The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Mankind is always in need of truths which cannot, in every age, be wholly understood. The assimilation of truths is not significant only for our knowledge; truths themselves contain life-force. By permeating ourselves with truth we permeate our soul-nature with an element drawn from the objective world, just as we must permeate our physical being with air taken from outside in order to live. Deep truths are indeed expressed in great religious revelations, but in such a form that their real inner meaning is often not understood until much, much later.

The New Testament has been written; the New Testament stands there as a record for humanity—but the whole future course of the Earth's evolution will be required for a full understanding of the New Testament to be reached. In the future, men will acquire much knowledge of the external world and of the spiritual world also; and if taken in the right sense it will all contribute to an understanding of the New Testament. The understanding comes about gradually, but the New Testament is written in a simple form so that it can be absorbed and, later, gradually understood. To permeate ourselves with the truth that resides in the New Testament is not without significance, even if we cannot yet understand the truth in its deepest inwardness. Later on, truth becomes cognitional force, but it is already life-force, in so far as it is imbibed in a more or less childlike form. And if the questions we began to consider yesterday are to be understood in the sense in which they are imparted in the New Testament, we need knowledge of greater depth, greater insight into the spiritual world and its mysteries.

If we are to carry further the studies we began yesterday, we must again examine some occult mysteries, for they will be able to guide us to a further understanding of the riddle of guilt and sin, and from this point of view throw light on the relation of Christ to the human soul.

In the course of our anthroposophical work we have often been faced with a point of view which may be put as a question, a question often asked: Why did Christ die in a human body? Here indeed is a fundamental question concerning the Mystery of Golgotha. Why did Christ die, why did the God die, in a human body?

The God died because the evolution of the universe made it necessary that He should be able to enter into humanity; it was necessary that a God of the upper worlds should become the leader of the Earth-evolution. For this reason Christ had to become related to death. Related to death! One could wish that this expression will come to be deeply understood by the soul of man.

As a rule a man encounters death only when he sees another person die, or in other phenomena akin to death which are to be found in the world, or in the certainty that he must himself pass through the gate of death when his present incarnation is over. But that is only the external aspect of death. Death is present in a quite different form in the world in which we live, and attention must be drawn to this. Let us start from a quite ordinary, everyday phenomenon. We breathe the air in and we breathe it out again; but the air undergoes a change. When the air is exhaled it is dead air; as exhaled air it cannot be inhaled again, for exhaled air is deadly. I indicate this only in order that you may understand the meaning of the occult saying: “When the air enters into men, it dies.” The living element in the air does indeed die when it enters into man. That, however, is only one phenomenon. The ray of light which penetrates our eye must likewise die, and we should gain nothing from the rays of light if our eye did not set itself up against the ray of light, as our lungs do against the air. The light that enters into our eye dies in our eye; and through the death of the light in our eye it comes about that we see. We are filled with much that has to die in us in order that we may have our Earth-consciousness. Corporeally we kill the air; we kill also the rays of light which penetrate us, and so we kill in many ways.

When we call spiritual science to our aid, we distinguish four grades of substance—earth, water, air and warmth. We then enter the realm where we speak of warmth-ether, of light-ether. As far up as the light-ether we kill that which penetrates us; we slay it unceasingly in order that we may have our Earth-consciousness. But there is something we cannot kill by our Earth-existence. We know that above the light-ether there is the so-called chemical ether, and then there comes the life-ether. These are the two kinds of ether that we cannot kill. But because of this, they have no special participation in us. If we were able to kill the chemical ether, the waves of the Harmony of the Spheres would sound perpetually into our physical body, and we should perpetually destroy these waves with our physical life. And if we would also kill the life-ether, we should destroy and continuously kill within ourselves the cosmic life that streams down to the Earth. In earthly sound we are given a substitute, but it is not to be compared with what we should hear if the chemical ether were audible to us as physical human beings. For physical sound is a product of the air and is not the spiritual sound; it is only a substitute for the spiritual sound.

When the Luciferic temptation came, the progressive gods were obliged to place man in a sphere where, from the life-ether downwards, death lives in his physical body. But at that time the progressive gods said—and the words are there in the Bible—”Man has come to know the distinction between Good and Evil, but Life he is not to have. Of the Tree of Life he shall not eat.” In occultism, we can continue the sentence, “Of the Tree of Life man shall not eat”, by adding the words, “and the Spirit of Matter he shall not hear.” Of the Tree of Life man shall not eat and the Spirit of Matter he shall not hear! These are the regions which were closed to man. Only through a certain procedure in the old Mysteries were the tones of the Sphere-Music and the Cosmic Life, pulsating through the universe, revealed to those who were to be initiated when it was given them, outside the body, to see the Christ in advance. Hence it is that the old philosophers speak of the Music of the Spheres.

In drawing attention to this, we indicate at the same time those regions from which the Christ came to us at the time of the Baptism by John in the Jordan. Whence did Christ come? He came from those regions which had been closed to man as a result of the Luciferic temptation—from the region of the Music of the Spheres and from the region of Cosmic Life. These regions had to be forgotten by man because of the Luciferic temptation at the beginning of Earth-evolution. At the baptism by John in the Jordan, Christ entered into a human body, and that which permeated this human body was the spiritual essence of the Harmony of the Spheres, the spiritual essence of the Cosmic Life—the element that still belonged to the human soul during the first phase of its time on Earth, but from which the human soul had to be shut out as a result of the Luciferic temptation. In this sense also man is related to spirit. With his soul he really belongs to the region of the Music of the Spheres and to the region of the Word, of the living Cosmic Ether. But he was cast out from those regions. They were to be restored to him in order that he might gradually be permeated again by the spiritual elements from which he had been exiled. So it is that from the standpoint of spiritual science the words of St. John's Gospel touch us so deeply: In the primal beginning, when man was not yet subject to temptation, was the Logos. Man belonged to the Logos ... the Logos was with God, and man was with the Logos, with God. And through the Baptism by John in the Jordan the Logos entered into human evolution—He became Man.

Here we have the all-important connection. Let us leave this truth as it stands there, and approach the question from another side. Life as a whole shows itself to us only from the external side. Otherwise man would know all the time how he absorbs the corpse of the light into his eye when he sees.

What was it that the Christ had to undertake in order that the fulfillment of St. Paul's saying, “Not I, but Christ in me”, might be made possible? It had to be possible that Christ should permeate the nature of man; but the nature of man is filled with what is slain by human nature in Earth-existence, from the light-ether downwards—the light-ether that dies in the human eye. The nature of man is filled with death; but the life-element in the two highest kinds of ether was withdrawn in order that human nature might not be laden with their death also. In order that Christ might dwell in us, He had therefore to become related to death, related to all the death that is spread out in the world, from the light down to the depths of materiality. Christ had to be able to pass into all that we bear within us as the corpse of the light, of the warmth, of the air, and so on. It was only because He was able to become related to death that He could become related to man. And we must feel in our souls that the God had to die so that he might be able to enfill us, we who had acquired death as a result of the Luciferic temptation, so that we might be able to say: “Christ in us.”

Many other things are hidden for man behind sense-existence. He turns his gaze upon the plant-world; he sees how the light of the Sun conjures the plants out of the soil. Science teaches us that light is necessary for the growth of plants, but that is only half the truth. Anyone who looks at the plants with clairvoyant sight sees living spiritual elements rising out of them. The light dips down into the plants and rises again out of them as a living spiritual element. In the animals it is the chemical ether that enters, and this chemical ether is not perceptible to man; if he could be aware of it, it would sound forth spiritually. The animals transform this ether into water-spirits. The plants transform light into air-spirits; animals transform the spirit active in the chemical ether into water-spirits. Finally, the cosmic ether, or life-ether, which man is prevented from killing and without which he could not live at all—he transforms the life-ether into Earth-spirits.

In a course of lectures given in Karlsruhe, From Jesus to Christ, I once spoke of the human “phantom”. This is not the time for drawing the connecting thread between what is to be said here and what was said then about the human “phantom”, but such connecting threads do exist and you will perhaps find them for yourself. Today I have to present the matter from another side.

There is perpetually engendered in man something that is also spiritual—the life in him. This is forever passing out into the world. Man projects an aura around him, an aura of rays whereby he continually enriches the earthly-spiritual element of the Earth. This earthly-spiritual element of the Earth, however, contains all the qualities, moral or otherwise, that man has acquired and bears within himself, for he sends it all out into his earthly environment. This is absolutely true. Clairvoyant sight perceives how man sends out his moral, intellectual and aesthetic aura into the world, and how this aura continues to live as earthly spirit in the spirituality of the Earth. As a comet draws its tail through the Cosmos, so does man draw through the whole of earthly life the spiritual aura which he projects. This spiritual aura is held together, phantom-like, during a man's life, but at the same time it rays out into the world his moral and intellectual properties of soul.

When in our occult studies we go back to the times before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that the men of those days simply radiated this phantom-like entity, which contained their moral qualities, into the external world, into the external spiritual aura of the Earth. But humanity developed in the course of the Earth's existence, and just at the epoch where the Mystery of Golgotha came to pass, a certain stage had been reached in the evolution of this phantom-like entity. In earlier times it was much more evanescent; by the time of the Mystery of Golgotha it had become denser, had more form; and into this phantom-like entity there was now mingled, as a fundamental characteristic, the death which man develops in himself by killing the ray of light that enters into his eye, and so on, as I have explained. These Earth-spirit entities which radiate from man are like a stillborn child, because he imparts his death to them. If Christ had not come upon Earth, then, during the sojourn of their souls in earthly bodies, human beings could have continuously rayed out entities with the impress of death upon them. And with this impress of death there would have been bound up the moral qualities of man of which we spoke yesterday; objective guilt and objective sin. They would have lain within it.

Let us suppose that the Christ had not come. What would have happened in the evolution of the Earth? From the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha would otherwise have taken place, men would have spiritually created dense forms to which they had imparted death. And these dense forms would have become the very things that had to pass over to the Jupiter stage with the Earth. Man would have imparted death to the Earth. A dead Earth would have given birth to a dead Jupiter.

It could not have been otherwise, because if the Mystery of Golgotha had not come about, man would not have been able to permeate the radiations he gives out with the essences of the Music of the Spheres and the Cosmic Life. These essences would not have been there; they would not have flowed into the human radiations; but Christ brought them back through the Mystery of Golgotha. And when there is a fulfillment of the words, “Not I, but Christ in me”, when we bring about a relationship to Christ within ourselves, that which rays out from us and would otherwise be dead, is made living. Because we bear death within us, the living Christ has to permeate us, in order that He may give life to the spiritual Earth-being that we leave behind us. Christ the living Logos, permeates and gives life to the objective guilt and sin which detaches itself from us and is not carried further in our Karma, and because He gives it life, a living Earth will evolve into a living Jupiter. This is the outcome of the Mystery of Golgotha.

The soul, if it reflects, can receive Christ in the following way. It can realize that there was once a time when man was within the bosom of the divine Logos. But man had to succumb to the temptation of Lucifer. He took death into himself; into him there passed the germ by which he would have brought a dead Earth to birth as a dead Jupiter. The endowment which, before the temptation, the human soul had been destined to receive for its Earth-existence was left behind. With Christ it entered again into man's Earth-existence.

When man takes Christ into himself, so as to feel permeated with Christ, he is able to say to himself: “The endowment which the gods had allocated to me before the Luciferic temptation, but which owing to the temptation by Lucifer had to remain behind in the Cosmos, enters into my soul with the Christ. The soul becomes whole again for the first time by taking the Christ into itself. Only then am I fully soul; only then am I again all that the gods intended me to be from the very beginning of the Earth.” “Am I really a soul without Christ?” man asks himself, and he feels that it is through Christ that he first becomes the soul that the guiding divine Beings meant him to be. This is the wonderful feeling of “home” that souls can have with Christ; for out of the primal cosmic home of the soul of man the Christ descended, in order to give back to the soul of man that which had to be lost on Earth as a result of the temptation by Lucifer. The Christ leads the soul up again to its primordial home, the home allotted to it by the gods.

That is the bliss and the blessing in the actual experience of Christ in the human soul. It was this that gave such bliss to certain Christian mystics in the Middle Ages. They may have written much which in itself seems to be too strongly colored by the senses, but fundamentally it was spiritual. Such Christian mystics as those who joined Bernard of Clairvaux, and others, felt that the human soul was as a bride who had lost her bridegroom at the primal beginning of the Earth; and when Christ entered into their souls, filling them with life and soul and spirit, they experienced Christ as the soul-bridegroom who united Himself with the soul; the bridegroom who had been lost when the soul forsook her original home in order to follow Lucifer along the path of freedom, the path of differentiation between good and evil.

When the soul of man really lives into Christ, feeling that Christ is the living Being who from the death on Golgotha flowed out into the atmosphere of the Earth and can flow into the soul, it feels itself inwardly vivified through the Christ. The soul feels a transition from death into life.

So long as we have to live out our earthly existence in human bodies—and this will continue far into a remote future—we cannot hear directly the Music of the Spheres or have direct experience of the Cosmic Life. But we can experience the incoming of the Christ, and so we can receive, by proxy as it were, that which would otherwise come to us from the Music of the Spheres and the Cosmic Life.

Pythagoras, an Initiate of the ancient Mysteries, spoke of the Music of the Spheres. He had gone through the process whereby the soul passes out of the body, and he could then be carried away into the spiritual worlds. There he saw the Christ who was later to come to the Earth. Since the Mystery of Golgotha we cannot speak of the Music of the Spheres as did Pythagoras, but we can speak of it in another way. An Initiate might even today speak as Pythagoras did; but the ordinary inhabitant of the Earth in his physical body can speak of the Music of the Spheres and of the Cosmic Life only when he experiences in his soul, “Not I, but Christ in me”, for the Christ within him has lived in the Music of the Spheres and in the Cosmic Life. But we must go through this experience in ourselves; we must really receive the Christ into our souls.

Let us suppose that a man were to fight against this, that he did not wish to receive Christ into his soul. Then he would come to the end of the Earth period, and in the nebulous spirit-structure that had then taken shape out of the Earth-spirits arising in the course of human evolution, he would have all the phantom-like beings which had issued from him in former incarnations. They would all be there. The tendency indicated here would lead to a dead Earth, and this would pass over, dead, to Jupiter. At the end of the Earth period a man might have carried through and completely absolved his Karma; he might have made personal compensation for all his imperfect deeds; he might have become whole in his soul-being, in his ego, but the objective sin and guilt would remain. That is an absolute truth, for we do not live only for ourselves, so that by adjusting our Karma we may become egotistically more nearly perfect; we live for the world, and at the end of the ages the remains of our Earth incarnations will stand there like a mighty tableau if we have not taken into us the living Christ.

When we connect what was said yesterday with what is being said today (and it is really the same, only seen from two sides) we understand how Christ takes upon Himself the guilt and sin of Earth humanity, in so far as these are objective guilt and sin. And if we have inwardly realized this “Not I, but Christ in me”, the Christ in us, then He takes over the objective remains of our incarnations, and they stand there vivified by Christ, irradiated by Christ and permeated by His life. Yes, the remains of our incarnations stand there, and what do they come to, taken as a whole?

Because Christ unites them all—Christ who belongs to all mankind in the present and in the future—the remains of the single incarnations are all compressed together. Every human soul lives in successive incarnations. From each incarnation certain relics or remains are left, as we have described. Further incarnations will leave other remains, and so on, up to the end of the Earth period. If these relics are permeated by Christ, they are compressed together. Compress what is rarefied and you will get density. Spirit also becomes dense, and so our collective Earth-incarnations are united into a spiritual body. This body belongs to us; we need it because we evolve onwards to Jupiter, and it will be the starting-point of our embodiment on Jupiter. At the end of the Earth period we shall stand there with the soul—whatever the particular karma of the soul may be—and we shall stand there before our earthly relics which have been gathered together by Christ, and we shall have to unite with them in order to pass over with them to Jupiter.

We shall rise again in the body, in the earthly body that has condensed out of the separate incarnations. Truly, my dear friends, from a heart profoundly moved I utter these words: “In the body we shall rise again!”

In these days, young people of sixteen and even less are beginning to claim a creed of their own, and to talk of having happily grown beyond such nonsense as the “Resurrection of the Body”. But those who seek to deepen their occult knowledge of the mysteries of the universe strive gradually to rise to an understanding of what has been said to mankind, because—as I explained at the beginning of the lecture—it had first of all to be said, in order that men might grasp it as life-truth and come to understand it later. The resurrection of the body is a reality, but our soul must feel that it will rise again with the earthly relics that have been collected, brought together by Christ, by the spiritual body that is permeated with Christ. This is what our soul must learn to understand. For let us suppose that, because of our not having received into ourselves the living Christ, we could not approach this Earth-body, with its sin and guilt, and unite with it. If we had rejected the Christ, the relics of our various incarnations would be scattered at the end of the Earth period; they would have remained, but they would not have been gathered together by the Christ, who spiritualizes the whole of humanity. We should stand there as souls at the end of the Earth period and we should be bound to the Earth, to that part of the Earth which remains dead in our relics. Certainly our souls would be free in the spirit in an egotistic sense, but we would be unable to approach our bodily relics. Such souls are the booty of Lucifer, for he strives to thwart the true goal of the Earth; he tries to prevent souls from reaching their Earth-goal, to hold them back in the spiritual world. And in the Jupiter period Lucifer will send over what has remained of scattered Earth-relics as a dead content of Jupiter. It will not, as Moon, separate from Jupiter, but will be within Jupiter, and it will be continually thrusting up these Earth-relics. And these Earth-relics will have to be animated as species-souls by the souls above.

And now you will remember what I have told you some years ago: that the human race on Jupiter will divide itself into those souls who have attained their Earth-goal, who will have attained the goal of Jupiter, and into those souls who will form a middle kingdom between the human kingdom and the animal kingdom on Jupiter. These latter will be Luciferic souls—Luciferic, merely spiritual. They will have their body below, and it will be a direct expression of their whole inner being, but they will be able to direct it only from outside. Two races, the good and the bad, will differentiate themselves from one another on Jupiter. This was stated years ago; today we wish to consider it more deeply.

A Venus-existence will follow that of Jupiter, and again there will be an adjustment through the further evolution of the Christ; but it is on Jupiter that man will realize what it means to be perfected only in his own ego, instead of making the whole Earth his concern. That is something he will have to experience through the whole course of the Jupiter cycle, for everything he has not permeated with Christ during his earthly existence may then appear before his spiritual sight.

Let us reflect from this point of view upon the words of Christ with which He sent His disciples out into the world to proclaim His Name, and in His Name to forgive sins. Why to forgive sins in His Name? Because the forgiveness of sins is connected with His Name. Sins can be blotted out and transformed into living life only if Christ can be united with our Earth-relics, if during our Earth-existence He is within us in the sense of the Pauline saying: “Not I, but Christ in me”.

And wherever any religious denomination associates itself in its outer observances with this saying of Christ, in order to bring home to souls, again and again, all that is connected with Christ, we must seek this deeper meaning in it. When, in any religious denomination, one of Christ's servants speaks of the forgiveness of sins, as though by Christ's command, it means that with his words he forms a connection with the forgiveness of sins through Christ, and to the soul in need of comfort he says, in effect: “I have seen that you have developed a living relationship to Christ. You are uniting the objective sin and guilt, and the objective sin and guilt that will enter into your Earth-relics, with everything that Christ is for you. Because I have recognized that you have permeated yourself with Christ—therefore I dare say to you: your sins are forgiven.”

Such words always mean that he who in any religious denomination speaks of the forgiveness of sins is convinced that the person in question has found a connection with Christ, that he wants to bear Christ in his heart and in his soul. Because of this he can properly give comfort when the other person comes to him conscious of guilt. “Christ will forgive you, and I am permitted to say to you that in His Name your sins are forgiven.” Christ is the only forgiver of sins because He is the bearer of sins. He is the Being who gives life to human Earth-relics, and a wonderful link with Him is created when those who want to serve Him can give comfort in the words, “Your sins are forgiven”, to those who show that in their inner being they feel a union with Christ. For it is like a fresh strengthening of the relationship to Christ when the soul realizes: “I have understood my guilt and sins in such a way that it can permissibly be said to me that Christ takes them upon himself, works through them with His being.” If the expression “the forgiveness of sins” is to be an expression of the truth, it must always carry an undertone which reminds the sinner of his bond with Christ, even if he does not form it anew. Between the soul and Christ there must be a bond so intense that the soul cannot be reminded of it often enough. And because the Christ is bound up with the objective sin and guilt of the human soul, the soul can best remind itself in daily life of its relationship to Christ by always remembering, at the moment of the forgiveness of sins, the presence of the Cosmic Christ in the Earth's existence.

Those who join Anthroposophy in the right spirit, and not merely in an external sense, can most assuredly become their own father confessors. Most assuredly through Spiritual Science they can learn to know Christ so intimately, and feel themselves so closely connected with Him, that they can be directly conscious of His spiritual presence. And when they have solemnly vowed themselves to Him as the Cosmic Principle, they can in spirit direct their confusion to Him and in their silent meditation ask from Him the forgiveness of sins. But as long as men have not yet permeated themselves with spiritual science in this deep spiritual sense, we must look with understanding at what the “forgiveness of sins” signifies in the various religious observances of the world. Men will become spiritually freer and freer, and in this greater spiritual freedom their communion with Christ will become more and more a direct experience.

And there must be tolerance! A person who believes that through the deep inward understanding he has of the Spirit of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ, he can hold direct intercourse with the Christ, must look with understanding upon those who need the positive declarations of a confession of faith, and a minister of Christ to give them comfort with words, “Your sins are forgiven”. On the other hand, there should be tolerance on the part of those who see that there are men who can be independent. In earthly life this may be all an ideal, but the anthroposophist may at least look up to such an ideal.

I have spoken to you of spiritual secrets which make it possible for men—even those who have absorbed much anthroposophical teaching—to look still more deeply into the whole nature of our being. I have spoken to you of the overcoming of human egoism, and of those things we must understand before we can have a right understanding of Karma. I have spoken to you of man in so far as he is not only an “I” being, but belongs to the whole Earth-existence and is thereby called to help forward the attainment of the divine aim appointed for the Earth. The Christ did not come into the world and pass through the Mystery of Golgotha in order that He might be something to each one of us in our egoism. It would be terrible if Christ were to be so understood that the words of Paul, “Not I, but Christ in me” served only to encourage a higher egoism. Christ died for the whole of humanity, for the humanity of the Earth. Christ became the central spirit of the Earth, who has to save for the Earth the spiritual-earthly elements that flow out from man.

Nowadays one can read theological works—and those who have read them will bear me out—which assure us that certain theologians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have at last disposed of the popular medieval belief that Christ came to Earth in order to snatch the Earth from the devil, to snatch the Earth from Lucifer. Within modern theology there is an “enlightened” materialism which will not recognize itself as such but on the contrary imagines itself to be specially enlightened. It says: “In the dark Middle Ages people said that Christ appeared in the world because He had to snatch the Earth away from the devil.” But the true explanation leads us back to this simple, popular belief. For everything on the Earth that is not set free by Christ belongs to Lucifer. All that is human in us, all that is more than what is merely confined in our ego, is ennobled, is made fruitful for the whole of humanity, when it is permeated with Christ.

And now, at the end of our considerations during the last few days, I would not like to conclude without saying those further words to each single one of the souls who are gathered together here:

Hope and confidence in the future of our work can dwell in our hearts, because we have endeavored, from the very beginning, to fill what we had to say with the will of Christ. And this hope and confidence may allow us to say that our teaching is itself what Christ has wished to say to us, in fulfillment of His words: “I am with you always, even to the end of the Earth ages.” We have wished to be mindful only of what comes from Him. And all that He has inspired us with, according to His promise, we want to take into our souls as our spiritual science. It is not because we feel our spiritual science to be imbued with any sort of Christian dogmatism that we regard it as Christian, but because, having Christ within us, we look on it as a revelation of the Christ in ourselves. I am therefore also convinced that the springing up of true spiritual science in those souls who want to receive, with us, our Christ-filled spiritual science will be fruitful for the whole of humanity, and especially for those who welcome these fruits.

Clairvoyant observation shows that much of what is good, spiritually good, in our Movement proceeds from those who have taken our Christian spiritual science into themselves, and then, having passed through the gate of death, send down to us the fruits of this Christian spiritual science. The Christian spiritual science which those souls have taken into themselves and are now sending down to us from the spiritual worlds is already living in us. For they do not keep it in their own karmic stream for the sake of their own perfecting; they can let it stream into those who want to receive it. Comfort and hope arise for our spiritual science when we know that our so-called “dead” are working with us.

In the second lecture we spoke about these things in a certain connection. But today, when we have come to the close of the course, I should like to add a personal word.

While I have been speaking to the Norrköping Branch of our society, I could not be other than conscious always of the spirit of one who was so closely connected with us here. The spirit of Frau Danielsen looks down like a good angel on all that this Branch wants to undertake. Hers also was a Christian spirit in the sense described, and the souls who knew her will never feel themselves separated from her. May that spirit hover as guardian-spirit over this Branch! Most willingly and surely will it do so if the souls who work in this Branch receive it. With these words, spoken from the depths of my heart, I close these lectures, and I hope that we shall continue to work together on the spiritual path we have embraced.

Whereas on the last occasion that we were able to meet together here we focused our attention upon experiences of a more special kind, today our approach to spiritual science will be rather of a general nature. I Should like to make a start from something all of you have really known for a long time—that all study of spiritual science is based on knowledge which is not acquired through the instrument of the physical body but through the liberation of what belongs to soul and spirit from the physical instrument; whereby the soul and spirit enter into direct connection with the spiritual world.

In ordinary life and in ordinary cognition this direct connection with the spiritual world is broken off because, if we wish to maintain our relation to the ordinary world, we have in our waking condition to use the instruments of our physical body. In the sleeping condition all our will is concentrated on our connection with the physical body in such a way that the longing for the body spreads a cloud, as it were throughout soul and spirit, preventing us—both during sleep and in ordinary life—from experiencing anything at all in the spiritual world around us.

Now it is important that anyone actively interested in spiritual science should really understand the value of this activity, as such, and its relation to the personal striving which, by meditation, and concentration of the impulses of thought, feeling and will—or anything else of that nature—brings the human being into the spiritual world. For in this connection we must above all be clear about a deep and significant truth—namely, that the unity, which to a certain extent surrounds us in the ordinary world, in the spiritual world does not exist in the same way I have already indicated that this unity is founded on the whole way in which man, as soul and spirit, is fitted together. Now constantly do we hear men asking: What is the unifying principle in the world? And what satisfaction they find in being able to trace everything to a unifying principle!

Actually the physical world does appear to us eminently as a whole, as one formation; and those people who  are, as it were, obsessed by the ‘demon of unity’ arrive at all manner of abstractions in their thought by seeking for the unifying  principle in the world.

Characteristic of this are personalities such as an old gentleman who came to me one evening and told me, with all the enthusiasm of a discoverer, that he had found a unifying principle enabling him to explain all the phenomena of the world. In his joy at this discovery he declared that he could tell me all about it in just a few words, and he was so pleased about the matter that he said: I can now explain the whole cosmos. Hell, earth, heaven—he could explain them all in accordance with this unifying principle.

This episode was brought to my mind again the other day, when someone wrote urgently demanding an interview with me. He had made the acquaintance of a man able in five minutes to propound a completely satisfying world-conception. I need hardly say that there is no time for interviews of such a kind where a really serious spiritual stream is concerned. Those, however, who are possessed by the "unity demon”—always at the same time a demon who loves the easy path—are just now particularly numerous.

In connection with this we must above all take very seriously what is said in "Knowledge of the Higher World", namely, that directly we have crossed the threshold of the spiritual world we really come face to face with a threefold experience. In the book mentioned, I have especially emphasised that the soul is split, as it were, into three, that when the soul crosses the threshold into the spiritual world there no longer exists what makes it possible to believe in the unity-demon, the demon who loves ease.

Indeed, as soon as we pass the threshold of the spiritual world, with our whole being we feel that we are entering into three worlds—actually three worlds. We must never lose sight of the fact that once the threshold of the spiritual world is crossed we have the distinct experience of three worlds. We actually belong to these three worlds in the very construction of our whole physical body. I might say that the working together of three worlds, comparatively independent of one another, is a necessary factor in the wonderful structure of man as he confronts us in the physical world. When we consider the formation of our head, the formation of all that belongs to our head, we must be clear, even when only speaking of the head, that the formative forces of our head and the beings who are working and creating in these formative forces, belong to an entirely different world from, for example, the formative force of our breast, the formative force of all that has to do with our heart, including our arms and hands. To a certain extent it is as if the formative force of these material parts of man were to belong to a quite different world from the formative forces of our head. The lower organs of the body to gather with the legs, in their turn, belong to an entirely different world from the other members referred to.

Now you may ask what significance all this has. It has a great significance, because the present cycle of mankind is such that we attain unadulterated genuine and really true results in spiritual science only when what is of a soul and spiritual nature is lifted out of the head.  So that the clairvoyant aspect of a man observed in the light of spiritual science is this—that the soul-spiritual is for the most part lifted out and, as it were, joined to the forces of the cosmos as if by a spiritually electric contact. (See Diagram I.)

Thus everything must be drawn out—the ego, the astral body, up to the etheric body. This drawing out is obviously connected with the development of what are called the lotus flowers. The forces that set the lotus flowers in movement lie in those parts of the soul-spiritual in man that are lifted out—or on the way to being lifted out.

This clairvoyance that is a head-clairvoyance can come about in our time through spiritual science, for the result of this head-clairvoyance is of service to mankind.  Of a quite different nature is the clairvoyant result brought about by the lifting-out of the soul-spiritual from the organs of the heart, arms and hands. This lifting-out is distinct, too, in its inward significance from what comes about through—what I prefer to call—head-clairvoyance. The lifting-out from the material organ of the heart is, rather, the result of meditation which is related to the life of the will; it is brought about by human devotion to the world-process, whereas the head-clairvoyance is more the result of thought, of conceptions, but also of conceptions partaking of the nature of feeling.

Where these two kinds of clairvoyance are concerned it is generally so that the heart-clairvoyance or breast-clairvoyance to the degree to which it is destined to develop, develops simultaneously with the head-clairvoyance. This leads the breast-clairvoyance more in the direction of will-development, towards connection with the actions of the spiritual beings of lower hierarchies, like those, for instance, who are embodied in the various earthly kingdoms; whereas the head-clairvoyance leads man more to vision, cognition, perception in the more important, higher worlds: more important in the sense that knowledge of these higher powers is necessary for satisfaction of certain requirements—knowledge which must increasingly arise in present day mankind. The further we approach the future of our earthly evolution the less will men be able to live—if their soul life is not to wither away—when they are not able to absorb into their knowledge the results of this clairvoyance.

There is still a third kind of clairvoyance which arises when what may be called the soul-spiritual is freed from, lifted out of, the remaining part of man. Here I have to indicate (see Diagram II.) the lifting-out down below towards man's extremity. In spite of the inelegance of the expression let me call this the clairvoyance of the abdomen; so that we can actually differentiate the kinds of clairvoyance as those of be head, the breast and the abdomen.

Whereas in this cycle of mankind the head-clairvoyance leads pre-eminently to the acquiring of what is independent of the human being, the abdomen-clairvoyance leads chiefly to results connected with what gees on within man. What goes on within man himself must naturally be an object of investigation and, indeed, in the sphere of physical research—of anatomy and physiology—which is concerned with this matter, there are plenty of investigators. It should not be thought that this abdomen-clairvoyance is without value, in the best sense of the word. Certainly it has value. We must, however, be clear that abdomen-clairvoyance can teach man very little concerning what goes on impersonally in cosmic processes, but that it teaches him principally about what is within him, what may be said to go on within his skin.

Where the moral and ethical are concerned, comparatively the most important clairvoyance is that of the head. I shall therefore speak always of opposites. The breast-clairvoyance is in the middle—between head-clairvoyance and abdomen-clairvoyance. In respect of the ethical these two are easily distinguishable, even inwardly. Those who in an impersonal way, in the sense indicated in "Knowledge of the Higher Worlds", strive for vision into the higher worlds, those who do not let themselves be disheartened by the difficulty of this sure path, will develop something impersonal in their clairvoyance, above all an interest of a higher kind for objective knowledge of the world, for all that goes on in the world cosmically, and in the world of historical events.

Of man himself head-clairvoyance speaks pre-eminently in a ray that points to man’s place in the cosmic, in the historical course of life, drawing attention also to what man is in the whole world-process; and what arises as a result of this head-clairvoyance will always have what we might call the character of universal knowledge. It will contain information having significance—please note this well—for all human beings, not only for particular individuals.

The abdomen-clairvoyance is chiefly permeated by every possible kind of human egoism, and in general very easily leads to the clairvoyant in question being mainly concerned with himself, with the occult foundations of his own destiny, with the occult foundations of his personal worth and character. This shows itself as a self-evident tendency in what we call abdomen-clairvoyance.

Now where the nature of their perception is concerned a great difference is revealed between these two kinds of clairvoyance. Whoever, on the path given in "Knowledge of the Higher Worlds", strives to free the soul and spirit from his head, from his apparatus of perception, whoever to a certain extent loosens the soul-spiritual part of his head from the physical instrument and with this soul-spiritual part of his head is able to place himself within the spiritual world, will find it extraordinarily difficult to get away from clairvoyant experiences that are merely shadowy. This getting free from the head is connected at first with experiences, that certainly lack the colour, the fulness, of vivid memories, and therefore appear to be, in a way, inwardly colourless. Only by striving for further progress on this path does it come about that these experiences lose their shadowy character so that pale, shadowy experiences become tinged with colour and tone.

This then is the process taking place here—that we leave our head and actually enter a world very difficult for us to observe; for it is by gradually and slowly acquiring the ability to live outside our head that we strengthen the inner life-forces, with the result that the forces streaming towards us from the whole surrounding world are drawn together. Imagine, therefore, the forces out of the whole surrounding world have to be drawn together, and when we have thus gathered them together we get the tinging with what has colour and tone. Imagine we conceive it in this way (see Diagram III.) you have here (a) a surface very full of colour, a spherical surface; and now imagine this spherical surface extended over a wide surface (b, c). Here the colour becomes much paler, and if we extend it still farther the colour will become increasingly pale. Were we to withdraw it again, if here it were pale yellow, we should here have a much stronger, deeper yellow, because the colour would be more concentrated.

Now the head-clairvoyance confronts the whole cosmos; and spread out over the whole cosmos is what the human being has first with his life-forces to concentrate into what, clairvoyantly, is himself in his essential being. So that in reality it is only in the arduous course of inner evolution that he gradually tinges his shadowy experiences with colour. Then, when endless efforts have been made to gain the general experience of simply being outside the body, when this has been experienced for a long time with a growing feeling of ever more intensive experience - though not yet accompanied by colour and tone—then gradually the realms from the cosmos approach the head-clairvoyance.

This is a matter of lengthy, selfless development. It must particularly be pointed out that an indispensable factor in this development is the actual study of spiritual science. Over and over again it must be emphasised that spiritual science when given can really be understood. It cannot be emphasised too often that for the understanding of spiritual science there is no need of clairvoyance.  It goes without saying that to arrive at its results one has to be clairvoyant; but once these results are gained they can be understood without clairvoyance. What must precede actual vision is the understanding of spiritual science. Here, too, it must be said that the right way is the reverse of what is right in the physical world of the senses. In the physical world of the senses we first have the right perception, after which we pass on to observation by means of thought, thus forming for ourselves a judgment based on knowledge. This must be reversed when we rise into the spiritual world. There we have first to develop concepts, making every effort to live ourselves into spiritual science objectively; otherwise we can never be sure that we shall rightly interpret anything we observe in the spiritual world. There, knowledge must come before vision. This is what to many people is so infinitely tiresome—that they are suppressed to study spiritual science; they take it as an incomprehensible demand. For it is comparatively easy to have perceptions, but rightly to interpret them means to make one's way rightly—objectively, selflessly—into spiritual science, to go into it deeply.

Now where what may be called abdomen-clairvoyance is concerned, the reverse is the case. Here we start out from the soul-spiritual which has been working upon our bodily, physical nature. For everything in the world is founded upon the spiritual. When you have eaten a piece of kohlrabi, let us say—most of us here are vegetarians—and it is then worked upon in our organism, we have to do not merely with a process that is physical and chemical, brought about by the stomach with its forces and juices but, behind all this, etheric body, astral body and ego are active. All these processes have behind them processes which are spiritual. We should be wrong in believing that there are material processes having no spiritual processes behind them. Just imagine that after a more or less excellent midday meal you lie down and become clairvoyant, clairvoyant in such a way that what is of a soul and spirit nature in the digestive organs is lifted out from then. While your stomach and your other organ are effectively digesting you are living with your soul and spirit in the world of soul and spirit itself, and whereas the spiritual process going on in your etheric body, astral body and ego normally remains in the unconscious, when you become clairvoyant it rises into your consciousness. Then, while you are experiencing in soul and spirit, you are able to see all the working, forming and creating of the soul and spirit in the bodily members during digestion; you are able to see this because it projects itself into the world and, reflecting itself in picture-form, appears to you in the ether outside. Then, because now you have not to draw colour so much out of the cosmos but have the working of the whole process concentrated under your skin, you get the most beautiful clairvoyant images. Thus this wonderful thing taking place around you in the most sublime, radiating processes of colour and form is nothing but the process of digestion going on in man's spiritual organs—a process taking place in the body.

This clairvoyance is particularly distinguished from the other by the fact that the other proceeds from shadowy images and receives colour and tone only with effort, whereas the abdomen-clairvoyance proceeds from the most beautiful, the most sublime, sight it is possible for us to have. This may be expressed in the form of a law—when clairvoyance begins with the most sublime images—in particular colour images—then it is a clairvoyance related to processes taking place within the personality. I lay stress upon this as it can be of value for investigation into the spiritual world.  Just as anatomy and physiology investigate the process of digestion and other processes; it is also of the greatest worth to investigate in this way the spiritual processes behind those that belong to man. It would be bad, however, to give oneself up to any kind of deception or illusion and thus to give things a wrong interpretation.

Were it thought that clairvoyance arising in this way without suitable preparation could give anything more than what goes on in man and projects itself into the objective world—were it thought possible to approach more nearly to the ruling powers of the world, to the leading spiritual forces, through clairvoyance of such a kind, we should be sadly deceived.  Just as little as we can solve the riddle of the world by investigating human digestion, can we approach the riddles and mysteries of the world by developing abdomen-clairvoyance.

You see therefore how essential it is rightly to find our way about in the world we enter through liberation of the forces in our soul and spirit. What we have now been saying is not meant to make anyone feel aversion towards abdomen-clairvoyance.  But everyone should be clear about the way clairvoyance of this kind is related to what can be true spiritual clairvoyance, and how we have to rise superior to all superficial over-estimation of what can be attained on a clairvoyant path in such a way that it can have only a personal content. Only when, where these things having a personal content are concerned, we can disregard the personal and observe in the way an anatomist or physiologist observes what he experiences in course of dissection or investigation only then have these things a certain value. In any case no religious feeling of any kind ought to be attached to these things, but only to the results of head-clairvoyance. We shall have the right attitude to the other clairvoyance in proportion as we demand that it is to be treated in the same scientifically objective sense as the results of anatomy and the results of physiology.

I should like here to make a rather sweeping statement—namely, that not everything discovered on the path of clairvoyance is worthy of veneration, but it is all of value as knowledge. This is what we have to bear in mind. I have told you that for our present cycle it is particularly

Important to incorporate into the general spiritual culture of mankind the results of clairvoyance; this is really important.  Concerning this, I will just mention today one aspect of the matter. We are actually living at a time when men must prepare gradually to leave the realm of mere philosophical idealism and to enter into real consciousness of the spiritual world, the universal spiritual world, in which we live just as we live in the physical world.

Now we will start out from an experience of  the head- clairvoyance, which will be easily understood by those who have  gone at all deeply into what was said in the last Munich cycle,¹ and which is dealt with also in my book The Threshold of the Spiritual World. I particularly mentioned there that our thinking undergoes a transformation the moment we free ourselves—especially where our thoughts are concerned—from the physical instrument of the head. I expressed myself at the time in a rather grotesque way, saying that when we are thus free our thoughts no longer have the character that they have in ordinary, everyday life. In our ordinary everyday experience we necessarily have the feeling—if we are not out of our mind—which we are in control of our thought-world, that when we have two thoughts—it is we who either combine or separate them.

When we remember we are conscious that in our inner life we pass over from our present experience to that of our past. We always have the feeling: it is we who stand behind the weaving and movement of our thoughts.  This ceases the moment we free the soul and spirit from our head and develop a thinking independent of the body. At that time I used a rather crude simile, saying it is as if we had put our head into ant-heap and then the characteristic confusion had arisen—this indeed is the way the thoughts begin to play into one another. When in ordinary life we combine two of our thoughts, as, for example, the two thoughts "rose" and "red", we know that in our thought-world we are free to combine these concepts—the rose is red. This is not so when we are outside. There we find life in the thoughts—thoughts have life of their own, every thought becomes a being. One thought runs into the other, while some other thought runs away from another.

Thus the thought-world acquires an individual life. Why is this so? Now what we experience in our ordinary, everyday thinking is merely pictures, merely shadows of thoughts. You can glean this from my book "Theosophy". As soon as we develop the thinking that is free of the body, every thought becomes like a husk, and into this husk there slips an elemental being. The thought is no longer in our control. We put it out like a feeler; it goes out into the world and into it slips an elemental being. Our thoughts are thus filled out, as it were, by elementals; and all this twirls and blusters about in us. So that it may be said: when we send out the soul- spiritual part of our head into the spiritual world (we have it outside only because we are within the physical head), when in this way we project it into the spiritual world, we no longer experience thoughts such as we do in the physical world, it is the life of being that we experience. As I said at the time, we put our head, as it were, into an ant heap, and experience the life of beings.

It is like this, in reality, right up to the highest of the hierarchies. If we wish to experience Angels, Archangels, or even Archai, this has to be in such a way that we live in our thoughts and in the beings, just as I have described. We send out our thoughts and a being slips in and moves about inside them. When on Venus or on Saturn we perceive beings, we let our thoughts slip out and then there slip into them Venus or Saturn beings. There is no need for us to be afraid of having the thoughts of hierarchies; we just have to accustom ourselves to live in the higher hierarchies with our head. We must say to ourselves: Our own thinking ceases and our head becomes the stage on which the higher hierarchies work

Now in the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, thought has certainly reached its zenith in purity and clearness.  Whatever the height to which thought was able to soar at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it is all implicit in this philosophy. The highest point which thought can attain has there been reached; the next step must go beyond it and lead into the actual whirling and weaving life of thought. Thus we live in an age when men are called to perceive the higher hierarchies. We are destined to be taken up into the world of the higher hierarchies and, confronted by the living and weaving of the hierarchies, we have to rid ourselves of our fear.

The nineteenth century was overflowing with this fear, with this terror, in face of the life of the higher hierarchies. Though they did not realise it, men had reached such a pitch that they were actually praying: O, dear Ahriman, protect me from having my life of thought seized upon by the weaving and living of the higher hierarchies, for otherwise some devil of a Saturn or Sun-being may enter! You will say that no one in the nineteenth century thought thus. But I can prove to you that they did.

 Ludwig Feuerbach, a philosopher of the nineteenth century, who particularly fought against the idea of immortality, who opposed all belief in a supersensible world, holding this belief to be that of fantastical, mystical dreamers and considering it harmful for the whole of mankind this Ludwig Feuerbach wrote the following. I beg you to make special note of this in your soul:

“The man who is actively occupied with the objects surrounding him in life has no time to think of death and consequently no need for immortality. If he thinks of death at all he sees in it merely a warning to lay out his share of life's capital wisely, to avoid wasting valuable time on unworthy thing but to use it to fulfil the task he sets himself in life.”

“Were man to find his fulfillment only beyond the earth, in the heavens, on Uranus, on Saturn, or wherever else he would, we should have no philosophy, no knowledge of any kind.  Instead of universal, abstract truths and beings, instead of the thoughts, knowledge, concepts of pure spiritual beings and objects that now dwell in our head, there would then dwell there our heavenly brothers—the beings of Saturn and Uranus.  In place of mathematics, logic, metaphysics, we should have the most faithful portraits of the dwellers in heaven .Those heavenly beings would indeed be encamped between us and the objects of our knowledge and thinking; they would obstruct our view of those objects and bring about a total eclipse of the sun in our spirit.”

For Feuerbach the sun is his thought.

He has, therefore, the whole picture of what would have to happen. He is so terribly afraid of it that he prays to the good Ahriman to preserve him from having the beings of Saturn and Uranus  dwelling in his head.

“They would be nearer and more akin to us than thoughts, ideas and concepts, for they are not purely spiritual abstract beings such as these, they are spiritual beings affecting the senses, beings who express only the essential nature of imaginative force. Our whole spirit would then be merely a dream, a vision of a more splendid future. Hence, whoever is prevented by the weight of his reason from swimming around on the surface of the ocean of imagination, will recognise that in the depths of our spirit, as if in an atmosphere impossible to be breathed in those depths, the life-light of the Angels, and all other similar heavenly beings, is extinguished ...."

If, therefore, these beings were to enter our thoughts our spirit would become a dream - so writes Feuerbach.  He feels secure only in the realm of thoughts; should the being of the Angels and other heavenly beings enter these thoughts he would then feel insecure. This is the prayer to Ahriman—that he should protect mankind from knowledge of the spiritual world; and in the forties of the nineteenth century this came about through Ludwig Feuerbach, the enemy of any spiritual world-conception. What does this mean? It means nothing or less than this—that the time is ripe for us to raise ourselves to the spiritual worlds; for we need only take in earnest what this man describes and the way will be found into the spiritual worlds. We need just to leave off struggling against it with the help of Ahriman. Thus you see that it is not the heavens that are to blame for spiritual science not making its way into the culture of our age, for it actually penetrates into the heads of its opponents. Spiritual science wills to enter the world. The heavens are not at fault; the gods are offering men wisdom—spiritual science is pressing its way in.  With the same fervour with which under Ahriman's lead men have brought resistance to bear, is it up to them now to leave off resisting and to find the courage to take spiritual science fully and genuinely in earnest.

The following must be said about the development of the nineteenth century. We must say: It is as if indicated by the spiritual world that after the materialistic age the spiritual age is to come, when it is man’s part to open his mind and heart to receive the spiritual world. What was in a supreme sense a materialistic world-outlook and found its characteristic advocate in the clever and greatly gifted philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach, is like an assault, a resistance, against what is to come to mankind. From above, the spiritual forces come down; from below the forces of understanding, the forces of knowledge, must ascend. It may be said that Ludwig Feuerbach found the characteristic way to express himself when he said that an eclipse in the sun of the soul would have to begin were thoughts no longer to be thought, but that beings of Uranus, Venus, Saturn, and so on, were to play in—in other words, the higher hierarchies. Then would come an eclipse of the spirit of which these people have a dreadful fear. This Eclipse of the spirit not, however, brought about by heavenly beings—their desire is to bring their light to man. The darkness has come about through men entering into connection with Ahriman, when, surrounding themselves with a cloud, an aura of fear, they have sought to make good their attack against the oncoming of the spiritual world. We can see by this that the darkening has been the work of man; and we must say further that man has made more and more use of this darkening, of this obscuring, of a free knowledge that opens itself to the radiant light of the spirit

This is what men have prepared for themselves; and by this it can be seen how, in the course of the nineteenth century, a certain love has arisen, a certain sympathy, for all thoughts which are without sequence and quickly disposed of—for everything, indeed, which does not have to be thoroughly thought out. A preference, a sympathy, has arisen for everything for which no definite conclusion is desired. A cognition and thinking that are unprejudiced and free of hypotheses has become increasingly unpopular; hence we cannot wonder, if in public life this love of the nebulous, the vague, the thoughts that are incomplete, has taken on a morally unsound character. While this character finds favour, however, sympathy for the life of thought becomes dull, and this then has its effect on general conduct. From this, into the physical body. Thereby the activity of the etheric body is held up in the glands and rays back, making perceptible what is not perceptible to the brain. By this means thoughts can be perceived that the brain does not perceive; but all the same it remains a subordinate activity.

You see how it is possible to make a sharp distinction between what are called head-clairvoyance and the clairvoyance of the abdomen. It may be that you will ask: How can I decide which of these two I am develoiping? We can only say that head-clairvoyance will always be obtained when, in this present cycle of mankind, it is really sought on the path specified, namely, through meditation and concentration, and when everything on this path is developed. Abdominal clairvoyance is something that does not come from following this path. It rests on the glandular system being perceived, and this can happen in life through various kinds of abnormal conditions.  There is less effort in becoming an abdominal clairvoyant, because to a certain extent this comes of itself; whereas head-clairvoyance has in the strictest sense of word—to be acquired.

Therefore when clairvoyance arises of itself it is best not to say that one is divinely favoured by being given something which has not been earned; it is best to distrustful. It is possible to give examples of ways in which abdominal clairvoyance can arise. The only way in which head-clairvoyance comes about is by one’s rising to certain stages in the development of initiation through diligent and regular meditation and concentration. Where abdominal clairvoyance concerned I will—because in a rather different sense to our previous reference it is not without danger to speak of these things—mention one of the most harmless occasions for becoming clairvoyant.

Let us suppose that a man grows up in circumstances such as early develop in his soul the desire to become in ordinary physical life a very big gun indeed—Privy Councillor, shall we say, or something of the kind. Thus, let us suppose that this desire arises in life very early. When anything like this is wished for it means that one is ambitious. This ambition lives in the desire-nature, and in the desire-nature it can burn—burn terribly. The man is not aware of wanting to be a Privy Councillor, but it burns in his desire and with this burning desire he goes through the world, growing up in company with it. Hence it happens that his desires does not always enter his physical organization as it should. Something is in disorder. If anyone becomes a Privy Councillor this doesn’t make him an abdominal clairvoyant; but it is possible for him to become so if, wishing to be a Privy Councillor and not becoming one, he goes through the world full of this burning ambition which gradually devours him. This desire, however, must be very strong. I can say all this because there is no one among us pining to be a Privy Counsillor.

When this desire continues to feed in this way, it remains hidden in the organism; the glandular system becomes inured to throwing back the desire and through the reflected desire it is possible to become clairvoyant. It is also possible that, if this man lives at number 13 Schunhauserallee, Berlin, and someone else living at number 23 becomes a Privy Councillor, our man perceives the event by means of this specially developed clairvoyance. This comes from his glandular system having been made particularly receptive by his inherent desire to be a Privy Councillor. And when some other man becomes something else of approximately the same kind, he will develop for such things a delicate, intensive clairvoyance. This clairvoyance usually develops in a certain sphere.  Since you know that there are other desires in life besides my harmless example of wishing to be a Privy Councillor, you will understand by what desires the various forms and spheres of this clairvoyance can be awakened. For these desires stream into the organism because during physical life they are unsatisfied. You will therefore see by what desires abdominal clairvoyance can be promoted; it is always bred through desire though this is not in every case perceived. In the burning desire that is reflected back the events are mirrored which can then be perceived in the etheric body.

It is now possible for you to have a more real insight into the deeper connection between the clairvoyance of the head and that of the abdomen. We need all this because it is related to what I propose to deal with tomorrow.

• 1. Secrets of the Threshold

Malsch, April 6, 1909

Today we are gathered for the dedication ceremony of our anthroposophical branch in Maisch. Although this “Section” of our Society has been fully at work for a while, we are able only today to officially celebrate its opening.

Many of our anthroposophical friends have come to this celebration from the most diverse regions to which our anthroposophical endeavors have spread. By coming here, they have demonstrated that they wish to unite their anthroposophical feelings and thoughts with those of serious and hardworking people in this group. One might say this group of people in Maisch has been thrown into these remote mountains, but surrounded by all the beautiful, great, and noble forces of nature, they will successfully unfold anthroposophical life. Those of you who were able to look around in the vicinity of this hospitable house in Malsch will have noticed that much has been done for its external appearance, as if the people responsible wished to say externally that the spiritual life by which all of us are inspired shall find special expression in this beautiful spot.

Let us look back at the modest beginnings of our anthroposophical life at the founding of our German Section, into which the Section in Malsch is now being incorporated. At that time we began with but a small group of people of spiritual scientific enthusiasts. Then, as we look at events such as this one today and observe the large number of souls who unite with us in spiritual scientific feelings and sentiments, we can be satisfied with the last few years of our endeavors.

The Stockmeyer family has spared no efforts to help with the unfolding of spiritual life on this beautiful piece of land although the spirits of nature have clearly aided their efforts. Also, this family must find great satisfaction in seeing how many genuine and true friends have hurried to this hospitable place, and I am sure all anthroposophical friends may be justly called genuine and true friends. This is so because anthroposophy must above all be truth in our hearts, and truth is sincerity. Anthroposophy, therefore, must be sincere; and anthroposophical friendship is expressed by your participation in such a dedication festival. Everything must be imbued with sincerity because honesty in friendship unites us with those who have worked so industriously so that here, too, there would arise a working sphere of anthroposophic activity. The hearts of those who have come here will be filled with gratitude for the efforts of the Stockmeyer family, who can be assured of our truly sincere anthroposophical appreciation.

On the other hand, the very success of such a dedication festival with so many souls present shows that Spiritual Science in our time is a powerful magnet for human striving, and on this occasion it may also be fitting to say that we can certainly look beyond the rooms that, surrounded by the spirits of beautiful nature, enclose us today and look at the rest of the world. It is possible to say that life and the endeavors of Spiritual Science today appear as phenomena whose existence results from an inner necessity. Really, it is as if many a page in the book about the life of old cultures, which sustained European and Western humanity for millennia and gave security and strength for life to it, were now beginning to wither and appear cold and lifeless to human hearts. That is why we see today a longing for spiritual scientific truths in so many areas of life. I, for one, having been permitted to speak to you here, sense something like a future force at work because of what has been taking place around me in the last few days.

We are here surrounded by green trees, the budding life of nature, and also by the magnificent sunlight that shines on us benevolently at this dedication since it animates everything and is imbued with spirit. This, then, is a perfect place to relate to you the words of our great harbingers of the new wisdom, the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings.

A few days have passed since I was permitted to speak in the same spirit in a lecture cycle in Rome, and this event symbolized to me what a magnet spiritual striving is. I was to speak to those who harbor a spiritual scientific longing in their hearts, but their longing is still fairly undefined at times. Yet the place where I was to speak looked differently, and it was on ground that actually had been entered only by cardinals in pursuit of spiritual endeavors or by others who work out of the convictions of the most positive and orthodox Catholicism. And so the air of the rooms where normally nothing but the official message from the orthodox center of Rome was proclaimed resounded with the free pronouncements of the spiritual scientific world view.

This shows us that although the free contemporary spirits of these Northern lands feel more attracted to anthroposophy, they can nevertheless look with a certain satisfaction to the souls who long to escape from an old, iron-clad orthodox tradition. It is certainly a good indication of the spirit of the times that it was possible to speak as freely and frankly about anthroposophic truths on territory heretofore reserved for cardinals, and as freely as this would be possible in the North. For what has been said before holds true everywhere: anthroposophy is sincerity; and where souls are in need of it and a call is issued, anthroposophy will follow it. But at no time will anthroposophy deviate in the least from the overall precepts that inspire its pronouncements, just because the consideration for the territory on which these pronouncements are made may make this expedient.

Wherever anthroposophical truth is proclaimed and where the spiritual element that pulsates through us is cultivated, there our message must be delivered in the light of sincerity, even when it is still surrounded by the thoughts of those who hate anthroposophy. However, in the midst of those who hate anthroposophy there are souls who, more or less consciously, long for the light of anthroposophy. And especially a strong contrast such as the one I have experienced during the past fourteen days can show us what a strong magnet anthroposophical life is.

The observation of our immediate present teaches us that this anthroposophical force is now strong enough to justify our joyful and satisfying hope that the small seedling planted today will in the future grow into a mighty tree. As theosophists, we are today in the same position humanity was in during the ancient Atlantean time. And just as life has become different since that time, so it will change again in the future, up to a time following a catastrophe. The wide perspective will now be made to appear before our souls.

Let us call to memory a similar movement in the last third of the Atlantean epoch that started small just like ours. The Atlantean soul life, which in many ways was still clairvoyant, had reached a high point during that time, but it did not yet have the consciousness of self, the strong feeling of the “I.” Instead, Atlanteans had a certain ability of clairvoyance and also certain magical powers, and this enabled them to look into the spiritual world. Those who had progressed to be leaders of this civilization were the ones best able to gaze into the spiritual world in the old ways and to bring forth the most knowledge from the astral realms. This clairvoyance disappeared little by little; in fact, mankind had to lose it completely in order to conquer for itself the consciousness of self in the physical world. But it is certain that clairvoyant knowledge in the last third of the Atlantean era had reached a special climax.

You will remember the technological achievement of the Atlanteans. They flew over the earth in small space vehicles—close to the earth because the atmosphere was saturated with thick fog formations. They propelled their small vehicles through this sea of air and water with energy derived from sprouting plants. The leading creators of this technology can be compared to today's industrial wizards who construct ingenious machines from lifeless forces. And those Atlanteans who could relate the most from the spiritual world can be compared to today's leading scholars and natural scientists.

However, within this Atlantean humanity a segment of people began to evolve who had only minor clairvoyant faculties, but possessed the ability to regard the external world with affection. The first rudimentary beginnings of arithmetic and counting could be observed in these people, but their participation in the great advances of the Atlantean industry—the construction of ever mightier vehicles for this sea of water and air—was very limited. And thus a small, insignificant group of people had developed in this last third of the Atlantean period who, in a certain sense, were despised for their comparative lack of clairvoyant power and their inability to participate in this great industry. However, this group of people prepared the way for seeing and knowing that is prevalent today, the way of seeing and knowing of which the external world today is so proud since it developed it in such a one-sided way.

Those leaders of the Atlantean civilization who had mastered everything that could be known from the vantage point of the Atlantean consciousness, including technology, conceived of a technical idea toward the end of the Atlantean era that has become fully productive in modern times. We can compare it to another measure of progress in our time that will carry over into the next catastrophe. During their golden age, the Atlanteans had vehicles that moved through air that was heavily mixed with water. Later, however, when their culture was already in a state of decline, it also became necessary to navigate the water, and this led the last cultural races of the Atlantean era first to embracing and then to realizing the idea of navigation and the conquest of the seas. This momentous idea in the Atlantean era not only of traversing the air but also of navigating the ocean water was quite a sensational idea that was put into reality by the last Atlantean races. After long experiments to navigate the waters, success came during the time when Atlantean culture was already in its decline.

Those responsible for this tremendous progress were not the ones who could be recruited for the task of transmitting the legacy of the actual spiritual life from the Atlantean era to our time. Rather, this task was reserved for the plain and simple people because they had been the first ones to be endowed with the ability to relate to the physical world. They were the ones whose clairvoyant faculties, though deteriorated the most among the several groups of people, were still adequate for those who were messengers from the spiritual world. These people, despised by the great scholars and inventors, were gathered by an eminent initiate whom we call The Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle. This small group was comprised of people who had least preserved their technical abilities and who were disdained by the leaders and by the great scholars and inventors. Yet it was precisely they whom the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle led from the West to the East, through Europe and into Asia. And it is also this small group of people that made the foundation of the post-Atlantean cultures possible.

The best of what was subsequently developed by the various cultures, the mighty tree of post-Atlantean knowledge and wisdom, emanated from the descendants of the despised simple people from the Atlantean era. Above all, something else emanated from the midst of the descendants of this group of modest people. Let us place the external events side by side with the internal events of our evolution. Let us look at the great sensation of the Atlantean era when the secondary racial group, whose descendants were the Phoenicians, invented navigation. What was accomplished by this invention?

We need only to remember the great events from the beginning of modern times, such as the great voyages of discovery by Columbus and other seafarers, which would have been impossible without navigation and the invention of ships, and we shall see how this sensational invention led to the gradual conquest of the physical plane on earth. PostAtlantean peoples were confined to a small radius of activities, but through the invention of ships the circle defining the earth became rounded out so that we now have a completed configuration of the physical plane. And thus, the sensational invention of the Atlantean world reaches into our time and promotes further progress on the physical plane.

However, the greatest conquest in the Atlantean era emanated from the descendants of that group of plain people gathered around the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle. And when those descendants, through their own development, had prepared the Indian, Persian, Egyptian, GraecoLatin, and our cultures, the earth became capable of yielding the material into which the Christ could be born. Therefore, the greatest spiritual event and deed of the post-Atlantean era had its beginning in the people who belonged to the most despised human beings in the eyes of the leaders of the Atlantean civilization, and this event gave rise to the immense spiritual progress that supports and maintains all spiritual life in our time—weaves through it and makes it productive.

The events in Atlantis are paralleled by those of our time. Seeing that the germinal beginnings of man's ability to do arithmetic and to count were present in Atlantis, we can recognize how these capabilities are today furthered in a marvelous conquest of the physical plane and how they brought about all kinds of technical progress. We also see how the great inventors and discoverers today have reached the culmination, in a sense, in applying those forces that first began to germinate with the small group of despised people in the Atlantean time. And what was then clairvoyant knowledge is today knowledge of nature and of the physical world. There is also a similarity between the spiritual leaders of the Atlantean civilization and today's natural scientists and scholars. On the other hand, a class of plain people exists everywhere—irrespective of positions its members might hold in the world, whose hearts are filled with the mighty magnet that attracts us to spiritual life, just as people in Atlantis were attracted to a life in which the external faculties for the physical plane could be developed.

Despite these similarities, there is also a certain difference between the modern and the ancient situation. In the old days referred to, the last remnants of clairvoyance were still present in people so that they were able to behold the Great Initiate. In a certain way, things today are more difficult for human beings when a call from the spiritual world issues to an equally small group of people, something we designate as the call of the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings. But since people today are placed on the physical plane, these Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings are at first unknown to this small nucleus of human beings that has crystallized itself out of the mass of people. As we can deduce from the facts of the present time, this small group feels in its hearts that there is such a thing as a new spiritual message that is meant to have an effect on the future just as the message in former ages has had an effect on the present. These human beings who today come from all walks of life and whom we can find everywhere are the true theosophists because they carry in their hearts a longing for a spiritual life that is meant to lay the foundation for future cultures. The true theosophists in our time are emerging—just as we now encounter a sensational discovery similar to the one in the Atlantean era.

In ancient times water was conquered through the highest technological progress; the same is true today in the case of air. This conquest will, of course, extend into a later epoch. But just as ships in our times have brought about mastery of the physical plane only, so the air ship that will lead human beings into the atmosphere and beyond will empower the pilots to find only matter—material things. Granted, new realms of the physical plane will be conquered, and this will be beneficial for the external world. However, the inner spiritual life is borne in the hearts of those who feel spiritually fulfilled by the promise of being able in the future to look into the spiritual world while being conscious of self.

Look into life and you will find out there our leaders of civilization, the pillars of external culture, active as inventors and discoverers, as scholars and natural scientists. They look with scorn and contempt on a small group such as the one assembled here today that constitutes itself as a new bearer of culture and that unites its members with others in spiritual scientific associations. The events of the ancient Atlantean era repeat themselves.

However, when the spiritual life touches your hearts with such force that you can compare yourselves with dignity to those who were gathered around the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle, then you will be the bearers of spiritual life in later ages. In addition to offering humanity the external, material, and corporeal realities, such a life would also make possible a renewed immersion in the spiritual world. Although the Great Initiate gathered human beings around Himself in ancient times, today the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings fulfill a similar function and issue their call to you. If you feel your mission from a sense of history, then your hearts will become strong enough to withstand all the ridicule and disdain that the so-called pillars of civilization heap on Spiritual Science from the outside. And if you understand your mission in this spirit, then your thoughts will be strong and any doubt that may reverberate into your souls from the outside will be unable to shake you in your conviction. Your thoughts will be spiritually refined by the very force that can issue from such a knowledge of our mission. Even if we have to review thousands of years and establish far-reaching ideals, it is worth the effort because where such ideals are established, life is transmuted, and where they are absent, life is dead. Ideals transform themselves into the force of a moment even if they have been taken from vast periods of time and may seem to make the person subscribing to them appear somewhat petty and despondent. You will be strong for the most insignificant task if you are capable of extracting your ideal from the loftiest heights. This will make you stand fast when those who govern the world with their erudition talk with disdain and contempt about the little spiritual scientific associations where those people sit who “do not want to go along with contemporary culture.” Oh yes, they do want to go along, and they also know to appreciate the accomplishments of the external, physical world, but they also know that just as a body cannot be without a soul, no external culture can exist without spiritual life.

Just as the despised human beings characterized above gathered around the Great Initiate and after generations made the existence of Christ on earth possible, so the anthroposophical movement must facilitate a comprehensive understanding of Christ. Christ descended to earth in the fourth major era, and those who wish to understand Him completely will be able to do so from the anthroposophical vantage point.

Why do people who have heretofore been nourished by the positive, orthodox religions, come to Spiritual Science as if responding to an undefined longing in their consciousness? Why do they listen to the anthroposphical message when before they listened only to the Vatican? Why? Is it still permissible today to say anthroposophy exists only for those who regard the greatest spiritual fact of our age—the Christ Impulse—with indifference? What do the people coming to us need from us? They want us to tell them who Christ was and what He accomplished! They are coming to us because those who consider themselves to be the privileged bearers of the Christ-name today cannot tell them who Christ was, whereas anthroposophy can. Today's cultural leaders use the denial of Christ to oppose the external tradition emanating from various religions, but they cannot effectively challenge the moribund positive religious movements. Those who do not know what the Great Christ is, those who deny His spirituality will be no match even for the old religious movements. But only the spiritual movements that place themselves in the midst of those who claim an exclusive right to the Christ-name, the movements who know how to express the true essence of the Christ even to those who wish to hear the opposite, only those spiritual movements will attract human beings to their cause who carry the future in their hearts. The ancient religious trends will prove to be stronger than all religious nihilism.

We do not conceive of anthroposophical life in a petty, dogmatic sense, nor do we want to comprehend it with the help of individual tenets or maxims, but rather by recognizing and understanding the mission and the task of our time. We want to embrace anthroposophical life in such a way that the true spirit of our time speaks to us and that the most significant event of our post-Atlantean era can be expressed through the words of anthroposophy. If these words are not just recited but rather put into practice as an expression of the spirit of our time, they will become a dynamic force of life in our souls, and this will make people understand what anthroposophical life is.

When we truly feel this, we will increasingly grow stronger, and the newly gained strength will help us to embrace our ideal firmly. Then we will know how this ideal can be justified, regardless of whether this happens in an environment where an old culture yearns for a new content, or in this environment here, where nature and the magnificent, spirit-endowed sunrays glittering around us encircle what the daily efforts of anthroposophy achieve. We will again learn to recognize the spirit within these sunrays and know that when the sun has set, the spirit indwelling in it will look into our hearts. We will also learn what it means to behold the sun and its spirit at midnight, and in understanding what this spirit is, we will see how it has descended and how it is now united with the highest impulses of our age. It is necessary that humanity understand the Christ-Impulse and that we can say who the Christ was. Such an understanding is now only in the beginning stages, but in direct proportion to its increasing spiritual insights, mankind will gradually understand how the Christ-Impulse has penetrated this worldly edifice.

To feel this way at the dedication of a branch of our movement is especially appropriate when, as is the case here, the members were united in wanting to express a heartfelt desire and name this branch after Francis of Assisi, whose life is enveloped by a deep spiritual mystery.

When Christ descended to the earth, He enveloped Himself with the threefold physical, etheric, and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth and lived three years in this sheath as Christ, the Sun-Spirit. With the event of the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ descended to the earth; but aside from what is known to all of you, something else special happened by virtue of the fact that Christ indwelled the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, particularly the astral and etheric bodies. After Christ cast off the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, they were still present as spiritual substance in the spiritual world, but multiplied in a great many copies. They did not perish in the world ether or in the astral world, but continued to live as identical images. Just as the seed of a plant, once buried in the ground, reappears in many copies according to the mystery of number, so the copies of Jesus of Nazareth's etheric and astral bodies were present in the spiritual world. And for what purpose were they present, considering the large framework of spiritual economy? They were there to be preserved and to serve the overall progress of the human race.

One of the first individuals to benefit from the blessed fact of these countless copies of Jesus's etheric body being present in the spiritual world was St. Augustine. When he again descended to earth after an earlier incarnation, not just any etheric body was woven into his own, but rather the copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. Augustine had his own astral body and ego, but his etheric body was interwoven with the image of the etheric body of Jesus. He had to work through the culture of his ego and astral body, but when he had made his way to the etheric body, he realized the great truths that we find in his mystical writings.

Many other human beings from the sixth to the ninth centuries had a copy of the etheric body of Jesus woven into their own etheric bodies. Many of these individuals conceived the Christian images that later were to be glorified in the arts in the form of the Madonna or the Christ on the cross. They were the creators of religious images who experienced in themselves what the people living at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha had experienced.

In the period spanning the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries the time had come when a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into the astral bodies of certain reincarnated souls. From the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries many human beings, for example Francis of Assisi and Elisabeth of Thüringen, had the imprint of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into them while their own astral bodies—the source of their knowledge—were formed during reincarnation. This enabled these individuals to proclaim the great truths of Christianity in the form of judgments, logical constructs, and scientific wisdom. But, in addition, they were also able to experience the feeling of carrying the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth within themselves.

Your eyes will be opened if you allow yourselves to experience vicariously all the humility, the devotion, and the Christian love that was part of Francis of Assisi. You will then know how to look at him as a person prone to make mistakes—because he possessed his own ego—and as a great individual because he carried a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth within his own astral body. All the humble feelings, the profound mysticism, and the spiritual soul life of Francis of Assisi become comprehensible if we know this one secret of his life.

Having such knowledge, we can see with our inner eye that the future of this new branch augurs well as it climbs upward under the guiding light of this great individual, for those who, like Francis of Assisi, received the grace and the calling to guide Christian humanity in the West will at all times let their spiritual light radiate into the areas of spiritual activity. And especially if this Francis of Assisi Section works in a genuinely spiritual sense, the unison of thoughts and feelings of this branch will be the reflection of the harmonizing light of Francis of Assisi, which he received as a gift of grace, as we mentioned before, by an infusion of his own astral body with a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Something of this light will radiate into this very branch.

In letting such perspectives roll by our inner eye, we who are assembled today in this modest branch for the purpose of dedicating the new branch will leave the proper feelings behind us when we depart. Let us look up to the light of Francis of Assisi; let us take along with us what can be ignited in us in this moment, and let us remember this branch in the future. In doing so, our feelings and thoughts will hover invisibly over this Francis of Assisi Branch, so that the impulses struggling upward from below may prove to be worthy of the light that shines into our souls from the outside. In such a moment we become conscious of the fact that we are here to work for the true and real measures of progress in our post-Atlantean era. Surely, when the founders of this branch felt the need to name it after Francis of Assisi, their souls must have sensed something of the great progress.

What was the most decisive turning point of our entire evolution? It was the time when the Christ descended to earth. Let us look back six hundred years from that event and then compare the earth to what it was six hundred years after Christ, a period spanning some twelve hundred years. First, let us look at Buddha, who lived six hundred years before Christ. In him we see an individuality of such greatness that words of admiration should be superfluous. Specifically, let us look at the moment where he is led out into life, but not into the life he wanted to live. Consider how he first meets a helpless child and how from this experience he forms the perception that there is suffering in the journey that human beings begin with their birth. And upon seeing a sick person, he says to himself, “Not only is there suffering in this world, but human beings on this plane are also subjected to illness.” He sees an old person who no longer is able to move his limbs and says to himself, “Aging involves suffering.” And when he sees a corpse, the sight of it conjures up in him the perception that death is suffering. Another perception is that to be separated from a loved one creates suffering, as is the case when one is united with someone whom one doesn't love. Finally, not to obtain what one desires is suffering too.

This, then, is the teaching that spread as the teaching of Buddha, some six hundred years before Christ. Let us fix in our minds the moment where Buddha steps out into the world, sees a corpse, and stands face to face with death. It was six hundred years after the event of Golgotha when for the first time one particular image came into being: the image of the cross with the corpse of the Savior hanging on it. Thousands of people were there to look at it. Now when Buddha looked at a corpse, it was to him a personification of all suffering on earth. The believers of the Christian community six hundred years after Christ would look at the corpse and see it as the victory of all spiritual life over death, the claim to bliss. And here we see how a faithful community looked at a dead body six hundred years before Christ, and then six hundred years after the event of Golgotha.

What can the Christ-Event tell us about the other pronouncements of suffering? Is birth suffering, as Buddha expressed it? Looking at Christ on the cross, the part of humanity that really understands Him will say, “Through birth we step into this existence—an existence that was found worthy of harboring the Christ. We are born into a life in which we can unite with Christ.” Likewise, sickness is not suffering if one understands Christ. People will have to learn to understand through the Christ-Impulse what, from a spiritual point of view, creates health. Illnesses will be healed in a spiritual way through the innermost, Christianized life. By dying to the outer world, we become assured that the treasure acquired in connection with the Christ-Impulse is carried into every other life. Through Christ's victory, death appears to us as a bridge that leads to the spiritual world, and we learn to understand the meaning of death for this spiritual world through this Christ-Impulse.

Also, it is no longer possible to say that the separation from the object of one's love creates suffering because the power of Christ will unite us, as one soul to another, with everything we want to love. Moreoever, the power of Christ will tie those together who love each other. The suffering that could arise through the separation of those loving each other is overcome through Christ.

Let us learn to love all people, lest our interpretation of the world be that to be united with what one does not love means suffering. Rather, let us learn to love every creature in its own right, and when our spiritual wells start to flow, our desires will be purified in such a way that we can partake in everything our souls are destined to receive, once the hurdles of the physical world are eliminated. And those spiritual fountainheads can begin to flow through the Christ- Impulse. People who will be content to obtain through the Christ-Spirit what they want will have their desires purified.

The new spiritual life has placed itself next to the old spiritual life through the Christ-Impulse. That is how deep progress in spiritual life ran before and after the Christ-Impulse had surfaced. This is keenly felt by someone who turns to one of the most ardent and joyful admirers and messengers of the Christ-Impulse—Francis of Assisi; his name, therefore, may well be bestowed on an association in which spiritual life is to be cultivated. May this name be a good augury, and may the work in this branch proceed in the true spirit of our time, properly understood, because this is necessary for the programs we have envisioned in our souls.

Let us consecrate this branch of our movement in the spirit expressed by the preceding words and by calling down the benediction we used yesterday when we broke ground for the outer temple. Let us conjure up the same spirit one more time so that it may hold sway and weave in this Francis of Assisi Branch.

May the feelings of those who have come to this dedication ceremony unite with this spirit and also unite in a brotherly way with those who are at work here in serious, anthroposophical endeavors so that spiritual life may germinate in the midst of the trees, forests, and sprouting plants of this sunny piece of nature. It matters little whether the bright sunrays outside indicate what is beautiful or magnificent in nature, whether snow be piled up outside, or whether a thick cloud cover be out there to obscure the external, physical sunlight. In times when nature renews itself or when she wears her somber garb, may the spirit of a higher life always imbue those who will be engaged in spiritual activities, and let us now conjure up this spirit to aid all the human beings in this branch.

With this, let us dedicate, from the bottom of our hearts, the Francis of Assisi Branch and hope that it will continue its work in the spirit in which it began—through the spiritual force of the Masters of Truth and of the Harmony of Feelings that streams into every branch. May it also continue its work through the good spirit with which it has endowed itself by naming itself after the splendid bearer of Christ.

May this branch continue as it began. Good spirits will guide its course as it becomes one of the centers where the kind of life is cultivated of which our time is clearly in need and where the seeds for the requirements of a far-distant future are sown. Let us hope the people who will soon have to work in solitude here emerge strengthened from today's festivities, where so many sincere friends united their feelings with them! Then the spiritual life cultivated in this place will flow back to all people involved and coalesce with the great harmony of anthroposophical life. Thoughts that originate in this place will encounter our thoughts, just as our thoughts will flow here from distant places. This harmony is something like an external garment of spirituality, and spirituality must pass through human evolution like a spiritual breath of air if beneficial forces are to reign over humanity.

May this branch be dedicated in the fullest sense of the word; may it become a field of activity into which we can always place our hopes with the same love and inner satisfaction as is the case in today's dedication ceremony.

In the course of these lectures we shall study matters which will, so to say, easily enter into the soul of each one, because each one will be able to interest himself in them intensely and directly. But as the whole would not otherwise be comprehensible, we must also make reflections which are necessary for the sake of completeness and of comprehension, and which will be a little more difficult than that which is, so to say, the central theme of our lectures. To-day, for instance, we are confronted with the necessity of glancing into the inner nature of those Beings of whom we have spoken in the two preceding lectures, the normal Folk-spirits.

We have already said what was necessary to characterize them outwardly: that they are Beings who are two stages higher than man, Beings who are working at the transformation of their etheric bodies, who are now at the present time engaged in transforming their etheric bodies into that which is called Life-spirit or Buddhi. Man is spun into the web of this work. In so far as the evolution of these Beings so progresses that man is woven into this evolution, the reflection of this Folk-spirit is expressed in human individuality itself, as the folk-character of the single human individual.

We must now look a little into the inner nature of such a Folk-soul. If we wish to throw light upon the present inner being of man, we find it necessary to picture it as being threefold, as being divided into:

The sentient-soul, which is, as it were, the lowest member of the inner human being,

The Intellectual-soul or Mind-soul, the central member, and

The Spiritual-soul, the highest member of the inner nature of the human being, in which the human ‘I’ is first actually brought to a state of consciousness.

In the spiritual-soul is first to be found that which is called human self-consciousness. Nevertheless the ‘I’ of man is active in all three parts of his inner life, in the sentient-soul as well as in the intellectual-soul or mind-soul, and in the spiritual-soul.

In the sentient-soul the ‘I’ is active in such a way that man is hardly aware of his ego. In the sentient-soul, therefore, he is thus far given up to all his desires and passions. The ‘I’ broods dully in what we call the sentient-soul. It first works itself out and begins to appear in the intellectual-soul or mind-soul, and only becomes quite apparent in the spiritual-soul.

If we wish to examine each of these three members of the human inner being separately, we must look upon them as three modifications, as three parts within the astral body. It certainly is the case, that these modifications, these three members of the astral body, prepare the transformation of the astral body itself, of the etheric body and of the physical body. But these transformations are still not what meets us as the actual human inner being or soul. The soul, the inner part of man; consists of three modifications of the astral body. The three modifications must make use of certain instruments, and these express themselves in such a way, that in the astral body the sentient-soul is a sort of instrument, in the etheric body the intellectual-soul or mind-soul, and in the physical body the spiritual-soul. Thus we can distinguish the human inner being from that which is the human envelope or covering; so that therefore the inner nature of man consists of three modifications of the astral body.

Just as in man the inner part, that in which the ‘I’ works and imprints itself, is represented by these three modifications of the astral body, so in those spiritual Beings whom we designate as Folk-spirits their actual inner part, or that which we may compare to the human inner part, is represented by three members, three modifications of the etheric body. Just as in man we distinguish sentient-soul, intellectual-soul, spiritual-soul, so in the Archangelic Beings, the normal Folk-spirits we must distinguish three modifications in the etheric body. As, however, these three modifications are not in the astral but in the etheric body they are quite different, essentially different from the three modifications in the soul-life of man. Hence also you must think of the form of consciousness, the whole soul-life of these Folk-spirits as being different from the soul-life of man. From an external description, therefore, we now press on as it were into the inner part of the soul of these Folk-spirits. It will not be quite easy but we must endeavor to cross this rubicon.

It will now be a case of starting out from some conception with which you are acquainted, a conception that bears some likeness to the inner life of the Folk-spirits. A man has not many such in his normal life, on the contrary, he has in his own consciousness extremely little of that which lives in the consciousness of the Folk-spirits. You may nevertheless form an idea of it if you will patiently follow with me the following considerations. You have all learnt at school that the three angles of a triangle are 180 deg., and you know that you could never learn that by any sort of external experience. I want you just to think of an iron or a wooden triangle; if now you measure with an instrument what the three angles together amount to, this external experience can never inform you that these three angles make 180 deg., but you will at once be informed, whether you draw these three angles or only imagine them, if you experience from within, that the three angles are 180 deg. You must realize it through the power of your own mind, from within. You need only carry out the following in thought. What I am now drawing is only drawn to represent the thought. In this figure you have strict proof that the three angles together make 180 deg.

If you once clearly visualize this figure in your mind, it will in every case bring this certainty; you may carry out the figure in thought, without externally drawing it. You thus perform an operation in pure thought, by the power of your own inner being; you need not go outside yourself. You may imagine for one moment, that there is no such thing as the so-called world of impressions, or what enters into man through the outer senses. Imagine the external world away, and space as being constructed in thought, then in this space the sum-total of the angles of all triangles will give 180 deg. In order to arrive at geometrical, mathematical knowledge it is not necessary for an outer object to approach your senses, it only needs inner experience, that which takes place in the consciousness itself. I have had to make use of this example, for it is the simplest and most practical, because people already know it, having learnt it at school. I might also give you the example of Hegel's logic, you would then also have a number of inner conceptions, but there you would find much with which you are unacquainted, for Hegel's logic is unknown to most people. By this you may therefore see how a man may arrive at knowledge merely from within, without being brought to this by anything external.

If you think of that which externally in the world is only attainable by mathematical construction, then you have some conception of how the consciousness of the Archangels works. A world such as appears to external man, a world of external colors and tones, they do not perceive at all. A Being of this kind never has these perceptions, it is never possible for him to touch a thing and thus receive impressions. But what he does experience may be thus expressed in words, ‘Something is now approaching me from a world which inspires me. This world has passed through my consciousness and has filled it.’

Now the Archangels are not Beings who can form mathematical concepts only; it is man who is so imperfect that he is only able by means of abstractions such as the truths of mathematics, to conceive of the activity of the Archangels. These truths appear normal to man, as well as to the Folkspirits. From this you may gather that the external physical world which man's senses bring before him, does not affect the Archangels at all. In that form in which the physical world appears to man, in which he receives impressions of it by means of his senses, it does not exist at all to the Archangels. If, therefore, you eliminate from your picture of the world all that is merely physical sensation, if you take away everything which you have received by means of external perceptions, you have then eliminated just what does not concern the Archangels. We shall therefore inquire, ‘What then still remains for the Archangels out of all that can also become human consciousness? What part of it exists for the Folk-spirits?’ Everything you experience in the sentient-soul as ordinary joy or ordinary grief brought about by the external world, all colors, sounds, in fact all sensible perceptions of the outer world,—none of this concerns these Beings at all. Therefore eliminate the whole contents of the human sentient-soul, and tell yourself that all that is in the picture of the world through man's possessing the sentient-soul, is of no importance to the Archangels, they do not work into that. Even one portion of the intellectual-soul is not an element of any significance to the Archangels, in so far as it is stimulated by outer impressions. That too, which is aroused externally, which a man works upon with his intellect and lives through in his feelings, that too, does not concern the Archangels. But in the intellectual-soul of man there are, however, certain things which man experiences in common with the Archangels. We can perceive quite clearly that such things come into the human intellectual-soul or mind-soul when we see how, for instance, what we call our moral ideals come to us. There would be no moral ideals if we were only able to have feelings, to feel joy and sorrow and to think about that which comes to us from the outer world by means of our sense-perceptions; true we might then be able to rejoice over the flowers in the field and also over a beautiful landscape, but our hearts would never be able to glow with enthusiasm for an ideal which cannot shine forth to us out of the external world, which we can inscribe in our soul and then follow with enthusiasm. But we must not only be aglow and feel in the sentient-soul, we must also give thought to the matter. The man who only feels and does not think, may indeed be an enthusiast but never a practical man. We must not absorb ideals into our sentient-soul from outside, but we must let them pour in out of the spiritual world, and work upon them in the intellectual-soul or mind-soul. The artistic, the architectural ideals and so on, are present in the intellectual-soul or mind-soul, and in the spiritual-soul. They are connected with that which a man cannot perceive outwardly, but which glows through and permeates his being inwardly, so that it becomes a part of his life. Observe the life of the peoples from epoch to epoch, how it has run its course, how new conceptions and new world-secrets have from time to time appeared in it. From whence could the Greeks have taken their conceptions of Zeus and Athena if they had only relied upon external perception? All that is contained in the wisdom, in the mythologies, religions, and sciences of the peoples came into them from within. So therefore we must see that one half of our inner life, half of our intellectual-soul or mind-soul and of our spiritual-soul is filled from within, and indeed exactly so far as man permeates himself inwardly with what has just been described. Thus far can the Archangels penetrate into the human inner being, and thus far also does the actual life of the Archangels extend. You must therefore eliminate from the inner life that which is received from outside through the sentient-soul and distinguish it from what is worked upon by the intellectual-soul or mind-soul feelings. Then, however, you still have that which we call our ‘I’. To us the ‘I’ is the highest member of our being; what we carry into our moral consciousness are ideals, moral, aesthetic, ideal thoughts. just as the outlook of man is closed as it were inwards, but can, by means of the senses, open itself outwards to the external world, so he can say that he perceives colors, sounds, cold and warmth, but he also has the consciousness that behind these perceptions of colors, sounds, warmth and cold, there is yet something real, and that is, the beings belonging to the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. They are behind it all. So that a man can in the manner described think of the world as continued beyond. On this world beyond, however, the outlook is closed to ordinary people. Were this not the case, there could be no materialism. If a man could have a free outlook over the domain extending upward from the intellectual-soul and spiritual-soul, it would then be quite as foolish to doubt the existence of the spiritual world as it would be foolish to-day to doubt the existence of the animal, plant and mineral worlds.

Now remember how in man the ‘I’, his highest member, encloses within itself the sentient, the intellectual and spiritual-souls. With the Archangels it is the case that their soul-life begins by experiencing in the intellectual soul or mind-soul, and then goes up into the ‘I’, which then spreads itself out in a world of higher realms, in a realm of spiritual facts, in which it lives just as man lives in the realm of the animals, plants and minerals; so that we may say, we must indeed perceive that this Archangelic Being may have in his soul-life that which we call the human ‘I’, yet nevertheless we cannot say that the ‘I’ of the Archangels is of the same nature. The ‘I’ of man is not one and the same as the ‘I’ of the Archangels. The Archangel-’I’ is in fact two stages higher, so that the Archangel is through his ‘I’ rooted in a higher world.

Now just as man by means of his sense-perception looks at colors and hears sounds, so does the Archangel look down upon the world which includes the ‘I’ as objective truth, only that around that ‘I’ there is still gathered some of that part of the astral, which we human beings know in ourselves as intellectual-soul or mind-soul. Think of these Beings as gazing into a world which does not extend to the minerals, plants or animals. Think that instead of this, their vision, which is a spiritual one, is directed to their picture of the world, and that they perceive centers therein. These centers are the human egos, around which again is gathered something that appears as a sort of aura. You have then the picture of how the Archangelic Being looks down upon those personalities of the folk belonging to him and which constitute the people. His world consists of an astral field of perception in which there are certain centers; these centers, these central points, are the several human personalities, the several human egos. just therefore as to us, colors and sounds, warmth and cold are within our field of perception, and are for us the important world, so to the Archangelic Beings, to the Folk-spirits, we ourselves with a portion of our inner life are the field of perception, and just as we go into the outer world and work at it and transform it into our instruments, so are we the objects in so far as we belong to this or the other Folk-spirit-belonging to the scene of action of the Archangels or Folk-spirits.

Thus we have an insight, strange as it may sound, into a higher theory of cognition, a higher epistemology of the Archangels. This is completely different from the epistemology of man; what is data for the Archangels is quite different. What is data for man is all that is spread out in space and meets us through our senses, as color, sound, warmth, cold, hardness and softness; what is data for the Archangels is what appears within, in the field of human consciousness. That to them is a number of centers around which the inner experiences of men are woven, in so far as these experiences take place in the intellectual-soul or mind-soul; but their activity is relatively a higher one.

What then differentiates the world of the Archangels or Folk-souls? The world of man is differentiated by the fact that if he takes hold of a thing with his hand, he feels it to be either warm or cold. The Archangel experiences something similar when he meets with human individualities. He meets with some men whose souls have more inner activity, the contents of whose souls are richer,—these make a greater impression upon him. Others he finds to be lethargic, indolent, the contents of whose souls are poor,—these beings are to him as the world impression of warmth and cold are to the human soul. Thus is the Archangel's picture of the world specialized, and he can make use of the several persons and work for them, by weaving out of his own being that which has to guide the whole people.

But there is also another way in which the life of the Archangel is connected with the life of the particular people he is leading. just as a human being has an ascending and a descending period in his life, an ascending time of youth, and a descending time of old age, so does the Archangel experience in the rise and fall of the culture of a people, his youth and his old age.

We must now again look into the inner life of one of these Archangels. You will already have noticed, from what I have related, that what man receives from without, the Archangel receives from within; hence when the individuals belonging to a people appear as centers within him, the Archangel has the feeling that what comes to him thus, does, it is true, arise in his consciousness from within, but it is nevertheless foreign to him. This to him is just like the sudden ideas that flash into our consciousness. He is also affected in just the opposite way by that which in man is youth and old age. Man experiences his youth in feeling the members of his body to be fresh, he feels that they are improving and developing. In old age these members become relaxed, they refuse to work; that is something which a man feels as happening from within him. Now the Archangel feels, it is true, that everything is happening within him, but the rise and decline of a nation nevertheless seems like something foreign to him, as something about which he has the feeling that it is independent of him, with which therefore he has nothing directly to do, but which gives him the occasion to incarnate in some particular people at a certain time. When the possibility of incorporating himself occurs, when there is a people living in the ascending period of its life, in all its upward-striving power, then the Archangel goes down, just as a man goes down when he has lived out his life between death and a new birth. Thus the Archangel goes down into a people and embodies himself in it. In the same way too, does the Archangel feel his death, the necessity of withdrawing from the people in question, when the several perceptions, the centers which he perceives begin to become less productive, less active, when they begin to have fewer contents. Then comes the time when he forsakes that community of people and enters into his Devachan, into his life between death and a new birth, in order at a later opportunity to seek out in another way a community of people. Thus the youthful upward life of a people signifies the youth of its Folk-spirit, he perceives it as being a fresh, flowing element in which he dwells. The descending period of a people's life he perceives as a withering of the centers in his domain of perception.

That gives a sort of insight into the inner being of one of these Folksouls. If we recall all this to mind, we may say, that in certain respects such a Folk-soul is really rather far removed from an individual human life, for in each one of these, what is in the sentient-soul and in the lower part of the intellectual-soul is a domain into which the Folk-spirit, the Archangel does not reach. For a human being it is, however, something very real. A man feels keenly that it belongs to the most inward, the most intimate part of his own life. In a certain respect the Archangel-nature, the one which guides the people, is something which floats above the separate individual human beings. The personal things which a man experiences because he receives perceptions through his senses, are foreign to the Archangel who is guiding the people. But there are intermediaries, and it is important that we should understand that there are such intermediaries. They are the Beings we call Angels, who are between the Archangels and man. You must take this in the strictest sense of the words: Folk-spirits are Archangels, they are Spirits who have finished the transforming of their astral bodies into Spirit-self or Manas, and are now transforming their etheric body or life-body into Life-spirit. Just halfway between these Beings and man are the Angels. These are Beings who are occupied in remodeling their astral body into Spirit-self or Manas, but have not yet concluded their work. At the present time man is at the beginning of this work, the Angels are nearly at the end of it, but have in no wise finished it. Therefore these Beings come into closer contact with that which makes up the daily life of man. We may say that the Angels incline with their whole soul-nature towards what we call the astral body. For this reason they fully understand all the joy and sorrow the human personality may go through. But because on the other hand they extend much higher than the human ‘I’, because they possess a higher ‘I’, because they can take in part of the higher world, the world of their consciousness extends to that domain in which is to be found the sphere of consciousness of the Archangels. They are therefore really the intermediaries between the Archangels and the several human individuals. They on their part receive the commands of the Folk-spirits and convey them into the several souls, and by means of this agency is brought about what a single individual may do, not only for his own progress, his own evolution, but for his whole people.

In the life of a human being these two streams flow side by side. The one stream is that which brings him onward from one incarnation to the next, which is connected with his own concerns, with what he has above all to do so as to fulfill the duty which is to him the strictest, because most especially his own duty. He may not stand still, because he would then be allowing the germs for growth within him to lie fallow, if he did not trouble about them. That, however, is his own private affair, by attending to which he progresses from incarnation to incarnation. But that which he contributes to his own people, which belongs to the concerns of the people of his own particular nation is brought about through the inspiration of the Angels, who carry the commands of the Archangels to the several human beings.

We can therefore easily picture a people spread over a certain portion of the earth, and over this people the folk-aura, the etheric aura, and in this how the forces of the Folk-spirit work, and modify the etheric body of man according to the three types of force. That which is at work in this folk aura is the Archangel; we must think of him as being a higher Being, one standing two stages higher in evolution than man, floating over the whole people, and giving directions as to what this people as a whole has to fulfill. The Archangel knows what must be done during the upward period, during the fresh youth of the people; he knows what are the achievements to be brought about by the transition of this people from youth to old age, so that his impulses should have the right effect.

These great outlines are fashioned by the Archangel; but here, upon this physical plane, the individual human beings must work, here they must take care that these great aims are realized. Between the individual human beings and the Archangels there are the Angels as intermediary beings, they impel the man to the place to which he must go, so that in the feelings of the people should arise that which corresponds to the great ordinances of the Archangels. You will form a correct picture of it, if you take what I have been describing not merely as an allegory, but as representing as nearly as possible the reality.

Now the whole tissue spun by the Archangels is influenced by those whom we call the abnormal* Archangels, the Spirits of Language, as I yesterday described. We have also described how the abnormal¹ Spirits of Personality, the Archai, work. We may now glance at the field in which the Archangel gives his orders, in which he distributes the missions which are to be carried further by the Angels into the separate individuals. The Archangels can, however, also operate into the domain of the abnormal Spirits of Personality, and it may happen that in the mutual co-operation of the Archangels with the abnormal Spirits of Personality,—because the latter are pursuing quite different objects,—that in certain respects the measures taken by the Archangels are crossed. When this occurs, when these abnormal Spirits of Personality come into collision with the measures taken by the Archangels, we can then perceive that within a single nation groups are formed, having special tasks. The action of the Spirits of Personality is externally visible when, within a certain people, groups are formed having special tasks. This may last for several centuries. For instance, in the very country in which we now have specially to work at Anthroposophy, in Germany, you have seen for centuries this play of the Archangel of the Germans in co-operation with the sometimes opposing separate Spirits of Personality. In the division of the collective German people into the smaller peoples, you have an interplay of the abnormal Spirits of Personality with the Archangel.

Such peoples are not so much centralized, they pay more attention to the cultivation of the individualities. This has in certain respects its good side, because in this way a great variety, many different shades of folk character can find their expression.

You may, however, take the other case, in which not the abnormal Spirit of Personality but the normal Spirit of Personality, who expresses himself in the Spirit of the Age becomes, so to speak, more important for a certain epoch than he otherwise is in the ordinary course of things.

Therefore, when we look at a people, we are looking at the Archangel as its first power. Then the Spirit of the Age comes and gives his orders to the Archangel, the latter passes them on to the Angels, and these convey them to the separate individuals. Now because one only sees, as a rule, what is nearest to one, so in this combined action one sees the actions of the Archangel as being the most important. It may, however, occur that the Spirit of the Age has to give out more weighty, more important orders, that he is, so to speak, compelled to take something away from the Archangel, because he must detach a portion of the people in order that the task of the age, the mission of the Spirit of the Age may be fulfilled. In such a case bodies of people separate themselves from the rest. The Spirit of the Age then visibly gains the upper hand over the influence of the Archangel. A case in point occurred when the Dutch people split away from the foundations which it had in common with the German people. Holland and Germany had originally one Archangel in common, and the separation occurred because the Spirit of the Age severed off a portion at a given time, and then passed on to this portion that which has become the important concern of the modern Spirit of the Age. All you may read in Dutch history—for history is in reality only an external expression, a maya, for what is happening inwardly—is only the reflection of an inner event. Thus in this case we can see the splitting of the Dutch people from the collective German people taking place externally; but the inner kernel is, that the Spirit of the Age required an instrument with which to carry out his overseas mission. The whole mission of the Dutch people was a mission of the Spirit of the Age, and it was split off for the purpose of giving him the possibility of carrying out something important at a certain time in history. What is described by historians is only outer maya, which hides the actual facts more than it reveals them.

There are other cases in which you can meet with what is so striking in this connection, namely, that a portion of a people had to sever itself from the common folk; that is the case with the Portuguese people. You may look in vain for other reasons in their case, you will find that it is here solely a question of a victory of the Spirit of the Age over the Archangel. If you go through the several events you will find that the opportunity was here made use of to form a special people,—there were not many such opportunities. The Spanish people and the Portuguese formed one mother folk. The outer reasons perhaps were, that the rivers were only navigable as far as to the Portuguese frontiers; there were no other external reasons. On the other hand there was the inner reason, that those tasks had to be fulfilled which were the specific tasks of the Portuguese, and which were different from the tasks of the combined Spanish people. There we see the Spirits of the Age for a time developing a more intense activity than they usually display. We see the harmony which had prevailed till then replaced by something else. We see the Spirit of the Age, instead of communicating his orders to the Archangel, taking a direct part in the history of the people, and we see how the other Spirits make use of this opportunity to incorporate themselves. When such a people is split off, then the Spirit of the Age for a time, in the first enthusiasm which has permeated the several persons, discharges the functions of the Archangel so much, that hardly anything else appears of the severance than a hurry and bustle within this people. One sees the hurrying and the urging, the activity which comes from the mission of the Spirit of the Age. Then, however, the possibility arises for a normal and an abnormal Archangel to incorporate themselves in the severed part of the people. Thus we see the growth of the Dutch and the Portuguese peoples who then received their own normal and abnormal Archangels. In that which incorporated itself here, in the difference in the temperament of the people expressed in the several personalities, we see the work of those spiritual Beings whom we have named. We see the work of these spiritual Beings in a very wonderful manner and we then recognize that what takes place outwardly in history is only a result of their activity. Gradually the saying, that the external world is maya or illusion, assumes more definite significance.

What happens in external history is only the outer reflection of the spiritual, of the super-sensible Beings, just as the outer man is only the outer reflection of the inner man. That is why I had to say, and it must be emphasized again and again, that the saying ‘The world is maya’ is of the very greatest importance; but it is not sufficient to emphasize it in an abstract way, rather should one be in a position to carry it out in detail.

Now we have seen that yet other Spirits and Hierarchies are active in what we call the world. We have spoken of the normal and abnormal Archangels. The abnormal Archangels have revealed themselves to us as being actually Spirits of Form or Powers, only they are those who have renounced a certain portion of the attributes of their evolution. We may then ask, How is it with the normal Spirits of Form? We perceive the normal Spirits of Form as being four degrees above man. In our next lecture we shall have a little more to say about them. These normal Spirits of Form are Beings four stages higher than man. The Hierarchies we mentioned yesterday do not end with the Spirits of Form, with whom we concluded the ascending line. Above these there are the Spirits of Motion, the Dynamis, or Mights; higher still there are the Beings we call Kyriotetes, Dominions or Spirits of Wisdom. You will find these different spiritual Beings enumerated in my Occult Science, as well as in my writings about the Akashic Record.

Now you can understand that the law of renunciation, of remaining behind, applies also to the higher Spirits, therefore that the Spirits of Motion may also remain behind with certain attributes,—Spirits of Motion, who are five stages higher than man,—that certain Spirits of Motion have so remained in human evolution, as if they were now only Spirits of Form or Powers. These are, as regards certain attributes, really Spirits of Motion, and in respect of other attributes, regarding which they have made renunciation, they are Spirits of Form; so that we have normal Spirits of Form, four stages higher than man, and other Spirits working on the same ground on which are the Spirits of Form, but who are really Spirits of Motion. That is therefore a domain in which the normal and abnormal Spirits of Form, the backward Spirits of Motion, work together, just as we have found a domain in which the normal and abnormal Archangels work together. Through this co-operation, however, something takes place which closely concerns man; by means of it the shaping of what we call the human races takes place, which we must distinguish from the peoples.

If we consider the matter in this way, we shall not have a confused idea of it, but one that is elastic; we must not confuse all this. A nation is not a race, the concept of a nation has nothing to do with that of a race. A race may divide itself into many different nations, races are different communities from nations. We are certainly right in speaking of a German, a Dutch, a Norwegian nation, but we speak of a Germanic race. Now what acts in the idea of a race? The Beings whom we describe as normal Spirits of Form or Powers act therein in combination with those Beings whom we have learnt to know as the abnormal Spirits of Form, but who in reality are Spirits of Motion having the mission of Spirits of Form. That is why mankind is divided into races. That which makes man the same over the whole globe, which makes each man, irrespective of the race to which he belongs, a member of the whole human kingdom, is brought about by the normal Spirits of Form. But that which plays a part over the whole earth and divides the whole of humanity into races, is brought about by the abnormal Spirits of Form, who have denied themselves so that there should not be one humanity only upon the earth but a variety of people.

Thus we arrive at the subsoil, so to say, at the ground of which the separate individual peoples first arise. In this way we succeed in surveying into the field belonging to the Spirits of Form and as abnormal Spirits of Form to bear one humanity, and that the belated Spirits of Motion enter into the field belonging to the Spirits of Form and as abnormal Spirits of Form divide up all humanity upon the globe into the several races. When we look into what these Spirits actually want, when we study the aims and objects of these normal and abnormal Spirits of Form, we shall understand what they wish to bring about with the human races, and how through these a foundation is created for what arises out of them. If we then study a people itself we shall have understood and comprehended it.

• 1. As the constant interchange of name is confusing, the reader is referred to the synopsis. The term abnormal is applied sometimes to the hierarchic rank abandoned, sometimes to the new hierarchy taken on.

Published in The Golden Blade, 1984. It is also known as, The Michael Impulse and the Mystery of Golgotha. It is the seventh of twelve lectures in the volume The Mission of Michael. The Revelation of the Intrinsic Secret of the Human Being.

For a true understanding of the nature of the human being we have to recognise his division into three members, each of which is, relatively speaking, self-dependent. We have within the human being the head, the organs of the breast system, and the organs of the limbs. These are of course crude expressions that are only roughly true. Under the name of limbs, for example, we have to include a good part of what is contained in the trunk. Moreover, as you will have gathered from my lectures, as well as from my book, Riddles of the Soul, there is a connection between the head of Man and his life of thought and ideation; the whole rhythmic activity in Man—roughly speaking, the breast system—is connected with the sphere of feeling; and finally the sphere of the will, which represents the essentially spiritual part of Man, goes together with the system and organisation of the limbs. Relatively speaking, these three systems of the human organism are independent one of another. Similarly, the life of ideas, the life of feeling and the life of will are each self-dependent, although at the same time they work together.

Now, as you know, we can best comprehend the difference from a spiritual point of view between these three systems when we observe them in the following way. In ordinary waking life Man is fully awake only in his head system—in all that has to do with the life of thinking and ideas. Everything connected with the life of feeling—that is, from a bodily aspect, with the rhythmic system—is a dream-life. Even in daytime the life of feeling pervades our waking life with a life of dreams. What goes on in the sphere of feeling we know indirectly through ideas, but we can never know it directly through the feelings themselves. The life of will is in still greater darkness; we have no clearer grasp of its real content than we have of the life of sleep.

A recognition of these distinctions allows us to indicate more exactly than is usually done the character and extent of the subconscious states lying below ordinary human consciousness. Subconscious ideas lie beneath the life of feeling; and still more deeply unconscious ideas lie beneath the life of will.

Now it is very important to realise that each one of the three systems contains within it thinking, feeling and willing. In the head system or the system of thought, a life of feeling and a life of will are also present; only they are much less developed than the life of ideas. Similarly, thoughts are present in the sphere of feeling, more feebly than in the sphere of the head and only coming to consciousness in a dreamlike manner.

One thing is usually quite disregarded, my dear friends, in our time of abstract science, and it is this. These subconscious members of the human being are more objective in proportion as they are less subjectively present in consciousness. What do I mean by that? I mean this. In our life of ideas, in our head life, we have processes which take place within us. On the other hand, what we experience through our rhythmic system, the processes that go on in the sphere of our feeling, are by no means our own individual property. They take place within us and yet at the same time they represent objective world-processes. This means that when you feel, you have of course an experience in yourself, but this experience is at the same time something that happens in the world and has significance there. And it is of extraordinary interest to follow up the world-processes that lie behind our life of feeling.

Suppose you experience something that affects you very deeply, Some event that moves you to joy or sorrow. Now you know that the whole of life runs its course in such a way that we can separate it into periods of about seven years in length. Roughly speaking, the first is from birth to the change of teeth, the second to the age of puberty, the third to the beginning of the twenty-first year, and so on. All these boundary lines are of course only approximate. Here then we have one division that shows itself in the course of human life.

The turning-points in the development of the human being which we arrive at by this method are clearly marked in the earlier part of life—change of teeth, and puberty—but later are more or less concealed, although they can be distinctly noted by one who knows what to look for. That which takes place in the soul and spirit of the human being about the twenty-first year of life is, for one who can observe it, just as clearly perceptible as the change at puberty is for external physiology. The division into seven-year periods holds true, in fact, for the whole course of human life.

Now let us go back to the event that makes a strong impression on our life of feeling. Suppose the event happens between the change of teeth and puberty. A very remarkable thing then takes place, which in these days of crude observation is not generally noticed. The impression made upon your feeling is there, and then gradually the vibrations of it die away in your consciousness. But something takes place in the objective world quite apart from what is in your consciousness, quite apart from any share your life of soul has in it. And this process that goes on in the objective world may be compared with the setting up of a vibratory motion. It vibrates out into the world. And the remarkable thing is that it does not go out and out endlessly into the infinite, but when it has spread itself out for a sufficient distance—when its elasticity is, so to speak, used up—it swings back and makes its appearance in the next seven-year period as an impulse that works upon your life of soul from outside. I will not say that such an event always comes back seven years later, for the lapse of time depends on the whole form and character of the individual life, but it falls into the course of the next seven-year period, although very often entirely without your notice.

Yes, my dear friends, we continually undergo experiences which strike in upon our feeling life and are the reaction of the world to an experience we had in the sphere of feeling during the previous seven-year period. An event that stirs and moves our feelings resounds again into our life of soul during the next stage of life. People do not usually remark such things, but anyone who takes a little trouble can learn to observe them, even externally.

Who of you has not at one time had the experience that someone you know well suddenly becomes dejected and out of humour? You have no idea why, but a change has come over him “out of the blue”, as we say. If you follow up the matter and have the eyes of your soul open to observe the particular way in which such a man conducts himself in life, if you can feel what is in between the words he says—or rather, what is within the words—then you will be able to go back to some earlier event that affected him deeply. And during the whole of the interval something has been going on in the world which would not have been going on if the man had not had that moving experience. The whole thing is a process which, besides being experienced by the man himself, takes place also as an absolutely objective experience outside him.

You will readily see how many opportunities there are for such things to go on outside us! They come about through our instrumentality, but they are none the less objective world-processes. These processes become involved in all that is going on among the elemental beings outside us, including such elemental beings as I described to you recently. You will remember how in another connection I brought them together with the breathing and the whole rhythmic system. Now you can see them working together with the rhythmic system indirectly through stimulation of the feelings. When we understand these things rightly, we are led to the inevitable conclusion that Man is continually creating around him as it were a great aura. And into the waves that are thus thrown up, elemental beings plunge; they mix themselves up, as it were, in the whole process and are able to influence the reaction that comes back on to Man—their power to do so, however, depending on the individual human being.

Let us picture the whole process. Something moves you deeply. You ray it out all around you. When it comes back to you, it is not unchanged; in the meantime elemental beings have concerned themselves with it, and when it works back on to you, then, together with the process outside you of which the elemental beings took hold, you receive also the influences and workings of these elemental beings. Man spreads out around him a spiritual atmosphere whereby he comes into contact with elemental beings—he and they mutually affect one another. All destiny that works itself out within the course of life is connected with these beings. For even within this life we have a kind of fulfillment of our destiny. If we have some experience today, then that experience has a significance for our later life. And this in fact is how our destiny is moulded. Elemental beings who feel attracted to us by reason of our nature, work at the shaping of our destiny. There they attain to a feeling of themselves: there they work with us and upon us.

We have here obtained an insight into the interplay between Man and his environment, and can see how spiritual forces are at work in the environment. By following this interplay, we can throw a light on many things that happen to Man in the way of destiny. An insight into these connections is nowhere within the scope of the ‘enlightened’ knowledge of our times; we can find traces of it only in traditions that have survived from earlier times, when Man lived in more elemental stages of consciousness and had more direct connection with reality. These traditions you will find sometimes very beautifully brought to expression in poems of earlier ages, where a destiny that befalls a human being is referred to the intervention of elemental beings. One of the most beautiful that has been preserved is a poem often presented to you in a Eurythmy performance. Here you can see how elemental beings from the Elf King's realm intervene in the destiny of Man. The poem runs thus:

THE ELF KING'S DAUGHTER
Sir Olaf rides from house and hall
Till late, his wedding guests to call.

There elves are dancing on the green,
Elf King's daughter amidst them is seen.

“Welcome Sir Olaf, your hand I'll take,
Come dance and join us for my sake.”

“I shall not dance nor dance I may,
Tomorrow will be my wedding day!”

“Mark well, Sir Olaf, and dance with me—
Two golden spurs I'll give to thee!

A silken sark snow white and fine—
My mother bleached it by moonshine.”

“I shall not dance nor dance I may
Tomorrow will be my wedding day!”

“Mark well, Sir Olaf, and dance with me—
A mountain of gold I'll give to thee!”

“To a mountain of gold I'll not say nay,
But I shall not dance nor dance I may.”

“If you refuse to dance with me
Illness and pest shall follow thee.”

Over his heart she struck amain,
Never he felt such bitter pain.

Pale-faced he sat on his horse so tame—
“Go back”, she cried, “to your worthy dame.”

And when at last he reached his gate
Trembling his mother stood to wait.

“My son, my son, oh tell me true
Why is your face of deathlike hue?”

“Of deathlike hue it needs must be
For Elf King's daughter did I see.”

“My son so dear, and loved so well,
What to your bride I needs must tell?”

“Tell her that to the woods I'm bound—
To exercise my horse and hound.”

At early dawn, at break of day,
Came bride and guests in their wedding array.

They feasted and drank of wine and beer—
“Where is Sir Olaf, my bridegroom dear?”

“Sir Olaf to the woods is bound
To exercise his horse and hound!”

The bride she lifted the cloth so red
There lay Sir Olaf—and he was dead.

There you have the elemental world interweaving in the destiny of Man, at the very moment when his destiny strikes in upon him with the shock of illness and of death. Please note the words exactly. In old poems these things are not presented as they would be in poems of recent times. (Herder took these verses from an old folk-poem). Of the poems produced within present day culture we may well say that about 99 per cent are superfluous. The poems that are derived from an ancient knowledge are always to be distinguished by the fact that they are true to reality. It could not possibly have been said in this poem that she struck him on the head, or on the mouth, or on the nose, but:

Over the heart she struck him amain,
He felt therefrom a grievous pain.

In this connection it has to be an organ of the rhythmic system, hence the heart.

What I want you to note is that here you have an entirely faithful reproduction in poetry of what actually goes on around Man in such an hour of destiny. It is in fact always going on around Man, but it makes itself felt particularly strongly in connection with the phenomenon of this periodic return of experiences in the sphere of feeling. For these always come back to us in a changed form. They enter into our destiny only after they have passed through whatever the elemental beings have found to do with them. Just as we live within the external physical air or among the products of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms—in the very same way do we live with the subconscious parts of our nature in spiritual spheres. In particular, with our rhythmic system we live in the spiritual sphere of the elemental beings. And in that sphere is shaped as much of our destiny as can be shaped in the course of life between birth and death.

Only because in our head we are fully awake, do we rise up at all out of this interplay with the elemental beings. In respect of our head life alone we are not involved in the realm of the elemental beings. There in our head we emerge, so to speak, above the surface of the ocean of elemental existence, in which as human beings we perpetually swim. Here then you may see how experiences can come back in the form of destiny even within the ordinary course of life, when they are related to our rhythmic system.

For the limb system, too, there is an interplay with the environment, but it is very much more complicated. Here again the events swing back; but they make a wider circuit and come back only in the next life or in one of the following earth-lives. Thus we can say that what we call our destiny or Karma need not after all be so enigmatic for us, if we look on it as only a further expansion of what can be studied in the return of experiences within a single life. For the experiences do not come back unchanged; they have undergone a very great change in the meantime.

Let me now draw your attention to a particular fact. Wherever I have lectured on education, I have always given emphasis to an important landmark in the course of life that occurs at about the ninth year. It is a turning-point that should be very carefully marked in teaching. Up to that time one's teaching about nature should be entirely of the kind where the description of nature and her processes is connected—by way of fables, legends, and so forth—with the moral life. Only at the ninth year may one begin to describe nature in a simple, elementary manner. Then the child is ripe for it. In Waldorf education the whole arrangement and treatment of subjects is derived directly and entirely from actual observation of the human being, down to the smallest details. I pointed this out in the article I wrote on the educational foundations of the Waldorf School, and I alluded there to this turning-point around the ninth year.

We may characterise this turning-point by saying that the ego-consciousness receives then a new form. The child becomes capable of taking note of external nature in a more objective way. Earlier, he unites whatever he sees in nature with his own being. Now the ego-consciousness unfolds, as you know, in the first seven-year stage of life, from about 2 – 2 ½ years of age. What happens is that it comes back in the second seven-year period, at about the ninth year. This is one of the most striking ‘returns’—this return of the ego-consciousness at about the ninth year of age. It comes back in a more spiritual form, whereas in the second or third year of life it has more of a soul character. This is only one of the events which comes back in a striking manner. The same observation can be made for less significant events.

Indeed, my dear friends, it will become urgently necessary for the future of human evolution to pay attention to these intimate things in the life of Man. An insight into such things must gradually become part of general culture. The culture and education of mankind change from epoch to epoch. We today, for example, are quite unhappy if at ten years old our children cannot read or do sums. The Romans were not so at all; they were unhappy if a child of ten did not yet know the twelve tables of the law. We for our part do not put ourselves to great trouble to make our children acquainted with the terms of the law. Our children's minds would be in a sorry plight if we did! What is thought necessary for people generally to be aware of, changes from age to age; and today we stand at the starting point of a time when the very evolution of the earth and mankind requires that these more intimate connections of Man's life of soul shall be generally recognised. Man will have to come to the point of knowing himself more exactly than has been held to be necessary hitherto. Otherwise these things will work back upon the whole disposition of human life in a most unfavourable way.

Because we do not know that something which stirs us deeply has such an origin, it does not by any means follow that nothing of the kind takes place in our life of soul. The events come back; they exercise their influence upon our life of soul. We cannot account for them. We do not attempt to bring them into our consciousness. The result is that many people today suffer a great deal from conditions of soul which they simply accept, while of course having no idea that they are to be referred to earlier experiences. Whatever concerns our feelings always comes back in some form or other. You will probably remember the typical instance I have often given. If we teach a child to pray—if, that is, we teach him to develop a prayerful mood and feeling, the effect of it will swing back into his life after many years. It swings back in the interval, but then swings out again further, and only later, after a very long time, does the feeling of prayer come back and manifest in a mood of blessing. As I have often said: No-one will be able in old age to bestow blessing upon others, merely from his presence, from the imponderable elements in his nature, if in childhood he has not learned to pray. Prayer turns into the power to bless. That is how things come back in life. And it is becoming imperative that men should understand these things.

The truth is that men's failure to comprehend these things is the cause of their inability to perceive the great significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. What meaning can it have for people who are caught in the toils of present day education when they hear it said: ‘After Christ had passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, He united Himself with the life of earthly humanity?’ People are not ready to form any idea of their reciprocal relation to the very realm of life wherein the Christ is to be found. The influence of the Christ Impulse is not very noticeable in the concept-forming activity of our heads. As soon, however, as we look down into the unconscious, as soon as we turn our gaze downwards into the sphere of feeling and into the sphere of willing, then we live, first of all, in the sphere of elemental beings; but this sphere is interwoven for us with the Christ Impulse. By way of our rhythmic system—that is, by way of our feelings—we dive down into the realm with which the Christ has united Himself. There we come to the place where the Christ is truly to be found, quite objectively, not merely through tradition or through subjective mysticism.

Moreover, we are living now in an epoch when the events that come from this place, in the way I have just explained, are coming to have great objective significance for the life of Man. For they are beginning to exercise an unconscious influence on men's decisions, upon all that men do; and this is true, even if they struggle against it. If only we are willing to enter into this matter and understand it, we shall be able to experience the influence consciously and to reckon with it; and then we shall be able to call on the spiritual worlds around us to aid us and to work with us.

An external observation will suffice to show that in this matter we are standing at a turning-point in human evolution. I need only refer you to one fact of which I have often spoken from one or another point of view. If we look at the accustomed treatment of history, we shall see that it has not yet reached an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Just recall the history of the world as it is usually set before us. A description is given of the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian kingdoms, of the ancient Persian and Egyptian kingdoms and of Greece and Rome, and then perhaps mention is made that the Mystery of Golgotha took place, and after that follows an account of the migrations of peoples, and so on. Some historians then carry the story up to the French Revolution or to Poincare; others to the downfall of the Hohenzollerns, and so forth. But in all this fable convenue you will find no mention of the continued working of the Christ Impulse. From the point of view of history as conceived today, it is just as though the Christ Impulse had been simply struck out. It is not there.

It is remarkable how, for example, an historian such as Ranke, who was a Christian and had a true appreciation of the Christ Impulse from a subjective aspect, simply cannot bring the Christ Event into his history. He does not know what to make of it. It plays no part in his conception of history. We may truly say that for Man's knowledge of the spirit, as manifested in history, Christianity is not yet there. It is our anthroposophical spiritual science which for the first time treats history in such a way as to reckon quite positively with the necessity that in the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch the event of Golgotha should break in upon the course of historical evolution. This event is placed at the very centre of our picture of the history of Man. Yes, and we go further. Not only do we receive the event of Golgotha into our picture of the history of Man, we portray cosmic evolution also, so that the Mystery of Golgotha has place within it.

If you will study my Outline of Occult Science, you will find that we do not speak there merely of eclipses of the sun or eclipses of the moon or of explosions or eruptions in the cosmos, but we speak of the Christ Event as a cosmic event. Strange to say, while the so-called historians can find no possible way of including the Christ Event in the progress of Man, the official representatives of religion are infuriated when they hear that some kind of anthroposophical spiritual science has entered the field and speaks of the Christ Event as a cosmic event. When they hear this, they treat it as a terrible outrage. Thus you can see how little readiness there is on the part of the Churches to meet the requirements of our time, for it is essential that the Christ Event should be brought into connection with the great events of the universe.

It must be said that even theologians today often speak of the Christ just as they may speak of any other divine Being. They speak of Him very much as the Hebrews of old or the Jews today speak of their Jahve. I told you a few days ago how one could take Harnack's book, The Essence of Christianity, and substitute for the name of Christ, wherever he uses it, the general name of God, and this without altering the sense, for Harnack has no glimmering of the specific nature of Christianity. His book is page for page a description of the very opposite of the essence of Christianity. It does not treat of Christianity at all; it treats of a general Jahve teaching.

It is important to point out these things, for they are deeply connected with the necessary demands of our time. It is no vague awareness of the presence of an abstract spiritual world that is needed: the evolution of human culture requires that Man should bring into it a consciousness of the actual spiritual world in which we live with all that we feel and will and do, and out of which we raise ourselves only in so far as we think. We emerge from it only with our heads, so to speak. Indeed, an entirely new kind of world-picture is justified when the endeavour is made to permeate all our feeling and willing and doing with the Christ Impulse. Our modern astronomy and our theory of evolution have been able to develop so entirely along the lines of abstract formulae solely because the Christ Impulse has not taken hold of men inwardly, but has remained a tradition. Even where it has taken hold of men subjectively, their inner experiences have not been at the same time objective world experiences—that is, experiences where we feel an interplay between ourselves and all that is happening spiritually around us.

Here and there one sees people beginning to be very keenly aware of the need for a new impulse in the evolution of humanity. But it is with the greatest difficulty that they come to the point of resolving to take hold of the life of the spirit in its actuality. When people speak of the spirit, they always have more or less a desire to keep within the abstract.

Even the consciousness of how we stand in relation to our thoughts must change in a certain way. For, as I have repeatedly pointed out, anthroposophical spiritual science is brought forward at this present time in fulfillment of a definite purpose. It is not the result of a wish to promote enthusiasm for some sort of ideal. It springs from an insight into Man's needs at the present time. And we must again at this point relate the needs of the present day to certain powers of the soul that were present in earlier ages, when Man had a closer connection with his spiritual environment. For in earlier times the conditions of Man's life of soul were quite different.

As I have often explained to you, we cannot look for any further development of Man from sources outside himself. The impulses for the progress of human evolution must in future be called forth from within; they must proceed from our connection with the spiritual world, and we must not blind ourselves to the fact that unless something is added by our own exertion to the experiences of life, these will tend increasingly to become experiences of decline. We find ourselves already in the descending evolution of the earth, and as human beings we must lift ourselves up by our own efforts if we are to transcend the earth-evolution, for we can emerge beyond it only through our connection with the spiritual world. It is our strivings in the direction of knowledge that we shall have to feel as a power within us, enabling humanity to pass over into future stages of evolution, when the Earth dies away, even as we pass on to further stages of evolution when our body dies away and we go through the gate of death.

We pass as individual human beings through the gate of death into the spiritual world; the body dies away beneath us. So will it be one day for mankind as a whole. Mankind will evolve over into the Jupiter existence. The Earth will become a corpse. We are even now in the dying stage of its evolution. The individual human being gets wrinkles and grey hairs. For the geologist who knows how to observe correctly, the Earth bears upon her today the unmistakable signs of old age; she is dying away beneath our feet. The spiritual quest we are engaged upon today is working counter to the ageing of the Earth. Awareness of this fact must permeate our consciousness.

Earlier ages spoke from a different point of view of the close relation between their Mystery knowledge and physical health and healing. This is a truth that must now begin once more to find its way into human consciousness. All striving for knowledge must give rise to the thought: I am doing something to promote the further evolution of the whole of mankind. We shall obviously never come to this consciousness as long as we do not pay attention to the actual process that goes on around us in the way I have described. For until we recognise this, we are bound to regard everything we feel and will and do as our personal affair. We shall have no idea that it is something which takes its course outside us, as well as within.

It will be necessary also for the more exact branches of human knowledge to come to meet this extension of our thought and understanding of the world. And here allow me to refer to something that may perhaps not be fully intelligible to everyone.

The more exact domains of knowledge are by no means yet at their zenith—far from it! For example, you can find today in the exact sciences the most impossible ideas. I will select just one, which may perhaps be generally intelligible. People have usually the following trivial picture: out there somewhere is the sun, and from the sun light goes out in all directions, just as from any other source of light. And you will find that wherever people follow this diffusion of light with mathematical ideas, they will say: You see, the light spreads out and out into the infinite, and then—why then it somehow or other disappears; it gradually weakens and is lost. But this is not so. Everything that spreads out or is diffused in this way reaches a boundary, and from this boundary it swings back again; it returns to its source in a changed form. The sunlight does not go out into the infinite, but swings back on itself—not indeed as light, but as something else. None the less, it does return.

So it is in reality with every form of light. And so it is with every kind of activity. All activities and influences are subject to the law of elasticity. The elasticity in them always has its boundary or limit. And yet ideas such as I have described above are current in our so-called exact sciences; you will find them presented there today. If you were physicists, I would draw your attention to how people reckon with distance traversed and time. They call the velocity, usually denoted by ‘v’, a function of distance and time, and they arrive at the following equation: v = d/t

But, my dear friends, that is absolutely false. The velocity is not a resultant; the velocity is an elementary principle or quality that something, be it material or spiritual, bears within it. And this velocity we analyse; we split it up into distance and time. We abstract the two things out of it—space and time. Space and time, however, are not real things in themselves. Velocities, varying velocities, are real.

This observation I make for the benefit of physicists. They will understand me when I say that their theoretical knowledge of time rests in very shaky foundations. These theories would indeed not hold water if we were in a position to grasp the spiritual in its actuality.

That is the very thing required of us in the present Michael Age. It means that we must take full cognisance of the environment of Man; we must come to know the various elemental and higher beings in our environment as surely as we know of the air and water around us. These are the important things for us; and they must once again become a part of general education and culture, as they were in ancient times. People are not prepared to admit this. They will not admit that in human evolution changes occur as momentous as that which occurred, for example, at the turning-point in the middle of the 15th century. And yet it is quite possible to prove it from detailed facts.

Some Swede or Norwegian has recently written a book in which he gives many quotations from the alchemists. In particular he cites a passage where all manner of things are mentioned—mercury, antimony, and so on. And now our author, whom his book shows to be an excellent modern chemist, says he can make nothing of a certain recipe which is indicated by some alchemist. He cannot do so for the simple reason that, when a present-day chemist speaks of mercury or quicksilver, he means the external metal. But in the book from which he is quoting the words mean something quite different. They do not refer to the external metal at all, but to certain processes within the human organism, and they indicate a knowledge of the inner being of Man. They carry the sense they had for the alchemist. Certainly it is quite possible to read them as if one were reading the description of a laboratory experiment, carried out with retorts and the like—but then one gets no meaning out of it! One is bound to regard it all as nonsense. It has meaning, however, as soon as we know what was meant by the words antimony, mercury, and so forth in those times. They have, it is true, a certain application to the external minerals, but they refer paramountly to inner processes of human nature, for which one had other means of approach than those we have today. The relevant writings from before the 15th century have accordingly to be read with an understanding quite different from the way in which we approach scientific writings of later date.

Such things as these give opportunity to study even externally the far-reaching change that has occurred in Man's life of soul. For a long time now, indeed for hundreds of years, mankind has set no value on these things, but today we are living in an epoch when we must begin to place very great value on them.

Translator Unknown

If we allow thoughts such as were discussed yesterday to pass through our souls, we do so in consideration of the seriousness of our time which, as we know, is unfortunately not universally felt now, not even felt by a great number of our contemporaries. This seriousness of our time will only be felt if a greater number of human beings attain to a feeling that a path to spiritual knowledge is necessary—yes, a path which measures up to the needs of our time—and that this path to spiritual knowledge is the only real cure for the shortcomings and sickness of our time. The question must really arise in us: in what do the basic causes of what is wrong in our time lie? Wherein lie the real causes of the sicknesses which afflict our time? And though the inclination exists in very many people today to seek these shortcomings and sicknesses or our time elsewhere than in Man himself, yet it is endlessly important to have insight that the only path which can lead to a goal is to seek the shortcomings in Man himself.

If we survey the present time, we see storm-signals shining over from Eastern Europe. We cannot say, today, that European humanity is inclined really to fix its attention on these storm-signals. People still always find it uncomfortable to form real judgements about the great affairs of mankind. In such a case, the thought which points to what has been neglected can be useful over and over again. For if, even to a small extent, we see what has been neglected, we will thus perhaps be prevented from being guilty of similar negligence in the future. Storm-signals have been shining over from the East for a long time—that East of which we have often said here that the germs of the 6th post-Atlantean culture lie in it, in spite of all that may be going on there. They were not, to be sure, written in such bloody writing as are those of the immediate past, but they have, all the same, been such so should have been attentively observed. Here, indeed, attention has for years been drawn to many a thing.

In the first part of our lecture today, I should like to touch on a matter which has already been brought forward here from one side or another. If one looks at what has been living for a long time in Eastern Europe, one could summarise it in a question which is extraordinarily characteristic for our present time. This runs: What is Man, really? What part does Man play in the universe? Among the various groups of the population of the earth, it is in Eastern Europe that this question has been taken in the most serious way in recent times. The West has much to do, apart from reflecting on the question: What is Man, really? It is certainly much dealt with in a theoretical way, but this kind of theoretical discussion is worth nothing unless it is permeated by real spiritual life.

I only wish to quote something which points to the question about the real being of man, a question which is longingly posed in the East. They are important words which can be heard over here from just that part of Europe. I have once before referred to a saying like this. Among those who developed views about the Social Question in recent times was Bakunin, one of the most gifted of men, the later opponent of Marx. He comes forward out of East-European ideas and impulses, and is in contrast to Marx, who has dealt with social life and the Social Movement entirely out of West-European ideas. Everywhere in Bakunin something of a philosophy of life shines through, a deeper comprehension and outlook of life. And thus a very important saying is uttered by Bakunin, which will throw light on the question what is man, really?, by setting in contrast the idea of Man and the idea of God.

The saying of Bakunin arose in him out of the experience of modern life. Deep in human nature—so thought Bakunin—lies the impulse of freedom, the impulse to be a free man. For what would one like better in life than to be a free man! In this way, perhaps, one could express the longing of a man who thinks as Bakunin does. This longing-impulse of the inner nature of Man arises in opposition to a God who oppresses a Man, because this oppression would not be compatible with human freedom. (See: R.S.—"The building at Dornach as a sign of historical development, and the impulse towards artistic transformation", p. 77).

Freedom must be fundamentally conceived, as I have attempted to do in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. If it is not so fundamentally conceived as is done there, people will always oscillate between the longing for freedom and the perception of present-day life, which realises anything but freedom.

Bakunin looks up, as it were, to the thousand of years of the old religious experience of the divine which mankind has had, and contrasts these with the concept of freedom. He says: "If God exists, then Man is a slave, but Man can and should be free, therefore God does not exist. I challenge every one of you to escape from this circle, and now you may choose which you will do. Thus, if God exists, there would be only one way in which He can promote human freedom—by ceasing to exist. As a jealous lover of human freedom, which I look on as the absolutely fundamental condition of all that we honour and adore in mankind. I alter Voltaire's saying, and say: If God really exists, one would have to remove Him". (Michael Bakunin, God and the State, according to the manuscript of 1871 translated by Max Nettlau.)

This is a saying which should really make a more significant impression on men that many a world-event which seems, from its external nature, more suitable to make an impression on the sensations of mankind. According to Bakunin we have to choose, and as modern men we can choose thus or thus, for nothing fundamentally compels us to do anything else but choose. Now one can certainly say that the men of today do not choose at all but, in matters of spirit and soul, vegetate without thoughts in this dilemma, in this circle.

Another saying from the East, which Gorki has made one of his heroes utter, runs: "I will write a little book. I will call in the Song of Death, the Prayer of Death, for there are such prayers. We utter it about dying. And this society, on which the curse of inner weakness weighs heavily, will take hold of my book as though it were musk before it dies".

This is such a saying as can be set before modern mankind from a certain point of view. Modern mankind is seeking only for all sorts of soporifics, soporifics of the soul and spirit, so that it shall not need to take this kind of saying all that seriously as it deserves. And in the East just that queer school of philosophy exists which has drawn from life a sort of conclusion in conformity with existence—the sect of the Barefooted Philosophers speak to these words: "In myself there is something not in other. Consequently, I have not come to the world in such a way as befits a man. I find myself on a definite path. And not only I: many of us are the same. We become peculiar men, and fit ourselves into no order. Who among us is guilty? We ourselves are guilty, before ourselves and before life".

Not single men, but man, were speaking this way in the East, and when once the history of these last years of confusion in Europe can be written on the basis of external facts as well—which is not yet possible today—people will certainly find how great a share this kind of world-outlook has in the whole destiny of our time, but how, on the other side as well, this kind of world-outlook is founded on what I described yesterday as the confusion, the superficiality, the thoughtlessness of our age.

Here we must ask ourselves, over and over again: in what details does what I already mentioned yesterday come to expression, namely that our age, especially since the beginning of the 18th century, is as it were peering through a wave of confusion, a wave of tangled thoughts which are forming of their own accord and bringing man into confusion! Enlightenment about this can only be found on the basis of a real Spiritual Science. What is spreading in the easiest way among a certain kind of men today! Thoughts, so-called thoughts! It is true that there are always thoughts which come to expression in words, ideas which can obtain quick dissemination today on printed paper. In particular it is thoughts, of the kind about which men are proud in the highest degree, thoughts about material life, perceptible to the senses, such as Natural Science (which, as you know, is thoroughly well popularised) is bringing forward everywhere today.

Comparison should be made how great a difference exists between the soul-life of man living up to the 15th or even to the 16th century and that of present-day man. At that time they communicated thoughts to one another they did not every morning read printed paper with thoughts which a man carried with him throughout the day, for the most part without being aware of the fact. What impression does it really make on a man if every Sunday he hears a sermon after he has been reading his newspaper from a quite different substratum of thoughts? As a result, a certain type of education is spreading. But, in our age, this type of education is quite without real spiritual content, for real spiritual content can only return to mankind through a spiritual culture.

Now thoughts, of the kind particularly propagated in recent times, are of no value whatever to mankind because they cannot be brought into connection with the supersensible life. All thoughts—this is a drastic thing to say, but it is true—which cannot be brought into connection with the supersensible life are really harmful to men. In this lies one of the principal sicknesses of our time, that thoughts are propagated from all sorts of foundations, especially from the popularisation of natural-scientific ideas, thoughts which people cannot then bring into connection with the supersensible life, and which are therefore harmful. Thoughts should really always be brought into connection with supersensible life. They work destructively, negatively, on human life if they are not brought into connection with the supersensible. For the fundamental question: what is man, really?, cannot be answered at all without the relationship between the thoughts produced in Man and the supersensible. Because, as matters stand, Man has the supersensible in his being; it always remains a barren thing for him, something unsatisfying in the deepest depths of his soul, if he cannot bring into connection with the Supersensible thoughts which are certainly produced in a supersensible way. Now the longing for a reply to the question what is man, really? will never cease to exist in the human soul. This longing can never be eradicated. It can only be stifled. Man can, as it were, dim down his consciousness so that it does not reach as far as the question: what is man?. For this question will show its disturbing effects in man in all sorts of nervous and other conditions. But it cannot be blotted out of human souls.

Now it was just the 19th century which was altogether unsuitable in its whole culture for answering this question in a way satisfying to men. Great impulses of the age always express themselves in significant symptoms. Such a significant symptom for the whole of recent spiritual like is the appearance of Friedrich Nietzsche. It is, indeed, very sad that narrow-minded people and Philistines of the present-day have attached themselves to Nietzsche as hangers-on, and that no glance has been cast at the real phenomenon of Nietzsche, or at any rate only by a few people.

I have always expressed myself in such a way as to say: in Nietzsche is represented the modern man who has suffered in his soul in the highest degree, and has even been ruined as a result of the culture of the last third of the 19th century. I have often said that this 19th century culture was brought forth by others. Schopenhauer has brought forth a certain part of the culture of the 19th century: Nietzsche has suffered from this as a follower of Schopenhauer. Richard Wagner has brought forth a part of the 19th century: Nietzsche has suffered from this as a follower of Wagner. There was the renewed Voltairism, the free-spirituality of the last third of the 19th century. Haeckel, Büchner, Feuerbach and others brought forth this free-spirituality of the last third of the 19th century: Nietzsche has suffered from it. Within the whole of recent cultural life, the fact that this culture must lend itself to absurdity was expressing itself in the last third of the 19th century. Art ran on into values which one could only comprehend if one did so as leading to their own dissolution. To an ever greater extent, Science came to teach, as the highest wisdom, its own invalidity when faced by the Supersensible. Nietzsche suffered from this. He suffered from Schopenhauer, from Richard Wagner, from the once-again-resurrected Voltairism, he suffered from the whole culture of the last third of the 19th century, and out of this suffering he at last coined two grandiose, conquering but despair-awakening ideas, that of the Superman and that of Eternal Recurrence.

Why Superman? Because he had no possibility of answering the question: what is Man? Superman is for Nietzsche simply the strong, great means of producing an illusion, the means for making people insensible to the impossibility of coming to a comprehension of Man out of the culture of the 19th century.

One must really represent to oneself the whole seriousness of the idea of Eternal Recurrence to Nietzsche! Just imagine: we have already existed innumerable times, just as we are sitting and gathered here, and so we shall be again on innumerable occasions. Every one of us has on innumerable occasions gone through what he is going through at the present time, and will go through it again on innumerable occasions. There is no evolution which would allow our thoughts to go on to an ascent, to progress. Eternal Recurrence!

Because he cannot come to a comprehension of Man, he comes to the idea of the Superman: because he cannot think of any real progress in the development either of mankind or of the cosmos, Eternal Recurrence. Nietzsche has reached these results. The others, who perhaps laugh about these results, do not come to them owing to their thoughtlessness. For either man reaches these results or one must turn to Spiritual Science, which does not speak of the Superman but of what has developed through Saturn-, Sun- and Moon-epochs throughout the earth's evolution, and beyond into the cosmic metamorphosis of our earth, which does not speak of Eternal Recurrence but is in a position to speak of real progress. You need only read about this in my Occult Science. But where is the inclination today to consider these things in their full seriousness? Is it not infinitely more important for most men today than these great, world-embracing affairs?

From all this kind of presupposition we must ask: but what lies before us? We do not easily come to what really lies before us. Today I should like to touch on a particular point of view. If one exerts oneself to take a good look at the experience of those people who have just gone through the gate of death, or who did so a short time ago, who thus stand at the beginning of the life which is led between death and a new birth, one notices something very peculiar. I freely admit to you that for a long time this perception, of which I am now speaking to you, was quite inexplicable to me. When one has found a fact like this one only comes gradually to a solution. It is the fact that a great number of human beings who are going through the gate of death in our present age are extraordinarily surprised by what they experience after death, that they are surprised by something unknown to them which confronts them there.

I have spoken to you of the experience of those who have gone through the gate of death. Into many a thing which is more easily comprehensible, with which one comes to terms more easily and about which it is easier to speak, something just mingles itself which one cannot describe otherwise than by saying: it surprises the dead that anything of this kind is there. There arises in the consciousness of the dead person the feeling that he would not really have thought that such experience would come before his soul. This is on the one side. On the other side, it appears to older deceased persons—it is the case to a smaller extent to those who died young—that the strangeness and surprising quality which comes before the soul arises in some way from those same people who have gone through the gate of death. It is thus something of which he is aware that it arises from himself, especially if the person in question has died at a more advanced age.

Although one notices this fact, one still has considerable difficulty in finding an explanation of it. One only finds this if one quite seriously takes account of another fact which must be considered in connection with it: that the human being of today experiences a great number of things of which he either knows nothing at all, or about which he creates all sorts of illusions for himself. Together with conscious experiences, there comes to a man a great total of unconscious experiences which he either does not notice at all, even though they are occurring to him, or to which he gives a quite false interpretation.

It is, you see, a general characteristic of the man of today that he likes to interpret his experiences. The modern man does not like to give an account of himself in accordance with truth. He would like, on one side or the other, to colour what is connected with his attitude towards the world. Just let us examine ourselves in this direction, and ask ourselves how often we really confess to ourselves that we are wrong about anything. Where we should confess to ourselves that we are wrong, in most cases we will interpose something else which makes us insensible to what we ought to have said to ourselves, namely that we were wrong. But this is only one of the phenomena which could already show us, from outside, that we are subconsciously much today about which we form illusions in our consciousness.

If one dies at a greater age, then one has a great quantity of these kind of sub-conscious experiences. And it is these sub-conscious experiences which come to meet us after death, transformed, as it were, into entities. We only come to a right view of this phenomenon if we discover this connection between what has been sub-consciously experienced and what comes to meet the dead person after he has gone through the gate of death, as something surprising. Only then do we comprehend why so many people who do not like to reflect about this or the other thing, but leave it to the sub-conscious, are surprised when the whole of the subconscious really comes to meet them after death. They are surprised by it: nevertheless, they have themselves very much to do with what comes to meet them. It is really a part of their own life, the part of their own experience which has either not been noticed at all or only very indistinctly.

To appreciate a thing like this in the right way is today a necessity, but still difficult problem of spiritual-scientific knowledge. But the pointing out of this fact is a matter of quite fundamental importance for our time. For only if one proceeds from these things can one come to a quite reasonable answer to the question: Why is the answer to the question what is man, really? so extraordinarily difficult for the men of the present time?

If one takes human life in its inner development it splits up into three parts. One embraces all that we have as endowments, talents, and abilities. The second part embraces all that we develop in intercourse between our consciousness and that of other men. The third sphere embraces all that we experience. Our age behaves very considered towards these three parts of human nature, and really only has regard for the middle part. It is true that there is much lamentation from a certain side today about the failure to recognise gifted people, but for the most part it is the gifted people themselves who lament in this way. It can be said that the habit of fostering talents in a thoroughly devoted way is dying out to an ever greater extent. In the way, the treasuring of human experience is dying out. Man is no longer conscious today that he is not merely, so to say, growing older but that as he becomes older he is becoming cleverer, wiser. This feeling for human development is to an ever increasing extent being lost to men. When people have reached a certain age today they are, so they believe, all equally wise. They have to put in a word about everything in the same way, according to the opinion of many, and neither talent nor the experience which is required through life should intervene in this discussion. Our whole democratic world-outlook (which will always tend to dig its own grave) rests fundamentally, on the assumption that when a man has reached a certain age he can come to decisions, in combination with his fellow men, about God and the world and about villages besides—about every possible thing.

But what a man develops in combination with his fellow men through the reciprocal interaction of consciousness with consciousness belongs only in one sphere of social life—the State-life. The State has certainly become man's idol, just for the reason that people only wish to admit the validity of what is active among men in the way which has just been intimated. They are not prepared to accept the other two spheres as independent social organisations, as a result of nothing but inner forces. One really only becomes cleverer by taking one's part in the management of life, by which I do not understand merely the milking of cows and the cooking of cabbage, but the management of life in its widest sense. To the economic sphere also belong, as it were, spiritual services, so far as these have a definite commodity value—and they really must have this, for otherwise no one would ever be able to live by spiritual services. Naturally, they also have a value in another sphere, but they have a commodity value in addition to this. Experience results just from this arrangement, to which the production of spiritual values also belongs, insofar as these are commodity values.

Now people do not know at all today, outside spiritual science, how to distinguish between these three spheres of human nature. Our natural endowments, as a result of which we are spiritually gifted for one thing or another, or adapted for this or that (for bodily aptitudes are also included with individual abilities)—all these do not entirely belong in our individual human nature, as human beings are understood today. However paradoxical it sounds the more gifted with genius a man is today, by so much the less is he, basically speaking, an individual man, for our endowments, our individual abilities are produced before our birth or before our conception as a result of many generations of interworking between the cosmos and the forces of inheritance. I have already presented this to you. (R.S. Ancient myths and their significance, 7 lectures). Our endowments of genius, our individual abilities, are in general all dependent on the head. In whatever the particular endowment of a man may consist, however it may appear to be connected with the special muscle-formations, it still has its origin in the head. Even though one's individual abilities depend on whether one is a giant who can break thick-trunked trees or a little bit of a fellow, all this still has its origin in the head. All that is, as it were, inborn in Man in the way individual abilities has its origin in the head.

What a man effects in relation to other men has its origin in intercourse, in the life between birth and death, such as speech and all the social elements in human life. But with the experience which we have we enter into a much more difficult chapter than most people picture to themselves today, for the men of today are very rarely experienced men because they do not let the experiences come to them. In the present time most men have even a kind of timidity about gathering experiences. One is put to shame if one has to confess that one has an opinion about something today different from what one held ten years ago. But one should not be ashamed of having become more sensible during these ten years. The ideal of present-day man, you see, is not to apply life to becoming wiser. Today, to a great extent people waste their lives as regards becoming more experienced. But it is just the individual who is expressing himself in this fact of becoming more experienced.

You can be a marvelous genius; what you have gone through in your earlier incarnations will only word to a very slight degree into what you bring forth as a result of your marvelous genius. These earlier incarnations are for the most part entirely innocent of real genius, for this is caused by an interworking between the cosmos and the forces of heredity through some generations. Geniuses are given to mankind, and truly not let fall from heaven in order to satisfy themselves. But people are quite specially embarrassed in face of what we acquire for ourselves as we become more sensible from year to year until our old age. The fact that we become more sensible from year to year, that we carry on the experiences of life and use them to become wiser—this is connected with our incarnations.

If we look in this connection at a personage such as Goethe, we notice very, very remarkable results. One can speak of Goethe's genius. This Goethean genius is already expressing itself in his youth. But what appears in him in his youth in the way of abilities has value as something which has fallen from heaven. But as Goethe became more and more mature in age, never ceasing to become more mature, what he had brought with him from his earlier incarnations was forming and gradually evolving in him. But men hate this today. Even Goethe himself had to lament that it was just the production of his youth, the credit for which he did not claim for himself, which were especially dear to people but that, on the contrary, they declined everything which he had acquired as a result of his life experience. I have often quoted to you a verse which he made with reference to the first part of his Faust—the second part had not been produced at the time. It runs—

See how they praise my Faust, and how they savour
My other writings which have gained their favour.
All the old chit-chat pleases them so much,
But now the riff-raff think I've lost my touch".

But this went on, you see, until far into our time. Yet how the candid and clever Friedrich Theodor Vischer has insulted the second part of Faust, parodied it, called it a cobbled-together, glued-together botch of Goethe's old age, because in our time people have not much feeling for ripening, for increasing of experience! But the fact that the life of today holds nothing which can give us an answer to the question: What is Man, really? is connected with this. For the answer to this question can only be given today out of life-experiences. But this life-experience ought not to come about in such circumstances that the Spiritual is shut out. One should be able gradually to get the feeling as one's life progresses: you are learning not only from the eternal, sense-perceptible course of things, but also from what is coming up from what underlies the things.

With regard to all this, the position is such, today, that from a certain point of view the question inevitably is how are we to get the spiritual life free from the state life! If spiritual life is to remain for the future bound up with the state life, then it will not be able to develop in such a way as men need in order to become really more experienced in their lives. The State would have to make spiritual life even shallower, because it cannot enter into those intimacies of spiritual life which lead to real experiences. The State could only engage in a spiritual life of a quite democratic kind, for democracy pertains to the State. But in its own depths spiritual life can never work democratically. You cannot plunge down into the depths of spiritual life, not yet into the depths of human knowledge, if you remain within the bounds of democracy. But everything must be democratic in the State: in it, judgement is only to be given on what every man can judge for every man. But in this way no real knowledge of Man can ever be assured. This must be removed to a sphere which is not quite alone by itself. Men pass one another by today, and will continue to pass one another by until they come to look on one another in a spiritual way.

This was not necessary in earlier times, for at that time men were not such complicated beings as they are today. The complication of human nature consists in the fact that mankind as such is, as it were, really only 27 years old. I have already explained to you from another point of view, that is to say, human beings only develop up to their 27th year. What comes after that no longer develops by itself, as in older times: development must be sought to get this. In his youth, up to his 27th year, man undergoes a development in which what pertains to humanity flows into him. Up to his 27th year, he is expecting something from life. Now comes the 27th year and now life, of itself, gives him nothing more. If, then, he does nothing about it on his own account, life from that time begins to be quite hollow, empty and barren for him, but it may be that he soars up to receive into himself the spiritual life, of which I said that it is flowing over mankind like a a wave.

This crisis, which is taking place at the present time in every human life about the 27th year and which then remains until about the 35th year, expresses itself in characteristic phenomenon. For everything which lives in universal human nature then expresses itself with particular intensity in single phenomenon. Thus, for example: a personage lived until a short time ago who was looked on as a very leading figure, although he did not in reality do much leading. At a definite point of time, this personage had an important decision set before him. But the following now appears. This personage had formerly incarnated in the 9th century of the Christian epoch and at that time was a kind of black magician in a place in southern Europe. This fact had such an influence on the present incarnation that this personage really died as this decisive event occurred: that is to say, the body was abandoned by the soul which had hitherto incarnated in it. But the personage lived on in an external way and, as judged by external appearances, was still there. Think what a chance this was for all sorts of Ahrimanic spirits and entities to live on in a man who had died in this way! This is one case of the kind which has frequently brought about the complication of present-day life. Things like this play into what is coming to pass on earth today as human activities, into what makes up human destinies today.

Without a feeling for decisive events such as the one which I have just mentioned, one can form no judgement about what is coming to pass. I have often stressed this: one cannot form judgements about the so-called "events leading up to this world-war catastrophe" in the same way as one used to deal with history before, because windows were being opened everywhere for Ahrimanic beings, who entered in. Spiritual basic causes of the most dubious and singular kind have played into the events of July 1914. Without the help of spiritual factors, one is unable to speak in a historical way about what led to this world-catastrophe.

But consider how necessary it is to take things really seriously today. Consider the basic phenomena which I have quoted before: up to the 7th year a human being develops his physical body, up to about the 14th year his etheric body, up to the 21st year his astral body, up to the 28th year his sentient soul. The 27th year is particularly important today. After that, up to the 35th year, first the mind-soul is working and then the consciousness soul. The Ego arises in the mind soul—you can read about this in my Theosophy.

But now, today, Man develops himself only until the 27th year in accordance with what human nature gives him. He develops himself in such a way that he awaits the rise of the Ego in the mind-soul. But this does not come of itself, because the development from the 28th to the 35th year no longer proceeds by itself.

This is the tremendous question which stands before the human being of today. Just imagine that a man lives on beyond his 27th year without having done anything to develop what gives the true ego-feeling and with it the feeling of being a man, namely the knowledge of Man. What happened? The question what is Man, really? The answer becomes either: "Away from Man to the Supreme", which gives us a merely unreal substance, or else it comes to expression as: "Something is out of order in myself. Consequently, I have not come into the world in such a way as befits a man. I find myself on a definite path. And not only I: many of us are the same. We become peculiar men, and fit ourselves into no order. Who among us is guilty? We ourselves are guilty, before ourselves and before life".

Then you have the question what is Man, really? arising from Spiritual Science. It lies at the basis of present day human nature. Is it not a serious task for the future to think how we really can separate the spiritual life, which enables us to have life experiences even about the Spirit, from the democratic state-life, which can never meddle with intimate experiences of life! Do you believe that anything could at any time arise in Theology, Jurisprudence, Philosophy, Medicine or the faculties of Political or Natural Science, as a result of which attention would be drawn to the fact that during this dangerous period between the 27th and 35th years there can come about an inward desolation of man, that in extreme cases the soul can even depart from the body and that thereafter the man only seems to continue to live, while he is possessed by a kind of Ahrimanic nature? The complication of modern life demands that the spiritual life shall be able really to flow over into the Spiritual. Today, the most important questions do not allow themselves to be grasped on the surface of life. And how is merely political democracy, which is fully justified in the sphere of state-life, to make it possible that men shall make their appearance in the future who will bring what they have to say about life wholly and completely in the form of a spiritual message out of the Spiritual World! Were it to be impossible in the future for spiritual messages to be brought to mankind out of the Spiritual World, then earth-evolution could in no way reach its goal. But the possibility of this kind of spiritual life depends on the freedom of spiritual life, depends on the spiritual life being genuinely set on its own feet, emancipated from the State. Otherwise the same thing will appear again and again which happened "far, far away from here", when the question arose of appointing new teachers in a university. Those who had to appoint them felt a certain anxiety because no one was teaching in the various faculties except people who had nothing in particular to say. Then it was loudly urged in the democratic assembly that "people with special qualifications" should be appointed. But the Democrats thumped with their sticks on the floor and shouted: "We want no people with special qualifications! We want average people, average people!"

All these things have a serious and deep basis. Our task is to point to this serious subsoil and, before everything, to oppose the most terrible evils of recent times, superficiality and thoughtlessness. It is often said: the Social Question is also a spiritual question. But then, the spiritual life must be considered in its fundamental nature, otherwise the spiritual consideration remains wholly imprisoned on the surface, above all when dealing with the Social Question.

I want to continue the observations I have begun concerning the progress of the human soul through its various earth lives, and to continue them in such a way as to make the experiences referred to useful as regards our judgment of the immediate present. To-day I would like to dwell more on the external side of things, and in the next lecture more on the inner side.

We have traced the path of the human soul in its repeated earth-lives through the three epochs most vitally concerning us—the Egypto-Chaldean, the Graeco-Latin, and our own, during which the human soul—looked upon as a self, as an individuality—experiences sonething different in each incarnation. Now we need only call up before our minds what will happen to those souls who go through earthly incarnation in our own time, to return after a more or less normal period, as will happen with most people, though not with everyone. It has often been pointed out, and last time it was repeated, that souls incarnated at thn present time will come back knowing with certainty, in some form or other—and (this I described more closely last time) through their own inward exerience—the fact of repeated earth-lives. This momentous step will be accomplished in the next age; souls will advance from their present ignorance to knowledge of reincarnation; but something else needs emphasis.

Remember that I laid stress on an important epoch which began with the seventh or eighth century before the Mstery of Golotha. In the earlier centuries of this epoch many souls were able, in the old clairvoyant fashion, to look back on their earlier earth-lives; but because they looked into a time when the sentient soul was specially developed, what they saw was the connection of human beings with the outer world. They gained a clear picture of man's proceedings in the outer world, and what happened to him there. To be sure, this will not be so in the next epoch to ours, when the retrospect will be more directed towards aspects of the soul. It will be less concerned with actions and experiences in space, less like a realistic picture, and more of a looking back into the life of the soul.

I mention this again so that you may see what very, very different experiences souls have in their successive earth lives. And of course the question must press upon each one of you—how has the outside world come to believe that during the course of history, human beings have not greatly changed? Taking the current presentations of history (some of which, but not all, are well-intentioned), we find over and over again that each goes back to a certain point of time, to which the historical accounts and documents extend, but they take for granted that the structure of the human soul has been the same all along. They grant a certain development, but they do not think of it in nearly as radical a way as we must do, in the light of the conclusions of spiritual science. The question forces itself on every one of us:—How is it that there is no proper awareness of “the metamorphosis of the human soul”?

If now we consider historical events from the point of view of spiritual science, we see that for a long time man has really been held back from knowledge of himself, rather than led towards it. To discover how the human soul changes from one incarnation to another is possible only when self- knowledge, real self-knowledge, takes root; but this has been driven back through events which we still have to appraise. Significant examples of this forcing-back process could be found in recent history. A certain fraternity, known to you all, that of the Freemasons, believes—honestly in the case of many of the brethren—that they can lead members of their circle to self-knowledge. They have various symbols of which it is evident, when they are approached with spiritual scientific knowledge, that they are profound, fraught with meaning; all really designed to lead to self-knowledge; but they do not do so. If one reads the official records of Freemasonry, it is remarkable to find the “enlightened” supposing that to understand their craft it is necessary to go back only to the eighteenth or seventeenth century. Yet what is contained in their symbols has been entirely concealed since the seventeenth century, changed into something to be looked at and shared—but which it is not felt necessary to understand. To approach these Masonic symbols with a capacity for understanding them would provide a path to self-knowledge, for they are all designed to that end. The real development of Freemasonry, however, has taken another path,—that of concealing self-knowledge, and by admitting only an outward explanation of the symbolism, to make self-knowledge impossible. Hence we can really say, from the standpoint of truth, that the development of modern Freemasonry is fundamentally that of a fraternity for making incomprehensible the symbols to be found within it. It is as though the unconscious purpose was precisely to make the symbols incomprehensible, for the very time over which the new Freemasonry has extended, (as regards the “enlightened”, not the mystical side), coincides with the greatest dread of self-knowledge in men's minds. There is much talk about it; man must seek “the divine within him”, “his higher self”, etc.; but that is all mere talk. It all tends to block up, not to open, the way to real self-knowledge; and we must ask: Whence comes this aversion, this terror? We will consider this from its outer side to-day.

It is apparent in a very remarkable way, not only in the limited realm of Freemasonry, but over the whole range of modern culture. We see how modern culture—notably in the spreading of Christianity—really takes the line of concealing and suppressing self-knowledge; a line of extraordinary interest and significance. Few people to-day take the trouble to compare the best available accounts of widely separated centuries, and fewer still reflect on the real character of what is described.

You can make an experiment, not very revealing but interesting all the same, by taking such a work as “The Life of Michelangelo” by Herman Grimm, which deals in fact mainly with Michael Angelo's period, the environment from which he emerged. Try to realise what the world would be like if one lived in the time which Grimm describes, and try to compare it with the world of to-day. The difference is tremendous! Yet that will not mean much, for the centuries in question are not very far apart. Something else emerges if one gives real thought to studying the epoch—including its preparatory stages and its after-effects—in which the great transition to modern times was accomplished. Looking back at the three great epochs which Spiritual Science shows us in our Present earth-cycle, we find that the third ends about the seventh or eighth century B.C., and the fourth with the beginning of the fifteenth century A.D. At this point there lies, not far behind us, an important, significant transition in the soul-life of civilised humanity. Usually it is hardly touched upon in history—and why? There, too, is the dread of self-knowledge, and also of knowledge of the human soul. An interesting example of the time antecedent to the change can be found in accounts of a personality such as St. Bernard Of Clairvaux. St. Bernard, perhaps the most outstanding personality of the twelfth century, and indeed of the age with which the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation came to an end, manifested a structure of soul which after the fifteenth century was no longer possible in Europe. Nowadays it is very hard to describe this, because the preconditions for forming the right conceptions are altogether lacking; but I advise you to read accounts of the life of St. Bernard so as to see the impression he made on other people. Reading these accounts, one says to oneself: By the side of these, what are the Gospel stories of Miracles? The few sick folk healed by Christ Jesus himself—according to the Gospels—are a trifle compared with the astonishing wonder-working activities of St. Bernard! The number of people of whom it is said that he made the blind to see and lame to walk, is beyond all comparison with the number of similar cases reported in the Gospels. The accounts of the impression made by his preaching gives one the feeling that what he said acted as a widespread, intensely active spiritual aura. In the words of this man there lived a reality of which we can have no conception at the present day. If one tried to describe all the effects produced by his personality, people would simply not believe it for there is no possibility nowadays of giving an adequate idea of how he was then regarded. To penetrate to the inner structure of his soul, is, as I have said, difficult to-day, because, even in our own circle, the conditions for it are wanting. However, I might hint at one thing:—

In this personality there was an amazing devotion to the spiritual world, an absolute absorption in it. If anyone to-day undertakes something and it fails, he naturally begins to doubt whether he was right to embark on it. A personality such as St. Bernard was never doubtful, because he had always taken counsel with his God in the spiritual worlds before he undertook or advised anything. Through all the failures he experienced in the Crusades, when everything he had advised went wrong, he never doubted for a moment that his thoughts were absolutely correct, and that the discrepancy between what really happened in the outer world and what he had conceived under the influence of the spiritual world would in some way be cleared up and accounted for.

In choosing out such a personality, one is speaking of a single, outstanding figure; but what I have been saying is not restricted to him. It is the signature of the whole age—in no way confined to him. It is the signature of the epoch which began in Europe about the third or fourth century A.D., and lasted until the thirteenth, fourteenth or fifteenth. Of course within this age something further was being prepared, but this came to expression, as a deep influence, stamping itself on its time, only after the fourteenth or fifteenth century. The third to the fifteenth centuries was the time of an even more concentrated power of Faith, the age in which the events of the time came to pass under its impress.

In this connection I must beg you to recollect what I always request in these lectures—it is particularly important in passages such as these. I choose my words in such a way that other words cannot be substituted for them. If these carefully chosen words are replaced by others, from that moment your description is no longer historically accurate. I said, “It was the age when the power of Faith-was established”: If that be changed into “It was the age when Piety was established”, that would represent something entirely untrue, not my meaning at all. It was the Power of Faith I referred to in describing Bernard. He was also without doubt a pious nan, but that may belong to a man's personal character. What in those days worked and lived in outer events was the influence of Faith. The power of Faith is indeed to be found in every age, but it is not always decisive in the making of history. Our present age will be superseded by one in which Faith will again play a significant though sporadic part, but it has not yet come to that. Superstitious belief in medicine for instance, take grotesque forms in the future, and Faith will have a great part to play in that, but things have not yet gone so far. In humanity to-day, a hazy somnolence as regards historical events plays the chief part. Now we can put the question: How did it happen that this power of Faith became such an important historical impulse in Europe—the very impulse which significantly ushered in what arose in the fifteenth century as the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, in which we are now living?

First of all it was something apparently quite external which laid the foundation for the advent of the power of Faith: I mean, the circunstances which brought about the fall of the Roman Empire. The dominant historical-impulses from the third or fourth century up to the fifteenth, took the place of the impulses of the Roman Empire. Of course there were very many impulses which contributed to the fall of the Empire but one very substantial one was that during the course of Roman history money gradually flowed away towards the East. With the extension of the Roman Empire the Legions had to be moved further and further to the borders of the huge Empire; the men's wages had to be paid in money—not in kind, as was possible while the Empire was smaller. Therefore, with the extending Empire, money-wealth was gradually diverted to the East; and an essential characteristic of Europe from the early part of the third and fourth centuries onward, was its shortage of money—of coinage, that is. Many other things are, involved in this, and it is important to look at them with a sound eye for reality, not with mystical enthusiasm.

The art of making gold, alchemy, was partly conditioned in Europe by the outflow of gold to the East; men believed that if gold could be made, crated, they could once again be rich. A frequent reason for alchemy, as it was cultivated in the first centuries of the Middle Ages, was the shortage of coinage due to the extension of the Roman Empire. Linked up with this was the eruption into the impoverished Roman Empire, at that period, of the peoples from the north. With their pagan ideas, pagan culture and pagan experiences, they understood little of the Roman social structure, which had gradually become more and more powerful under the influence of money. The Romans had found things very uncomfortable after the diversion of money to the East, but these conditions suited the invading German races very well.

The spread of Christianity coincided with this condition of the Roman Empire. It is a fact, though one no longer recognised, that a profound spiritual perception lived in the spreading waves of Christianity throughout those early times. There is an incurable fear to-day, especially in theological circles, of the sc-called “Gnosis”. Many a time on asking why people in such circles dislike, and even fear, Spiritual Science, one receives the answer that “it lead to a revival of the Gnosis”; that is quite a sufficient reason for rejection! the Gnosis (though of course in our age it would have to make its appearance in a different guise from what it was in the early centuries of Christianity) is nothing else than a positive knowledge of the spiritual world, the human capacity to attain to vision of spiritual realms, as sight in the physical world is gained by the senses. One can meet people to-day who make fun of the disputes there used to be as to whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Son, or is connected in some other way with the Father and the Son. Nowadays people unite no conceptions with these ideas, but they did in those times. Anyone who writes the history of the first Christian centuries out of true knowledce, will see that in these origins of dogmas the spirit was active, although men can no longer find it now. A deeply significant spiritual outlook was carried on the advancing waves of Christianity, and it lasted on into the ninth century. A study of the details of this spreading Christianity shows that the later opinion, according to which the religious outlook should be concerned only with the strengthening of faith and should meddle as little as possible with tie particulars of the spiritual world, arose from a certain way, a right way, of regarding the nations from whom the new Europe was to arise. They were pagan peoples—peoples moreover, who had not come far in connected thinking or in the forming of ideas which lead into the spiritual world; they were strong, forceful, primitively sound men, but not exactly men of a disposition to form very defined conceptions of anything spiritual.

So, in order that Christianity might spread, it was made suitable for these peoples. Because they were not great thinkers, more was made of the “heart”, of the power of faith. So we find that in the tenth century all spiritual vision had more or less disappeared from Christianity; everything was centred in faith—and what was then regarded as faith, what was meant by the term, had gradually become the soul-content of man. Souls then lived in a different atmosphere from that of to-day. One needs to realise what was then experienced through legends. I will relate one simple legend, a thoughtful one, which in those days was known everywhere. It runs thus:

Saint Bernard occasionally rode on an ass. He had a monk with him. This monk suffered from what we call epilepsy. He was constantly falling. St. Bernard saw this when the monk accompanied him to lead his ass; so he besought his God that in future the monk might never have an attack of epilepsy without knowing of it beforehand. The legend goes on to say that the monk lived for twenty years, but every time he had an attack, he knew it was coming so he could stay in bed, and not bruise his limbs by falling.

This is a simple, unpretentious tale, but it worked deeply and was told everywhere. Men felt strong in soul in experiencing the supporting power of true faith, and they lived in the aura of such an experience.

Now it would not have been possible for this power of faith to establish itself in this way if Europe had not been to some extent isolated during the centuries I have described. Money had flowed Eastwards; and for this reason, trade had gradually ceased. Europe was for a time limited to agriculture. The fact that a third of the soil of Europe should have passed over in the course of these centuries to the upholders of the power of faith—that is, into the possession of the Church—is highly symptomatic. It is as though the whole content of the fourth post-Atlantean period (interrupted only by the Roman element) had been condensed into this power of Faith. But in the course of this strengthening of faith one thing was lost—progress in a genuine Christ-consciousness. We must not forget that Christ was known in the highest sense during the first Christian centuries by those who knew how the Christ-Figure, the Christ-Being, stood in relation to all the forces of the Spiritual world. For those who were first affected by the Christ-Figure, the ground of their emotion was that they gazed up into a spiritual world, and in a sense perceived as it were the approach of the Christ-Figure to the Earth through the aeons, and could connect the Event of Golgotha with all that happened in the Cosmos. This was the grasp of the Event of Golgotha which led those who first interpreted it to explain what had happened on earth as the outcome of event in the worlds of great cosmic happenings.

I know very well that this is otherwise represented now, but when it is said, “We must go back to the plain, simple conceptions of Christ Jesus prevailing in the early centuries”, that is to speak accords to personal fancies, from a wish to conceal the greatness of the Christ-idea and the profound insight of those early centuries into the Mystery of Golgotha. That is why the favourite idea was brought out: everything was made simple, designed to show that Christ Jesus was no more than “the simple man of Nazareth”. It is less surprising to find this view among young people. Older people, at any rate, ought to know that in these matters a significant change has taken place in our time. I have often heard that it is said “These things as presented in Spiritual science we simply cannot understand; they are so very difficult! If only there were not these hindrances!” Thirty years ago the simple country people would have understood such subjects well, but in course-of the last few decades a great change has come about. Older people may still know something of how certain writings, such as those of Böhme and Eckartshausen, which most strenuously endeavoured to open a way into the concrete realities of the spiritual world, were then accepted by the souls of simple peasants. Our spiritual life, unfortunately, has become superficial, under the influence of the bourgeois mind and the increasing repetition of its favourite idea—that truth must be “simple”, meaning that truth must be easy for everyone to grasp in a comfortable way without much reflection. Certainly, there are not many traces left nowadays—even in simple minds—of the fact that in the early centuries of Christianity it was possible to bring lofty spiritual truths before quite simple people when Christ Jesus was spoken of. this implies that what occurred in the subsequent centuries was, in a sense, directed primarily to concealing the knowledge of Christ from Man, to keeping, it at a distance from him.

In these matters we must not look at what we imagine, but at the reality. One of the deepest demands of our age is that we should learn to face reality. Here is an example. I once gave a lecture in Colmar on the subject of “Christianity and Wisdom”; two Catholic ecclesiastics were present. Naturally, they had never heard anything like it before, and on that account they came to me after the lecture, for what I had said did not seem to them so very wicked. It might have seemed so only if some of their superiors had previously spoken about it, and then they would probably have heard nonsense. They only made one objection. They said: “What you say is all very well; it is excellent to talk in this way about the spiritual world, but people understand none of it. We talk in such a way that people can understand it.” I said: “You know, reverend sirs, that neither you nor I ought to lay down the law as to how we should speak to people. Our favourite theories are of no consequence; for of course, according to them, the way in which you speak will please you and the way in which I speak will please me, but that is not the point. What matters is the duty laid upon us by the time we live in:—- not to answer such questions as you have just raised according to our favourite theories, but to let reality itself give the answer. And this is not far to seek. I ask you, since you believe that you speak to everybody, does everybody go to church to hear you?" As truthful men they could only answer: “Many stay away.” Then I could say: “That is the answer of reality! I speak for those who remain outside, who have also the right to find the way to Christ Jesus.” Let the question be asked of reality, of the age, not of man's own self, because the answer one can get from oneself is clearly known to one It seems very simple; but to learn to grasp the obligation laid on us by our age is not a simple matter. Only after deep counsel with himself can a man recognise what really lies behind this.

Mankind's real need to-day is just this: to become objective, to learn to live with the facts of the world. If we understand how to grasp the impulse which is meant by this, we shall come to terms with the truth that gradually, under the influence of the course of events through the centuries, the higher knowledge, the upward gaze into the connection between the Mystery of Golgotha and cosmic events, has been quite lost in Europe. Christ has been put at a distance—from the European soul; He has been reduced to what men were willing to grasp and imagine. The important thing, however, is that men should grasp reality, not merely what they would like to grasp. We often hear it said: “Man should seek his God and he will find Him within. He must unite himself with his inner divine self, then he will find Him”. People are particularly shocked when Spiritual Science is impelled to declare: “If we rise into the spirit from the world in which we live, we find the “Hierarchies”, a richly-membered hierarchical spiritual world, even as here below we find a richly-membered physical world. It is certainly easier and more comfortable to say, “Let each draw near directly to the one Christ: everyone can find Him.” But it does not matter what men imagine; the point is that they should recognise what is really to be found in the spiritual. What do those find who so often say, “I have found an inner connection with my God?” What they call “God,” when they speak like this is in fact often the nearest Spiritual Being belonging to the hierarchy of the Angels, the Guardian Angel, who is thus revered as the “highest being.” To say we “believe” we have found God, means nothin; what is necessary is to understand the reality of this inner experience. When anyone believes himself to be permeated inwardly by a divine being, he is generally permeated only by a member of the Hierarchy of Angels, or else by his own Ego, as it was between the last death and the present birth, as it lived in the spiritual world before uniting with his physical body.

Is it not interesting, that there is one word of which the origin is unknown? Search dictionaries, and you will discover fine explanations of all sorts of words. Yet for this one word the most learned dictionary-makers can find no origin; they do not know what it means even philologically—and this is the word, “God.” It is the word whose meaning is unknown. Very significant and very suggestive! For what people are often really talking about, when they speak so constantly about their “God,” is their own Angel, or simply their own Ego in the time between the last death and present birth. What is thus actually experienced—(I am thinking only of genuine, honest experiences)—is real enough. The point is not to succumb to the illusion that people are praying to “one God.” People have only one word for the experience of their Angel, or indeed for their own ego, whether embodied or not.

It is not uncommon for someone to have a vague foreboding that through Spiritual Science he will get behind the veil of what is constantly referred to as an “experience of God,” and this hinders the spread of Spiritual Science, for Spiritual Science is inherently inclined to reveal the truth behind the immensely significant fact to which I have just referred. The whole historical trend from the third to the tenth—indeed to the fifteenth—century, tends more to the concealment of the mysteries of Christ Jesus than to their becoming manifest. This is not a criticism, but simply a characteristisation; and if people are not in a position to take it in objectively, they will never understand the powers ruling the age that begins with the fifteenth century, the age of the “Consciousness-Soul.” This age, I might say, “thunders in,” and everything in the spiritual world tends to bring out the Consciousness Soul, with its two poles, the material and the spiritual. It is from this point of view that the course of historical development must be scrutinised. Let us picture, for example, how the frame of mind which appears at a higher stage in St Bernard, as the fruit of a strengthened, consolidated faith, produced the European tendency to put Jerusalem in the place of Rome, to found an anti-Roman Christianity with its centre in Jerusalem. For this impulse lay at the root of the Crusades. Godfrey de Bouillon was no emissary of the Roman Pope; on the contrary, he seized on the Crusades in order to build in Jerusalem a bulwark against Rome, to make Christianity independent of Rome. It was an idea which held sway for several centuries. Henry the Second, the Saintly, gave it out in the form of “a Church Catholic but not Roman”.

We see how the faith of Europe sends its aura into the regions where the Romans had sent their gold! In the East the Crusaders came into contact with money and its results; with Roman gold on the one hand, with Oriental Gnosis on the other. This aura under which the Crusades arose must be taken into consideration. It is entirely the aura of European faith—that is the one tone, the one colouring the picture. Let us set against this colouring—if it were to be painted, it would have to be in this one colour—another picture of the dawn of the Consciousness Soul. How should this be represented?

Consider Dandolo, Doge of Venice (1120–1205), formerly in Constantinople and blinded there by the Turks, who was the incarnation of the Ahriman-spirit, and, in spite of his blindness, was the ruler Venice—that Venice which imported the Ahrimanic element into the spirit, as I have described. It was a moment of great significance in the history of the world when this Doge conquered Constantinople, and led over the original spirit of the Crusades into the later ones. How did it happen? In this way.

The Crusaders originally went to the East in quest of the holy places and relics, wishing to bring them under the mantle of their faith. That was their aim they wanted to bring the relics back reverently to Europe. They wished to establish a real link between their faith and the events of he Mystery of Golgotha. When Venice intervened, what became of the relics? They were all collected, but in reality everything was made a business transaction! Under the influence of Venice, the relics were gradually treated as stocks and shares; they rose and rose in value. The capitalist aura spread through Dandolo, the incarnation of the Ahriman-spirit!

We ask ourselves—how did Venice succeed in reversing the earlier trend of events? Venice led trade back from the East to Europe; she rekindled commercial life, which had been impossible before. The question must arise: How could Venice become so powerful in the realm of commerce, while Europe was fundamentally so poor?

Commerce was carried on by barter. During the first part of the period of which I have been speaking, Europe was cut off from the East, to which, to begin with, she had given her coinage. In the absence of money, barter was substituted. Over and over again the historical fact of the way in which Venice came into this field must be insisted upon. We can prove that Venice drove a great bargain for the possession of Alexandria and Damieta, in order to barter her goods for the Oriental wares she coveted. What was it that Venice sold? One thing can easily be proved by documentary evidence, and many others could be added to it: investigation in this direction could be carried far. The Venetian wares were men! Thousands of men! The new trade with the East was begun with human beings—men were sold to the East; and anyone who follows up what became of them arrives at a remarkable result, of which outer history as yet knows but little. From these bartered men sprang the strongest of the warriors with whom the great military expeditions from Asia into Europe were successfully undertaken. The choicest troops of the Asiatic tribes which later fell upon Europe consisted of the descendants of the men sold into slavery to the East by Venice and other Italian States.

It is really necessary to look behind the scenes of world-history, and not to cling to the legends so often retailed to mankind as the “history of the world.” These legends must ultimately suffer the fate of being dismissed as school-girl tales, even though written by Ranke. The times we live in are much too serious for us to refrain from emphasizing what must be learnt; and the most important thing gained from these maters will be the acquirement of a judnment which will awaken man's consciousness—so that he will no longer remain asleep to current tendencies. A monstrous thing happens in our present time, but men do not, and will not, see it; they prefer to look at everything in a disguised and confused way. If here or there a note is struck, sounding from the depths of human development, it is repulsed with phrases drawn from superficial journalism or newspaper articles, which are as far as possible from profitable truth.

To-day I wished to draw your attention from an external point of view, to something belonging to the period in which, during the fifteenth century, the transition was accomplished from the Mind-Soul to the Consciousness-Soul It is most desirable that such ideas should sink into men's souls; they are needed—needed in all domains of life. People talk a great deal nowadays about the ways in which the structure of the community will develop in the future. This very morning I read an article by a man who esteems himself exceptionally clever, who believes he has really grasped the truths of political economy from their foundations. The profound fact he gives out in his argument is that the community, the communal life, must be comprehended as an “organism.” Something really significant is supposed to have been advanced when it is said that the life of the community must be looked upon as an organism, not as a machine. Thus is the most dreadful Wilsonism rife amongst us! I have often said that the very essence of “Wilsonism” is its inability to conceive of the life of the community except as an “organism.” Men must eventually learn to employ higher concepts than this, in contemplating the social structure. It can never be understood as an “organism:” it is an affair of the soul, of the spirit. The Spirit works in every human social community. Our age has become poverty-stricken in conceptions. We can found no social policy unless we steep our minds in spiritual knowledge for only there can we find the “meta-organism!” which transcends the mere “organism.”

Everywhere we find unwillingness to penetrate directly into the spirit; but it must be done, or incalculable effects will follow. On this subject, if you remember, I pointed out how, in the seventeenth century, Johann Valentine Andreae wrote the story of the “Chemical Marriage” of Christian Rosenkreuz, which contains much that springs from impulses connected with the transition in the fifteenth century. The story is told as having occurred in that century.

It is very interesting to notice that Johann Valentine Andreae wrote it as a youth of seventeen, when he was still unripe in external intelligence, and repudiated it in his later yenrs. Andreae, the pious theologian of later years, wrote everything possible in opposition to it. The interesting fact is that Andreae's life shows no glimmer of understanding the meaning of what he wrote in the “Chemical Marriage”. The Spiritual worlds desired to reveal to mankind something connected with the entire experience of that age.

Recently I visited, a castle in Central Europe, where there is a chapel in which the ideas of the transition-period of the new age are symbolised. Primitive paintings adorn the well of the staircase, and what do they represent? The “Chemical Marriage” of Christian Rosenkeuz! The way leads through the Chemical Marriage to a Chapel of the Grail. Then began the Thirty Years' War, after which the “Chemical Marriage” was written down, but its meaning was lost in the waves of conflict.

The lesson to be learnt from this is that the same thing never happens twice. The spiritual development which has been required of humanity since the fifteenth century must make its appearance little by little. In the next lecture we will speak of this from a deeper aspect.

I should like to begin by speaking to you about the conditions and laws underlying human destiny, destiny, which customarily is called karma. This karma, however, will be understood, be clearly seen into only when we begin by acquainting ourselves with the varieties of laws underlying the universe. So today, then, I should like—for it is necessary to speak to you in a rather abstract form about the various underlying universal laws, in order then to crystallize out of this the more special form which can be designated as human destiny—karma.

We speak of cause and effect not only when we wish to comprehend the phenomena of the world, but also when we wish to fix our attention on the phenomena of human life itself. And at present it is quite customary to speak in general terms about cause and effect. Especially is this so in scientific circles. However, directly from this there result the greatest difficulties concerning the actual truth. For the various ways in which cause and effect appear in the world are not at all considered.

We can begin by looking at the so-called lifeless nature which, indeed, confronts us most clearly in the mineral kingdom, in all that we see in the rocky and stony part of the earth, often in such wonderful formations, but also in all that is reduced to powder, and which is then reunited and repacked in the formless rocky strata of the earth. Let us look, my dear friends, first at what thus appears as the lifeless in the world.

When we consider the lifeless—everything lifeless, without exception—we discover that everywhere within this kingdom of the lifeless we can find the causes themselves. Wherever the lifeless exists as effect, we can also seek the causes within this very same kingdom. In fact, we proceed in accordance with the principles of knowledge only when we seek the causes of the processes of the lifeless within its own kingdom.

If you have a crystal before you, however beautifully formed it may be, you should seek the cause of its forms in the kingdom of the lifeless itself. And thus, this lifeless kingdom shows itself as something contained within itself. We are, at first, not able to say where we can find the limits of this lifeless. Under certain conditions they may lie far distant out in the reaches of the universe. But if we are concerned with the effects of something lifeless confronting us, and we wish to find the causes, we must then seek them also within the realm of the lifeless. Through what we have said, however, we have already placed the lifeless alongside something else, and therewith a certain perspective is immediately opened before us.

Consider the human being himself. Consider how he passes through the door of death. Everything which existed and acted in him before this event has left the visible, apprehensible form which remains after the human soul has passed through death's portal; nothing remains but this discarded, deserted form, of which we say that it is lifeless. And just as we speak of the lifeless when we gaze upon the stony structure of the mountains with its crystal forms, so must we speak of the lifeless when we behold this human corpse, bereft of soul and spirit. What from the beginning prevailed in the rest of lifeless nature only now comes into existence for the corpse of the human being.

We were unable to find in the lifeless itself the causes of what occurs in the human form as effects during life before the soul has passed through the door of death. It is true that, when an arm is raised, not only do we seek in vain in the lifeless, physical laws of the human form for the cause of this action, but we shall also seek in vain in the realm of the chemical, in the realm of the physical forces which are present in the human form, for the cause, let us say, of the heart-beat, of the blood circulation, of any of the processes which are not at all under the control of the will.

But, at the moment when the human form has become a corpse, when the soul has stepped through the gateway of death, we observe an effect in the human organism. We perceive, let us say, a change in the color of the skin, the limbs become limp; briefly, everything appears which we are accustomed to behold in a corpse. Where do we seek the cause? In the corpse itself, in the chemical, physical, lifeless forces of the corpse itself.

When now in all its aspects, in all directions, you think out to the end what I have here indicated—I need only indicate it—you will realize that, after the human soul has crossed the threshold of death, the human being has then become, regarding his corpse, like lifeless nature about him. That means that we must now seek the causes for the effects in the same region in which the effects themselves lie. This is very important.

As soon, however, as we behold this special nature of the human corpse, we find something else that is extraordinarily significant. The human being casts off his corpse, as it were, at death. And if then, with that faculty of perception which is capable of it, we observe what the real human being, the soul-spirit human being, has become after he has passed through the door of death, we are compelled to say: Indeed, it is quite true that the corpse is cast off, and that now it has no longer any significance for this actual soul-spirit human being, who has reached the other side of death's door. This corpse has no longer any significance; it is now something discarded.

With lifeless external nature this is quite a different matter. And, indeed, even if we consider the matter only superficially, this difference confronts us. Let us observe a human corpse. It can best be observed where it has had an air-burial. In subterranean caves, which formerly were chiefly used by certain communities as burial places, we find the corpses of men, for example, simply hung up. There they dry out. They go so far in this drying out process and become so completely brittle that it only requires a little tap to cause them to fall into dust.

What we thus find preserved as the lifeless is something quite different from what we find outside in our earthly surroundings as lifeless nature. This lifeless nature fashions itself, it forms itself into crystal shapes. It is in a remarkable state of change. When we disregard what is purely earthly and look at other phenomena which are also lifeless, at water, and air, we then find that an active transformation and metamorphosis takes place in these lifeless elements. Let us now place this before the soul. Let us bear in mind the similarity of the human body in its lifelessness, after the soul has laid it aside, to extra-human lifeless nature.

Let us now proceed further. Let us consider the plant kingdom. Here we enter the sphere of the living. If we study a plant intimately, we shall never find ourselves able to explain the effect appearing in the plant merely as a result of the causes which lie in the plant kingdom itself—that is, in the same kingdom in which the effects appear. Certainly, there is today a science which attempts to do this. However, this science is on the wrong track, for finally it comes to the point of saying: Yes, indeed, it is possible to investigate the physical forces and laws acting in the plant; the chemically active forces and laws can be investigated; but something remains over and above. At this point these people divide into two groups. One group maintains that what remains over is only a sort of aggregation, a sort of form, shape; that what is active are only the physical and chemical laws. The other group says: No! there is something else there besides, which science has not yet investigated; science will, however, eventually discover it. But this will be said for a long time to come. The fact of the matter, however, is something different. For, when we wish to investigate plant nature, we cannot comprehend it, if the entire universe is not called to our aid, if the plant is not beheld in such a way that we say that the forces of plant activity lie in the reaches of the cosmos. Everything that happens in the plant is the effect of the reaches of the universe. The sun must first advance to a certain position in the cosmos in order that some particular effects may appear in the plant kingdom. Different forces must be active from wide spaces of the universe in order that the plant may receive its form, in order that it may receive its inner driving forces.

My dear friends, the truth of the matter is as follows. If we were able to travel, not in the manner of Jules Verne, but actually to travel out to the moon, to the sun, etc., then, unless we should have already acquired other forces of cognition than those we now possess, we would not become any more clever in this search for the causes than we are upon the earth itself. We would not get very far were we to say the following: “Very well, the causes of the effects which appear in the plant kingdom are not in the plant kingdom of the earth itself; so we travel to the sun; we shall find there the causes.” But we do not find them there with ordinary means of cognition. We do find them, however, if we lift ourselves to imaginative knowledge, if we possess quite a different mode of knowledge. In that case we do not need to travel to the sun; we find them here in the earth region itself. Only we shall find it necessary to cross over from an ordinary physical world to an ether world, and we shall find that in the reaches of the world the cosmic ether works everywhere with its forces, and that out of these reaches it works inward. Out of cosmic reaches everywhere the ether forces work into our world.

Thus, we must actually cross over to a second kingdom of the world, if we intend to seek the causes of the effects in the plant kingdom.

Now, the human being participates in the same element as the plant. The same forces which send their influences from the reaches of the ether cosmos down into the plants work also in the human being. He carries within him the ether forces, and we designate the sum of the forces he thus carries the ether body. And I have already told you how this ether body a few days after death becomes larger and larger and finally loses itself, so that the human being remains only in his astral and ego being. Thus, what he has carried within him of an etheric nature becomes larger and larger and finally loses itself in the cosmic reaches.

Let us now compare again what we can see of the human being when he has crossed the threshold of death with what we see in the plant kingdom. We must say that the causative forces of the plant kingdom conn* down to earth out of the reaches of space. We must say in regard to the human ether body that the forces of this ether body go out into these reaches, that is to say, they go to that region whence come the growth forces of the plant when the human being has passed through death's door. Now the matter already becomes clearer. If we merely look at a physical corpse and say that it is lifeless, then a descent into the rest of lifeless nature becomes difficult for us. But, if we look at the living, at the plant kingdom, and become aware that the causative forces for this kingdom come out of the cosmic reaches, then by plunging ourselves imaginatively into the nature of man, we see that, when the human being has crossed the threshold of death, the human ether body goes out into the source whence come the etheric forces of the plant kingdom.

Something else, however, is characteristic. What acts upon the plants as causative forces, acts relatively quickly; for upon the plants which are springing from the ground, which are developing their blossoms and their fruit, the sun of the day before yesterday has but little influence today. The sun of the day before yesterday is not effecting very much as a causative force. The sun must shine today, really shine today. That is important. And you will notice in our subsequent considerations that it is important that we note this fact.

The plants with their ether-causative forces have, it is true, their actual fundamental forces within the realm of the earthly, but they have these in what exists simultaneously in the cosmos and the earth. And when the human ether body dissolves itself, after the human being as a soul-spirit being has passed through the portal of death, this process lasts only a brief time, a few days only. Again, a simultaneous relationship exists, for the days during which this dissolution takes place, measured in the time of cosmic events, are but an insignificant moment.

When the ether body returns to that region whence come the ether forces which manifest as plant growth forces, we have, again, to do with something which shows us that as soon as the human being lives in the ether, his ether activity is not limited to the earth, for it departs from the earth, yet it develops with simultaneousness.

I shall now tabulate the foregoing in the following manner. We can say:

Mineral Kingdom: Simultaneousness of cause and effect in the physical.

Thus, we have essentially to do with simultaneousness of the causes in the physical. You will say: “Yes, but the causes of much that occurs in the physical lie prior in time.” This is in reality not the fact. If effects are to arise in the physical, then the causes must last, must continue to act. If the causes cease, effects no longer occur. We are, therefore, justified in writing this down thus:

Mineral Kingdom: Simultaneousness of the causes in the physical.

When we come to the plant kingdom, however—and in doing so we come to what can be observed in the human being also as something plantlike—we then have to do with simultaneousness in the physical and the super-physical.

Plant Kingdom: Simultaneousness of the causes in the physical and super-physical.

Let us now approach the animal kingdom. In this kingdom we shall seek quite in vain in the animal itself for what appears as effects as long as the animal is living. Even if the animal only crawls in order to seek its food, we shall seek quite in vain for the causes in the chemical and physical processes taking place within the animal body. We shall also seek entirely in vain in the reaches of ether space, where we find the causes for the plant nature,—we shall also seek there in vain for the causes of animal movement and animal sensation. For all that takes place in the animal in regard to what is plantlike in the animal, we find the causes also in ether space. And when the animal dies, its ether body also passes out into the reaches of cosmic ether. But we shall never be able to find within the earthly, within the physical, or the super-physical etheric, the causes of sensation. It is impossible to find them there.

Here it can be said that something occurs wherein the modern view is very much on the wrong track. Indeed, in regard to many phenomena which appear in the animal—the phenomena of sensation, of movement the human being with this modern conception must say to himself: “If I investigate the inner processes of the animal's physical, chemical forces, I cannot find the causes there. But also, in the reaches of the cosmos, in the ether reaches of the universe the causes cannot be found. If I wish to explain the nature of a blossom, then I must go out into the ether universe. I shall be able to explain the blossom's nature from the nature of the ether universe. I shall also be able to explain much in the animal which is plantlike from the nature of the ether cosmos, but I shall never be able to explain what appears in the animal as movement or as sensation.”

If I observe an animal on the 20th of June and consider its sensations, then I shall not be able to find the causes of the sensations on the 20th of June in anything that is in earthly or extra-earthly space. If I go still farther back I shall not find them either. I shall not find them in May, nor in April, nor in any other month.

The modern view feels this. Therefore, this modern view explains what is thus not capable of explanation, or at least a great deal of it, by means of heredity. That is to say, it explains by means of a phrase. It is “inherited.” It originates with the forebears, it is “inherited” by the offspring. Naturally, not everything, because that would, indeed, be too grotesque; nevertheless, a great deal. It is inherited!

What is meant by “inherited?” The concept of heredity leads finally back to the idea that what appears as complicated animal was contained in its mother's ovum. And it has, indeed, been the endeavor of the modern view to observe an ox outwardly in its complicated form and then to say: “Well, the ox sprang from the ovum; in it were the forces which then resulted in the full-grown ox. Therefore, the ovum is an extraordinarily complicated body.”

It would have to be extremely complicated, this ovum of the cow, for, is it not true? everything is contained within it which presses toward all sides, and forms, and fashions, and works, in order that out of the little ovum the complicated ox may emerge!

And however much we may struggle to find a way out—there are, indeed, many theories of evolution, of epigenesis, etc.—whatever way out we try to find, we see that there is nothing else to do than to conclude that this ovum, this little egg, is something extremely complicated. Since everything is led back to the molecule, which is built up of atoms in a complicated way, there are many who represent the first inception of this ovum as a complicated molecule. But, my dear friends, this does not even agree with physical observations.

The question arises: Is this ovum really such a complicated molecule, already such a complicated organism? The peculiarity of the ovum does not at all consist in its complexity, but in the fact that it throws all its substance back into chaos—into a chaotic state. Precisely the ovum is, in the mother-animal, not a complicated structure, but a completely pulverized, disarranged substance. It is not organized at all. It is something that falls back into an absolutely unorganized, powder-like condition. And reproduction would never occur, did not the unorganized, the lifeless matter which tends toward the crystalline, toward the form—did not this matter in the ovum fall back into itself, into chaos. The albumen is not the most complicated body, but rather the simplest, which has nothing determinative in it. And out of this little chaos, which exists there at first as an ovum, no ox could ever come into existence, for this ovum is just a chaos. Why, then, does an ox come forth from it? Because, in the maternal organism, the entire cosmos acts upon this ovum. It is just because it is unconditioned, because it is chaotic, that the entire cosmos can act upon it. And fructification has no other purpose than to cast back the matter of the ovum into chaos, into the indeterminate, into the unconditioned. Thus, nothing else acts but the universe alone. But now, if we look into the mother, we do not find therein the causes. If we look outside into the ether world, there also in the simultaneous occurrences the causes are not to be found. We must go back until we come to the time before the animal was born, if we wish to find the causes for what germinates there as the potential capacities of a being, capable of sensation and movement. We must go back to a time before life has begun. That is, for the capacities of feeling and movement the causal world does not lie in simultaneousness but lies in a time prior to the conception of this being.

The following is the curious fact: If I behold a plant, I must go out into what is simultaneous, and I then find the cause; but I find it in the reaches of the universe. If, however, I wish to find the cause of what acts in the animal as sensation, then I cannot look for it in simultaneousness, but I must look for it in what preceded life; in other words, the stellar constellation must have changed, it must have become different. It is not the stellar constellation in the universe which exists simultaneously with the animal that has its influence upon the actual animal nature, but the constellation of the stars preceding its life.

And now let us look at the human being when he has passed the threshold of death. When this has occurred, he must go back—after he has laid aside his ether body, which spreads out into every part of the reaches of the universe from whence come the growth forces of the plants, the etheric forces—he must go back, as I have described it, to his moment of birth. Then he has experienced in his astral body all that he has gone through in life, but in reverse order. In other words, the human being must not pass into the state of simultaneousness with his astral body after death; he must go back to the state prior to birth. He must go to that region whence come the forces which give the animal the capacity for sensation and the ability of movement. These do not come out of simultaneously existing stellar constellations, they come from the constellations existing prior to birth.

Thus, if we speak of the animal kingdom, we cannot speak of the simultaneousness of the causes in the physical and super-physical, but we must then speak of past super-physical causes passing over to the present effects in the physical.

Animal Kingdom: Past super-physical causes to present effects.

And here, too, we enter again the concept of time. We must, if I may use a trivial expression, go for a walk in time. If we wish to seek the causes of something occurring in the physical world, we go for a walk in this world; we do not need to go outside the physical world. If we wish to seek the causes of something which is really in the living plant kingdom, then we must go quite far away. We must seek in the ether world. And only there where the ether world comes to an end, where—speaking in terms of a fairy tale—the world is fenced, is boarded in, there only do we find the causes of plant growth.

We may go about there as much as we wish, yet we shall not find the cause of the faculty of sensation or movement. We must begin to go for a walk in time, we must tread there the path of time in reverse order. We must leave space and go for a walk in time.

You will note that we can place the human physical body in its lifelessness alongside lifeless outer nature in respect of causation; we can place the human ether body in its life and its expansion after death into the ether spaces alongside the ether life of the plant, which also comes hither out of the reaches of the ether, but, indeed, out of the simultaneous constellations of the super-physical, of the super-earthly. And we are able to place the human astral organism alongside of that which exists outside in the animal nature.

And we then advance from the mineral, to the plant, to the animal kingdom, coming finally to the real human kingdom. You will say: “Well, we have already considered that from the beginning.” Yes, indeed, but not altogether. We have, in the first place, considered the human kingdom in so far as the human being has a physical body; then, in so far as he has an ether body, and then, in so far as he has an astral body. But just note that he would be a crystal—a complicated one, to be sure, but a crystal, nevertheless—if he had only his physical body. If he were to have merely his ether body in addition, he would then be a plant, a beautiful plant perhaps, nevertheless, just a plant. If, again, the human being had in addition an astral body, he would go about on all fours, perhaps have horns and other similar animal characteristics—in short, he would be just an animal. The human being is none of these. The form which he has as an erect walking being he has by virtue of his possessing an ego organism besides the physical, etheric, and astral organisms. And only this being, who also has an ego organism, can we designate as man, as belonging to the human kingdom.

Let us now once more consider what we have already observed. If we wish to seek the causes of plant nature, we must then go out into the reaches of the ether realm, but we are still able to remain in space; only, as has been remarked, space in that case becomes somewhat hypothetical, for we must even resort to the fairy-tale concept, we must go “where the world is boarded up.” It is, however, really a fact that even modern human beings who think in accord with purely natural scientific research are coming to the view that we can actually speak of something like that expressed in the fairy tale “where the world is boarded in.” It is, naturally, a trivial, clumsy expression. But we need only recall how childishly human beings think: There is the sun. It sends forth its rays, sends them farther and farther away. They become, it is true, weaker and weaker. The light goes on and on and on, it goes further and further away, into the endless.

I have explained long ago to those who have already for years heard my lectures that it is nonsense to imagine that the light goes out into the endless. I have always said that the outspreading of light is dependent on its elasticity. If we take a rubber ball and depress it, we can do this only up to a certain point, it then snaps back again. That is to say, the elasticity of the ball has its limits; then the depressed surface springs back into place. This I have said is also true of light. It does not go out into the limitless, but, when a certain limit is reached, it returns.

This fact, that light does not expand out into the boundless, but only to a certain limit and then comes back, has found an advocate, for example, in England in the physicist Sir Oliver Lodge. So it can be seen that today physical science has already come to advocate what is given through spiritual science, and physical science will eventually accept, in all particulars, what is stated by spiritual science.

And thus it is, indeed, possible to speak also of the fact that there outside, if we think sufficiently far out into space, we must allow our thoughts to return and not permit ourselves simply to postulate endless space, which is fantastic—indeed, a fantasy we cannot imagine. Perhaps there may be some among you who will remember that in the description of the course of my life I said how very deep an impression was made on me when, in my study of modern synthetic geometry, I was led to the concept that a straight line may not be considered as having a limitless extension, a never ending extension, but that such a line extending in one direction actually returns from the other. Geometry expresses it somewhat as follows: The point at infinity to the right of a fixed point is the same as the infinitely distant point to the left. It is possible to calculate this. This is not merely analogous to the fact that when we have a circle and start here by following the circumference we return to the same point again, or that, if a semicircle is infinite it is a straight line. That is not the case. That would be an analogy to which those who can think with exactness do not attribute any value. What made an impression on me was not this trivial analogy, but the actual proof in accordance with strict calculation, that the infinitely distant point on the left is the same as the infinitely distant point on the right, and that actually if someone begins to run from here along a straight line continually he will not run to a limitless infinity, but that, if he but continue to run for the proper length of time, he will eventually come toward us again from the opposite direction. This appears grotesque to all physical thought. The moment physical thinking is laid aside, this is actually a reality, because the universe is not endless, but is limited in as far as the physical universe is concerned. Thus, it may be said that we reach the limits of the etheric when we speak of the vegetative and of what is etheric in the human being. But we must go outside of everything that exists in space when we wish to explain the animal and the astral nature in man. There we must go walking in time; there we must go beyond simultaneousness; there we must advance in time.

When we enter time, we cross the boundary of the physical in a twofold way. In describing the animal, we must already proceed in time. We must, however, not continue this mode of thinking abstractly, but continue it in a concrete way. Pay attention for a moment and see how this can be continued concretely.

Human beings think, do they not? that when the sun sends forth its light, this continues on its path endlessly. Sir Oliver Lodge shows, however, that we have already forsaken this mode of thinking about the matter and, instead, that we know that light comes to a boundary and then returns again. The sun receives back its light from all sides, although in another form, in a transformed condition. The sun receives back the light. Let us now employ this mode of thinking on what we have just been considering. We stand, at the outset, in space. Earth-space remains within it. We stride out into the universe. That is not yet enough for us: we stride out into time. Now some one could say: “Very well, we now stride on ever further and further.” No, not at all! We now return again. We must continue this mode of thinking. We return again. We come back again in the same way as we do when we march forth into space, going ever further, reaching finally the boundary, and then return. So here also do we return. That is to say, if we have sought the past super-physical causes in the reaches of time, we must return again into the physical.

What does that mean? It means, we must again descend out of time, out of time descend again upon the earth. If we wish, thus, to seek the causes of the human being, then we must seek them again upon earth. Now we have marched back in time. If, by marching back in time, we come again upon the earth, then of course we come into a previous human life. With the animal, we stride further; it dissipates in regard to time just as our ether body dissipates right out to the boundary of the cosmos. The human being does not dissipate himself out there, for when we retract his path in time we come back to the earth into his previous life. Thus, we must say for the human being: From past physical causes to present effects in the physical.

Mineral Kingdom: Simultaneousness of causes in the physical.

Plant Kingdom: Simultaneousness of the causes in the physical and super-physical.

Animal Kingdom: Past super-physical causes of present effects.

Human Kingdom: Past physical causes of present effects in the physical.

You see, it has required effort today to familiarize ourselves with abstractions in a preparatory way. But that, my dear friends, was necessary. It was necessary, because I wished to show you that there is also a logic for those spheres which we must consider to be the spiritual. Only, this logic does not agree with the clumsy logic which is deduced merely from physical phenomena, and in which human beings are accustomed entirely and only to believe.

If we proceed in a purely logical way and investigate the series of causes, then, in the mere train of thought, we reach the past earth lives. And it is necessary to call attention to the fact that also the mode of thinking itself must become different from the usual mode, if we wish to comprehend the spiritual.

Human beings believe that what reveals itself from the spiritual world cannot be comprehended. It can be comprehended, but we must broaden our logic. It is, indeed, also necessary, if we wish to comprehend a musical or any other work of art, that we bear in ourselves the conditions which meet the matter halfway. If we do not possess these conditions, then we understand nothing concerning them. Then the music passes us by as a noise. Or we may see in some work of art nothing but an incomprehensible shape. Thus, we must also meet what is communicated from the spirit world with a mode of thought commensurate with this world. This, however, becomes evident in mere logical thinking. By investigating the various natures of the causes, we reach, indeed, the possibility of understanding the past earth lives also in logical sequence.

Now there remains the important question, which begins there where we observe the corpse. It has become lifeless. Lifeless nature exists outside in its crystal forms, in its varied shapes. The important question now confronts us: What is the relationship of lifeless nature to the corpse of the human being?

Perhaps you will see, my dear friends, that something is being contributed to a meaning which lies in the direction of the answer to this question, if you take hold of the matter in its second step, if you say: When I behold the plant world surrounding me, then I realize that it carries in itself the forces coming from the reaches of the ether cosmos to which my ether body returns. There outside in the ether reaches, there above are the causative sources of the plants. Thither goes my ether body when it has served its purpose during my life. I go thither where plant life gushes forth from the ether reaches. I go thither—that is, I am related to it. Indeed, I can say: Something exists there above me; my ether body ascends to it; the verduring, sprouting, up-springing plant world comes thither from it. But there is a difference. I give up my ether body; the plants receive the ether in order to grow. They receive the ether in order to live. I yield up the ether body after death. I yield it up as something remaining over. The plants, however, receive this ether body as something that gives them life. They have their beginning in that region which I reach at my end. The plant beginning unites with the human ether body's ending.

May it perhaps be that in relation to the mineral, to the crystals of the most manifold forms, I can ask the following question: Is that which I leave behind as physical corpse, as an end of myself, perhaps also a beginning of the mineral? Do beginning and end perhaps meet?

With this question in mind we intend to close today, my dear friends, and to begin tomorrow, in order to enter thoroughly into the question of human destiny, of so-called karma. Thus, in the next lecture, I shall continue to speak about karma. You will then no longer have to find your way through such a thicket of abstractions, but you will also understand that this was quite necessary for a certain development of thought.

Well, gentlemen, has anyone thought of anything else today?

Questioner: I have a question about the purpose of carnival. Is there anything we can hear from Dr. Steiner about that? Where does the carnival celebration come from, what does it mean?

Dr. Steiner: So you mean, what is the purpose of carnival? Well, you see, the carnival festival cannot be understood by asking about its purpose, because, at least according to the way it is celebrated today, you will admit that after all, humanity could do without carnival over the years. So you can say that, from today's point of view, the carnival festival is basically pointless. But it no longer has its original meaning either. It has gone with such things as carnival festivals, just as it has gone with the medals, with the robes and so on. They used to have their good sense; little by little they have lost that sense. Well, it is not true that the other festivals of the year are also gradually disappearing; little by little, if they are no longer revived in their meaning, they lose their significance. Not much has been done yet to restore the significance of Carnival. In fact, Carnival would have a profound impact on all of social life if it regained the original meaning it had, for example, in ancient Rome, where it was celebrated a little earlier.

If we go back to ancient Rome, we find the following. People back then were also divided up, if one may say so, as they are here in the present day: one was a civil servant, the other was a warrior, the third was a laborer, and so on, and the division was even harsher then than it is today, at least in a social sense. For a slave could even be bought as a human being! So one can say that the differences between people in ancient Rome were still very, very significant. But the awareness that one had this or that position should be lost, at least for a few days of the year. Isn't that right? Today we talk about democracy and mean, at least initially and more in the theoretical sense, that all people are equal. Now, the Romans did not believe that at all, but for them, the one who was born into any higher class was only a real human being. You know that even in our times, the saying still applied to certain people: “A man only begins with a baron.” So those who are below the baron are not human.

In ancient Rome, this was of course extremely pronounced. Even if the nobility was not introduced in the same way as it appeared later – because that is a medieval institution from the so-called feudal period – there was still a great difference between the classes in ancient Rome. But now, for a few days a year, people were supposed to be equal, democracy was supposed to prevail. Of course, it was not possible for people to come with their ordinary faces, otherwise they would have been recognized; so they had to wear masks. Then they were what the masks were. There was also a person who was the carnival king. During these days he could do whatever he wanted. He could give orders when otherwise he only received orders. And the whole of Rome went mad for a few days, out of place; and people could also behave differently towards their superiors, did not need to be polite to them - so for a few days, to make people equal! And this institution naturally led to people not exactly weeping and mourning during these days; for it pleased them to be able to live like that for a few days. The carnival revelry then developed out of this joy: People only played crazy tricks when they were freed for a few days. And so the whole carnival merrymaking came about.

The result of this was that, because people liked it very much, it has been preserved. But things are preserved without people knowing the original meaning. So carnival remains only as the time when you do crazy things – because you were allowed to do crazy things. Then the church decided that it was necessary to have Ash Wednesday immediately afterwards, so that people would feel that they were guilty, that they were not allowed to do everything they wanted, and so on. And since Christianity, at least in earlier times, had developed the custom of making people do without, Lent was established. And it was naturally expedient to attach Lent to the carnival season, because then people did without the least; they did everything they liked as well as they could. Afterwards it is much worse not to eat the things one has eaten before. It was then as if time had not gone forward. And so these festivals came together.

The only thing was that in Rome, Carnival was much earlier, around our present-day Christmas time, because everything was moved a little to a later season. That is how we got today's carnival. I believe that the date of the carnival in all other areas is based on the Easter season. But that, as I hear, only leads to it being celebrated twice!

Well, that is what needs to be said in answer to this question. It can be said of many things in humanity that they originally had a meaning but then later lost that meaning. Then one wonders: Why all this?

Well, maybe someone has something else to ask today.

Questioner: I would like to ask the doctor if he would perhaps continue the story from last time.

Questioner: I would like to ask Dr. whether it is possible for people to insult another person or cause him pain, that is, to influence others? Mrs. A had a three-year-old child who always saw entities coming in through the door and windows. The child often had restless nights, and especially when the woman had washed her underwear – the woman borrowed things in the house – the child always became restless. Finally, there was nothing left; then the woman died later. I would like to ask Dr. Steiner if something like this would be possible?

Dr. Steiner: These are, of course, things that touch on all kinds of areas in which superstition can play just as strong a role - because people are gullible - but also the facts. You just have to be clear about the fact that there are connections in the world that cannot be easily traced physically. I will start from very simple connections.

Look at it this way: take a grape harvest. You harvest the grapes and press them, prepare them, put them in barrels, store them in the cellar. Now, you will notice that when the next wine is ready - when the time comes for the wine to ferment again - it becomes restless. He remains, without having a physical connection, still in contact. This is a simple fact that shows you that there are such connections in nature itself that cannot easily be followed with the eye and so on.

Now, as you know, there is already a way to bridge the ordinary visibility. You only need to remember that even in inanimate nature there are devices today that overcome the ordinary visible – not the finer visible, but the ordinary visible. You only need to think of radiotelegraphy! What is radiotelegraphy based on? It is based on the fact that you have an electricity exciter somewhere; initially, no wire connects to it, but it stands alone. Somewhere else, without any connection to it, there is an apparatus that contains certain fine discs that can be set in motion. Such an apparatus is called a coherer. At first glance, they have no physical connection at all, but when you excite electricity here, it causes the signs to move there; and if you connect it to a device, you can receive the messages there, just as you can receive electricity through the wires. Of course, it is based on the fact that electricity propagates, but you just can't see it; it propagates without a gross physical connection. So even in inanimate nature you have a connection that is such that you can say: at least to a certain extent, the visible is overcome.

Now we can take the matter further. Imagine certain twin brothers or sisters. When they reach a later age, even twin brothers and sisters who are not physically connected can be in touch with each other. One may be here and the other there. Nevertheless, it can be observed that at a particular time one of the twins may fall ill, for example, and the other, who is further away, also! Or one of them will become saddened by something at a certain time; and so will the other. All such things show you that there are effects in the world that cannot immediately be explained as physical influences.

But if you now approach the animal kingdom, you soon realize that there are perceptions in animals, for example, that humans do not have. Suppose, for example, an earthquake or a volcanic eruption occurs in some area that is very damaging to people. People just sit there quietly; you can sometimes see the animals moving away and leaving the area for days beforehand! From this too you can see that there can be a sense of something for the animals that you do not perceive physically. If one were to perceive it physically, then man would also be able to perceive the matter.

From all this you can see that there are connections that are possible in the world outside the physical. Now, when we look at such finer connections, we come to the fact that sometimes people feel something inside them that they certainly could not have perceived physically. For example, I will say: There is a person somewhere - these things have happened in hundreds and thousands of cases - who suddenly flinches and sees something in front of him like a picture - it is of course only a dream - and he cries out and says: My friend! But the friend may be far away; he may be experiencing it in Europe, or he may be in America. My friend! Something has happened to him! It turns out that he has died. So these things do happen. Once again, we can see how such effects can take place without there being any physical connection.

Yes, but it must be said that it is good for our human race that these things are not all too widespread; because just think, if your head were capable of perceiving everything that one person or another thinks or says about you, for example, then it would be a terrible story! Isn't it true, you know, if you have a telegraph device, then the device must first be set up, the wire must first be switched on, and then the transmission takes place. Likewise, in wireless telegraphy, this must be in order, must not be disconnected (pointing to the drawing), then the transmission takes place. Now, in general, in the case of a fully healthy person, it is so that the person is not connected to all the currents that are going on; he is disconnected; but in special cases it can certainly happen that one is connected to something.

Take for example – I cannot go into your case in detail for the good reason that you probably do not know how strongly it is attested; but I will go into a similar case, and then you will be able to explain this too. I only want to talk about things that are absolutely authenticated, because otherwise it is very easy to end up with mere talk. You probably did not experience the case yourself, but read about it or heard it related? So I will only go into what is well authenticated. Suppose: A woman A had an argument during her pregnancy with a woman B who lives in the neighborhood. It does happen, doesn't it, that people argue with each other. Now perhaps this woman B, who lives in the neighborhood, cursed woman A very strongly, and woman A was terribly frightened when woman B shouted and swore. As a result, the child that is born may become somewhat dependent on Ms. B, but Ms. B may also become somewhat dependent on the child. It may well be that the child becomes receptive to what Ms. B gives it as underwear or the like when she washes it. But on the other hand it can also be important for Mrs. B to receive underwear; she then needs, because she does have a little remorse about what she did to Mrs. A, to have something from this house to continually reassure her; and in the moment when she is then deprived of it, she seeks to get it in every possible way. People who want to get something like that, without being thieves by nature, can steal all kinds of things. They become thieving only for these things; otherwise they do not steal, but seek to get these things in every way. Then it can even happen that, when these things are withdrawn from them, because there are also spiritual and mental influences on a person's health, they suffer from a kind of inner wasting away, from a wasting fever and die, or let us say, even from a heart or nerve attack. That is entirely possible.

So you can say: These things happen in the world, and these things can be explained, because, even without a physical connection, an influence is exerted by one person on the other under certain circumstances. But then you always have to be able to go into the cause. It could have been a completely different cause in this case you mentioned. But if, for example, there had been a row between the two women during pregnancy, this could be the cause of an intervention between this woman and the child at a later stage. Now, gentlemen, it was requested that I speak a little further about what I said the other day. I showed you how people in ancient India lived under very different conditions four to five thousand years ago. And it was precisely through this special Indian nature and the way the peoples were together that these ancient Indians developed the view of the physical human body.

The Egyptians, on the other hand, who had their country entirely under the influence of the Nile, who owed everything they were, so to speak, to the Nile, they have, because man also becomes aware of the ether through this, developed the view of the etheric body of man.

The inhabitants of Assyria and the Babylonians, because the particularly pure air and the high altitude made it easy for them to observe the stars at certain times of the year, developed the astral body as a concept.

And the Jews, who actually had to wander in their early days, who were never settled close to anyone, only later settled, who thought and felt more out of the inner nature of man, they developed the view of the human ego.

Thus, the conception of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I has gradually developed. You see, the word Yahweh means nothing other than: I am the I-am. That is the meaning of the word. Since Yahweh is considered the supreme God, this confession of the supreme God clearly points to the human ego.

If we follow the development of the story, we find that all these peoples have actually expressed more in their thoughts and feelings what they have experienced. The Indian has experienced a fertile, rich nature - everything is in a state of perpetual bloom and growth: a rich, lush nature. So he actually perceived the richness of the physical, and he developed the view of the physical body from his own view. The Egyptian, on the other hand, saw that only the Nile, which you can see, can help him; so he developed the doctrine of the ether, and so on. But all these people actually developed everything they experienced.

In contrast to this, there was another people. We can say (a drawing is being made): here is ancient India, here Arabia; here then Egypt, there flows the Nile. Now it goes over here, and here we have a land facing Africa, which then connects to Europe. Here again would be Assyria, as I told you last time, here Egypt, here India; here would be Palestine, where the Jews settled; and here we have Greece. In this Greece, peoples settled who had immigrated from the most diverse areas of Asia and Europe, and who thus mixed with each other there. They also found original inhabitants when they immigrated, but the Greek people gradually developed on this peninsula of Europe. These Greek people were actually the first, one might say, to open their eyes and see something of the world that was not only experienced from within. The Indians experienced nature from within; the Egyptians experienced the effects of the ether; the Assyrians experienced the astral body in the stars; the Jews experienced their ego. The Greeks were actually the first, as I said, to turn their eyes outward and look at the world. The others did not really look at the world. So one can say: The Indians and the Egyptians, nor the Babylonians nor the Jews, had a particularly developed view of nature; they did not know much about nature because they did not open their eyes and look out. It was only with the Greeks that an understanding of nature arose, because the Greeks opened their eyes and looked outwards. And so it was only in Greece that man really became aware of the external world.

You see, the Indians knew very well: this physical world here is part of the whole world, and I came out of the spiritual at birth; I go back into it after death. The Egyptians believed that the mummies had to be preserved so that people could come back; but they also paid particular attention to the spiritual. The Babylonians saw the will of the spirits in the starry sky that they observed, in the astral. So they also believed in spirits. And you know that the Jews were of the opinion that Jehovah, Yahweh, would lead them back to those ancient times when the patriarchs lived. So basically they also looked to what connects man to the spiritual world.

With the Greeks, it became different. They were actually the first to have become attached to the external world. The earlier peoples did not care much about the external world. The Greeks were very interested in the outer world; and there is a Greek saying that says: It is better to be a beggar in the upper world, that is, he means in Greece, on earth, than a king in the realm of shadows, that is, of the dead. So the Greeks, above all, have grown fond of the world and have thereby also gained a view of nature for the first time.

The other peoples, for example, developed a view of man. Among the Indians, in particular, there was already a certain view of man in the most ancient times. But they did not gain this view of man by taking dead people to the dissecting room and cutting them up! If the Indians had to do that, they would never have gained their view of man. Rather, they sensed how the liver and lungs behave in the individual parts of the human body - this was still possible in those days. They knew this through inner knowledge. This is what led the Indians to their great wisdom: they knew through inner sensing and feeling how the liver works and so on. Today, people only know how a piece of meat tastes in their mouths. The Indians knew how a piece of meat behaves in the intestines, what the liver does, what the gall bladder does, through inner experience, just as people today feel the pieces of meat they eat in their mouths.

The Egyptians developed geometry because they needed it. They had to determine again and again where the fields were located; after all, the Nile flooded everything every year. This is also something that can be invented out of the head. The Babylonians developed astrology, the knowledge of the stars - again something that has nothing to do with the earthly; they had no strong interest in the earthly. And the fact that the Jews have no strong interest in the earthly is shown by the fact that a Jew is more likely to have an interest in anything than in what is actually in the world of the senses around him; he is good at thinking, but he has no real interest in what is in the world of the senses around him.

The people who are most interested in what is in the sensory world around them are the Greeks. If you do some research, it is interesting to note that they saw the whole world differently from the way we see it today. That is very interesting. Today we see the sky as blue. The Greeks did not have the same impression of the color blue as we do, but saw the sky as much darker, almost blackish, with a slightly greenish tinge. They perceived red particularly strongly. With our dull perception of red, we can no longer imagine the strong impression that the red color made on the Greeks! It is precisely because humanity has gradually developed a sense of blue that humanity has in turn moved away from the sensual impression. So the Greeks first became particularly attached to what existed outside of them. And that is why the Greeks were particularly skilled at developing what we today call mythology. The Greeks worshipped a whole pantheon of gods: Zeus, Apollo, Pallas Athena, Ares, Aphrodite; they saw gods everywhere. They worshipped a whole pantheon of gods because what they loved as external nature seemed to them to be everywhere still alive and spiritualized. Not as dead as it is with us, but everywhere still animated and spiritualized, it seemed to them. So they worshiped the gods everywhere in the nature itself that they had come to love.

But as a result, during the Greek era, all those people who had become dependent on Greek civilization, Greek culture, and Greek intellectual life forgot what the Indians, the Egyptians, and the Babylonians had actually experienced in spiritual terms.

Now you will know, gentlemen, how great an influence Greece actually had on the whole development of mankind. This continues to this day! Anyone who can send their son to grammar school today still has him learn Greek. But in the past it was much more widespread. In the past, you were a donkey, so to speak, if you couldn't speak Greek or at least read Greek writers and poets. Greece has had an enormously strong influence on the world because it was the first to take an interest in this external world.

Now, while this interest in the external world was developing in Greece, the important thing happened in Asia, that from there the mystery of Golgotha developed, that is, when Greece was already overcome, when everything was actually already under Roman rule. But what does this Roman rule mean? It was, after all, completely imbued with the Greek spirit. The educated Romans had also all learned Greek, and anyone who was educated in Rome knew Greek. Greek had gained the greatest influence everywhere. While Greek was spreading in this way, in a little-known Roman province in Asia – at that time Palestine, the Jews had been overcome, Palestine had become a Roman province – a man appeared, Jesus of Nazareth, who said something completely different from anything that people had ever said before. And as you can imagine, because he said something so special, he was not immediately understood by others either. Therefore, at first he was understood only by a few.

What did this personality, Jesus, actually say when he appeared in Palestine? Well, this personality, Jesus, said in the way he was able to express it at that time: Yes, people today believe – that was the “today” at that time – everywhere that man is an earthly creature. But he is not. He is a being that comes from the spiritual world and when it dies, returns to the spiritual world. Today, when Christianity has been in effect for almost two thousand years, one is surprised that such a thing was said at the time. But at that time it was not so. The Asian and African conceptions of the spirit were little known or widespread in Greece. There, people were more turned towards the world. And so, especially against the worldly Hellenism that existed in Rome, what Jesus of Nazareth taught in the first place was something tremendously significant.

But in doing so, he would not have done anything different from resurrecting what earlier peoples, the Indians, the Egyptians and so on, had already said. Only what I have just told you would have been resurrected; only what was already there would have come back. But that Jesus of Nazareth not only revived what was already there, but he also said the following. He said: Yes, if I had only listened to what people could tell me today, I would not have come up with the teaching of the spirit at all, because people no longer really know anything about the spirit. That came to me from outside the earth. And so he realized that he was not just Jesus, but that an entity had emerged in his soul that was the Christ. To him, Jesus was the one who was born of the mother's womb on earth. The Christ was the one who entered his soul only in later times. The truth has emerged in his soul from the fact that people are spiritual by nature.

Now we must ask ourselves: How were the various ancient teachings cultivated in India, in Egypt, in Babylonia and also among the Jews? If you look around at the spiritual life today, you will find the church on one side and the schools on the other. At most, the rulers of the church argue with the rulers of the schools about the extent of the influence of the one on the other; but they are separate from each other. This was not the case with these ancient peoples, neither with the Indians nor the Egyptians nor the Babylonians nor even the Jews. Everything that was connected with religion in those days was at the same time connected with schools; it was one and the same thing to serve both the church and the school. Much of it has, of course, been transplanted into our time; but it is not the same as it was in ancient times, when the priest was also the teacher. The priest was the teacher both in India and in Egypt, Babylonia and so on. The priest was the teacher. And where did he teach? Well, he taught where the service was also performed, where the cult was held. The cult was generally connected with teaching. These were the mystery schools. They did not have churches and schools, but they had such places, that is, such institutes, which were both at the same time, and which we call mysteries today. But the general view was that one must be careful with everything that could be learned there.

You see, gentlemen, that was an old view: that a person should only be mature enough to receive certain knowledge. This has been completely lost today. And so everywhere you had those who held the highest dignity in the mysteries, called “fathers”. This is still reflected, for example, in the Catholic Church, where certain priests are called fathers. In ancient times, among the Indians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians and so on, everywhere those who were actually initiated into the knowledge, who had insights, were called “fathers”. And when these fathers had taught those who had been accepted by them, whom they believed could make them mature, then they also had them, just as they had been called “fathers,” called them “sons.” And all the rest of the people who did not enter into the mysteries, who were not accepted, were called the “children” of the fathers; or they were also called sons and daughters. Now, you can understand that a certain view has emerged. This view consisted in the fact that people, who were much more devout then than they are today, really felt that those who were in the mysteries were their fathers in a spiritual sense as well; they gladly regarded them as their fathers, as their spiritual fathers. And above all, they believed that these spiritual fathers were in closer contact with the gods than they were outside; they outside must first receive the message, the knowledge, from the fathers. And so, gradually, people became very dependent on the fathers. The state that the Catholic Church would like to restore today, I believe, wholeheartedly, was a matter of course in the ancient times. It was like that everywhere. No one rebelled against it. People simply said: If you want to be a real human being, then you either have to be a father yourself, then you communicate directly with the gods, or you have to learn something about the gods from the fathers. So you are a human being because those who are in the schools, in the mysteries, tell you something. This is how the distinction between children of God and children of men, between sons of God and sons of men, came about. Those who were in the mysteries were called the sons of God because they, in turn, looked up to the gods as to their fathers. But those who lived outside, to whom only what was in the mysteries was proclaimed, were called the children of men or sons of men. And so people were divided into sons of God and sons of men or human children. Today this seems even ridiculous to people, but in those days it was quite natural. Today, people do make distinctions – admittedly not in Switzerland, but I don't know whether something similar is gaining a little ground there; but in neighboring countries, right away – now it has ceased somewhat, but it wasn't long ago that one distinguished excellencies from ordinary people, the barons from ordinary people; this was more taken for granted. But in the old days it was simply taken for granted that a distinction was made between the sons of the gods, the children of the gods and the children of men.

The one who then called himself Christ Jesus, who was so named, said: A son of God, a child of the spirit, is not acquired through another human being; rather, everyone becomes one through God Himself. It is only a matter of becoming aware of it. The old man said: The Father from the Mysteries must make one aware of this. - The Christ Jesus said: One already carries the seed of the divine within oneself, and one can, if one only makes the right effort, bring it out of oneself.

But with that, Christ Jesus taught that which makes people all over the world the same in their souls. And the greatest difference that has been overcome by Christ Jesus is that between the Sons of God and the sons of men.

People have misunderstood this in all sorts of ways – the ancients because they did not want the idea to arise that it was no longer possible to distinguish between the Sons of God and the children of men, and the later generations because they no longer knew what was meant by it. Just as the later generations no longer knew the carnival, they also no longer knew what was meant by “sons of the gods” and “sons of man”. That is why the Bible, the New Testament, continually adds that Jesus Christ is sometimes called the Son of God and sometimes the Son of Man, while all the passages that speak of the Son of God and the Son of Man actually mean that both can be used in the same sense; that is why they are spoken of alternately. But if you don't know that this has led to that, you can't really understand the Gospels at all. And they are actually being understood today in a very bad sense, especially by those who profess to do so.

In this way you have presented emotionally what actually came into the world through Christ Jesus. And if I first deal with the external things today, I must say: You see, there were also other great differences between people everywhere. One need only think of ancient India. There were distinctions, like the animals or classes of animals: the Brahmins, the priests, the country people, the laborers. The Egyptians, on the other hand, had a whole army of slaves. The castes were not so strictly separated from each other, but they were still present to a certain extent. Yes, even in Greece and Rome there was still the difference between freeborn and slaves. These external differences have only been wiped out in modern times because the difference between the children of the gods and the children of men has been wiped out. So there was also an enormous influence on the whole social life of humanity from what happened in Palestine through Christ Jesus.

But now one can actually ask about everything: Yes, is it the case that it can be found out where the spiritual actually comes from outside of the earth into the human being? You see, in this respect it is even very difficult to talk today, because today everything is actually only considered materialistically. For example, let us say, language. You know that different languages are spoken in different areas, different countries of the world; but still, the languages all have a secret similarity. The similarity does not have to be as striking as, say, in Germany and England, in Germany and in Holland. But still, it is the case that the languages, despite being different, have a certain similarity. One can find that, for example, the language spoken in India, even if one does not understand it immediately, if one engages with it, the individual word images are similar to those of the German language.

And what do people say when they want to explain something like this today? They say: Well, such a language originated in one place on earth - because everything should only come from the earth - then the peoples migrated, carried the language somewhere else, and it changed a little. But it all comes from one language.

This is the greatest scientific superstition that has emerged in modern times. Because, you see, gentlemen, this scientific superstition is exactly the same as the following: Imagine a person lives in India and he gets warm when the sun shines. Now, the view is formed: man can get warm. - Now, later, people in Europe discover that they also get warm in summer. They also get warm. Now they don't use their intellect to help them, but their senses. They say: “You can't explain getting warm from the present; but in ancient India, people got warm; they emigrated to Europe and transplanted the property of getting warm to Europe.” Yes, gentlemen, if someone says that, then of course he is crazy. But the philologists say the same thing! They do not say, when a language in Europe is similar to a language in India, that the same influence from outside the Earth has worked in India as in Europe, but they say: the language has migrated! If in two regions a person gets warm, one will not say that the property of getting warm was brought here by migration, but one looks up to the common sun, and it warms both those in India and those in Europe. When two languages are found that are similar in distant places, it is not because the language has migrated, but because the common influence, just as the influence of the sun is there for the whole earth, the common influence of extraterrestrials is effective on the peoples of the most diverse areas of the earth. But because men definitely do not want to admit that an extraterrestrial influence takes place in the spiritual, they think up all kinds of things, which one just does not notice are crazy, because they are so learned. If people were not afraid of being thought crazy, they would deny everywhere that the sun warms, but they would say: In primeval times the property of becoming warm arose once, and that has been transplanted over the whole earth. They would deny the influence of the sun, if that were not crazy! This is something that must be taken into account if one wants to understand the origin of Christianity.

It's already too late to answer any further questions today; we can talk about it next Saturday.

One of the concepts which must rise up within us when we speak of the relations of Christ to the human soul is that of sin and its debt. We know what the significance of the concepts of guilt and sin has in the Christianity of St. Paul. Our present age is, however, little adapted for a really deep inner understanding of the wider connections between the concepts ‘Death and Sin’ and ‘Death and Immortality,’ that are to be found in Paul's writings. This lies in the materialism of our times. Let us recall what I said in the first lecture of this course, that there could be no true immortality of the human soul without a continuation of consciousness into the conditions after death. An ending of consciousness with death would coincide with the fact, which in that case would have to be accepted, that man is really not immortal. The unconscious continuance of man's being after death would mean that what is the most important of all, that which makes man into man, would not exist after death. An unconscious human soul surviving after death would not mean much more than the sum of atoms acknowledged by materialism, which remain even when the human body is destroyed.

For Paul it was a matter of unshakable conviction that it is only possible to speak of immortality if the individual consciousness is maintained. And as he had to think of the individual consciousness as subject to sin and guilt it may be taken for granted that Paul would think: ‘If a man's consciousness is obscured after death by sin and guilt, or by their results—if after death, consciousness is disturbed by sin and guilt, this signifies that sin and guilt really kill man—they kill him as soul, as spirit.’ The materialistic consciousness of our time is far remote from this. Many modern philosophic investigators are content to speak of a continuance of the life of the human soul, whereas the immortality of man may only be identified with a conscious continuance of the human soul after death.

A difficulty of course arises here, especially for the anthroposophical world conception. To be faced with this difficulty we need only direct our attention to the relationship of the concepts of ‘Guilt and Sin’ and of ‘Karma.’ Many people get over this by saying that they believe Karma to be a debt which a man contracts in anyone of his incarnations; he bears this debt with him, with his Karma, and discharges it later; this, in the course of incarnations, compensation is brought about. Here begins the difficulty. These people then say: ‘How can this be reconcilable with the Christian acceptation of the conception of the forgiveness of sins through Christ?’ And yet again the idea of the forgiveness of sins is intimately bound up with true Christianity. It is only necessary to think of this one example: Christ on the Cross between two malefactors. The malefactor on the left hand mocks at Christ: ‘If Thou wilt be God, help Thyself and us.’ The malefactor on the right held that the other ought not to speak thus, for both had merited their fate of crucifixion—the just award of their deeds; whereas He was innocent, and had yet to experience the same fate. The malefactor on the right added to this: ‘Think of me when Thou art in Thy Kingdom.’ And Christ answered him: ‘Verily, I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.’ It is not permissible merely to gainsay these words and omit them from the Gospel, for they are very significant. The difficulty arises from the question: If this malefactor on the right has to wash away what he has brought about in his Karma, what does it mean when Christ, as it were, pardoning and forgiving him, says: ‘To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise?’ It may appear that the malefactor on the right will have to wash away his debt with his Karma, even as the one on the left. Why is there a difference made by Christ between the malefactor on the right and the one on the left? There is no doubt at all that the conception of Karma is here met by a difficulty that is not easy to solve. It is solved however when we try to probe more deeply into Christianity by means of Spiritual Science. And now I shall approach the subject from quite another side, the nature of which is already known to you, but which can bring certain remarkable circumstances to light.

You know how often we speak of Lucifer and Ahriman, and how Lucifer and Ahriman are represented in my Mystery-Plays. When one begins to consider the thing in a human-anthropomorphic sense and simply makes of Lucifer a kind of inner and of Ahriman a kind of outer criminal, there will be difficulty in getting on; for we must not forget that Lucifer, besides being the bringer of evil into the world, the inner evil that arises through the passions, is also the bringer of freedom; Lucifer plays an important role in the universe. In the same way it must be said of Ahriman that he, too, plays an important part in the universe. When we began to speak more of Lucifer and Ahriman, it was our experience that many of those who were associated with us became uneasy; they still had a feeling left of what people have always thought of Lucifer, namely, that he is a fearful criminal in the world, against whom one must defend one's self. Feeling this about Lucifer they could not of course give unqualified assent to a different conception because they must assign to Lucifer an important role in the universe, and yet again Lucifer must be regarded as an opponent of progressive Gods, as a being who crosses the plan of those Gods to whom honor is rightly due. Thus, when we speak of Lucifer in this way, we are in effect ascribing an important role in the universe to an enemy of the Gods. And we must do the same in the case of Ahriman. From this point of view it is quite easy to understand the human feeling that asks: ‘What is the right attitude to adopt towards Lucifer and Ahriman; am I to love them or hate them?’ It should be quite clear from the way in which one speaks of Lucifer and Ahriman that they are beings who, by their whole nature do not belong to the physical plane, but have their mission and task in the Cosmos outside the physical plane, in the spiritual worlds. In the Munich lectures of the summer of 1913, I laid particular emphasis on the fact that the progressive Gods have assigned to Lucifer and Ahriman roles in the spiritual worlds; and that discrepancy and disharmony only appear when they bring down their activities into the physical plane, and arrogate to themselves rights which are not allotted to them. But we must submit to one thing, to which the human soul does not readily submit when these matters are under consideration, and it is this: that our judgment, our human judgment, as we pass it, holds good only for the physical plane, and that this judgment, right as it may be for the physical plane, cannot be simply transferred to the higher worlds. We must therefore gradually accustom ourselves in Anthroposophy to widen out our judgments and our world of concepts and ideas. It is because materialistically-minded men of the present day do not want to widen their judgment, but prefer to hold to that which holds good for the physical plane that they have such difficulty in understanding Anthroposophy, although it is all perfectly intelligible.

If we say: ‘one power is hostile to another,’ or ‘hostility is unseemly,’ it is quite correct from the physical plane. But the same thing does not hold good for the higher planes. On the higher planes the judgment must be widened. Just as in the realm of electricity positive and negative electricity are necessary, so also is spiritual hostility necessary in order that the universe may exist in its entirety; it is necessary that the spirits should oppose one another. Here comes in the truth of the saying of Herakleitos, that strife as well as love constitutes the universe. It is only when Lucifer works upon the human soul, and when through the human soul strife is brought into the physical world, that strife is wrong. But this does not hold good for the higher worlds; there the hostility of the spirits is an element that belongs to the whole structure, to the whole evolution of the universe. This implies that as soon as we come into the higher worlds, we must employ other standards, other colorings for our judgments. That is why there is often a feeling of shock when we speak of Lucifer and Ahriman on the one side as the opponents of the Gods, and on the other side as being necessary to the whole course of the universal order. Hence we must, above all things, hold firmly in our minds that a man comes into collision with the universal order if he allows the judgment which holds good for the physical plane to hold good for the higher worlds.

This is the root of the whole matter and it must again and again be emphasized that Christ, as Christ, does not belong to the order of the other entities of the physical plane. From the moment of the baptism in Jordan, a Being Who had not previously existed on Earth, a Being Who does not belong to the order of earth-beings, entered into the corporeal being of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, in Christ, we are concerned with a Being Who could truly say to the disciples: ‘I am from above, but ye are from below,’ that is to say: ‘I am a Being of the kingdom of heaven, ye are of the kingdom of earth.’ Now let us consider the consequences of this. Must earthly judgment that is entirely justifiable as such, and that everyone on earth must maintain, be also the judgment of that Cosmic Being Who, as Christ, entered the Jesus body? That Being, Who entered the body of Jesus at the baptism in Jordan, applies not an earthly but a heavenly judgment. He must judge differently from man.

And now let us consider the whole import of the words spoken on Golgotha. The malefactor on the left believes that in the Christ merely an earthly being is present, not a being whose realm is beyond the earthly kingdom. But just before death there comes to the consciousness of the malefactor on the right, ‘Thy kingdom, O Christ, is another; think of me when Thou art in Thy kingdom.’ At this moment the malefactor on the right shows that he has a dim idea of the fact that Christ belongs to another kingdom, where a power of judgment other than that obtaining on the earth, holds sway. Then, out of the consciousness that He stands in His kingdom, Christ can answer: ‘Verily, because thou hast some dim foreboding of My kingdom, this day (that is with death) thou shalt be with Me in My kingdom.’ This is a reference to the super-earthly Christ power that draws up the human individuality into a spiritual kingdom. Earthly judgment, human judgment, must of course say: ‘As regards his Karma, the right-hand malefactor will have to make compensation for his guilt even as the one on the left,’ for the heavenly judgment, however, something else holds good. But that is only the beginning of the matter, for of course it might now be said: ‘Yes, then the judgment of heaven contradicts that of the earth. How can Christ forgive where the earthly judgment demands karmic retribution?’

It is a difficult question, but we will try to approach it more closely in the course of this lecture. I lay special emphasis on the fact that we are touching here on one of the most difficult questions of Spiritual Science. We must make a difference which the human soul does not willingly make, because it does not like following the thing to its ultimate consequences; there are difficulties in following it up to its ultimate consequences. We shall find it, as I have said, a difficult subject, and you will perhaps find it necessary to turn the thing over in your souls many times in order to get at its real essence.

Firstly, we must make a distinction. We must consider the one element that fulfils itself in Karma in an objective retribution. Here we must clearly understand that man is certainly subject to his Karma; that he has to make karmic compensation for unjust deeds, and when we think more deeply about it, a man will not actually wish otherwise. For suppose that a man has done another person wrong; in the moment of this wrong he is less perfect than before he had done it, and he can only attain the grade of perfection which was his before he committed the wrong by making compensation for it. He must wish to make compensation for the wrong; for only in such compensation does he create for himself the stage of perfection which was his before the act was committed. Thus, for the sake of our own perfecting we can wish nothing else than that Karma is there as objective justice. When we grasp the true meaning of human freedom, we can have no wish that a sin should be so forgiven us; that if, for example, we were to put a man's eyes out, the sin would be so forgiven us that we should no longer need to wipe it away in our Karma. A man who puts out the eyes of another is more imperfect than one who does not, and in his later Karma it must come to pass that he does a corresponding good act, for then only is he again the man that he was before he committed the act. So that when we rightly consider the nature of man, there can be no thought within us that when a man has put out the eyes of another it will be forgiven him, and that Karma will be in some way adjusted. It is fully justified in Karma that we are not excused a farthing, but that the debt must be paid to the uttermost.

But there is another element with regard to the guilt. The guilt, the sin with which we are laden, is not merely our own affair, it is an objective cosmic concern, it means something for the universe also. This is where the distinction must be made. The crimes that we have committed are compensated in our Karma, but the act of putting out another's eyes is an accomplished fact; if we have, let us say, put someone's eyes out in the present incarnation, and then in the next incarnation do something that makes compensation for this act, yet for the objective course of the universe the fact still remains that so many hundred years ago we put someone's eyes out. That is an objective fact in the universe. So far as we are concerned we make compensation for it later. The guilt that we have personally contracted is adjusted in our Karma, but the objective cosmic fact remains—we cannot efface that by removing our own imperfection. We must discriminate between the consequences of a sin for ourselves, and the consequences of a sin for the objective course of the world. It is highly important that we should make this distinction. And I may now perhaps introduce an occult observation which will make this matter clearer.

When a man surveys the course of human evolution since the Mystery of Golgotha and approaches the Akashic Record without being permeated with the Christ-Being, it is easy, very easy indeed to be led into error, for in this he will find records which very often do not coincide with the karmic evolution of the individuals. For example, let us suppose that in, say the year 733, some man lived and incurred heavy guilt. The person now examining the Akashic Record, may at first have no connection with the Christ-Being. And behold! the man's guilt cannot be found in the Akashic Record. Examination of the Karma in a later incarnation of this man reveals that there is something still in his Karma which he has to wipe out. That must have existed in the Akashic Record at a certain point of time, but it is not there.

Examination of the Karma reveals that the man has to make amends; the guilt of the incarnation must have been inscribed in the Akashic Record, but it is not there. Here is a contradiction. This is an objective fact which may occur in numerous cases. I may meet with a man to-day, and if through grace I am permitted to know something about his Karma, I may perhaps find that some misfortune or stroke of fate stands in his Karma, that it is the adjustment of earlier guilt. If I turn to his earlier incarnations and examine what he did then, I do not find this fact registered in the Akashic Record. How does this come about? The reason of this is that Christ has actually taken upon Himself the objective debt. In the moment that I permeate myself with Christ, I discover the deed when I examine the Akashic Record with Christ. Christ has taken it into His kingdom, and He bears it further, so that when I look away from Christ I cannot find it in the Akashic Record. This distinction must be observed: karmic justice remains; but Christ intervenes in the effects of guilt in the spiritual world. He takes over the debt into His kingdom, and bears it further. Christ is that Being Who, because He is of another kingdom, is able to blot out in the Cosmos our debts and our guilt, taking them upon Himself.

What is it that the Christ on the Cross of Golgotha really conveys to the malefactor on the left? He does not utter it, but in the fact that He does not utter it lies the essence. He says to the malefactor on the left: ‘What thou hast done will continue to work in the spiritual world also and not merely in the physical world.’ To the malefactor on the right He says: ‘To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.’ That is to say: ‘I am beside thine act; through thy Karma thou wilt have later on to do for thyself all that the act signifies for thee, but what the act signifies for the universe,’ if I may use a trivial expression, ‘that is My concern.’ This is what Christ says. The distinction made here is a very important one, and the matter is not only of significance for the time after the Mystery of Golgotha, but also for the time before the Mystery of Golgotha.

A number of friends will remember that in earlier lectures I have called attention to the fact that it is not a mere legend, but that Christ actually did descend to the dead after His death. He thereby also accomplished something for the souls who in previous ages had laden themselves with guilt and sin. Error now also comes in when a man without being permeated with Christ, investigates in the Akashic Record the time before the Mystery of Golgotha. Such a man will continually make errors in his reading of the Akashic Record. For this reason I was not in the very least surprised that, for example, Leadbeater, who in reality knows nothing about Christ, should have made the most abstruse statements concerning the evolution of the Earth in his book, Man, How, Whence and Whither. For only when a man is permeated with the Christ-Impulse is he capable of really seeing things as they are, and how they have been regulated in the evolution of the earth on the basis of the Mystery of Golgotha, though they occurred before the Mystery of Golgotha.

Karma is an affair of the successive incarnations of man. The significance of Karmic justice must be considered with that judgment that is our earthly judgment. That which Christ does for humanity must be measured by a judgment that belongs to worlds other than this earth-world. And suppose that were not so? Let us think of the end of the earth, of the time when men shall have passed through their earthly incarnations. Most certainly it will come to pass that all will have to be paid to the uttermost farthing. Human souls will have had to pay off their Karma in a certain way. But let us imagine that all guilt had remained in existence in the earth that all guilt would go on working in the earth. Then at the end of the earth period human beings would be there with their Karma adjusted, but the earth would not be ready to develop into the Jupiter condition; the whole of the earth-humanity would be there without a dwelling-place, without the possibility of developing onwards to Jupiter. That the whole earth develops along with man is the result of the Deed of Christ. All the guilt and debt that would pile up would cast the earth into the abyss, and we should have no planet for our further evolution. In our Karma we can take care of ourselves, but not of humanity as a whole, and not of that which in earth-evolution is connected with the whole evolution of humanity.

So let us realize that Karma will not be taken from us, but that our debts and sins will be blotted out as regards the earth-evolution through what took place in the Mystery of Golgotha. We must, of course, realize to the full that all this cannot be bestowed on man without his co-operation—it cannot be his unless he too does something. And that is clearly brought before us in the utterances from the cross of Golgotha which I have quoted. It is very definitely shown to us how the soul of the malefactor on the right received a dim idea of a supersensible kingdom wherein things proceed otherwise than in the earthly kingdom. Man must fill his soul with the substance of the Christ Being; he must, as it were, have taken something of the Christ into his soul, so that Christ is active in him, and bears him into a kingdom in which he has not indeed the power to make his Karma ineffective, but in which through Christ it comes to pass that debt and sin are blotted out for our external world. This has been most wonderfully represented in painting.

There is no one upon whom such a picture as ‘Christ, as Judge at the Last Day’ (by Michelangelo) in the Sistine chapel can fail to make a deep impression. What really underlies such a picture? Let us take, not the deep esoteric fact, but the picture that is here presented to our soul. We see the righteous and the sinners. It is possible to present this picture differently from the way in which Michelangelo, as a Christian, has done. There is the possibility that at the end of the earth, men, seeing their Karma might say to themselves: ‘Yes, I have indeed wiped off my Karma, but everywhere in the spiritual there stand, written on tablets of brass, my guilt and sin, and these are of serious import for the earth; they must destroy the earth. As far as I am concerned, I have made compensation, but there the guilt stands, everywhere.’ That would not, however, be the truth; it might be there, but it would not be the truth. For through the fact of Christ's death upon Golgotha, man will not see the tables of his guilt and sin, but he will see Him Who has taken them upon Himself; he will see, atoned in the Being of Christ, all that would otherwise be spread out in the Akashic Record. In place of the Akashic Record, the Christ stands before him, having taken all upon himself.

We are looking into deep secrets of the earth's existence. But what is necessary in order to fathom the true state of things in this domain? It is this that men, no matter whether they are righteous or whether they are sinners, should have the possibility of looking upon Christ, that there should be no empty place where the Christ ought to stand. The connection with Christ is necessary, and this malefactor on the right himself shows us his connection with the Christ in what he says. And even though the Christ has given to those who work in His Spirit the behest to forgive sins, it never means that thereby Karma is to be encroached upon. But it does mean that the earthly kingdom will be rescued for him who stands in relationship to Christ, rescued from the spiritual consequence of guilt and sin, which are objective facts even when a later Karma has made compensation for them.

What does it signify for the human soul when one, who may so speak, says in the Name of Christ: ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’ It means that he is able to assert: ‘Thou hast indeed to await thy karmic settlement; but Christ has transformed thy guilt and sin so that later thou mayest not have the terrible pain of looking back upon thy guilt in such a way as to see that thou hast in it destroyed a part of the earth's existence.’ Christ blots it out. But a certain consciousness is necessary, one that is demanded, one that those who would forgive sins have the right to demand—consciousness of the guilt, and consciousness that Christ has the power to take it upon Himself. For the saying: ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’ denotes a cosmic fact, and not a karmic fact.

Christ shows His relation to this so wonderfully in a certain passage—so wonderfully that it penetrates deep, deep into our hearts. Let us conjure up in our souls the scene where the woman taken in adultery comes before Him, with those who are condemning her. They bring the woman before Him, and in two different ways Christ meets them. He writes in the earth; and He forgives, He does not judge at all, He does not condemn. Why does He write in the earth? Because Karma works, because Karma is objective justice. For the adulteress, her act cannot be obliterated. Christ writes it in the earth.

But with the spiritual and not the earthly consequence it is otherwise; Christ takes upon Himself the spiritual consequence. ‘He forgives’ does not mean that He blots out in the absolute sense, but that he takes upon Himself the consequences of the objective act.

Now let us think of all that it signifies when the human soul is able to say to itself: ‘Yes, I have done this or that in the world; it does not impair my evolution, for I do not remain as imperfect as I was when I committed the deed; I am permitted to attain my perfection in the further course of my Karma, in that I make compensation for the deed. But I cannot undo it for the earth evolution.’ Man would have to bear unspeakable suffering if a Being had not joined Himself with the earth, a Being Who undoes for the earth that which cannot be changed by us. This Being is the Christ. He takes away from us, not subjective Karma, but the objective spiritual effects of the acts, the guilt. That is what we must follow up in our hearts, and then for the first time we shall understand that Christ is, in truth, that Being Who is bound up with the whole of earth-humanity. For the earth is there for the sake of the Will of Mankind. Christ is connected with the whole earth. It is the weakness of man, as a consequence of the Luciferic temptation, that although he is indeed able to redeem himself subjectively in Karma, he cannot redeem the earth at the same time. That is accomplished by the cosmic Being-Christ.

And now we understand why many theosophists cannot realize that Christianity is in full accord with the idea of Karma. These people bring into theosophy the most intense egoism, a super-egoism; they do not certainly put it into words, but still they really think and feel: ‘If I can only redeem myself in my Karma, what does it matter to me about the world? Let it do what it will!’ These theosophists are quite satisfied if they can speak of karmic adjustment: but there is a great deal more to be done. Man would be purely a Luciferic being if he were to think only of himself. Man is a member of the whole world, and he must think about the whole world in a sense of sacrifice. He must think about it in the sense that he can indeed be egoistically redeemed through his Karma, but that he cannot at the same time, redeem the whole earth-existence. Christ enters into that. At the moment we decide not to think only of our Ego, we must think about something other than our Ego. Of what must we think? Of the ‘Christ in me’ as Paul says; then indeed we are united with Him in the whole earth-existence. We do not then think of our self-redemption, but we say: ‘Not I and my own redemption—not I, but the Christ in me, and the earth-redemption.’

Many believe they may call themselves true Christians, and yet speak of others—anthroposophical Christians for instance—as heretics! There is surely very little true Christian feeling here. The question may perhaps be permitted: ‘Is it really Christian to think that I may do anything, and that Christ only came into the world for the sake of taking it all away from me and to forgive my sins, so that I may have nothing more to do with my Karma, with my sins?’ I think there is another word more applicable to such a mode of thought than the word ‘Christian’; perhaps the word ‘convenient’ would be better. ‘Convenient’ it certainly would be, if a man had only to repent, and then all the sins that he had committed in the world were obliterated for the whole of his later Karma. The sin is not blotted out from Karma; but it can be blotted out from the earth-evolution, and this it is that man cannot do because of the human weakness that is the result of the Luciferic temptation. Christ accomplishes this. With the remission of sins we are saved from the pain of having added an objective debt to the Earth-evolution for all eternity. When we have this understanding of Christ a greater earnestness will manifest itself in many other things as well. Many elements will fall away from those conceptions of Christ which may well seem full of triviality and cynicism to the man whose soul has absorbed the Christ-conception in all seriousness. For all that has been said to-day, and that can be proved point by point from the most significant passages of the New Testament, tells us that all that Christ is to us comes from the fact that He is not a Being like other men, but a Being Who, from above, that is, ‘out of the cosmos,’ entered into the earth-evolution at the baptism by John in Jordan. Everything proves the cosmic nature of Christ. And he who deeply grasps Christ's attitude towards sin and debt, may speak thus: ‘Because man in the course of the earth's existence could not blot out his guilt for the whole earth—a cosmic Being had to descend in order that it might be made possible for the earth-debt to be discharged.’ True, Christianity must needs regard Christ as a cosmic Being. It cannot do otherwise. Our soul must be deeply permeated by what is meant in the words: ‘Not I, but Christ in me.’ For then from this knowledge there radiates into our soul something that I can only express in these words: ‘When I am able to say: “Not I, but Christ in me” in that moment I assert that I shall be removed from the earth-sphere, that in me there lives some thing that has significance for the cosmos, and that I am counted worthy, as man, to bear a super-earthly element in my soul just as I bear within me a super-earthly being in all that has entered me from Saturn, Sun and Moon.’

Man's consciousness of being filled with Christ will become of great import. And with St. Paul's saying: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me,’ he will connect the feeling that his inner responsibility to Christ must be taken in deep, deep earnestness. Anthroposophy will bring about this feeling of responsibility in the Christ consciousness in such a way that we shall not presume on every occasion to say: ‘I thought so, and because I thought so, I had a right to say it.’ Our materialistic age is carrying this further and further. ‘I was convinced of this and therefore I had a right to say it.’ But, is it not a profanation of the Christ in us, a fresh crucifixion of the Christ in us, that at any moment when we believe something or other, we cry it out to the world, or send it out into the world in writing, without having investigated it?

When man realizes the significance of Christ in all seriousness, a feeling will arise that he must prove himself worthy of the Christ who lives within him—this cosmic principle that is in him.

It may be readily believed that those who do not want to receive Christ as a cosmic principle, but who at every opportunity are ready to regret their offence, will first tell all kind of lies about their fellow men and then want to efface the lies. He who would prove himself worthy of the Christ in his soul will first prove to himself whether he ought to say a thing about which he happens at the moment to be convinced. Many things will be changed when a true conception of Christ comes into the world. All those people who write to-day or disfigure paper with printers' ink because they promptly write down things, of which they have no knowledge, will come to realize that they are thereby putting the Christ in the human soul to shame. And then the excuse will cease: ‘Yes, I thought so; I said it in quite good faith.’ Christ wants more than ‘good faith,’ Christ would fain lead men to the Truth. He Himself has said, ‘The Truth will make you free.’ But where has Christ ever said that when people imagine that they are thinking as He would have them think, this, that, or the other may be shouted out or proclaimed in writing to the world, when they really know nothing about it? Much will be changed! A great deal of modern writing will be unable to exist any longer when men start from the principle of proving themselves worthy of the saying: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me.’ The canker of our decadent civilization will be rooted out when there is a cessation of those voices which, without real conviction, cry everything out into the world, or cover paper with printers' ink irresponsibly, without being first convinced that they are speaking the truth. In this connection we have had to experience many things in the theosophical movement.* [Note by Translator.—In the following passage reference is made to the expulsion from the Theosophical Society of the German Section, of which Dr. Steiner was General Secretary. Those who are unfamiliar with the facts of the case should read the book by Eugene Levy, Mrs. Besant and the Present Crisis in the Theosophical Society, notably pages 48-50.]

How readily was the excuse to hand: ‘Yes, but the person who made the statement was at that moment convinced of its truth.’ What does ‘conviction’ of this kind amount to? It is nothing but the greatest irresponsibility—pure nonsense. It is for no personal reasons, but because of the seriousness of the situation, that I have ventured to draw your attention to the fact that there is no excuse for the lady President of the Theosophical Society to have placed before that Society the irresponsible untruth of the Jesuit fairy-tale. Afterwards people said: ‘But the President withdrew it after a few weeks.’ So much the worse when one in a responsible position trumpets forth something that, after a few weeks, has to be withdrawn, for then comes the world-judgment, and not the personal judgment. And let us add such knowledge as this to that distinction which must be made between the subjective Karma in the Ego of man and that which may be called objective Karma. For no word shall be lost; every man must make compensation for the harm that he has done; there we haven't to talk, we have to take the fact as Christ took it in the case of the adulteress: He wrote the sin in the earth. It must be clearly understood that an objective and not a merely subjective judgment of the world is necessary. That which may, in a certain sense, be called the ‘Christian Conscience’ will arise in an increasing measure as human souls become more and more conscious of the presence of Christ, and the saying of Paul becomes true: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me!’

More and more will the consciousness enter into souls that man ought not to say merely what he ‘thinks,’ but that he must prove the objective truth of what he says.

Christ will be to the soul a teacher of truth, a teacher of the highest sense of responsibility. He will fill souls with this when they come to experience the whole import of the saying: ‘Not I, but Christ in me.’

We shall speak further of these things in the next lecture.