. At the same time, since we have recognised a series of stages in the organic systems of man, we may readily conceive that the most delicate system of all, the blood, must take into itself the most completely filtered vital activities of the nutriment, and that, when anything whatever enters into the blood, it contains by that time only the very least possible amount of that inner vital activity that was in the substances when they were taken in by the stomach. When the substances enter into the stomach they still contain a considerable part of their own nature and essential character, their own vital activity. But when once they are in the blood they must have surrendered all this, in so far as they are nutritive substances that have been conducted into the blood, and must have become something new. The blood is thus something which shields inwardly, in the highest degree, all its processes, something that carries on its processes in the greatest measure independently of the outer world. Such is the blood from he one point of view.

But we have already indicated that this blood is like a tablet which is equally exposed on its two sides, exposed, that is, to impressions coming from both directions. It is turned on the one side to the subconscious processes in the deeper regions of the human organism, where the nutritive substances, after going through filtering processes, come up and force their way to the blood. The influence of everything occurring there is diminished by the sympathetic nervous system, so that it does not reach our consciousness. And the other side of the tablet must be turned by the blood to the experiences of the conscious life of the soul. Not only the unconscious activities of the ego, which work up from the bony system, but also the conscious soul-activities, belonging to the other ego, must penetrate into the blood. They must be able to metamorphose themselves by the time they reach the blood, in order that they then may become the expression of what we have about us in our environment as physical-sensible world; for of course that which is woven into the plant world as ether-body, for example, is not visible to normal consciousness. It is the physical world, first of all, that we have around us; and, for the normal consciousness, we ourselves belong only to the physical world. Thus we expose this other side of our “blood-tablet” to the physical-sensible world which then becomes the content of our consciousness. The entire soul-life, as it is stimulated into thought through the impressions of the physical-sensible world and as it flames into feelings and is stirred into impulses of will, must find its instrument in the blood-system in so far as it is conscious ego-life.

And what does this signify? Nothing other than this: that not only are we able to have in our blood that into which the nutritive substances have been changed, when they have been driven upward from the subconscious and filtered to the point where they may lead a life of their own in the blood, shielded from all macrocosmic laws; but also that there must be inscribed on the other side of the tablet of the blood all that occurs in the physical-sensible realm, in the lifeless matter of the physical-sensible world, which is known to us through sense-impressions and appears to our consciousness, at first, in the form of everything that can make impressions. For whatever goes to make up life can become known to the normal consciousness only through combinations of physical sense-impressions. In reality it becomes known only through the next higher super-sensible member, the ether-body. Thus the blood must be capable of being also related to the physical-sensible world just as this immediately surrounds us.

We may, accordingly, expect to find that something is incorporated into the blood which, we might say, does not manifest itself there as if it were due to the influence of processes working up from the lower depths of our nature, but rather as if it were due to the influence of external macrocosmic laws and vital activities. We must have in our blood, therefore, something that is similar in character and action to direct external processes, which take their course outside of us in the same way in which they gradually come later to take their course within our organism. That is, there must be physical, chemical, inorganic processes which take their course within our blood, which are necessary to enable our ego to take part in the physical world. Thus we shall have to seek in the blood for processes wherein substances can act through their physical-sensible character, in accordance with what they are in the macrocosm. And this we do find, as a matter of fact, in that something is presented to us in the red corpuscles which shows us that it is just beginning to live, and is at the point where it passes over to the state of lifelessness. And from the other side of the tablet something is incorporated into the blood which we may call a process easily comparable to an external process of combustion. In short we have in the blood, disposed on the other side, and recognisable even physically, everything that makes man a physical-sensible being through the fact that in the blood he has an instrument for his ego which is living in this physical-sensible world.

Thus, even concerning the organisation of the blood, physical chemical research itself can show us how significant, how illuminating, occult premisses may be for what is presented to direct inquiry into the physiology of man.

From all the foregoing we may say that we have in the human organism, in the first place, processes which are stimulated by the blood-process in so far as this is related to the outside world, and which constitute physical-sensible processes of the outside world; but that we have also other processes which reach as far as the blood-system from the other direction, and are fitted into this system after they have been filtered to the last degree. Only when we clearly perceive this will the blood appear to us the truly important organ it is. We shall see that it has on the one hand turned its entire being, so to speak, toward life in the very lowest and most basic forms that we know round about us, so that it almost becomes a material substance which tends continually to evoke physical chemical processes in order to be able to serve as an instrument for the ego; and on the other hand that it is the most completely shielded of substances, which carries on inner processes that could not be carried on anywhere else, because everything which is pre-requisite to those processes is dependent upon all the other processes that fit themselves into the processes of the blood. In other words the finest and highest processes which are stimulated out of the depths of our organism unite, within the circuit of our blood, with the other, the physical chemical processes, which obey the laws of the external world. In no other substance does the physical-sensible world come into such direct contact, as does the blood, with something of an entirely different character which, for its very existence, presupposes the activity of super-sensible systems of force. In fact, this blood is something in which the lowliest that man can see in processes around him is blended with the loftiest that can take on organic form within his nature.

It will be entirely clear to us, therefore, that in these blood-processes we have before us something which, if it becomes irregular, unrhythmical, must cause irregularities in the greatest measure in our entire organism. And since the blood is the expression of the whole collection of organic processes we shall have to consider carefully, in connection with irregularities of the blood, where abnormal phenomena are manifest, difficult to distinguish individually, to which particular course of processes we must attribute these irregularities. If, for instance, they are to be found in those processes in the blood-channels which follow the pattern of physical chemical processes in the outer world, we shall then have to be quite clear that these irregularities, which we must learn to recognise and not confuse them, must be dealt with from the side of consciousness, in so far as this consciousness is associated with the physical plane. And here a field is opened, a therapeutic field, which we may think of as one by way of which we shall learn to see whether certain irregularities in the circulation of the blood are connected with such processes as we may call in the true sense of the term physical chemical processes. We shall then be able to intervene by means of such external impressions and appropriate control of external sense-impressions as we can evoke in dealing with a human being, in this case such external impressions as can produce physical chemical processes, that is, through everything which we can convey to the physical organism from without. By this we mean not so much the soul and spiritual impressions we can employ, though these are also included, as all those especially which we can effect through a control of the breathing process, through watching over the breathing process and also over the reciprocal action of the human organism and the external world through the skin.

Then again we can also see in the blood-organism the most delicate organic processes working from the other direction. And we shall have to understand, with reference to this blood-organism, that it represents the third stage in the refinement of our nutritive substances. If the blood-organism, because it evokes those delicate processes of salt forming, liquefaction and warmth under the influence of external impressions, is thereby predetermined from without in its physical chemical course by the soul-processes themselves, we may ask how this process as a blood-process is determined from within. We must distinguish the function belonging to the blood by reason of the fact that it is blood; but we must also understand that it needs to be nourished just like any other organ: we must consider it in the same way as any other organ that needs to be nourished. And on the other hand we must also recognise it as the organ standing at the highest stage of organic activity. With regard to this activity we must consider especially what we call the inner support of human life. The blood, which is the opposite extreme, so to speak, from the bony system, must be most of all protected in order that in our thinking it may create, as the instrument of thought in so far as this thought has ego-consciousness—that it may be able to create the process we have called salification. This protection must proceed from the blood itself; therefore the blood must above everything be capable of calling forth, spiritually as it were, a spiritual bony system, must be able itself to cause the process of salt-forming. This is a task to which the blood must so devote itself that it can be independent of the other organs, and need only receive from the other organs the least possible support for its own work. Least of all do the vital activities of the other organs play into this salifying process of the blood, so that in respect to this process of salification, in relation to thought, the blood is what most of all makes the organism an inner one.

And how can we fail to recognise this, since our thought is the most inward thing we have, that in which we most completely interiorise ourselves to our normal consciousness? Whereas in our feelings we are, to our normal consciousness, at the border-line between the inner and the outer, and in our will-impulses we come into such strong contact with the outer world that under ordinary circumstances the human being no longer recognises himself in his will-impulses! Man recognises himself always in his thoughts, but not in his impulses of will. This may be seen from the fact that there has been so much controversy in the world over the question of the freedom or absence of freedom of the human will, as well as over its other qualities. In our thought-system, which has its physical correlative in a process of salification, we have the innermost aspect of what the blood has to accomplish as an instrument of the ego. And since the process of salification must be completely interiorised and protected against the other organs, this capacity of the blood may be most of all hindered by abnormalities within it. When we note that the blood is so hindered that it no longer manifests its capacity in this direction, we must understand that it needs to be stimulated to that sort of activity which has fallen below a certain border-line in its own particular life.

But the other situation may come about, in which the inner vital activity of an organ, let us say, in this case, the organ of the blood, whose inner vital activity is destined to develop a life of its own, passes beyond a certain limit, exercises unduly this life of its own. Among all occurring human irregularities this is by far the most serious, since it has most of all to do with cases of illness. Only very seldom have we to deal with the opposite condition. It is generally the case that certain parts of the inner organisation are too little protected and therefore too intensely stimulated. When the blood shows itself to be most highly stimulated, when it shows an excessive tendency to develop this activity, it then becomes necessary to counteract this. We can remedy this by introducing the appropriate vital activities from without. In other words, we co-operate in the process of salification, of salt-depositing, by the therapeutic introduction of such substances as contribute to bring it about. This leads us at once to see that a kind of system may be introduced into the way in which we have to deal with the irregularities of our organism.

We may now proceed still farther in this direction. When the organs of our inner astral world, our inner cosmic system, spleen, liver, gall-bladder, etc., are excessive in their inner vital activity, as regards the special character of their functions, how can we deal with them? Here we must call to our minds, above all, that these organs are appointed to a work which goes on all the way up to the circulation of the blood; that they have to prepare beforehand, so to speak, the entire organism, have to direct the nutritive substances as far as the blood by taking them over as they are conveyed into the digestive canal and leading them, with their vital activities transformed, to the blood-system. Hence they are the mediators between these two systems. Just as the blood-system manifests the greatest quickening of inner activity, in so far as it constitutes the thought-system, so it takes on an activity that manifests a connection with our life of feeling, in the way we described when we said that in the process of condensation, of inner liquefaction, the blood-system is supported by what radiates from our inner cosmic system. The blood is left almost entirely to itself in so far as it is the instrument of the element of thought in us; it is stimulated by what radiates upward, by that in which the organs of the inner cosmic system participate, through their own action—so that we have here to call attention to an activity which goes even beyond the individual life of the blood and directs us to the individual life of these organs belonging to the inner cosmic system.

Now, when the functions of these organs, liver, gallbladder, kidneys, lungs, and the rest, develop too intense a vital activity, an overflow of life, we are then concerned with the question how we may in similar fashion deal therapeutically with these processes. We have to paralyse the inner vital activities by introducing something which is adapted to maintain the activity, the vitality, of external cosmic life and thus to paralyse the exaggerated inner vitality. Just as we combat the excessive inner vital activities of the blood, paralyse them, so to speak, by introducing salt-containing substances, so we may also reduce the excessive activity of these organs by introducing substances which develop their own inner vital activities and work in opposition to those of the organs concerned.

Thus the question now arises for us, how we can work on these organs and also on the lowest organs, which have a still lower function: on those digestive organs, namely, which have to do with the preliminary preparation of the nutritive substances for the inner cosmic system. In other words, how shall we deal with the individual organic systems when we consider their gradual upbuilding, stage by stage? In tomorrow's lecture we shall answer the question, “How does the picture of a diseased organ appear to us in the light of occult physiology?” And we shall also show how other organs are incorporated, for example, the system of muscles. And we shall bring our reflections to an end by showing that what confronts us in the already evolved organism is quite plainly connected with the becoming organism, with the human germinal life, indeed, it is precisely here that this is so very distinct, if we are able to presuppose occult principles. It will then become clear to us, quite of itself, how the remaining members participate in the work of the human physical organisation.

• 1. See Grundlegendes fur eine Erweiterung der Heilkunst nach geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen, 1925 Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, Dornach.

On The Fate of The Lower "Principles"

Enq. You spoke of Kama-loka, what is it?

Theo. When the man dies, his lower three principles leave him for ever; i. e., body, life, and the vehicle of the latter, the astral body or the double of the living man. And then, his four principles — the central or middle principle, the animal soul or Kama-rupa, with what it has assimilated from the lower Manas, and the higher triad find themselves in Kama-loka. The latter is an astral locality, the limbus of scholastic theology, the Hades of the ancients, and, strictly speaking, a locality only in a relative sense. It has neither a definite area nor boundary, but exists within subjective space; i. e., is beyond our sensuous perceptions. Still it exists, and it is there that the astral eidolons of all the beings that have lived, animals included, await their second death. For the animals it comes with the disintegration and the entire fading out of their astral particles to the last. For the human eidolon it begins when the Atma-Buddhi-Manasic triad is said to "separate" itself from its lower principles, or the reflection of the ex-personality, by falling into the Devachanic state.

Enq. And what happens after this?

Theo. Then the Kama-rupic phantom, remaining bereft of its informing thinking principle, the higher Manas, and the lower aspect of the latter, the animal intelligence, no longer receiving light from the higher mind, and no longer having a physical brain to work through, collapses.

Enq. In what way?

Theo. Well, it falls into the state of the frog when certain portions of its brain are taken out by the vivisector. It can think no more, even on the lowest animal plane. Henceforth it is no longer even the lower Manas, since this "lower" is nothing without the "higher."

Enq. And is it this nonentity which we find materializing in Seance rooms with Mediums?

Theo. It is this nonentity. A true nonentity, however, only as to reasoning or cogitating powers, still an Entity, however astral and fluidic, as shown in certain cases when, having been magnetically and unconsciously drawn toward a medium, it is revived for a time and lives in him by proxy, so to speak. This "spook," or the Kama-rupa, may be compared with the jelly-fish, which has an ethereal gelatinous appearance so long as it is in its own element, or water (the medium's specific AURA), but which, no sooner is it thrown out of it, than it dissolves in the hand or on the sand, especially in sunlight. In the medium's Aura, it lives a kind of vicarious life and reasons and speaks either through the medium's brain or those of other persons present. But this would lead us too far, and upon other people's grounds, whereon I have no desire to trespass. Let us keep to the subject of reincarnation.

Enq. What of the latter? How long does the incarnating Ego remain in the Devachanic state?

Theo. This, we are taught, depends on the degree of spirituality and the merit or demerit of the last incarnation. The average time is from ten to fifteen centuries, as I already told you.

Enq. But why could not this Ego manifest and communicate with mortals as Spiritualists will have it? What is there to prevent a mother from communicating with the children she left on earth, a husband with his wife, and so on? It is a most consoling belief, I must confess; nor do I wonder that those who believe in it are so averse to give it up.

Theo. Nor are they forced to, unless they happen to prefer truth to fiction, however "consoling." Uncongenial our doctrines may be to Spiritualists; yet, nothing of what we believe in and teach is half as selfish and cruel as what they preach.

Enq. I do not understand you. What is selfish?

Theo. Their doctrine of the return of Spirits, the real "personalities" as they say; and I will tell you why. If Devachan — call it "paradise" if you like, a "place of bliss and of supreme felicity," if it is anything — is such a place (or say state), logic tells us that no sorrow or even a shade of pain can be experienced therein. "God shall wipe away all the tears from the eyes" of those in paradise, we read in the book of many promises. And if the "Spirits of the dead" are enabled to return and see all that is going on on earth, and especially in their homes, what kind of bliss can be in store for them?

WHY THEOSOPHISTS DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE RETURN OF PURE "SPIRITS"

Enq. What do you mean? Why should this interfere with their bliss?

Theo. Simply this; and here is an instance. A mother dies, leaving behind her little helpless children — orphans whom she adores — perhaps a beloved husband also. We say that her "Spirit" or Ego — that individuality which is now all impregnated, for the entire Devachanic period, with the noblest feelings held by its late personality, i.e., love for her children, pity for those who suffer, and so on — we say that it is now entirely separated from the "vale of tears," that its future bliss consists in that blessed ignorance of all the woes it left behind. Spiritualists say, on the contrary, that it is as vividly aware of them, and more so than before, for "Spirits see more than mortals in the flesh do." We say that the bliss of the Devachanee consists in its complete conviction that it has never left the earth, and that there is no such thing as death at all; that the post-mortem spiritual consciousness of the mother will represent to her that she lives surrounded by her children and all those whom she loved; that no gap, no link, will be missing to make her disembodied state the most perfect and absolute happiness. The Spiritualists deny this point blank. According to their doctrine, unfortunate man is not liberated even by death from the sorrows of this life. Not a drop from the life-cup of pain and suffering will miss his lips; and nolens volens, since he sees everything now, shall he drink it to the bitter dregs. Thus, the loving wife, who during her lifetime was ready to save her husband sorrow at the price of her heart's blood, is now doomed to see, in utter helplessness, his despair, and to register every hot tear he sheds for her loss. Worse than that, she may see the tears dry too soon, and another beloved face shine on him, the father of her children; find another woman replacing her in his affections; doomed to hear her orphans giving the holy name of "mother" to one indifferent to them, and to see those little children neglected, if not ill-treated. According to this doctrine the "gentle wafting to immortal life" becomes without any transition the way into a new path of mental suffering! And yet, the columns of the "Banner of Light," the veteran journal of the American Spiritualists, are filled with messages from the dead, the "dear departed ones," who all write to say how very happy they are! Is such a state of knowledge consistent with bliss? Then "bliss" stands in such a case for the greatest curse, and orthodox damnation must be a relief in comparison to it!

Enq. But how does your theory avoid this? How can you reconcile the theory of Soul's omniscience with its blindness to that which is taking place on earth?

Theo. Because such is the law of love and mercy. During every Devachanic period the Ego, omniscient as it is per se, clothes itself, so to say, with the reflection of the "personality" that was. I have just told you that the ideal efflorescence of all the abstract, therefore undying and eternal qualities or attributes, such as love and mercy, the love of the good, the true and the beautiful, that ever spoke in the heart of the living "personality," clung after death to the Ego, and therefore followed it to Devachan. For the time being, then, the Ego becomes the ideal reflection of the human being it was when last on earth, and that is not omniscient. Were it that, it would never be in the state we call Devachan at all.

Enq. What are your reasons for it?

Theo. If you want an answer on the strict lines of our philosophy, then I will say that it is because everything is illusion (Maya) outside of eternal truth, which has neither form, colour, nor limitation. He who has placed himself beyond the veil of maya — and such are the highest Adepts and Initiates — can have no Devachan. As to the ordinary mortal, his bliss in it is complete. It is an absolute oblivion of all that gave it pain or sorrow in the past incarnation, and even oblivion of the fact that such things as pain or sorrow exist at all. The Devachanee lives its intermediate cycle between two incarnations surrounded by everything it had aspired to in vain, and in the companionship of everyone it loved on earth. It has reached the fulfilment of all its soul-yearnings. And thus it lives throughout long centuries an existence of unalloyed happiness, which is the reward for its sufferings in earth-life. In short, it bathes in a sea of uninterrupted felicity spanned only by events of still greater felicity in degree.

Enq. But this is more than simple delusion, it is an existence of insane hallucinations!

Theo. From your standpoint it may be, not so from that of philosophy. Besides which, is not our whole terrestrial life filled with such delusions? Have you never met men and women living for years in a fool's paradise? And because you should happen to learn that the husband of a wife, whom she adores and believes herself as beloved by him, is untrue to her, would you go and break her heart and beautiful dream by rudely awakening her to the reality? I think not. I say it again, such oblivion and hallucination — if you call it so — are only a merciful law of nature and strict justice. At any rate, it is a far more fascinating prospect than the orthodox golden harp with a pair of wings. The assurance that "the soul that lives ascends frequently and runs familiarly through the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem, visiting the patriarchs and prophets, saluting the apostles, and admiring the army of martyrs" may seem of a more pious character to some. Nevertheless, it is a hallucination of a far more delusive character, since mothers love their children with an immortal love, we all know, while the personages mentioned in the "heavenly Jerusalem" are still of a rather doubtful nature. But I would, still, rather accept the "new Jerusalem," with its streets paved like the show windows of a jeweller's shop, than find consolation in the heartless doctrine of the Spiritualists. The idea alone that the intellectual conscious souls of one's father, mother, daughter or brother find their bliss in a "Summer land" — only a little more natural, but just as ridiculous as the "New Jerusalem" in its description — would be enough to make one lose every respect for one's "departed ones." To believe that a pure spirit can feel happy while doomed to witness the sins, mistakes, treachery, and, above all, the sufferings of those from whom it is severed by death and whom it loves best, without being able to help them, would be a maddening thought.

Enq. There is something in your argument. I confess to having never seen it in this light.

Theo. Just so, and one must be selfish to the core and utterly devoid of the sense of retributive justice, to have ever imagined such a thing. We are with those whom we have lost in material form, and far, far nearer to them now, than when they were alive. And it is not only in the fancy of the Devachanee, as some may imagine, but in reality. For pure divine love is not merely the blossom of a human heart, but has its roots in eternity. Spiritual holy love is immortal, and Karma brings sooner or later all those who loved each other with such a spiritual affection to incarnate once more in the same family group. Again we say that love beyond the grave, illusion though you may call it, has a magic and divine potency which reacts on the living. A mother's Ego filled with love for the imaginary children it sees near itself, living a life of happiness, as real to it as when on earth — that love will always be felt by the children in flesh. It will manifest in their dreams, and often in various events — in providential protections and escapes, for love is a strong shield, and is not limited by space or time. As with this Devachanic "mother," so with the rest of human relationships and attachments, save the purely selfish or material. Analogy will suggest to you the rest.

Enq. In no case, then, do you admit the possibility of the communication of the living with the disembodied spirit?

Theo. Yes, there is a case, and even two exceptions to the rule. The first exception is during the few days that follow immediately the death of a person and before the Ego passes into the Devachanic state. Whether any living mortal, save a few exceptional cases — (when the intensity of the desire in the dying person to return for some purpose forced the higher consciousness to remain awake, and therefore it was really the individuality, the "Spirit" that communicated) — has derived much benefit from the return of the spirit into the objective plane is another question. The spirit is dazed after death and falls very soon into what we call "pre-devachanic unconsciousness." The second exception is found in the Nirmanakayas.

Enq. What about them? And what does the name mean for you?

Theo. It is the name given to those who, though they have won the right to Nirvana and cyclic rest — (not "Devachan," as the latter is an illusion of our consciousness, a happy dream, and as those who are fit for Nirvana must have lost entirely every desire or possibility of the world's illusions) — have out of pity for mankind and those they left on earth renounced the Nirvanic state. Such an adept, or Saint, or whatever you may call him, believing it a selfish act to rest in bliss while mankind groans under the burden of misery produced by ignorance, renounces Nirvana, and determines to remain invisible in spirit on this earth. They have no material body, as they have left it behind; but otherwise they remain with all their principles even in astral life in our sphere. And such can and do communicate with a few elect ones, only surely not with ordinary mediums.

Enq. I have put you the question about Nirmanakayas because I read in some German and other works that it was the name given to the terrestrial appearances or bodies assumed by Buddhas in the Northern Buddhistic teachings.

Theo. So they are, only the Orientalists have confused this terrestrial body by understanding it to be objective and physical instead of purely astral and subjective.

Enq. And what good can they do on earth?

Theo. Not much, as regards individuals, as they have no right to interfere with Karma, and can only advise and inspire mortals for the general good. Yet they do more beneficent actions than you imagine.

Enq. To this Science would never subscribe, not even modern psychology. For them, no portion of intelligence can survive the physical brain. What would you answer them?

Theo. I would not even go to the trouble of answering, but would simply say, in the words given to "M. A. Oxon," "Intelligence is perpetuated after the body is dead. Though it is not a question of the brain only. . . . It is reasonable to propound the indestructibility of the human spirit from what we know" (Spirit Identity, p. 69).

Enq. But "M. A. Oxon" is a Spiritualist?

Theo. Quite so, and the only true Spiritualist I know of, though we may still disagree with him on many a minor question. Apart from this, no Spiritualist comes nearer to the occult truths than he does. Like any one of us he speaks incessantly "of the surface dangers that beset the ill-equipped, feather-headed muddler with the occult, who crosses the threshold without counting the cost." ¹ Our only disagreement rests in the question of "Spirit Identity." Otherwise, I, for one, coincide almost entirely with him, and accept the three propositions he embodied in his address of July, 1884. It is this eminent Spiritualist, rather, who disagrees with us, not we with him.

Enq. What are these propositions?

Theo. "l. That there is a life coincident with, and independent of the physical life of the body."

"2. That, as a necessary corollary, this life extends beyond the life of the body" (we say it extends throughout Devachan).

"3. That there is communication between the denizens of that state of existence and those of the world in which we now live."

All depend, you see, on the minor and secondary aspects of these fundamental propositions. Everything depends on the views we take of Spirit and Soul, or Individuality and Personality. Spiritualists confuse the two "into one"; we separate them, and say that, with the exceptions above enumerated, no Spirit will revisit the earth, though the animal Soul may. But let us return once more to our direct subject, the Skandhas.

Enq. I begin to understand better now. It is the Spirit, so to say, of those Skandhas which are the most ennobling, which, attaching themselves to the incarnating Ego, survive, and are added to the stock of its angelic experiences. And it is the attributes connected with the material Skandhas, with selfish and personal motives, which, disappearing from the field of action between two incarnations, reappear at the subsequent incarnation as Karmic results to be atoned for; and therefore the Spirit will not leave Devachan. Is it so?

Theo. Very nearly so. If you add to this that the law of retribution, or Karma, rewarding the highest and most spiritual in Devachan, never fails to reward them again on earth by giving them a further development, and furnishing the Ego with a body fitted for it, then you will be quite correct.

A Few Words About the Skandhas

Enq. What becomes of the other, the lower Skandhas of the personality, after the death of the body? Are they quite destroyed?

Theo. They are and yet they are not — a fresh metaphysical and occult mystery for you. They are destroyed as the working stock in hand of the personality; they remain as Karmic effects, as germs, hanging in the atmosphere of the terrestrial plane, ready to come to life, as so many avenging fiends, to attach themselves to the new personality of the Ego when it reincarnates.

Enq. This really passes my comprehension, and is very difficult to understand.

Theo. Not once that you have assimilated all the details. For then you will see that for logic, consistency, profound philosophy, divine mercy and equity, this doctrine of Reincarnation has not its equal on earth. It is a belief in a perpetual progress for each incarnating Ego, or divine soul, in an evolution from the outward into the inward, from the material to the Spiritual, arriving at the end of each stage at absolute unity with the divine Principle. From strength to strength, from the beauty and perfection of one plane to the greater beauty and perfection of another, with accessions of new glory, of fresh knowledge and power in each cycle, such is the destiny of every Ego, which thus becomes its own Saviour in each world and incarnation.

Enq. But Christianity teaches the same. It also preaches progression.

Theo. Yes, only with the addition of something else. It tells us of the impossibility of attaining Salvation without the aid of a miraculous Saviour, and therefore dooms to perdition all those who will not accept the dogma. This is just the difference between Christian theology and Theosophy. The former enforces belief in the Descent of the Spiritual Ego into the Lower Self; the latter inculcates the necessity of endeavouring to elevate oneself to the Christos, or Buddhi state.

Enq. By teaching the annihilation of consciousness in case of failure, however, don't you think that it amounts to the annihilation of Self, in the opinion of the non-metaphysical?

Theo. From the standpoint of those who believe in the resurrection of the body literally, and insist that every bone, every artery and atom of flesh will be raised bodily on the Judgment Day — of course it does. If you still insist that it is the perishable form and finite qualities that make up immortal man, then we shall hardly understand each other. And if you do not understand that, by limiting the existence of every Ego to one life on earth, you make of Deity an ever-drunken Indra of the Puranic dead letter, a cruel Moloch, a god who makes an inextricable mess on Earth, and yet claims thanks for it, then the sooner we drop the conversation the better.

Enq. But let us return, now that the subject of the Skandhas is disposed of, to the question of the consciousness which survives death. This is the point which interests most people. Do we possess more knowledge in Devachan than we do in Earth life?

Theo. In one sense, we can acquire more knowledge; that is, we can develop further any faculty which we loved and strove after during life, provided it is concerned with abstract and ideal things, such as music, painting, poetry, etc., since Devachan is merely an idealized and subjective continuation of earth-life.

Enq. But if in Devachan the Spirit is free from matter, why should it not possess all knowledge?

Theo. Because, as I told you, the Ego is, so to say, wedded to the memory of its last incarnation. Thus, if you think over what I have said, and string all the facts together, you will realize that the Devachanic state is not one of omniscience, but a transcendental continuation of the personal life just terminated. It is the rest of the soul from the toils of life.

Enq. But the scientific materialists assert that after the death of man nothing remains; that the human body simply disintegrates into its component elements; and that what we call soul is merely a temporary self-consciousness produced as a bye-product of organic action, which will evaporate like steam. Is not theirs a strange state of mind?

Theo. Not strange at all, that I see. If they say that self-consciousness ceases with the body, then in their case they simply utter an unconscious prophecy, for once they are firmly convinced of what they assert, no conscious after-life is possible for them. For there are exceptions to every rule.

On post-Mortem and post-Natal Consciousness

Enq. But if human self-consciousness survives death as a rule, why should there be exceptions? ²

Theo. In the fundamental principles of the spiritual world no exception is possible. But there are rules for those who see, and rules for those who prefer to remain blind.

Enq. Quite so, I understand. This is but an aberration of the blind man, who denies the existence of the sun because he does not see it. But after death his spiritual eyes will certainly compel him to see. Is this what you mean?

Theo. He will not be compelled, nor will he see anything. Having persistently denied during life the continuance of existence after death, he will be unable to see it, because his spiritual capacity having been stunted in life, it cannot develop after death, and he will remain blind. By insisting that he must see it, you evidently mean one thing and I another. You speak of the spirit from the spirit, or the flame from the flame — of Atma, in short — and you confuse it with the human soul — Manas. . . . You do not understand me; let me try to make it clear. The whole gist of your question is to know whether, in the case of a downright materialist, the complete loss of self-consciousness and self-perception after death is possible? Isn't it so? I answer, It is possible. Because, believing firmly in our Esoteric Doctrine, which refers to the post-mortem period, or the interval between two lives or births, as merely a transitory state, I say, whether that interval between two acts of the illusionary drama of life lasts one year or a million, that post-mortem state may, without any breach of the fundamental law, prove to be just the same state as that of a man who is in a dead faint.

Enq. But since you have just said that the fundamental laws of the after death state admit of no exceptions, how can this be?

Theo. Nor do I say that it does admit of an exception. But the spiritual law of continuity applies only to things which are truly real. To one who has read and understood Mandukya Upanishad and Vedanta-Sara all this becomes very clear. I will say more: it is sufficient to understand what we mean by Buddhi and the duality of Manas to gain a clear perception why the materialist may fail to have a self-conscious survival after death. Since Manas, in its lower aspect, is the seat of the terrestrial mind, it can, therefore, give only that perception of the Universe which is based on the evidence of that mind; it cannot give spiritual vision. It is said in the Eastern school, that between Buddhi and Manas (the Ego), or Iswara and Pragna ³ there is in reality no more difference than between a forest and its trees, a lake and its waters, as the Mandukya teaches. One or hundreds of trees dead from loss of vitality, or uprooted, are yet incapable of preventing the forest from being still a forest.

Enq. But, as I understand it, Buddhi represents in this simile the forest, and Manas-taijasi ⁴ the trees. And if Buddha is immortal, how can that which is similar to it, i. e., Manas-taijasi, entirely lose its consciousness till the day of its new incarnation? I cannot understand it.

Theo. You cannot, because you will mix up an abstract representation of the whole with its casual changes of form. Remember that if it can be said of Buddhi-Manas that it is unconditionally immortal, the same cannot be said of the lower Manas, still less of Taijasi, which is merely an attribute. Neither of these, neither Manas nor Taijasi, can exist apart from Buddhi, the divine soul, because the first (Manas) is, in its lower aspect, a qualificative attribute of the terrestrial personality, and the second (Taijasi) is identical with the first, because it is the same Manas only with the light of Buddhi reflected on it. In its turn, Buddhi would remain only an impersonal spirit without this element which it borrows from the human soul, which conditions and makes of it, in this illusive Universe, as it were something separate from the universal soul for the whole period of the cycle of incarnation. Say rather that Buddhi-Manas can neither die nor lose its compound self-consciousness in Eternity, nor the recollection of its previous incarnations in which the two — i.e., the spiritual and the human soul — had been closely linked together. But it is not so in the case of a materialist, whose human soul not only receives nothing from the divine soul, but even refuses to recognise its existence. You can hardly apply this axiom to the attributes and qualifications of the human soul, for it would be like saying that because your divine soul is immortal, therefore the bloom on your cheek must also be immortal; whereas this bloom, like Taijasi, is simply a transitory phenomenon.

Enq. Do I understand you to say that we must not mix in our minds the noumenon with the phenomenon, the cause with its effect?

Theo. I do say so, and repeat that, limited to Manas or the human soul alone, the radiance of Taijasi itself becomes a mere question of time; because both immortality and consciousness after death become, for the terrestrial personality of man, simply conditioned attributes, as they depend entirely on conditions and beliefs created by the human soul itself during the life of its body. Karma acts incessantly: we reap in our after-life only the fruit of that which we have ourselves sown in this.

Enq. But if my Ego can, after the destruction of my body, become plunged in a state of entire unconsciousness, then where can be the punishment for the sins of my past life?

Theo. Our philosophy teaches that Karmic punishment reaches the Ego only in its next incarnation. After death it receives only the reward for the unmerited sufferings endured during its past incarnation.⁵ The whole punishment after death, even for the materialist, consists, therefore, in the absence of any reward, and the utter loss of the consciousness of one's bliss and rest. Karma is the child of the terrestrial Ego, the fruit of the actions of the tree which is the objective personality visible to all, as much as the fruit of all the thoughts and even motives of the spiritual "I"; but Karma is also the tender mother, who heals the wounds inflicted by her during the preceding life, before she will begin to torture this Ego by inflicting upon him new ones. If it may be said that there is not a mental or physical suffering in the life of a mortal which is not the direct fruit and consequence of some sin in a preceding existence; on the other hand, since he does not preserve the slightest recollection of it in his actual life, and feels himself not deserving of such punishment, and therefore thinks he suffers for no guilt of his own, this alone is sufficient to entitle the human soul to the fullest consolation, rest, and bliss in his post-mortem existence. Death comes to our spiritual selves ever as a deliverer and friend. For the materialist, who, notwithstanding his materialism, was not a bad man, the interval between the two lives will be like the unbroken and placid sleep of a child, either entirely dreamless, or filled with pictures of which he will have no definite perception; while for the average mortal it will be a dream as vivid as life, and full of realistic bliss and visions.

Enq. Then the personal man must always go on suffering blindly the Karmic penalties which the Ego has incurred?

Theo. Not quite so. At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshalled before him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the personal becomes one with the individual and all-knowing Ego. But this instant is enough to show to him the whole chain of causes which have been at work during his life. He sees and now understands himself as he is, unadorned by flattery or self-deception. He reads his life, remaining as a spectator looking down into the arena he is quitting; he feels and knows the justice of all the suffering that has overtaken him.

Enq. Does this happen to everyone?

Theo. Without any exception. Very good and holy men see, we are taught, not only the life they are leaving, but even several preceding lives in which were produced the causes that made them what they were in the life just closing. They recognise the law of Karma in all its majesty and justice.

Enq. Is there anything corresponding to this before re-birth?

Theo. There is. As the man at the moment of death has a retrospective insight into the life he has led, so, at the moment he is reborn on to earth, the Ego, awaking from the state of Devachan, has a prospective vision of the life which awaits him, and realizes all the causes that have led to it. He realizes them and sees futurity, because it is between Devachan and re-birth that the Ego regains his full manasic consciousness, and rebecomes for a short time the god he was, before, in compliance with Karmic law, he first descended into matter and incarnated in the first man of flesh. The "golden thread" sees all its "pearls" and misses not one of them.

What is Really Meant by Annihilation

Enq. I have heard some Theosophists speak of a golden thread on which their lives were strung. What do they mean by this?

Theo. In the Hindu Sacred books it is said that that which undergoes periodical incarnation is the Sutratma, which means literally the "Thread Soul." It is a synonym of the reincarnating Ego — Manas conjoined with Buddhi — which absorbs the Manasic recollections of all our preceding lives. It is so called, because, like the pearls on a thread, so is the long series of human lives strung together on that one thread. In some Upanishad these recurrent re-births are likened to the life of a mortal which oscillates periodically between sleep and waking.

Enq. This, I must say, does not seem very clear, and I will tell you why. For the man who awakes, another day commences, but that man is the same in soul and body as he was the day before; whereas at every incarnation a full change takes place not only of the external envelope, sex, and personality, but even of the mental and psychic capacities. The simile does not seem to me quite correct. The man who arises from sleep remembers quite clearly what he has done yesterday, the day before, and even months and years ago. But none of us has the slightest recollection of a preceding life or of any fact or event concerning it. . . . I may forget in the morning what I have dreamt during the night, still I know that I have slept and have the certainty that I lived during sleep; but what recollection can I have of my past incarnation until the moment of death? How do you reconcile this?

Theo. Some people do recollect their past incarnations during life; but these are Buddhas and Initiates. This is what the Yogis call Samma-Sambuddha, or the knowledge of the whole series of one's past incarnations.

Enq. But we ordinary mortals who have not reached Samma-Sambuddha, how are we to understand this simile?

Theo. By studying it and trying to understand more correctly the characteristics and the three kinds of sleep. Sleep is a general and immutable law for man as for beast, but there are different kinds of sleep and still more different dreams and visions.

Enq. But this takes us to another subject. Let us return to the materialist who, while not denying dreams, which he could hardly do, yet denies immortality in general and the survival of his own individuality.

Theo. And the materialist, without knowing it, is right. One who has no inner perception of, and faith in, the immortality of his soul, in that man the soul can never become Buddhi-taijasi, but will remain simply Manas, and for Manas alone there is no immortality possible. In order to live in the world to come a conscious life, one has to believe first of all in that life during the terrestrial existence. On these two aphorisms of the Secret Science all the philosophy about the post-mortem consciousness and the immortality of the soul is built. The Ego receives always according to its deserts. After the dissolution of the body, there commences for it a period of full awakened consciousness, or a state of chaotic dreams, or an utterly dreamless sleep undistinguishable from annihilation, and these are the three kinds of sleep. If our physiologists find the cause of dreams and visions in an unconscious preparation for them during the waking hours, why cannot the same be admitted for the post-mortem dreams? I repeat it: death is sleep. After death, before the spiritual eyes of the soul, begins a performance according to a programme learnt and very often unconsciously composed by ourselves: the practical carrying out of correct beliefs or of illusions which have been created by ourselves. The Methodist will be Methodist, the Mussulman a Mussulman, at least for some time — in a perfect fool's paradise of each man's creation and making. These are the post-mortem fruits of the tree of life. Naturally, our belief or unbelief in the fact of conscious immortality is unable to influence the unconditioned reality of the fact itself, once that it exists; but the belief or unbelief in that immortality as the property of independent or separate entities, cannot fail to give colour to that fact in its application to each of these entities. Now do you begin to understand it?

Enq. I think I do. The materialist, disbelieving in everything that cannot be proven to him by his five senses, or by scientific reasoning, based exclusively on the data furnished by these senses in spite of their inadequacy, and rejecting every spiritual manifestation, accepts life as the only conscious existence. Therefore according to their beliefs so will it be unto them. They will lose their personal Ego, and will plunge into a dreamless sleep until a new awakening. Is it so?

Theo. Almost so. Remember the practically universal teaching of the two kinds of conscious existence: the terrestrial and the spiritual. The latter must be considered real from the very fact that it is inhabited by the eternal, changeless and immortal Monad; whereas the incarnating Ego dresses itself up in new garments entirely different from those of its previous incarnations, and in which all except its spiritual prototype is doomed to a change so radical as to leave no trace behind.

Enq. How so? Can my conscious terrestrial "I" perish not only for a time, like the consciousness of the materialist, but so entirely as to leave no trace behind?

Theo. According to the teaching, it must so perish and in its fulness, all except the principle which, having united itself with the Monad, has thereby become a purely spiritual and indestructible essence, one with it in the Eternity. But in the case of an out-and-out materialist, in whose personal no Buddhi has ever reflected itself, how can the latter carry away into the Eternity one particle of that terrestrial personality? Your spiritual "I" is immortal; but from your present self it can carry away into Eternity that only which has become worthy of immortality, namely, the aroma alone of the flower that has been mown by death.

Enq. Well, and the flower, the terrestrial "I"?

Theo. The flower, as all past and future flowers which have blossomed and will have to blossom on the mother bough, the Sutratma, all children of one root or Buddhi — will return to dust. Your present "I," as you yourself know, is not the body now sitting before me, nor yet is it what I would call Manas-Sutratma, but Sutratma-Buddhi.

Enq. But this does not explain to me, at all, why you call life after death immortal, infinite and real, and the terrestrial life a simple phantom or illusion; since even that post-mortem life has limits, however much wider they may be than those of terrestrial life.

Theo. No doubt. The spiritual Ego of man moves in eternity like a pendulum between the hours of birth and death. But if these hours, marking the periods of life terrestrial and life spiritual, are limited in their duration, and if the very number of such stages in Eternity between sleep and awakening, illusion and reality, has its beginning and its end, on the other hand, the spiritual pilgrim is eternal. Therefore are the hours of his post-mortem life, when, disembodied, he stands face to face with truth and not the mirages of his transitory earthly existences, during the period of that pilgrimage which we call "the cycle of re-births" — the only reality in our conception. Such intervals, their limitation notwithstanding, do not prevent the Ego, while ever perfecting itself, from following undeviatingly, though gradually and slowly, the path to its last transformation, when that Ego, having reached its goal, becomes a divine being. These intervals and stages help towards this final result instead of hindering it; and without such limited intervals the divine Ego could never reach its ultimate goal. I have given you once already a familiar illustration by comparing the Ego, or the individuality, to an actor, and its numerous and various incarnations to the parts it plays. Will you call these parts or their costumes the individuality of the actor himself? Like that actor, the Ego is forced to play during the cycle of necessity, up to the very threshold of Paranirvana, many parts such as may be unpleasant to it. But as the bee collects its honey from every flower, leaving the rest as food for the earthly worms, so does our spiritual individuality, whether we call it Sutratma or Ego. Collecting from every terrestrial personality, into which Karma forces it to incarnate, the nectar alone of the spiritual qualities and self-consciousness, it unites all these into one whole and emerges from its chrysalis as the glorified Dhyan Chohan. So much the worse for those terrestrial personalities from which it could collect nothing. Such personalities cannot assuredly outlive consciously their terrestrial existence.

Enq. Thus, then, it seems that, for the terrestrial personality, immortality is still conditional. Is, then, immortality itself not unconditional?

Theo. Not at all. But immortality cannot touch the non-existent: for all that which exists as SAT, or emanates from SAT, immortality and Eternity are absolute. Matter is the opposite pole of spirit, and yet the two are one. The essence of all this, i.e., Spirit, Force and Matter, or the three in one, is as endless as it is beginningless; but the form acquired by this triple unity during its incarnations, its externality, is certainly only the illusion of our personal conceptions. Therefore do we call Nirvana and the Universal life alone a reality, while relegating the terrestrial life, its terrestrial personality included, and even its Devachanic existence, to the phantom realm of illusion.

Enq. But why in such a case call sleep the reality, and waking the illusion?

Theo. It is simply a comparison made to facilitate the grasping of the subject, and from the standpoint of terrestrial conceptions it is a very correct one.

Enq. And still I cannot understand, if the life to come is based on justice and the merited retribution for all our terrestrial suffering, how in the case of materialists, many of whom are really honest and charitable men, there should remain of their personality nothing but the refuse of a faded flower.

Theo. No one ever said such a thing. No materialist, however unbelieving, can die for ever in the fulness of his spiritual individuality. What was said is that consciousness can disappear either fully or partially in the case of a materialist, so that no conscious remains of his personality survive.

Enq. But surely this is annihilation?

Theo. Certainly not. One can sleep a dead sleep and miss several stations during a long railway journey, without the slightest recollection or consciousness, and awake at another station and continue the journey past innumerable other halting-places till the end of the journey or the goal is reached. Three kinds of sleep were mentioned to you: the dreamless, the chaotic, and the one which is so real, that to the sleeping man his dreams become full realities. If you believe in the latter why can't you believe in the former; according to the after life a man has believed in and expected, such is the life he will have. He who expected no life to come will have an absolute blank, amounting to annihilation, in the interval between the two re-births. This is just the carrying out of the programme we spoke of, a programme created by the materialists themselves. But there are various kinds of materialists, as you say. A selfish, wicked Egoist, one who never shed a tear for anyone but himself, thus adding entire indifference to the whole world to his unbelief, must, at the threshold of death, drop his personality for ever. This personality having no tendrils of sympathy for the world around and hence nothing to hook on to Sutratma, it follows that with the last breath every connection between the two is broken. There being no Devachan for such a materialist, the Sutratma will re-incarnate almost immediately. But those materialists who erred in nothing but their disbelief will oversleep but one station. And the time will come when that ex-materialist will perceive himself in the Eternity and perhaps repent that he lost even one day, one station, from the life eternal.

Enq. Still, would it not be more correct to say that death is birth into a new life, or a return once more into eternity?

Theo. You may if you like. Only remember that births differ, and that there are births of "still-born" beings, which are failures of nature. Moreover, with your Western fixed ideas about material life, the words "living" and "being" are quite inapplicable to the pure subjective state of post-mortem existence. It is just because, save in a few philosophers who are not read by the many, and who themselves are too confused to present a distinct picture of it, it is just because your Western ideas of life and death have finally become so narrow, that on the one hand they have led to crass materialism, and on the other, to the still more material conception of the other life, which the spiritualists have formulated in their Summer-land. There the souls of men eat, drink, marry, and live in a paradise quite as sensual as that of Mohammed, but even less philosophical. Nor are the average conceptions of the uneducated Christians any better, being if possible still more material. What between truncated angels, brass trumpets, golden harps, and material hell-fires, the Christian heaven seems like a fairy scene at a Christmas pantomime.

It is because of these narrow conceptions that you find such difficulty in understanding. It is just because the life of the disembodied soul, while possessing all the vividness of reality, as in certain dreams, is devoid of every grossly objective form of terrestrial life, that the Eastern philosophers have compared it with visions during sleep.

Definite Words for Definite Things

Enq. Don't you think it is because there are no definite and fixed terms to indicate each "Principle" in man, that such a confusion of ideas arises in our minds with respect to the respective functions of these "Principles"?

Theo. I have thought of it myself. The whole trouble has arisen from this: we have started our expositions of, and discussion about, the "Principles," using their Sanskrit names instead of coining immediately, for the use of Theosophists, their equivalents in English. We must try and remedy this now.

Enq. You will do well, as it may avoid further confusion; no two theosophical writers, it seems to me, have hitherto agreed to call the same "Principle" by the same name.

Theo. The confusion is more apparent than real, however. I have heard some of our Theosophists express surprise at, and criticize several essays speaking of these "principles"; but, when examined, there was no worse mistake in them than that of using the word "Soul" to cover the three principles without specifying the distinctions. The first, as positively the clearest of our Theosophical writers, Mr. A. P. Sinnett, has some comprehensive and admirably-written passages on the "Higher Self." (Vide Transactions of the "LONDON LODGE of the Theos. Soc.," No. 7, Oct., 1885.) His real idea has also been misconceived by some, owing to his using the word "Soul" in a general sense. Yet here are a few passages which will show to you how clear and comprehensive is all that he writes on the subject: —

... "The human soul, once launched on the streams of evolution as a human individuality,⁶ passes through alternate periods of physical and relatively spiritual existence. It passes from the one plane, or stratum, or condition of nature to the other under the guidance of its Karmic affinities; living in incarnations the life which its Karma has pre-ordained; modifying its progress within the limitations of circumstances, and, — developing fresh Karma by its use or abuse of opportunities, — it returns to spiritual existence (Devachan) after each physical life, — through the intervening region of Kamaloca — for rest and refreshment and for the gradual absorption into its essence, as so much cosmic progress, of the life's experience gained "on earth" or during physical existence. This view of the matter will, moreover, have suggested many collateral inferences to anyone thinking over the subject; for instance, that the transfer of consciousness from the Kamaloka to the Devachanic stage of this progression would necessarily be gradual; ⁷ that in truth, no hard-and-fast line separates the varieties of spiritual conditions, that even the spiritual and physical planes, as psychic faculties in living people show, are not so hopelessly walled off from one another as materialistic theories would suggest; that all states of nature are all around us simultaneously, and appeal to different perceptive faculties; and so on. . . . It is clear that during physical existence people who possess psychic faculties remain in connection with the planes of superphysical consciousness; and although most people may not be endowed with such faculties, we all, as the phenomena of sleep, even, and especially . . . those of somnambulism or mesmerism, show, are capable of entering into conditions of consciousness that the five physical senses have nothing to do with. We — the souls within us — are not as it were altogether adrift in the ocean of matter. We clearly retain some surviving interest or rights in the shore from which, for a time, we have floated off. The process of incarnation, therefore, is not fully described when we speak of an alternate existence on the physical and spiritual planes, and thus picture the soul as a complete entity slipping entirely from the one state of existence to the other. The more correct definitions of the process would probably represent incarnation as taking place on this physical plane of nature by reason of an efflux emanating from the soul. The Spiritual realm would all the while be the proper habitat of the Soul, which would never entirely quit it; and that non-materializable portion of the Soul which abides permanently on the spiritual plane may fitly, perhaps, be spoken of as the HIGHER SELF."

This "Higher Self" is ATMA, and of course it is "non-materializable," as Mr. Sinnett says. Even more, it can never be "objective" under any circumstances, even to the highest spiritual perception. For Atman or the "Higher Self" is really Brahma, the ABSOLUTE, and indistinguishable from it. In hours of Samadhi, the higher spiritual consciousness of the Initiate is entirely absorbed in the ONE essence, which is Atman, and therefore, being one with the whole, there can be nothing objective for it. Now some of our Theosophists have got into the habit of using the words "Self" and "Ego" as synonymous, of associating the term "Self" with only man's higher individual or even personal "Self" or Ego, whereas this term ought never to be applied except to the One universal Self. Hence the confusion. Speaking of Manas, the "causal body," we may call it — when connecting it with the Buddhic radiance — the "HIGHER EGO," never the "Higher Self." For even Buddhi, the "Spiritual Soul," is not the SELF, but the vehicle only of SELF. All the other "Selves" — such as the "Individual" self and "personal" self — ought never to be spoken or written of without their qualifying and characteristic adjectives.

Thus in this most excellent essay on the "Higher Self," this term is applied to the sixth principle or Buddhi (of course in conjunction with Manas, as without such union there would be no thinking principle or element in the spiritual soul); and has in consequence given rise to just such misunderstandings. The statement that "a child does not acquire its sixth principle — or become a morally responsible being capable of generating Karma — until seven years old," proves what is meant therein by the HIGHER SELF. Therefore, the able author is quite justified in explaining that after the "Higher Self" has passed into the human being and saturated the personality — in some of the finer organizations only — with its consciousness "people with psychic faculties may indeed perceive this Higher Self through their finer senses from time to time." But so are those, who limit the term "Higher Self" to the Universal Divine Principle, "justified" in misunderstanding him. For, when we read, without being prepared for this shifting of metaphysical terms,⁸ that while "fully manifesting on the physical plane . . . the Higher Self still remains a conscious spiritual Ego on the corresponding plane of Nature" — we are apt to see in the "Higher Self" of this sentence, "Atma," and in the spiritual Ego, "Manas," or rather Buddhi-Manas, and forthwith to criticise the whole thing as incorrect.

To avoid henceforth such misapprehensions, I propose to translate literally from the Occult Eastern terms their equivalents in English, and offer these for future use.

THE HIGHER SELF is Atma the inseparable ray of the Universal and ONE SELF. It is the God above, more than within, us. Happy the man who succeeds in saturating his inner Ego with it!

THE SPIRITUAL divine EGO is the Spiritual soul or Buddhi, in close union with Manas, the mind-principle, without which it is no EGO at all, but only the Atmic Vehicle.

THE INNER, or HIGHER "EGO" is Manas, the "Fifth" Principle, so called, independently of Buddhi. The Mind-Principle is only the Spiritual Ego when merged into one with Buddhi, — no materialist being supposed to have in him such an Ego, however great his intellectual capacities. It is the permanent Individuality or the "Re-incarnating Ego."

THE LOWER, or PERSONAL "EGO" is the physical man in conjunction with his lower Self, i. e., animal instincts, passions, desires, etc. It is called the "false personality," and consists of the lower Manas combined with Kama-rupa, and operating through the Physical body and its phantom or "double."

The remaining "Principle" "Prana," or "Life," is, strictly speaking, the radiating force or Energy of Atma — as the Universal Life and the ONE SELF, — ITS lower or rather (in its effects) more physical, because manifesting, aspect. Prana or Life permeates the whole being of the objective Universe; and is called a "principle" only because it is an indispensable factor and the deus ex machina of the living man.

Enq. This division being so much simplified in its combinations will answer better, I believe. The other is much too metaphysical.

Theo. If outsiders as well as Theosophists would agree to it, it would certainly make matters much more comprehensible.

• 1. "Some things that I do know of Spiritualism and some that I do not."
• 2. A few portions of this chapter and of the preceding were published in Lucifer in the shape of a "Dialogue on the Mysteries of After Life," in the January number, 1889. The article was unsigned, as if it were written by the editor, but it came from the pen of the author of the present volume.
• 3. Iswara is the collective consciousness of the manifested deity, Brahma, i. e., the collective consciousness of the Host of Dhyan Chohans (vide SECRET DOCTRINE); and Pragna is their individual wisdom.
• 4. Taijasi means the radiant in consequence of its union with Buddhi; i. e., Manas, the human soul, illuminated by the radiance of the divine soul. Therefore, Manas-taijasi may be described as radiant mind; the human reason lit by the light of the spirit; and Buddhi-Manas is the revelation of the divine plus human intellect and self-consciousness.
• 5. Some Theosophists have taken exception to this phrase, but the words are those of Master, and the meaning attached to the word "unmerited" is that given above. In the T. P. S. pamphlet No. 6, a phrase, criticised subsequently in LUCIFER, was used which was intended to convey the same idea. In form, however, it was awkward and open to the criticism directed against it; but the essential idea was that men often suffer from the effects of the actions done by others, effects which thus do not strictly belong to their own Karma — and for these sufferings they of course deserve compensation.
• 6. The "re-incarnating Ego," or "Human Soul," as he called it, the Causal Body with the Hindus.
• 7. The length of this "transfer" depends, however, on the degree of spirituality in the ex-personality of the disembodied Ego. For those whose lives were very spiritual this transfer, though gradual, is very rapid. The time becomes longer with the materialistically inclined.
• 8. "Shifting of Metaphysical terms" applies here only to the shifting of their translated equivalents from the Eastern expressions; for to this day there never existed any such terms in English, every Theosophist having to coin his own terms to render his thought. It is nigh time, then, to settle on some definite nomenclature.

We have seen how complicated the personality had to be that had to let all previous spiritual currents flow into a higher current into the world. Two children were called: the Solomon and the Nathan [boy Jesus]. We have seen how, in the twelfth year, the remarkable event occurred that the Zarathustra ego moved into the body of the Nathanian boy. So we have before us a Jesus child who carries within him the ego of Zoroaster [and who] in the astral body holds everything that the Buddha has become since his last incarnation, and [who] in the ether bears that pure etheric body that was preserved from the time before the luciferic influences asserted themselves, which have led man deeper and deeper down into the earthly world.

[The question may arise] why were two Jesus children born? Would not one have been enough, since he was an extract of everything that needed to be developed in the Hebrew people? Nevertheless, it was necessary. In order for all the qualities that Christ Jesus needed to emerge in the body, the most diverse stages of human development had to be gone through. The boy Solomon had the most excellent of all that could arise as perfect physical instruments.

From the time of physical birth until the seventh year, the human being brings forth the best qualities of the physical body; until the fourteenth year, the qualities of the etheric body; then until about the twenty-first year, those of the astral body. Only then are the best qualities of the I developed. What we have in our physical and etheric bodies - with the exception of that essence which we take with us into the devachanic world after death - is what we inherit from our ancestors. Thus the boy Solomon could only inherit what could grow in our physical and etheric bodies. Up to the age of twelve, Zarathustra's I was in those outer limbs that can be fully obtained through inheritance. From the age of twelve, the development of the astral body would have begun. However, this is not inherited, it is still attached to the individuality in the spiritual world. In order for Zarathustra's I to develop in the most perfect astral body, he had to receive the most perfect one. For this, the experiences that the Buddha had gained were necessary, who came from the spiritual culture of India, which was turned away from the earthly. But if the ego of Zarathustra had embodied itself in the Nathanian child, then it would not have received the perfect physical and etheric body that it needed, which had to absorb not only the internal but also everything external, as it could only happen in the royal, not in the priestly line.

After the Zarathustra ego had absorbed everything that one experiences with such perfect tools, it could experience the other, which comes from the perfect etheric and astral body, [it could] develop all the innermost qualities of man.

Now he matured to ascend to an even higher and more perfect level. That happened through that event which is described by the baptism of John in the Jordan. What is it? We must discuss it in order to understand it, the mission of John the Baptist. What was he sent into the world for? It must be borne in mind that humanity goes through different epochs. There was an era when inner revelation and inspiration reigned supreme in the Indian people. (For them, the world was an illusion.) Those who attained inner revelation were the most advanced people of the time.

Everything develops slowly. It has become apparent from two sides that

Firstly, that although people still had inspiration, it became increasingly imperfect. This was the case with the Egyptians.

Secondly, that people gradually developed a sense of the external world; that the world is an external expression of the spirit. This was what Zarathustra had to teach the Persian people, this was his mission. That was the meaning of his doctrine of the sun; [that] Maya is [the] expression of spiritual essence[s]. Man can perceive spirit not only within himself but also through the veil of external illusion. Thus, Zarathustra taught his people the doctrine of light in this world. The tenor of his teaching was something like this: Oh, we humans are still imperfect in terms of our senses and [our] minds. But we will gradually educate ourselves. Behind the illusion is the spiritual meaning of the world, and we will develop in such a way that this spirit will approach us.

It was a teaching of confidence, of hope for a light appearing in the world, that Zarathustra brought to his people. Because Zarathustra was dealing with a special people, he was able to do this.

[There were] two migratory movements. When the Atlantic catastrophe occurred, people began to migrate from west to east. Two migrations: [one went] through Europe and over into Asia. Northern, central and southern Europe were crossed by the northern stream of people, some of whom remained here. [A second stream went] through Africa and over into Asia. There were two folk currents because they were differently predisposed. The northern folk were predisposed to develop intellect and reason, to look outwards. Those who passed through Africa were predisposed to look more inwards, to develop the powers of quiet reflection, not so much to look out into the outer world. The most advanced folk of the northern folk current were the ancient Persians, where Zarathustra worked. The following mood prevailed in the other, African, stream of the people: “No matter how much you work, the outer world is not there to find the spirit in it. It is fragmented, only to be found after death” - Osiris.

Both currents should flow together, the inner and outer. The most perfect from within as a revelation was the ancient Indian - the Egyptian was more imperfect: looking within the soul life. Persian: looking outwards. But one thing was characteristic of all people. They could not yet come to perfect self-awareness, self-consciousness; they lived in the spirit when they dampened down, lowered their consciousness, surrendered it. The Zarathustra people also had to fall into ecstasy, surrendering to lightning, thunder, and the sun. Only after a long evolution did people become mature enough to connect the inner and outer revelations. The time when this became possible had come with the appearance of John the Baptist and Christ Jesus. Before that, there were no people who could experience the revelation of the spirit while maintaining their ego, their self-awareness. What were people like before? They could say to themselves: We can come to the spirit, but we have to leave our best, our ego. We have to give up our self-awareness and be transported into a beyond; we cannot experience the heavenly realms in our earthly human nature.

John the Baptist was able to proclaim that the time had now come when man, by maintaining his self-awareness while preserving his ego, could experience the heavenly realms. That was John's proclamation: The Kingdoms of Heaven have come!

How could he show that this was the case? If people had simply been told that they were mature enough to transfer themselves into the spiritual realm with their ego, they would not have understood it. How could he teach them? Only through the baptism of John. It consisted of complete immersion in water. What happened? You know what happens when someone drowns... The etheric body is drawn out for a while... at that moment people are freed from the hindrances of the physical body.

The fact that the inner man is now ripe to experience the spiritual while maintaining his self-awareness is expressed in the symbol of the baptism in the Jordan. What kind of people were they who were baptized? The first to say: Our ego is now such that it can gradually ascend with self-awareness. [Gap in the transcript] So there were some people who knew what the clock of the world had struck. This small group was able to say to itself: There is an I-center in every human being that can ascend. They knew this from experience. The greatest teachers could have taught this without being understood.

In the past, one could only teach: If you give up your ego and make it objective, you create the conditions for rising up. When you merge with the whole people, do not feel as individuals, but are immersed in the people's ego, when you say to yourselves and feel: I want to be one with Abraham, then through this self-forgetfulness of the ego you can hope to find the spiritual world.

But it is not right to keep what was good for one era and apply it to another. John the Baptist now had to teach differently: the element for rising up had to be found in the self. That was his new teaching.

When the old teachers came up, how did the Baptist address them? The conservatives who wanted to propagate the ancient teachings in the astral immersion... The snake symbol was always chosen for the astral. [He spoke:] You, the snake doctrine, why do you come, you who do not want to recognize what the world clock is showing now?..

Now the one who carried the ego of Zarathustra within him came forth, in the astral body the Nirmanakaya of Buddha, in the etheric body that which was unaffected by the Luciferic principle. The Jesus came and was baptized. He was submerged / gap in the transcript].

Then withdrew from the physical body that excellent, great, pure etheric body, withdrew everything that had lived in Gautama Buddha. The images of all that had gone before, all that had been experienced, stood before him. Thus the Jesus of Nazareth experienced what was in him, what had gradually moved into him. He saw all this in himself. That was the greatest moment on earth that has ever been experienced. In the etheric body, what would have become of humanity if it had not descended to the luciferic influences was revealed: the image of the perfectly pure human being. And what was revealed in his astral body? What Gautama Buddha had experienced was revealed to his soul. Gautama Buddha had seen as an enlightened being back into the entire development of the earth. He had seen how man had become more and more material with each incarnation. Therefore, Buddha could only reflect on what could help people to rise above physical incarnation. A doctrine of pain: everything is suffering. The doctrine of liberation from the earthly body. Therefore, he gave instructions in the doctrine of compassion and love: to attain what could free people. Salvation would have been achieved from suffering. But then the earthly existence would have been lost for people. Buddhism is a religion of salvation. Christianity is a religion of resurrection. Nothing should be lost. Everything should be led over into the spirit. You should consider yourselves as disciples, bringing everything into the spiritual worlds in order to resurrect it in the higher sense. Christianity is a religion of resurrection and revival. The Buddha's ultimate purpose is to free us from pain. The ultimate purpose of Christianity is to transform pain into bliss.

In this world, we should experience something that we cannot experience anywhere else. Our task is to transform the coarse metal into the gold of the spirit. We will transform ourselves if we gradually overcome what lives in us as pain. Overcoming the disease: Overcoming gives strength. Death is the strongest illusion, maya. If everything is deceptive, if maya is mixed into everything, then death is only a lie, is only maya. We are overcoming death. Golgotha is the only place where death appears to us in its truth: as the bringer of new life.

Only within Maya are we separated from what we love. If we overcome the sensual world, the union is all the more intense. It is impossible to be separated from what we love by progressing in spirit. United with what we do not love? We learn to love everything. Not achieving what we desire? We attain such purified desires that physical obstacles do not stand in our way. This is the great progress from the Buddha to the Christ teaching. We should not flee from the world, nor leave it, but take it with us. Buddha wants to free himself from the world. Christ wants to co-redeem the world.

In the Jordan, Jesus of Nazareth experienced that infinite measure of pain that Gautama Buddha once burdened his soul with; this Jesus had to experience. All the glory to which humanity is called stood before him as an image on the one hand, and suffering on the other. He could say to himself: “There is the image that comes from the pure etheric body, which people have forfeited in order to come to the physical body. What is in the other image is what the best have felt, the suffering, the pain for humanity.”

And so this consciousness in Jesus stood alone in the face of all humanity. What did He have to say to Himself? It is impossible to ascend into the spiritual worlds with the consciousness that humanity has gained so far. All of this must be abandoned, and a completely new one must be created: a new etheric body that leads to ever more perfect levels. To do this, it was necessary that what people had achieved so far be shattered at the moment when this consciousness arose.

All this took place in this soul. At the moment when the etheric and astral bodies returned, how did they work? In such a way that all those great sensations, ideas, had a killing, dissolving effect on the physical body. It was too great for this physical body. Two things occurred: Zarathustra's I belonged to this body. Now a new task was set. Zarathustra's ego left him and a new ego, corresponding to that consciousness, moved as a new, as the Christ-ego into the body that had begun to die because the consciousness had become too great. The Christ-consciousness moved into this body.

We have touched here on the secret of the greatest moment in the evolution of the Earth. Behold the Lamb of God, could John say, “who has experienced in his soul all the suffering of humanity.” We must recognize this event not only as cosmic, but also as human. That was the significance of this soul, that it not only longed for redemption, for liberation, but [that it] decided to bring about a new development of time. It was a free decision in the soul of Christ Jesus to live through these three years.

That is the significant thing, that at this moment of John the Baptist's baptism, it was a free decision to take upon himself the whole destiny of humanity.

You will have been able to see from the one lecture given here on more complicated questions of reincarnation that, with further progress in the spiritual-scientific world-view, what we could give in the beginning as elementary truths becomes modified—we gradually rise to higher and higher truths. Still it was right to present the general cosmic truths at first in as simple and elementary a form as possible. It is, however, necessary also to advance slowly step by step from the abc to the higher truths, for only through these higher truths will that gradually be attained which, among other things, spiritual science is intended to give: namely, the possibility of understanding and penetrating the world which surrounds us in the physical, sense-perceptible sphere. Now it is true that we have a long way to go before we shall be able to coordinate the spiritual lines and forces existing behind the sense world. But because of much that has been said in recent lectures various phenomena of our existence will already have become clearer, more understandable. Today we shall proceed a little farther in this regard, and here also we shall speak again about more complicated questions of reincarnation, of re-embodiment.

To that end we must today clearly realize first of all that differences exist among the beings who occupy a leading place in the earth's human evolution. We have to distinguish in the course of our earth evolution those leading individualities who from the beginning, so to speak, have developed with the humanity of our earth just as it is—only that they have made more rapid progress. We might put it this way: If we go back into the past to the very remote Lemurian time, we find among the human beings then incarnated the most varied stages of development. All the souls embodied at that time have again and again experienced reincarnations, re-embodiments, during the succeeding Atlantean and our post-Atlantean periods. These souls have developed with varying rapidity. Some have made relatively slow progress through the various incarnations, and still have long distances to travel in the future; but there are also souls who have developed rapidly, who, one might say, have utilized their incarnations to better advantage, and are therefore at a stage of soul-spiritual development which will be attained by the normal man only in a very, very distant future. But, continuing to speak of this soul sphere, we may say nevertheless that however advanced these individual souls may be, however far they may tower above the normal man, still they have followed the same path in our earth evolution as the rest of humanity; they have merely advanced more rapidly. Besides these leading individualities, who in this sense are like the rest of humanity, only at a higher stage, there are also in the course of human evolution other individualities, other beings, who have by no means gone through various incarnations just as other men have. We can perhaps illustrate what lies at the bottom of this by saying: There were beings in that very time of the Lemurian evolution to which we have alluded who no longer needed to descend so deeply into physical embodiment as other men, as all the beings who have just been described—there were beings who could have accomplished their development in higher, more spiritual regions, who, in other words, did not need for their own further progress to descend into bodies of flesh. It is nevertheless possible for these beings, in order to intervene in the course of human evolution, to descend vicariously, so to speak, into just such human bodies as ours. At any time therefore a being may appear of whom, if we make the clairvoyant test, we cannot say, as we can of other human beings, that we trace the soul back in time and find it in a previous fleshly incarnation, trace it farther back and find it again in another incarnation, and so on—but we must say instead: If we trace the soul of such a being back through the course of time, perhaps we do not find it at all in any former fleshly incarnation; but if we do, it is only because the being in question is able to descend repeatedly, at intervals, and incarnate vicariously in a human body. A spiritual being who descends thus into a human body in order to intervene in evolution as a human being, without gaining anything from this embodiment for himself, so to speak, without experiencing anything here in the world of special significance for himself—such a being is called in oriental wisdom an Avatar. And this is the distinction between a leading being who has sprung from human evolution itself and one called an Avatar: namely, that an Avatar-being reaps no benefits for himself from his physical embodiments, or from the one physical embodiment to which he subjects himself, for he enters into a physical body for the blessing and advancement of mankind. Therefore, as we have said, such an Avatar-being can either enter into a human body just once, or several times in succession; and he is then something entirely different from other human beings.

The greatest Avatar-Being Who has lived on earth, as you can gather from the spirit of all the lectures given here, is the Christ—that Being Whom we designate as the Christ, Who took possession of the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth in the 30th year of his life. This Being, Who first came in contact with our earth at the beginning of our era, Who was incarnated for three years in a body of flesh, and Who since that time has been connected with the astral sphere, that is, with the spiritual sphere of our super-sensible world—this Being is of unique significance as an Avatar-Being. We should seek the Christ-Being quite in vain in an earlier human embodiment, whereas other, lower Avatar-beings could be embodied more than once. They incarnate repeatedly, but they obtain for themselves no benefit from the earthly embodiments. They only give; they take nothing from the earth. But if you wish to understand these things perfectly, you must distinguish between such a lofty Avatar-Being as the Christ and lower Avatar-beings. The latter can have the most varied missions on our earth, but we can speak first of one such mission; and in order not to flounder about in speculation, we shall at once give a concrete instance to illustrate this kind of mission.

You all know from the story of which Noah is the center that in the ancient Hebrew narrative a great part of the post-Noah humanity derives from the three ancestors, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Today we shall not go into what Noah and these three tribal ancestors are intended to represent in another respect; we shall simply realize clearly that the Hebrew literature which speaks of Shem, one of the sons of Noah, traces back the whole tribe of the Semites to Shem as its ancestor. A genuinely occult view of such a matter is always based upon the deeper truths. Those who are able to carry on occult research into such things know the following facts concerning Shem, the ancestor of the Semites.

In case of such a personality, who is destined to be the ancestor of an entire tribe, care must be taken from the very time of his birth to make it possible for him to be just this ancestor. Now in what way will care be taken that a personality—like Shem, for example—can be the ancestor of a whole people, or of a tribal community? In the case of Shem it was brought about through his receiving a quite specially prepared etheric body. We know that when the human being is born into this world he fashions about his individuality his etheric or life body, with the other members of his being. For such a tribal ancestor a special etheric body must be prepared which is the model etheric body for all the descendants in the following generations; so that we have in such a tribal progenitor a typical etheric body, a model etheric body; and then through blood relationship this passes through the generations so that in a certain sense the etheric bodies of all the descendants who belong to the same tribe are copies of the etheric body of the ancestor. Thus in all the etheric bodies of the Semitic people there was inwoven something like a copy of Shem's etheric body. Now by what means is such a thing brought about in the course of human evolution?

If we observe this man Shem a little more closely, we find that his etheric body received its archetypal form because into this very etheric body an Avatar had woven himself. Although he was not so exalted as certain other Avatar-beings, still it was a lofty Avatar-being who descended into his etheric body. This being was not united with Shem's astral body nor with his ego, but was woven, as it were, into his etheric body alone. In this very example we are able to study what the exact significance is when an Avatar-being participates in the constitution, the composition, of a human being. What does it mean, then, that a man like Shem, who has the mission to be the ancestor of a whole people, should have an Avatar-being woven into his body? It means that whenever an Avatar-being is woven into a fleshly human body, some one member, or even several members, of the super-sensible constitution of this human being are capable of being multiplied, of being split into many parts.

It was really because an Avatar-being was interwoven with Shem's etheric body that it became possible for numberless copies of the original to be formed; and these many copies could be woven into all the descendants of the tribal ancestor in the successive generations. Thus, the descent to earth of an Avatar-being has the significance, among other things, that it contributes to the multiplication of one or several members of the person in question who is animated by the Avatar. There existed in Shem, as you can see from this, an especially precious etheric body, an archetypal etheric body, prepared by an exalted Avatar, and then woven into Shem, so that it could then descend in many copies to all those who were ordained to be related by blood to this ancestor.

Now we have already said in the lecture mentioned at the beginning that there is also a spiritual economy consisting in the fact that anything of especial value is preserved and carried over into the future. We have heard that not only is the ego re-embodied, but that also the astral body and the etheric body can be re-embodied. Aside from the fact that numberless copies of Shem's etheric body were formed, his own etheric body was also preserved in the spiritual world; for it could later be very useful in the mission of the Hebrew people. In this etheric body all the peculiarities of the Hebrew people had originally come to expression; and if at any time something of very especial importance was to occur for the ancient Hebrew people, if a special task, a special mission, was to be assigned to some one, it could best be accomplished by one who bore the etheric body of the ancestor. At a later time a man who played an important role in the history of the Hebrew people actually did bear the etheric body of the tribal ancestor. In fact, we have here one of those wonderful complications in human evolution which can explain a great deal to us. We have to do with a very exalted individuality who was compelled to condescend, as it were, in order to speak to the Hebrew people in an appropriate manner, and to give them the strength for a special mission—in somewhat the way a spiritually advanced person would have to speak to a lowly tribe. He would of course be compelled to learn the language of this tribe; but no one should maintain on this account that the language is something which would serve to advance him personally, for the one concerned need only take the trouble to learn the language. In the same way a lofty individuality had to make the effort to use Shem's etheric body, in order to be able to give a very definite impulse to the ancient Hebrew people. This personality is the one you find in the Biblical history named Melchizedek. He took upon himself, as it were, the etheric body of Shem, in order later to give to Abraham the impulse which you find so beautifully described in the Bible. And so, aside from the fact that what was contained in the individuality of Shem was multiplied, because an Avatar-being was embodied in it, and then became woven into all the other etheric bodies belonging to the Hebrew people, Shem's own etheric body was preserved in the spiritual world, so that it could be borne at a later time by Melchizedek, who was to give to the Hebrew people an important impulse through Abraham.

Thus delicately interwoven are the facts existing behind the physical world which alone make explicable to us what occurs in that world. We come to understand history only when we are able to point to such facts: to facts of a spiritual nature which lie behind the physical ones. History can never be explained out of itself, if we consider physical facts alone.

What we have just been discussing becomes especially significant: namely, that through the descent of an Avatar-being the essential soul-spiritual members of the personality who is the bearer of this Avatar-being are multiplied and transmitted to other human beings, and appear in copies of the original. This fact assumes very special significance through the appearance of the Christ on earth. Because the Avatar-Being of Christ dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, it became possible for the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth to be multiplied innumerable times, as well as the astral body, and even the ego,—that is, the ego as an impulse, as it was kindled in the astral body when the Christ entered into the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth. But first we will take into account the fact that through the Avatar-Being the etheric body and the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth could be multiplied.

Now just through the appearance of the Christ Principle in the earth evolution, there occurred in humanity one of the most significant phenomena. What I have told you about Shem is fundamentally typical and characteristic for the pre-Christian time. When in this way an etheric body or an astral body is multiplied, the copies of it are transmitted as a rule to those people who are related by blood to the one who had the original; hence, the copies of Shem's etheric body were transmitted to the members of the Hebrew tribe. That was changed by the appearance of the Christ Avatar-Being. The etheric body and the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth were multiplied, and these copies were preserved as such until, in the course of human development, they could be used. They were not, however, limited to any one nationality nor to any particular people; but when in the course of time a human being appeared who—irrespective of nationality—was ripe, was fitted to have interwoven with his own astral body an astral copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, or an etheric copy of his etheric body, these could be woven into his being. Thus we see how it became possible in the course of time—let us say—for all sorts of people to have woven into them copies of the astral body or of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth.

The intimate history of Christian development is connected with this fact. What is ordinarily described as the history of Christian development is a sum of entirely external occurrences; and therefore far too little consideration is given to a fact of very great importance: namely, to the distinction of actual periods in Christian development. Anyone who can look more deeply into the evolutionary progress of Christianity will easily perceive that in the early centuries of the Christian era the manner in which Christianity was spread was entirely different from that of later centuries. In the first Christian centuries the spread of Christianity was connected, as it were, with everything that could be procured from the physical plane. We need only to take a look at the early teachers of Christianity to see how at that time physical recollections, physical relationships, and physical relics are emphasized. Just consider what great importance was given by Irenæus, who in the first century contributed much to the spread of Christian teaching in various lands, to the fact that recollections extended back to those who had themselves listened to the pupils of the Apostles. Great value was set upon being able to prove by means of such physical recollections that Christ Himself had taught in Palestine. It was especially emphasized, for example, that Papias himself had sat at the feet of the Apostles' pupils; even the places were pointed out and described where those personalities had sat who were still eyewitnesses of the fact that Christ had lived in Palestine. The physical continuance of remembrance is what was especially emphasized in the early Christian centuries.

What great prominence was given to everything of a physical nature that still existed can be seen in the words of the ancient Augustine, who says: “Why do I believe in the truths of Christianity? Because the authority of the Catholic Church compels me to.” The physical authority for the existence of something in the physical world is to him the important and essential thing: that a corporate body has been maintained which, linking personality with personality, reaches up to one who was a companion of the Christ—such as Peter. For him that is the determining factor. Thus we can see that in the spread of Christianity during the early centuries it was the documents, the impressions of the physical plane, to which the greatest importance was attached.

Now the situation changes after the time of Augustine up to, let us say, the 10th, 11th, or 12th century. During that period of time it was no longer possible to appeal to the living remembrance, nor to draw upon the documents of the physical plane, for they lay too far in the past. At that time also something entirely different came into existence in the whole mood and disposition of the humanity which was then embracing Christianity ; and especially was this the case among European peoples. During that time there was actually something like a direct knowledge that a Christ exists, that a Christ died on the cross, and that He continues to live. From the 4th or 5th century up to the 10th or 12th there were a large number of people who would have considered it the greatest folly had they been told that the events of Palestine could even be doubted, for they knew better. They had always been able to experience inwardly a kind of Pauline revelation in miniature—what Paul, who up to that time was a Saul, experienced on the road to Damascus, and through which he became a Paul. How did it happen that in those centuries a number of people were able to receive revelations which were in a certain sense clairvoyant concerning the events in Palestine ? It was possible because in those centuries the multiplied copies of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, which had been preserved, had been woven into a great number of people; because it was granted to them to wear these as a garment, so to speak. There was inwoven with their etheric bodies, not Jesus' own etheric body, but only a copy of the inborn original one of Jesus of Nazareth. In these centuries there were those who could possess such an etheric body, and who could thereby have a direct knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth, and also of the Christ. This was the reason also that the Christ picture became dissociated from external, historical, physical existence. And the most extreme dissociation is shown to us in that wonderful poem of the 9th century, known as the Heliand poem, which originated in the time of Ludwig the Pious, who reigned from 814–840, and which was written down by an outwardly simple man of Saxony. His astral body and his ego could by no means equal what his etheric body contained, for into his etheric body was woven a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. The simple Saxon pastor who wrote this poem had the certainty through direct clairvoyant vision that the Christ exists on the astral plane, and that He is the same as He who was crucified on Golgotha! And because this was a direct certainty for him, he no longer needed to cling to the historical documents. He no longer needed the physical mediation to assure him that the Christ existed. He described Him, therefore, as detached from the whole Palestinian setting. He described Him as something like a leader of a Middle-European or Germanic tribe; and those who surrounded Him as His followers, the Apostles, he described as vassals of a Germanic prince. All the external scenery was changed; only the actually essential, the eternal, in the Christ Figure remained,—only what constitutes the structure of the events. Having such a direct knowledge, built upon such an important foundation as the copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, it was not necessary to hold himself rigidly to the immediate historical events when he was speaking of the Christ. He invested what was for him direct knowledge with a different external setting. And just as in the case of this writer of the Heliand poem we have been able to describe one of the strange personalities who had a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth interwoven with his etheric body, so we could find other personalities in this period who had similar copies. Thus we see how the most important occurrences of all, which are able to explain history to us in an intimate way, take place behind the physical events.

If we now follow Christian development farther, we come, let us say, into the period between the 11th or 12th century and the 15th. Here there was an entirely different mystery, which now carried the whole evolution forward. First it was, so to speak, the memory of what had taken place on the physical plane; then it was the etheric element which was directly inwoven with the etheric bodies of the bearers of Christianity in Middle-Europe. In the later centuries, from the 12th to the 15th, it was especially the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth which in numerous copies was woven into the astral bodies of the most important bearers of Christianity. Such people then had an ego which as ego was capable of forming very false notions of all sorts of things; but in their astral bodies there existed immediate sources of strength, of devotion, a direct certainty of sacred truths. There existed in such people deep fervor, absolutely direct conviction, and also in some circumstances the ability to prove this conviction. What must sometimes seem so strange to us in these very personalities is that in their ego their development by no means equalled what their astral body contained, because the latter had a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into it. What their ego did often seemed grotesque; but the world of their moods and feelings, of their fervor, was grand and exalted. Such a personality, for example, was Francis of Assisi. And when we, as people of the present time, study Francis of Assisi and are not able to understand his conscious ego, but are nevertheless compelled to have the deepest possible reverence for the entire world of his feelings and for all that he did,—that fact becomes explicable from such a point of view. He was one of those who had a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth inwoven. Because of this he was able to accomplish just what he did accomplish, and many of his adherents from the Order of Franciscans, with its servants and minorites, had similarly such copies interwoven with their astral bodies.

All the strange and otherwise mysterious phenomena of that time will become luminous and clear to you, if you bring properly before the eyes of your soul this mediation in world evolution between past and future. The important question was whether what was woven into these people of the Middle Ages from the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was more what we call the sentient soul, or more the intellectual soul, or more what we call the consciousness soul. For the astral body of man must of course be considered in a certain sense as something containing all this; that is, it must be thought of as enclosing the ego, and containing sentient soul, intellectual soul, and consciousness soul. All that was in Francis of Assisi was wholly sentient soul of Jesus of Nazareth, so to speak. Wholly sentient soul of Jesus of Nazareth was contained in that remarkable personality whom you will follow biographically with the soul when you know the secret of her life: Elizabeth of Thüringen, born in 1207. Here we have a personality who had a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into the sentient soul. The riddle of the human being is solved for us by means of just such knowledge.

Above all, one phenomenon will be understandable when you know that during this time the most diverse personalities had sentient soul, intellectual soul, or consciousness soul woven into them as copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. You will be able to understand that science, otherwise so little understood, which we ordinarily designate as scholasticism. What kind of a task did the scholastics set for themselves? The task of finding, on the basis of judgment and intellect, verifications, proofs, for that with which there was no historical connecting link, and concerning which there was no direct clairvoyant certainty, such as existed in previous centuries because of the interwoven etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. These people had to set themselves the task in this way: They said to themselves: It has been communicated to us through tradition that in history that Being appeared Who is known as Christ Jesus; that other spiritual beings of whom the religious documents bear witness have intervened in human evolution.—From their intellectual soul, from the intellect element of the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, they set themselves the task of proving with subtle and clearly developed concepts all that existed in their literature as mystery truths. Thus arose that strange science which tried to achieve what was perhaps the ultimate in sagacity, in intellect, that has ever been reached by humanity. One may think of the content of scholasticism as one wishes, but through several centuries, simply by means of this very delicate discrimination and exact outlining of concepts, the capacity for human reflection was developed and impressed upon the culture of the period. It was between the 13th and 15th centuries that humanity had implanted into it through scholasticism the capacity to think with acute and searching logic.

Among those who, in turn, were more imbued with the consciousness soul—that is, the copy of what had constituted the consciousness soul of Jesus of Nazareth—there appeared the special conviction—because the ego functions in the consciousness soul—that the Christ can be found in the ego. And because they themselves had within them the element of the consciousness soul from the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, the inner Christ rose resplendent in their souls. These are the individuals whom you know as Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and all the bearers of mediæval mysticism.

Thus you see how the very diversified phases of the astral body were multiplied because the exalted Avatar-Being of Christ had entered into the body of Jesus of Nazareth; and they worked on in the following age and brought about the real development of Christianity. In other respects also this was an important transition. We see how in the course of its development humanity is dependent in other ways also upon having incorporated within it these fragments of the Jesus of Nazareth being. In the early centuries there were people who were entirely dependent upon the physical plane; then in the following centuries came those who were accessible to the interweaving with their etheric bodies of the element of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. Later people tended more, so to speak, toward the astral body; hence the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth could now likewise be incorporated in them. The astral body is the bearer of the power of judgment, which awakened particularly between the 12th and the 14th centuries. You could observe this from another phenomenon also.

Up to that time it was especially well understood what depths of mystery the Holy Communion contained. At most there was only slight discussion about it, but it was accepted in a manner that enabled one to feel all that lay in the words : This is My body and this is My blood,—because the Christ indicated that He would be united with the earth, would be the planetary Spirit of the Earth. And because the most precious thing coming out of the physical earth is grain, bread became for man the body of Christ; and the sap which flows through the plants became for him something from the blood of Christ. Through this knowledge the value of the Lord's Supper was not diminished, but was on the contrary heightened. Something of these limitless depths was felt in these centuries, up to the time when the power of judgment awakened in the astral body. It was only from then on that disputes began about the Lord's Supper. Just consider how among the Hussites, among the Lutherans and the dissenting Zwinglians and Calvinists, there was discussion as to what the Lord's Supper is intended to be. Such discussion would not have been possible earlier, because there was still a direct knowledge of the Lord's Supper. But we see verified here a great historical law which should be of special importance for spiritual scientists: namely, that as long as people knew what the Lord's Supper was they did not discuss it. In general you can consider it a sign that people really have no knowledge of a certain matter .when they begin to discuss it. Where there is knowledge, knowledge is imparted, and no particular desire for discussion exists. Where there is desire for discussion, there is as a rule no knowledge of the truth. Discussion begins only when there is a lack of knowledge, and it is always and everywhere the sign of a decline as regards the seriousness of a subject when discussion begins. Disintegration of a particular trend is always proclaimed by discussions. It is very important that in the spiritual-scientific field we come to understand more and more that the wish for discussion may really be taken as a sign of ignorance; on the other hand, that which is the opposite of discussion, the will to learn, the will gradually to comprehend what is in question, should be cultivated.

Here we see a great historical fact verified by the development of Christianity itself. But we can learn something else besides, if we see how in these centuries of Christendom just described the power of judgment—which resides in the astral body—this acute intellectual wisdom, is developed. Indeed, if we fix our attention upon realities, not dogmas, we can learn how much Christianity has accomplished in the course of its progress. What has become of scholasticism, if we consider it, not as to its content, but as a means of cultivating and disciplining the faculties? Do you know what became of it? It became modern natural science. Modern natural science is entirely unthinkable without the Christian natural science of the Middle Ages. It is not only that Copernicus was a canon, and Giordano Bruno a Dominican, but that all the thought-forms employed in the natural sciences since the 15th and 16th centuries are nothing but what was developed and nurtured by the scholastic science of the Middle Ages. Those people do not live in reality, but in abstractions, who look up passages in the books of the scholastics, compare them with the statements of more recent natural science, and then say: Haeckel and others maintain something entirely different. Realities are what matter!

A Haeckel, a Darwin, a DuBois-Reymond, a Huxley, and others, would all have been impossible if the Christian scholastic science of the Middle ages had not preceded them. For the very fact that these modern scientists were able to think as they did they owe to the Christianized science of the scholastics of the Middle Ages. That is the reality. By this means humanity has learned to think in the true sense of the word.—The matter goes further still. Read David Friedrich Strauss. Try to observe the mode of his thinking; try to analyze his thought pictures: How he insists upon representing the whole life of Jesus of Nazareth as a myth. Do you know whence he has the keenness of his thinking? He gets it from the Christian scholasticism of the Middle Ages. Everything by means of which Christianity is so radically combated today has been learned from the Christian scholastic science of the Middle Ages. Actually there could not be today an opponent of Christianity concerning whom it could not easily be pointed out that he would not be able to think as he thinks at all, had he not learned the thought-forms from the scholastic science of the Middle Ages. This, indeed, would mean to observe world history in its reality.

What then has happened since the 16th century? Since the 16th century the ego itself has come more and more into prominence, and with it human egotism also, and with egotism, materialism. What the ego had acquired as content has been unlearned and forgotten. It was therefore necessary for man to limit himself to that which the ego can observe—to that which the physical sense-instrument is able to give to the ordinary intelligence—and that alone could it take into the inner sanctuary. The civilization since the 16th century is a civilization of egotism. What must now enter into this ego? Christian evolution has passed through a development in the external physical body, a development in the etheric body, and also in the astral body, and has penetrated as far as the ego. Now it must take into this ego the mysteries and secrets of Christianity itself. Following a time when the ego learned to think through Christianity, and applied the thoughts to the outer world, it must now be possible for the ego to be made into a Christ-receptive organ. This ego must now rediscover the wisdom which is the primordial wisdom of the Great Avatar, of Christ Himself. And by what means must this come to pass? By a profounder understanding of Christianity through spiritual science. Carefully prepared through the three stages of physical, etheric, and astral development, the matter of concern should now be that the organ within man be opened, so that he may henceforth see into his spiritual environment with that eye which the Christ can open for him. As the greatest Avatar-Being, the Christ descended to earth. Let us get a perspective view of this; let us try to look at the world as we shall be able to see it when we shall have received the Christ into ourselves. We then find the whole process of our world-becoming illuminated and pervaded by the Christ-Being. That is to say, we describe how upon Saturn man's physical body gradually came into existence, how on the Sun the etheric body made its appearance, on the Moon the astral body, and then on the Earth the ego is added; and we find how everything tends toward the goal of becoming ever more independent and individual, in order to incorporate in the Earth evolution that wisdom which passes over from the Sun to the Earth. In other words : for the liberated ego of modern times the Christ and Christianity must become the perspective center of the cosmic view.

Thus you see how Christianity gradually prepared itself for what it is to become. In the early centuries the Christian received Christianity with his physical capacity for knowledge; then later with his etheric capacity; and throughout the Middle Ages with his astral capacity for knowledge. Then for a time Christianity in its true form was repressed, until the ego had been trained by the three bodies in the course of Christian development. But since this ego has learned to think and to direct its vision to the objective world, it is now capable also of seeing in all phenomena in this objective world spiritual facts which are intimately connected with the Central Being, with the Christ Being: it is capable of beholding the Christ everywhere in the most various forms as the foundation.

With this fact we stand at the starting point of spiritual-scientific comprehension and knowledge of Christianity. We begin to understand what task, what mission, has been assigned to this Movement for Spiritual Knowledge, and we realize at the same time the reality of this mission. Just as the individual human being has physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego, and gradually rises to ever more lofty heights, so is it also in the historical development of Christianity. We might say that Christianity has also a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an ego—an ego which can even deny its origin, as in our time, since the ego can in any case become egotistic—but still an ego which can at the same time receive the true Christ Being into itself, and can gradually rise to ever higher stages of existence. What the human being is in particular, the great world is in its totality, as well as in its course of historical development. If we observe the matter in this light, there opens before us from the spiritual-scientific viewpoint a perspective far into the future. And we know how this can lay hold upon our heart and fill it with meaning. We comprehend more and more what we have to do, and we know also that we are not groping in the dark; for we have not devised any ideas which we intend arbitrarily to project into the future, but we intend to harbor and to follow only those ideas which have been gradually prepared through the centuries. Just as it is true that the ego must first appear and be developed little by little up to Spirit Self, Life Spirit, and Spirit Man, after the physical body, the etheric body, and astral body were already in existence, so is it true that the modern man with his ego-form, with his present-day thinking, could only be developed out of the astral, the etheric, and the physical form of Christianity. Christianity has become Ego. As it is true that this was the development in the past, just so true is it that the ego-form of humanity can appear only after the astral and etheric form of Christianity has been developed. Christianity will develop on into the future; it will offer humanity far greater things, and the Christian development and the Christian standard of life will arise in new form: the transformed astral body will appear as the Christian Spirit Self; the transformed etheric body as the Christian Life Spirit. And in a radiant perspective of the future of Christianity, Spirit Man gleams forth before our souls like a star toward which we strive, illuminated and glowing through and through with the spirit of Christianity.

Speaking about the problem of immortality and about the riddle of freedom spiritual-scientifically is the task of the whole cycle that I would like to hold in this winter here. These are the two questions that admittedly the scientific worldview cannot approach and in which the only philosophical world consideration will always smash as it arises from my book The Riddles of Philosophy and from an unbiased consideration of the historical development of philosophy.

I would like today to consider a partial question possibly in a concluded whole: the question of the human being as a being of soul and spirit. Already while pronouncing these words, one touches, actually, the question of the human soul in a way that is very far from the present worldview. The present worldview—if it generally gets involved to look at something else than that which experimental psychology, biology, physiology give—speaks of a duality of body and soul. I would like to show that this arrangement of the human being must lead to serious misunderstandings that divert a scientific consideration, actually, from the highest human riddles. One believes today that in the so-called soul riddles the riddle of spirit is already enclosed, and you will find, while you dedicate yourself to this misunderstanding, the applause of some scientific world viewers and also of some soul viewers. Spiritual science generally is in a peculiar relation to the scientific and to the philosophical worldviews.

You know that I have stressed repeatedly that spiritual science stands everywhere completely on the ground of scientific research, and just because it stands more than the scientific worldview on scientific ground, it feels forced to ascend from the mere consideration of nature and her life to the consideration of the real spiritual life. Only the scientific worldview that became ingrained in a big part of our contemporaries also behaves in their choicest representatives in such a way that spiritual science has a rough ride to find understanding anyhow. I would like to say some introductory words about it because they will be necessary in case of our further consideration.

Today one can find that in certain areas the scientific worldview has almost got to a kind of ideal limitation of its field. We have works in the scientific realm that you can regard as exemplary in the way, how they restrict their task with the realisation of single problems. After the unilaterally Darwinian-Haeckel romanticism of the last third of the nineteenth century biology, for example, has advanced so far that we have such an exemplary work as the work of the Berlin researcher Oscar Hertwig (1849-1922) about The Origin of Organisms. A Refutation of Darwin's Theory of Chance (1916). We also have ingenious achievements for such areas, which touch the borders of that what should be regarded here methodically, as for example the Guide to Physiological Psychology (1891) by Theodor Ziehen (1862-1950, German neurologist, psychiatrist). One may say that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science espouses such methodical research where it depends on the consideration of the actually scientific area. I myself always oppose with all that I would like to contribute to spiritual science the sometimes indeed well intentioned, but dilettantish worldview constructions that arise from some inadequate attempts of knowledge.

However, just this methodical scientific worldview gives spiritual science a hard fight to find understanding with our contemporaries. Even in the so exemplary book by Oscar Hertwig we find as it were the scientific conviction that natural sciences can deal only with the finite and cannot consider the infinite. However, natural sciences can explore the finite in all directions. Hertwig repeats Nägeli's (Karl Wilhelm N., 1817-1891, Swiss botanist) words from his scientific point of view rightly, and Theodor Ziehen also says that he wants to look at everything in the human soul life that has parallel phenomena in the human body, so that physiology can give information about these parallel phenomena. One must leave everything else to metaphysics or the like. Then, however, Ziehen says again that that is more important which the present physiological-psychological research puts forward in its details, which are, actually, nothing special which do not say anything particular about the big riddles of soul and spirit, than everything that was tried to perform about the supersensible in the soul life and the like for centuries. If we add the dictum which already before decades the great physiologist Du Bois-Reymond (Emil Du B.R., 1818-1896) did that real science is only allowed to deal, actually, with the sensory world because science stops where the supersensible begins, we find that by which the scientific worldview wants to pull the rug out under the feet of any spiritual science. On one side one always says rather benevolently: one has to leave all questions which exceed the sensory consideration to metaphysics or something similar, nevertheless, on the other side one argues again that real science can be performed only in the area of sensory consideration.

Thus, we realise that science blanks out everything mental and spiritual, and it solely claims the character of scientificity for that which is left. Compared with such attempts I would like to stress that spiritual science stands even in the question of the so-called old vitality absolutely on the ground of such researchers like Du Bois-Reymond, Hertwig and others. Since this vitality which haunted in science until the middle, until the end of the second third of the nineteenth century is a product of speculation.

Because one believed that the phenomena in the living organism were not explicable with physical and chemical laws, one speculated on an uncertain vitality to which one ascribed everything that one could not explain chemically or physically. Du Bois-Reymond said in his excellent preface of his Researches on Animal Electricity (1848-1864) already at the middle of the nineteenth century with a certain right that the progress of physiology necessitated, actually, that once somebody would come who banishes this vitality from physiology. Spiritual science can agree even with such a hard condemnation of vitality. Since it can figure everything out that is brought forward from physiological-biological side rightly against such a hypothetical, speculative vitality, and can consider what appears today again as so-called neovitalism only as a reaction which is caused by the fact that one realises sporadically: we cannot already recognise that what lives simply as the only physical and chemical. However, this reaction returns more or less to the old speculation of an uncertain vitality.

Spiritual science represented here can also not agree with this reaction against the purely mechanistic natural sciences. For it, however, it must arrogate something else to itself. With those cognitive forces and abilities which lead just to the big, significant scientific results one cannot exceed the only physical and chemical. Of course, the living beings are subject to physical and chemical laws because they have physical bodies. These must be investigated with physics and chemistry, and one is not allowed to contrive any vitality. But the mere cognitive forces and abilities as natural sciences apply them rightly are not sufficient to understand life, soul and spirit, and one only has the option either to stop in the area of physical and chemical laws and then to renounce understanding life, soul and spirit, or to appeal to quite different cognitive forces.

With it, however, you are confronted again with a widespread prejudice. Most people do not believe that the human soul striving methodically gets to cognitive forces and abilities that are quite different from those of natural sciences. So you face a double possibility only not to comprehend soul and spirit or to cross the Rubicon to familiarise yourself with the advancement of the human souls. It can thereby get to such cognitive forces that are more important to you than that what natural sciences can say, just if they are perfect. You are confronted with a severe prejudice. You must say from the viewpoint of spiritual science, natural sciences behave, actually, to spiritual science in such a way as somebody who can only describe the letters that are printed on any page behaves to that who can read them. Spiritual science tries to read that which natural sciences can only describe. That what it has to say about the phenomena of the world, about its contents and about the significance of the processes behaves like something read to the description of the letters that compose the words. There is the possibility to penetrate really into life, soul, and spirit, while one attains an ability of reading nature. This ability behaves compared with the mere physical consideration like the free ability of reading to the mere description of letters.

Now many contemporaries if such a thing is said remember of course that this is a reference to all kinds of fantastic visionary activities of the soul. However, that does not at all apply. Spiritual science is rather something for which one has to work hard and methodically, as natural sciences have to do it. But spiritual science has a rough ride today to penetrate because since centuries already any human worldview has intended to blank out the spiritual from the soul more or less, to consider the soul as the whole inwardness of the human being, and to think it more or less dependent or also independent of the body, but to search no such relation of the soul to the spirit as it is searched on the other side by the soul to the body. Someone who only with pure soul experiences—even if these would be mystically increased soul experiences—wants to find out something about the real nature of the human being as a spiritual being resembles someone who wants to inform himself because of hunger and thirst of those processes which take place in the human body, and which are the basis of that which the soul experiences as hunger and thirst.

Everybody easily realises that hunger and thirst are the inner experience of something that happens in the body. The scientific worldview says, if the human being feels hunger and thirst, a chemical change has taken place in the blood or as the case may be. It points to the fact that in the body something has happened that expresses itself as the experience of thirst and hunger in the soul. However, one has to look at the soul experiences, if one wants to investigate what goes forward in the body. Of course, you cannot investigate in a living being that has no hunger how the hunger expresses itself bodily, but you can never find out for yourself that you only consider the inner experience of hunger or saturation with which bodily processes this inner experience is associated. Just as little you can get to know something from this mere play about that which forms the basis of the soul as something spiritual, even if you immerse yourself ever so mystically. As well as natural sciences must proceed from the experience of hunger and thirst with their methods to something that is not observed in the usual soul life—for the human being knows nothing of the chemical process in his body, while he suffers from hunger and thirst—, you have to change into something spiritual if you consider everything that can be experienced by imagining, feeling and willing in the soul.

However, how can you find this spiritual being? The sensory places itself before the senses, while the human being faces nature; the spiritual does not do it in the same way. The spiritual confronts the human being only if he rouses the cognitive abilities from his inside that I have called “beholding” in my book The Riddle of Man that slumbers in the usual life as it were. Now I would like to talk not about something abstract, but I would like to show immediately at a concrete example that—as the naturalist can go over by his method from the subjective hunger and thirst to the bodily processes which are unconscious in the usual experience—it is as possible to go over from the soul phenomena to the spiritual phenomena which relate from one side to the soul as from the other side the soul relates to the body. Already with such concrete questions you are confronted straight away with opposition of the common consideration of the soul life. This wants to consider, actually, the passive soul life only because it takes the scientific methods as starting point. You cannot consider the active soul life scientifically that is active in its being from within, and it is often lost generally out of sight. Today natural sciences often consider the mental experience only how mental pictures form a group, how a mental picture is maybe caused by outer perception, how it causes another which is stored in memory, or also many other. One observes how the mental pictures associate with gradations of feeling, with will impulses or the like. One does not attain methods that you can compare concerning the spiritual with the strict methods of the scientific worldview. If you take the Physiological Psychology by Theodor Ziehen, you realise how everything results in the fact that our whole soul life is built up on such associations if it exceeds the mere sensory life. However, this kind of consideration just does not get to the impartial beholding of the soul life.

Such consideration, for example, shows the following: you can realise if you get to a real observation or introspection of the soul, as I will show it after, that we are dependent in the usual life with our soul experience on that what life gives us as mental pictures. If the human being lets his soul life to its own resources, the mental pictures play in it that have come from the impressions of the outside world into his soul. He is a kind of slave of his mental pictures in a way. Theodor Ziehen says with a certain right, we cannot think as we want, but we must think as the just available associations determine it because this or that impression has been done on us that causes another impression. Thus we are given away—after Ziehen—to the play of impressions. We are not so free in the usual life in relation to our imagining as we mean. However, we are also not as dependent as Theodor Ziehen means. Someone who can advance to the soul observation knows that, indeed, the strong dependence on impressions is there, but it lasts for a certain time. This is something to which modern psychology does not give thought at all. However, a mental picture that is caused by an impression tyrannises us. If I have seen a friend, this mental picture pursues me, it causes other mental pictures of other friends, of common experiences with these friends and so on, and you are dependent on these mental pictures, but only for some time. This time can be determined even internally experimentally. This time takes two to three days. However, after this time the power changes with which such an impression works on our soul. Then we can emotionally relate to an impression in such a way as the impression has related to us before.

We were its slaves before; we become its masters after two to three days. You can do this, for example, in the following way. If you have a feeling for the inner soul life, you can ask yourself, which difference exists between being given to the inner soul life, as it takes place by itself for some time, and reading a book? If I read a book, I cannot be carried from one mental picture to another. I would not advance reading if I were carried by mental pictures that an impression has caused in me, I must dedicate myself rather to that what flows from the book as mental pictures. There I come under the control of the author. The author controls the course of my mental pictures. I become similar with my ego to that what happens if my mental pictures are controlled by the mental pictures that come from the book if I have lived with any impression for two to three days, concerning this impression. Then I leave myself not to the association that this impression wants to cause, but I have the inner power to associate this impression with others. An entire change of an image impression proceeds in the human soul if it has lasted for two to three days in the soul.

You can already convince yourself of the truth of the just said without being a spiritual researcher by usual, more intimate observation of the soul life, indeed, in an area that is considered only cursorily nowadays, and that the so-called analytic psychology or psychoanalysis despises. However, I do not want to go into that. However, I would like to point out that someone who can really observe dreams knows that the involuntary appearance of dreams is always associated anyhow with the impressions of the last days, actually, only of the last two to three days. However, do not misunderstand me! Of course, bygone events appear in the dreams as memories.

However, it is something else that evokes these bygone events. If you can observe the dream exactly, you always realise that any mental picture of the last two to three days must be there. That only evokes bygone events. For two to three days, the impressions of the outside world have the power to generate dreams. Then the other things are associated with them. Unless such mental picture can generate the dream, it cannot originate. However, you have really to observe what I have indicated now, because the usual consciousness cannot observe it. This is just so unknown to many people today because it proceeds in the unconscious. As a rule, the human being attains no knowledge how he relates different to a mental picture that is not yet present for two to three days in his soul, and to such which is present already so long. One can observe all these things exactly and properly only as a spiritual researcher. However, he needs a certain strengthening of the usual soul life to the real observation. The imagining applies for the usual soul life, actually, only to that which it repeats and develops in a way what the senses perceive from the outside. This soul life can now be strengthened, so that these pale, uncertain mental pictures of the everyday life can appear in another way in the soul so that its power matches a sense perception. However, this must happen if you want to do researches really in the spiritual area. With the usual cognitive forces, you cannot do these researches. I have described the method in detail in my books How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? and Occult Science by which you can lift up imagining and by which you change it into Imagination, into the beholding percipience.

I would like only to emphasise some things of the big wealth of that which the soul has to carry out with itself to strengthen its life. I want to refer to that what I have recently emphasised in my last book The Riddles of the Soul, the continuation of my book The Riddle of Man: the fact that the human being if he activates his usual soul life in science gets to certain so-called limits of knowledge. These limits of knowledge can face you if you familiarise yourself with the worldviews of profound thinkers. If I may bring in something personal here: experiences have led me to this form of spiritual science thirty to 35 years ago which I could gain in the worldviews of such persons to whom knowledge is not an external occupation, but something that constitutes the core of their longing and feeling. If you are confronted, for example, with the thinker Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807-1887) with words which have come to him when he had thought about the connection of body and soul, with words like: the soul cannot be in the body, but it can also not be beyond the body, then you get in living connection with an original, elementary thinker to such limits in which the human soul life must come if it wants to be cognitively active.

The usual thinking just puts limits of knowledge in such points of the soul life. Du Bois-Reymond spoke of “seven world riddles” which cannot be solved; however, one could bring in hundreds of such so-called limits of the human soul life:

• if you do not content yourself with such limits, but if you try to go through everything that the soul has to go through while it says to itself, you have to put questions which the natural outside world cannot answer, also that what comes up from your soul cannot answer them,

• if you combine in your innermost soul life with these questions,

• if you have patience to struggle with them not only logically, but internally,

• if you put them repeatedly to your soul not only to get to know what they say logically, but what they release vividly in the soul,

then something emerges from such questions gradually in the soul. One experiences something emotionally that I want to bring to mind in the following way by a comparison. Just the scientific worldview often thinks that the lowest living beings only have an inner life activity at first, develop it in contact with the outside world and thereby transform their still undifferentiated organisms, so that it touches the outside world not only in an uncertain way, but that this touching is differentiated to the sense of touch, and from the sense of touch the other senses should have gradually developed phylogenetically. That which the being experiences in living matter can be really compared with that which the soul experiences if it is confronted with such limits. If you get to know the mental experience of such limits really, you feel that with it nothing is meant that deals with the origin of outer sensory tools. If you have patience to settle down in such riddles, a sort of mental groping develops, then something arises from it like a differentiation of the soul life. Today most people do not believe in that, of course. However, one will believe in it more and more if one realises that only in such a way one can attain real knowledge of the phenomena of the world and in particular of the riddle of the human being. The human being gradually does not only reach questions of limits, but he develops his soul with it, and thus those higher organs of beholding originate by which the soul learns gradually to penetrate into the spirit. This is only one of those exercises that the soul has to practise to transform the undifferentiated soul life, so that it can really penetrate into the spiritual world.

I would have to bring in a lot of that what you can read in the mentioned books if I wanted to explain how imagining becomes something else than in the usual life. Imagining is something passive that follows the sensory percepts. Because the soul life is invigorated by many exercises, it becomes something else from imagining. The imagining becomes active so that as it were an ego asserts itself which is much more concrete than the usual one, and the human being gets to know that he can really observe the soul phenomena with such increased soul life.

If I now return, after I have developed the nature of real self-knowledge, to that what I have asserted up to now, I have to say, what happens there, actually, while the mental pictures change from that state which they have for two to three days into the other state which they have later, one can figure this out only with such reinforced soul life. Since you get to know then that the human being becomes as free compared with the mental pictures that subjectively prevail for two to three days, after this time, as he is usually free from his usual body. The human being gets to know what he is in his inside what controls the mental pictures in such a way, as we control the hands and legs if we grasp or go with our usual ego. The human being gets to know the higher ego that remains usually unconscious and moves within the mindscape as the usual ego moves in the bodily life. That means we come after two to three days from that which is subjective to the objective of the soul life.

We enter that which outer impressions do not control, and which we learn to recognise as that which carries the outer impressions through the whole life between birth and death. We learn to recognise something second in the human being to which we feel as we feel towards our body in the usual life. We get to know what I have called in one of the last numbers of the magazine Das Reich (The Empire) the body of formative forces, a supersensible body that is there, as well as the usual physical body is there. However, it remains unconscious for the usual soul life. As well as the hand of the physical body is moved by the usual ego, the human being learns to recognise how he works within that which carries the imagination which lives in the imagination and this is only the spirit. The spirit is not the imagination, but what lives in the imagination in such a way as the usual soul lives in the body. However, while the usual psychology considers, actually, the whole soul life only as it prevails for two to three days, calculated from the impressions, it does not get at all from the soul to the spirit, blanks out the spirit. For the usual soul life, it is blanked out in a way.

A self-consideration shows this of which we can speak now, after I have already indicated what its being consists of. You all are clear in your mind that the ego stands in the centre of the soul life. However, today the psychologist is less clear about that in his mind. It is interesting what, for example, such an excellent psychologist like Theodor Ziehen says in his book Physiological Psychology just about the ego. This book contains printed lectures. There he says to his listeners, if you think about that which the ego is, actually, where to do you come there, actually? If you really think about it, at first your body will come into your mind, then everything that you have as relations to the outside world; then everything that you have as relatives and possession, your name and title, your dominating mental pictures and your main inclinations, your past will come into your mind. Indeed, Theodor Ziehen says, the reflective consciousness distinguishes now—except everything that comes into your mind in such a way—the ego as that which prevails inside, which moves and works from the inside imagining. Nevertheless, it is a fiction of epistemology or of speculative psychology. Physiological psychology has nothing to do with that.

This is such a place again by which the ground should be pulled away under the feet of spiritual science. However, can anybody really allow himself for the usual consciousness to think with his ego only of everything that Theodor Ziehen thinks? Does he not feel the inner activity of a central being in his soul life? Does he only think really of his relatives and properties, of his title and name and the like? No, there can be no talk of it! The human being is aware that in his inside something prevails. Still he comes, actually, to nothing if he characterises the ego. The scientific psychology is right in a limited sense if it cannot say much about this ego. How does this ego behave in the usual consciousness? An introspection shows this again.

If this ego becomes something else by the exercises that I have described, then one also notices what the ego is, considered with the usual consciousness. One distinguishes two states in the human life after the outer appearance: sleeping and waking, and thinks, they alternate between day and night. One does not know that for a real consideration of the soul something else arises. We sleep not only at night, but a part of our being also sleeps by day, sleeps perpetually. The invigoration of the ego is in a certain sense a real arousal of the ego that sleeps perpetually. We know nothing about the contents of our sleep; we know only that it interrupts our usual life. If we survey our life from birth to death, we look back, actually, always only at the daily experiences, the night experiences are nothing. If we look at our life in such a way, then is that which we are in sleep as if it were not there. It is excluded from our field of observation. However, that applies also to the ego in the usual soul life. It is not there strictly speaking for the imagining and other consideration; the real ego escapes from the usual soul life because the human being sleeps concerning his ego in his present stage of development also by day.

We know only negatively about our ego, we know about it in such a way as the eye looks with the blind spot that it has inwardly. We know that there is nothing. We know also about the ego as about a black spot on a coloured surface. Although no colour phenomena come from there, we see a black place. Thus, we see that nothing is surrounded by our usual experiences, and thus we have the consciousness of the sleeping ego. It is aroused because the soul forces are increased in such a way as I have described it. Thus, only the real essence appears in the human being gradually. You learn to recognise the connections of the soul life with the spirit, as well as you learn to recognise from natural sciences if we have hunger and thirst that a body is there in which chemical transformations of the blood take place which express themselves in the soul life as hunger and thirst. As there a body is connected with the soul life by certain processes about which the human being knows nothing at first in the usual life, you learn to recognise on the other side that the soul is connected with the spirit. While the body is recognised from without, the spirit is recognised, while you become aware of the sleeping ego.

As well as the ego is crowded together in one point, the human being as a spiritual being is recognised by the usual consciousness. If you strengthen the inner soul force, you realise that this ego really gets contents as you attain the contents of the bodily for the only inner sensations by methodical scientific research. You get to a real investigation of the spirit as you get to know the chemical transformations which take place in the blood or, otherwise, in the body if the human being has hunger or thirst or feels saturation.

Thus, you learn to recognise how a mental picture that lives in you and is a mere mental picture at first is fulfilled with pictorial contents that are not as abstract as the mental picture of the usual consciousness. The spiritual researcher lifts these contents up in the consciousness so that the mental picture becomes like a perception of these pictorial, Imaginative contents. The spiritual researcher beholds Imaginative processes that change. If, for example, a mental picture becomes warmer what proceeds for the usual consciousness in the subconscious, then something else originates from the mental picture. Then something originates from it that is not only a cognitive or perceptual image, but also an image motivating the will.

This is a very significant progress for the spiritual researcher, if he can ascend to such a knowledge by which he realises how the cognitive image changes into a will image because its Imaginative contents change which pass then to that what becomes or can become active in us. There you realise that the spiritual stands behind the mental and is perpetually changing. As we can describe chemical and physical processes in the body, we can describe spiritually how behind imagining, feeling, and will impulses changes are which go from the Imaginative to the Inspirative and to the Intuitive. As from the chemical transformation of the body subjectively hunger and thirst appear, the spiritual appears vice versa subjective, either as a perceptual image or also as an image of feeling which changes then into an image of will. Thus, you become able to describe that which lives behind the soul as a spiritual being as the bodily lives behind the soul towards the other side. Then you recognise that this becomes really concrete in the human being what can appear before the strengthened soul life so that we feel that which I have called “body of formative forces,” as we feel the physical body usually only. Then you also get to know that which lives outdoors in the world beyond the sensory as something supersensible in quite concrete way.

Sometimes I anticipate something in a former talk that I explain more exactly in later talks. Thus, it is also with the following. However, today I already want to point to it. The plant is composed not only of that which physics and chemistry, or biology or physiology can investigate but it contains something else. If we have brought ourselves to the point where we feel the body of formative forces in ourselves as we feel usually in the physical body, we can perceive the supersensible in the remaining world with this body of formative forces. Then we behold the spiritual in any plant, in any animal and in the physical human that is then not anything visionary in trivial sense, but also is there before the strengthened soul like the contents of sensory perception before the not strengthened soul. However, we have to replace the spatial concepts with temporal ones everywhere. In what way do we perceive, actually, the supersensible in the plant? By perceiving our own supersensible in the body of formative forces as if a tone perceives the other in a melody.

The perception of the supersensible in the plant realm is completely based on the fact that the life of our body of formative forces proceeds much slower than the life of the plant body of formative forces. I have more exactly explained this in a small writing The Human Life from the Viewpoint of Spiritual Science (1916, now in Philosophy and Anthroposophy, GA 35). There you will find how everything depends on these different speeds. Because our body of formative forces can interact like a higher, malleable organ with the much faster proceeding life of the plant, we really perceive the other kind of the life in the plants. Thereby something else will face our soul than the old, speculative vitality. We perceive, to put it another way, something supersensible in the sensory.

It is hard to speak impartially of these things already today. Only if one feels obliged in certain sense to the knowledge of truth, one does this. Since many people mean of course that such things are not based on scientific spirit, but on speculative fiction or daydreaming. Only slowly and gradually, humanity will learn that this is no daydreaming, no speculative fiction, but is based on a methodical research of the spiritual. Certain denominations needed up to 1822, until they acknowledged the Copernican worldview as a truth. I hope it will not last so long with the recognition of this spiritual truth, also for social reasons that should be stated in the talk, which I hold in this cycle about the historical life of humanity.

However, the most paradox prejudices exist concerning the whole and concerning the details of spiritual knowledge. I have already mentioned two weeks ago that recently Pastor Rittelmeyer has written a treatise (On Rudolf Steiner's Theosophy) in The Christian World about that which spiritual science intends, and what it can become as a deeper basis of the religious life. One has argued against that: if already the human soul should rise to a spiritual world, it must not happen in such a way that the human being carries his mental into the spiritual world arbitrarily by exercises, but this has to happen spontaneously. One can say nothing more ignorant than this. Since just if this settling in the spiritual world happens by itself if it appears without the involvement of the human being, the human being does not come into the real spiritual world but only in the mania of some mental pictures which are not spiritual because the human being does not behave actively but passively. He gets to a life which is again dependent on the body, on some organic processes in the body, and then it is pathological, or is dependent on mere soul processes, and then it is autosuggestion or as the case may be. The real penetration into the spirit is based just on the fact that one notices that this can be only reached by activity, by the will. This only carries us into the real spiritual world. Someone who says, it is doubtful that exercises are demanded by which the human being should arbitrarily reach what he can only receive like by grace understands nothing at all of the real significance of spiritual science. However, today many people know nothing about the real spirit. Hence, they cannot get to a real consideration of the everlasting, of the immortal and the free in the human soul.

On two ways, you come out from that what either is only inner life in the soul or is dependent from the body. On that way one does not come out on which, for example, the Physiological Psychology by Theodor Ziehen tries it. If Ziehen says, we cannot think what we want, but we must think as the associations determine it, then he just shows that he distracts, actually, from the spirit with his whole consideration. One can say, Ziehen looks at the soul life in such a way that he oversleeps the real spiritual impulses of the soul. Hence, Ziehen can say, the main principle of the human soul life is that a mental picture combines with others either after their inner resemblance or after their temporal succession. If I have seen a friend at a certain place and see the friend later again, the place that was temporally connected with him can associate itself with him again. If the soul life proceeds in such a way, only according to these principles of association, then it proceeds in such a way as the body lets this mental proceed. There just the spirit sleeps. The spirit submerges in the soul life that is only dependent on the body. Since the spiritual begins everywhere where we make ourselves independent from the associations by inner activity. The spiritual begins everywhere where Ziehen stops talking, and where generally scientific psychology stops talking.

In two directions, one comes out from the mere soul life. On one side, we can come out and rise to the spirit, so that we can behold the supersensible in the outer world, after we have become conscious in our real ego, while we feel the body of formative forces, as we feel, otherwise, the physical body. However, we get to an even higher mental picture of our ego, then we realise, why to the usual consciousness this ego is hidden: this ego arises as little from the usual soul life as from the lung the air originates that we breathe. Someone who believes that the true ego is generated anyhow in the body believes the same in this area as someone who believes that the breath is anyhow generated from the lung. No, our true ego is inside the world that we perceive Imaginatively. There on one side we find the ego, while we arouse it, while we get from the mere sensory perception to the supersensible. In this ego, we find one side of the everlasting, that side which shows the seedlings of everything that we become when we go through the gate of death and settle in the spiritual world to return to following lives on earth.

On the other side, we find the ego again. It is the same. The human being oversleeps the real being of his ego in the usual life, however, he also oversleeps the real being of his will. If the body of formative forces dawns on him, that awakes in certain way which lives in the will. What does the human being know about that which lives in the will in the usual life? If he lifts his hand, he knows, it comes from his mental picture. However, the human being oversleeps completely in the usual awake consciousness how this works how it goes over in the physical body. This also wakes gradually, even if not in the body of formative forces.

Then we experience from which deeper impulses our actions put themselves in the world, we experience something supersensible behind our will about which the usual consciousness knows nothing. While on the other side we exceed our usual soul life to the spirit, we experience the spirit in the will, that spirit which was active in us, before we entered by birth or conception into the physical existence by which we have come from the spiritual world in the physical existence. Thus methodically exceeding the usual soul life, the spiritual researcher experiences his everlasting.

I explain in the next talks: how this everlasting is included in the contents of the beholding consciousness how really this everlasting is found because we can hold side by side that to which we come, while we pursue the imagining beyond the only sensory perception in the supersensible, and that to which we come while we pursue the will beyond the only mental-bodily into the spiritual.

With it, I have given something of the program of the next talks at the end of this talk. I hope, spiritual science will get beyond that dictum of Du Bois-Reymond with which he wanted to take away the ground under the feet from any spiritual research, while he asserted the principle that only that which comes from the senses can be, actually, science, and where supra-naturalism starts, science stops. No, it should be just shown by our worldview that in future a general conviction will be there which is based on the fact that where real supra-naturalism, real penetration into the spiritual world stops, science must die away also compared with the view of nature. Thus, we also realise that natural sciences themselves have more and more dead, dying away concepts, because the living contents can come only from the spirit. The spirit is the creator of life, and it can be the only creator of real, lively, scientific concepts if it is recognised.