The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] If we follow the work of the mind invested by man in his attempts to solve the riddle of world and life, the words, “Know Thyself,” which were inscribed as a motto in the temple of Apollo, will suggest themselves to the soul in its contemplation. The understanding for a world conception rests on the fact that the human soul can be stirred by the contemplation of these words. The nature of a living organism involves the necessity of feeling hunger. The nature of the human soul at a certain stage of its development causes a similar necessity. It is manifest in the need to gain from life a certain spiritual return that, just as food satisfies hunger, satisfies the soul's challenge, “Know Thyself.” This feeling can lay hold on the human soul so powerfully that it can be forced to think, “Only then am I fully human in the true sense of the word when I develop within myself a relation to the world that expresses its fundamental character in the challenge, ‘Know Thyself’.” The soul can reach the point where it considers this feeling as an awakening out of the dream of life that it dreamt before this particular experience.

[ 2 ] During the first period of his life, man develops the power of memory through which he will, in later life, recollect his experiences back to a certain moment of his childhood. What lies before this moment he feels as a dream of life from which he awoke. The human soul would not be what it should be if the power of memory did not grow out of the dim soul life of the child. In a similar way the human soul can, at a more developed stage, think of its experience of the challenge expressed in the words, “Know Thyself.” It can have the feeling that a soul life that does not awake out of its dream of life through this experience does not live up to its inner potentialities.

[ 3 ] Philosophers have often pointed out that they are at a loss when asked about the nature of philosophy in the true sense of the word. One thing, however, is certain, namely, that one must see in philosophy a special form of satisfying the need of the human soul expressed in the challenge, “Know Thyself.” Of this challenge one can know just as distinctly as one can know what hunger is, although one may be at a loss to give an explanation of the phenomenon of hunger that would be satisfactory to everybody.

[ 4 ] It was probably a thought of this kind that motivated Johann Gottlieb Fichte when he stated that the philosophy a man chooses depends on the kind of man he is. Animated by this thought, one can examine the attempts that have been made in the course of history to find solutions for the riddles of philosophy. In these attempts one will find the nature of the human being himself revealed. For although man will try to silence his personal interests entirely when he intends to speak as a philosopher, there will, nevertheless, immediately appear in a philosophy what the human personality can make out of itself by unfolding those forces that are most centrally and most originally its own.

[ 5 ] Seen from this viewpoint, the examination of the philosophical achievements with regard to the world riddles can excite certain expectations.

We can hope that such an examination can yield results concerning the nature of human soul development, and the writer of this book believes that in exploring the philosophical views of the occident he has found such results. Four distinctly discernible epochs in the evolution of the philosophical struggle of mankind presented themselves to his view. He had to recognize the difference of these epochs as distinct as the difference of the species of a realm of nature. This observation led him to acknowledge in the realm of the history of man's philosophical development the existence of objective spiritual impulses following a definite law of evolution of their own, independent of the individual men in whom they are observed. The achievements of these men as philosophers thus appear as the manifestation of these impulses that direct the courses of events under the surface of external history. The conviction is then suggested that such results arise from the unprejudiced observation of the historical facts, much as a natural law rests on the observation of facts of nature. The author of this book believes that he has not been misled by preconceptions to present an arbitrary construction of the historical process, but that the facts force the acknowledgment of results of the kind indicated.

[ 6 ] It can be shown that in the evolutionary course of the philosophical struggle of mankind, periods are distinguishable, each of which lasts between seven and eight centuries. In each of these epochs there is a distinctly different impulse at work, as if it were under the surface of external history, sending its rays into the human personalities and thus causing the evolution of man's mode of philosophizing while taking its own definite course of development.

[ 7 ] The way in which the facts support the distinction of these epochs is to be shown in the present book. Its author would like, as far as possible, to let the facts speak for themselves. At this point, he wants to offer a few guiding lines from which, however, the thoughts expressed in this book did not take their departure; they are the results of this book.

[ 8 ] One can be of the opinion that these guiding lines correctly should have been placed at the end of the book because their truth follows only from the content of the complete presentation. They are, however, to precede the subject matter as a preliminary statement because they justify the inner structure of the book. For although they were the result of the author's research, they were naturally in his mind before he wrote the book and had their effect on its form. For the reader, however, it can be important to learn not only at the end of the book why the author presents his subject in a certain way, but to form his judgment concerning this method of presentation already during the reading. But only so much is to be stated here as is necessary for the understanding of the book's arrangement.

[ 9 ] The first epoch of the development of philosophical views begins in Greek antiquity. It can be distinctly traced back as far as Pherekydes of Syros and Thales of Miletos and it comes to a close in the age of beginning Christianity. The spiritual aspiration of mankind in this age shows an essentially different character from that of earlier times. It is the age of awakening thought life. Prior to this age, the human soul lived in imaginative (symbolic) thought pictures that expressed its relation to the world and existence.

All attempts to find the philosophical thought life developed in pre-Greek times fail upon closer inspection. Genuine philosophy cannot be dated earlier than the Greek civilization. What may at first glance seem to resemble the element of thought in Oriental or Egyptian world contemplation's proves, on closer inspection, to be not real thought but parabolic, symbolic conception. It is in Greece that the aspiration is born to gain knowledge of the world and its laws by means of an element that can be acknowledged as thought also in the present age. As long as the human soul conceives world phenomena through pictures, it feels itself intimately bound up with them. The soul feels itself in this phase to be a member of the world organism; it does not think of itself as an independent entity separated from this organism. As the pure pictureless thought awakens in the human soul, the soul begins to feel its separation from the world. Thought becomes the soul's educator for independence.

But the ancient Greek did not experience thought as modern man does. This is a fact that can be easily overlooked. A genuine insight into the ancient Greek's thought life will reveal the essential difference. The ancient Greek's experience of thought is comparable to our experience of a perception, to our experience of “red” or “yellow.” Just as we today attribute a color or tone percept to a “thing,” so the ancient Greek perceives thought in the world of things and as adhering to them. It is for this reason that thought at that time still is the connecting link between soul and world. The process of separation between soul and world is just beginning; it has not yet been completed. To be sure, the soul feels the thought within itself, but it must be of the opinion to have received it from the world and it can therefore expect the solution of the world riddles from its thought experience. It is in this type of thought experience that the philosophical development proceeds that begins with Pherekydes and Thales, culminates in Plato and Aristotle and then recedes until it ends at the time of the beginning of Christianity. From the undercurrents of the spiritual evolution, thought life streams into the souls of man and produces in these souls philosophies that educate them to feel themselves in their self-dependence independent of the outer world.

[ 10 ] A new period begins with the dawn of the Christian era. The human soul can now no longer experience thought as a perception from the outer world. It now feels thought as the product of its own (inner) being. An impulse much more powerful than the stream of thought life now radiates into the soul from the deeper currents of the spiritual creative process. It is only now that self-consciousness awakes in mankind in a form adequate to the true nature of this self-consciousness. What men had experienced in this respect before that time had really only been harbingers and anticipatory phenomena of what one should in its deepest meaning call inwardly experienced self-consciousness.

It is to be hoped that a future history of spiritual evolution will call this time the “Age of Awakening Self-Consciousness.” Only now does man become in the true sense of the' word aware of the whole scope of his soul life as “Ego.” The full weight of this fact is more instinctively felt than distinctly known by the philosophical spirits of that time. All philosophical aspirations of that epoch retain this general character up to the time of Scotus Erigena. The philosophers of this period are completely submerged in religious conceptions with their philosophical thinking. Through this type of thought formation, the human soul, finding itself in an awakened self-consciousness entirely left to its own resources, strives to gain the consciousness of its submergence in the life of the world organism. Thought becomes a mere means to express the conviction regarding the relation of man's soul to the world that one has gained from religious sources. Steeped in this view, nourished by religious conceptions, thought life grows like the seed of a plant in the soul of the earth, until it breaks forth into the light.

In Greek philosophy the life of thought unfolds its own inner forces. It leads the human soul to the point where it feels its self-dependence. Then from greater depths of spiritual life an element breaks forth into mankind that is fundamentally different from thought life—an element that filled the soul with a new inner experience, with an awareness of being a world in itself, resting on its inner point of gravitation. Thus, self-consciousness is at first experienced, but it is not as yet conceived in the form of thought. The life of thought continues to be developed, concealed and sheltered in the warmth of religious consciousness. In this way pass the first seven or eight hundred years after the foundation of Christianity.

[ 11 ] The next period shows an entirely different character. The leading philosophers feel the reawakening of the energy of thought life. For centuries the human soul had been inwardly consolidated through the experience of its self-dependence. It now begins to search for what it might claim as its innermost self possession. It finds that this is its thought life. Everything else is given from without; thought is felt as something the soul has to produce out of its own depth, that is, the soul is present in full consciousness at this process of production. The urge arises in the soul to gain in thought a knowledge through which it can enlighten itself about its own relation to the world. How can something be expressed in thought life that is not itself merely the soul's own product? This becomes the question of the philosophers of that age. The spiritual trends of Nominalism, Realism, Scholasticism and medieval Mysticism reveal this fundamental character of the philosophy of that age. The human soul attempts to examine its thought life with regard to its content of reality.

[ 12 ] With the close of this third period the character of philosophical endeavor changes. The self-consciousness of the soul has been strengthened through century-long work performed in the examination of the reality of thought life. One has learned to feel the life of thought as something that is deeply related to the soul's own nature and to experience in this union an inner security of existence. As a mark of this stage of development, there shines like a brilliant star in the firmament of the spirit, the words, “I think, therefore I am,” which were spoken by Descartes (1596–1650). One feels the soul flowing in thought life, and in the awareness of this stream one believes one experiences the true nature of the soul itself. The representative of that time feels himself so secure within this existence recognized in thought life that he arrives at the conviction that true knowledge could only be a knowledge that is experienced in the same way as the soul experiences thought life resting on its own foundation. This becomes the viewpoint of Spinoza (1632–1677).

Now philosophies emerge that shape the world picture as it must be imagined when the self-conscious human soul, conceived by the life of thought, can have its adequate position within that world. How must the world be depicted so that within it the human soul can be thought to correspond adequately to the necessary concept of the self-consciousness? This becomes the question that, in an unbiased observation, we find at the bottom of the philosophy of Giordano Bruno (1548–1600). It is also distinctly the question for which Leibnitz (1646–1716) seeks the answer.

[ 13 ] With conceptions of a world picture arising from such a question the fourth epoch in the evolution of the philosophical world view begins. Our present age is approximately in the middle of this epoch. This book is to show how far philosophical knowledge has advanced in the conception of a world picture in which the self-conscious soul can find such a secure place, so that it can understand its own meaning and significance within the existing world. When, in the first epoch of philosophical search, philosophy derived its powers from the awakening thought life, the human soul was spurred by the hope of gaining a knowledge of a world to which it belongs with its true nature, which is not limited to the life manifested through the body of the senses.

[ 14 ] In the fourth epoch the emerging natural sciences add a view of nature to the philosophical world picture that gradually senses its own independent ground. As this nature-picture develops, it retains nothing of a world in which the self-conscious ego (the human soul experiencing itself as a self-conscious entity) must recognize itself. In the first epoch the human soul begins to detach itself from the experienced external world and to develop a knowledge concerned with the inner life of the soul. This independent soul life finds its power in the awakening thought element. In the fourth period a picture 'of nature emerges that has detached itself in turn from the inner soul life. The tendency arises to think of nature in such a way that nothing is allowed to be mixed into its conception that has been derived from the soul and not exclusively from nature itself. Thus, the soul is, in this period, expelled from nature, and with its inner experiences confined to its subjective world. The soul is not about to be forced to admit that everything it can gain as knowledge by itself can have a significance only for itself. It cannot find in itself anything to point to a world in which this soul could have its roots with its true being. For in the picture of nature it cannot find any trace of itself.

[ 15 ] The evolution of thought life has proceeded through four epochs. In the first, thought is experienced as a perception coming from without. In this phase the human soul finds its self-dependence through the thought process. In the second period, thought had exhausted its power in this direction. The soul now becomes stronger in the experience of its own entity. Thought itself now lives more in the background and blends into self knowledge. It can no longer be considered as if it were an external perception. The soul becomes used to experiencing it as its own product. It must arrive at the question of what this product of inner soul activity has to do with an external world. The third period passes in the light of this question. The philosophers develop a cognitive life that tests thought itself with regard to its inner power. The philosophical strength of the period manifests itself as a life in the element of thought as such, as a power to work through thought in its own essence. In the course of this epoch the philosophical life increases in its ability to master the element of thought. At the beginning of the fourth period the cognitive self-consciousness, on the basis of its thought possession, proceeds to form a philosophical world picture. This picture is now challenged by a picture of nature that refuses to accept any element of this self-consciousness. The self-conscious soul, confronted with this nature picture, feels as its fundamental question, “How do I gain a world picture in which both the inner world with its true essence and the external nature are securely rooted at the same time?” The impulse caused by this question dominates the philosophical evolution from the beginning of the fourth period; the philosophers themselves may be more or less aware of that fact. This is also the most important impulse of the philosophical life of the present age.

In this book the facts are to be characterized that show the effect of that impulse. The first volume of the book is to present the philosophical development up to the middle of the nineteenth century; the second will follow that development into the present time. It is to show at the end how the philosophical evolution leads the soul to aspects toward a future human life in cognition. Through this, the soul should be able to develop a world picture out of its own self-consciousness in which its true being can be conceived simultaneously with the picture of nature that is the result of the modern scientific development.

[ 6 ] A philosophical future perspective adequate to the present was to be unfolded in this book from the historical evolution of the philosophical world view.

Much that I should like to say regarding the spiritual world has to be hinted at pictorially, or rather half pictorially for the pictures must be taken in a real and active sense.

It is necessary to indicate pictorially such things as I desire to bring before your souls today for further meditation, because if one were not to speak symbolically but in ideas, one would have to speak at very great length. Each one of you can himself reach the depths of that of which I shall speak today, if he holds and ponders over it to a certain extent within his soul.

Every year at this season we pass from one division of time to another. This may at first appear simply a matter of convenience; but it is not so. The men who had to separate time into seasons followed by profound instinct certain great laws regulating the course of time. The festival of the passing of one year into another takes place with us in the depths of winter (naturally, I speak of our part of the world) at the time when all plants have suspended their growth, their blossoming and fruit-bearing. Only certain forest trees remain what is called evergreen through winter. The power of the Sim is then at its lowest.

We know that in all events and occurrences that take place before our senses, spiritual events are interwoven. We know that when we walk through the forest, we have not only the trees about us with their green foliage, but that in the background of existence spiritual and psychic beings are everywhere active. We are already familiar with this thought, which the clever people of our time regard as a childish superstition; we realise it as a true and actual fact.

It is absolutely clear to us that behind all the things of sense, whether they be solid or whether they be happenings which our senses perceive—are spiritual activities, and spiritual life.

Now let us, to begin with, consider what people call our lifeless inorganic Earth, the mineral kingdom of our Earth. This which is apparently lifeless substance, the mineral which to the materialist is merely lifeless, is to us not only endowed with life, but with soul and spirit, so that we speak also of a soul-and-spirit part of our so-called lifeless inorganic, purely mineral Earth. True, when we speak of the consciousness of the Earth, we do not in the first place see in the geological-mineral substance that which may be compared to a man’s muscles and blood, but we see only what may be compared to his bony system, namely, the solid earth; so that when we speak of the consciousness of the Earth, we have to think of it as connected with the whole Earth, not only with its bony system, but with water, air, ether, etc., corresponding to the muscles, blood, and so on.

The whole Earth has consciousness, a consciousness belonging to the mineral kingdom. We shall not occupy ourselves with the differences in this consciousness of the Earth in special regions during the course of the year, but we shall endeavour to evoke in our souls the conception that the whole Earth has consciousness. Let us now turn from the mineral Earth, and direct our attention to all that springs forth and sprouts on Earth, to the plant world.

Looked at in accordance with Spiritual Science, we must regard the plant world, in the first place, as an independent entity in reference to the Earth. That the whole plant world is an independent entity as regards the Earth only comes clearly before us when we consider the consciousness of these two entities or beings. We can speak of a consciousness of the whole mineral Earth, but we can equally speak of a consciousness of the whole plant world which evolves on the Earth. The laws of this consciousness are certainly entirely different from the laws of human consciousness. In speaking of plant consciousness, we must always speak of it as regards certain districts only, because it changes with different regions of the Earth.

As men we are not aware that there really is a certain parallel between our consciousness and the consciousness of the whole plant world, for we are apt to look on our waking consciousness as our complete consciousness, without taking our sleeping consciousness into consideration. To simplify our subject, we say: In the daytime when awake, our ego and astral body are within our physical body. I have, however, often remarked that this in fact refers to our blood and nervous system only, not to the remaining parts of our system. When the ego and astral body withdraw from our head, for instance, they are so much the stronger within other parts of us.

A parallel thing happens on the Earth, when on one part of it there is summer and on the other winter; this also is merely a change of consciousness. The case is the same with ourselves. We are not aware of this, however, because in man the two kinds of consciousness are not of equal clearness; they are of different strength. Night consciousness is beclouded consciousness, for us practically no consciousness at all; while day consciousness is full consciousness of our other side. In the night our lower nature wakes, while with our higher nature we sleep, and it is exactly the same with the Earth, when on the one hemisphere there is winter, on the other there is summer. On one side the consciousness is awake, on the other side it sleeps and vice versa. As I have just said, and as I have often explained, this only holds good in respect to the plant world. We know that the plant world sleeps in the height of summer when there is growth on every side; while it is outwardly unfolding its physical nature—it is asleep. But it wakes to full consciousness during the time when physically, externally, it is going through no development; then the plant world is awake. Thus we speak of all plant life on Earth as a whole; and this plant life, as a whole, has a consciousness.

When speaking of this consciousness which as a second consciousness intermingles with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, we can really say that during the height of summer in our part of the Earth the plant consciousness is asleep, and in depth of winter it is awake. At this season, however, during the time at which we now are, something further takes place.

Now I beg you to note that these two states of consciousness, that is, the general consciousness belonging to the mineral earth, and the general plant consciousness—are always distinct. They are throughout the whole year two separate beings. But these are not only two distinct Beings, for at one season they unite, so that at the present time of year, the one interpenetrates the other. At the time when one year is passing over into the other, the mineral things and events of the Earth and the whole plant world have but one consciousness, which means that these two consciousnesses interpenetrate each other.

What is the nature of the mineral consciousness of the Earth, the varieties of which (as I have said) we shall not study today as we shall those of the plant consciousness, which we realise wakes during winter time and sleeps in summer? What is the peculiar nature of this mineral consciousness, this consciousness of the great Earth-Being?

The man who is limited in his physical senses, and limited to the understanding that he considers appertains to these physical senses, can at first know nothing of this great Earth-consciousness. Spiritual Science, however, can instruct as to what this Earth-consciousness really thinks—thinks as we think of plants, animals, air, rivers, mountains, etc. Just as with our ordinary waking consciousness, we think of the things round about us, so, in like manner does the Earth think. Let us inquire today: of what does the Earth consciously think?

The Earth thinks with its consciousness the whole firmament of heaven nearest to the Earth. As we look with our eyes on trees and stones, so does the Earth consciously look into space and contemplate all that takes place in the stars. The Earth is a being that meditates on the occurrences of the stars.

Thus fundamentally the mineral consciousness contains the secret of the whole Cosmos. While we men move about on the Earth in a superficial way, thinking merely of the stones against which we knock, or of the many things which our senses reveal to us, the Earth thinks with its consciousness—through which we are passing as we move through space—of the whole Cosmos. She has indeed greater, more all-embracing thoughts than we have. In truth, it is an extraordinarily exalting thought, when we realise: ‘I am not simply passing through the air; I am moving through the thoughts of the Earth.’

Now let us again consider the other consciousness, that of the plants. These are not able to think so much as the Earth can. The thinking consciousness of the plants—not of individual plants, but of the whole united plant-world—is a much more restricted consciousness, it embraces a smaller circle of the Earth throughout the year; but this is not the case at the present season. Plant consciousness is now one with the whole consciousness of the Earth, and because the plant consciousness interpenetrates the earth-consciousness, the plant-world at New Year time, knows the secrets of the stars and applies them. Plants are thus able to unfold again in spring in accordance with the secrets of the cosmos, and can bring forth their blossoms and fruit. In this unfoldment the whole mystery of the cosmos is contained, in the way plants bring forth their leaves, blossoms and fruit.

But during the time the plants are producing their leaves, flowers and fruit, they are not able to meditate upon it. It is only at this present season they can think—now—when the plant consciousness is united with the consciousness of the whole mineral world. This is why it is said in Spiritual Science: About the season of the New Year, two cycles interpenetrate each other.

This is the main secret of all existence—that two cycles penetrate each other; then parting, continue separately their further development; again intermingle, and so on. Only think how marvellous this secret of existence is! Plant-consciousness and mineral-consciousness, two streams of evolution—progress apart through the whole year, then at the time when one year passes over into another, they unite. Again they pass through the year apart, uniting once more at the festival of the New Year. The cyclic advance of history is similar to this.

We turn from this mystic event, through which we are now passing, and which fills us with a deep feeling of holy awe in respect of the passing of one year into the other—we turn to a still deeper mystery.

We know that we are now living in that cycle in which the consciousness-soul is unfolding, that this was preceded by that of the unfolding of the rational or intellectual-soul, which was again preceded by the cycle in which the sentient soul was developed, before which again we go back to the time of development of the sentient body. This takes us back 6000 years before our Christian era, to a time when all human thought was evolved within the cycle of the sentient body—of the so-called astral body.

We have now to advance through the cycle of the spiritual or consciousness-soul, and through that of the Spirit-Self, and further still man has to develop.

The consciousness-soul (since 1923 translated by Dr. Steiner as the spiritual-soul) is principally developed at the present time because man chiefly makes use of his physical body alone as an instrument. On this account—as you know already from many lectures—this present age is the high tide of materialism. A time will come, however, when man will not only make use of his physical body, but will again learn to use his etheric body, as in earlier times he used his astral body, in the cycle of evolution when that body was the main element of consciousness.

We can therefore say: Our condition at one time on Earth was such, that our soul experienced a contact of its consciousness with the consciousness of our astral body. Just as at New Year, plant-consciousness penetrates mineral consciousness, so, thousands of years ago, did our soul intermingle with our astral body. At that time our soul was one, in its consciousness, with the astral body. The time of that type of consciousness was six thousand years before our era. When that consciousness came about man celebrated a New Year on Earth; a mighty New Year!

Just as we regard the New Year as the mingling of the plant-consciousness with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, so we must realise that 6,000 years before our era a great, a mighty cosmic New Year of our Earth took place. Our Soul-consciousness then united with—passed through—the astral consciousness of our body.

What was it that then took place?

At that time when our inner soul-consciousness passed through (or intermingled with) the astral consciousness of our body—then our limited human consciousness, the consciousness which we have today, had progressed as far as the present plant-consciousness at New Year. Just as plants gaze abroad into the heavens because their consciousness has been united to the mineral consciousness of theEarth, so did man then see and perceive a wide field of wisdom six thousand years before our era, when his soul was united with his astral body at the time of the cosmic New Year.

From this time originated the knowledge which we have now lost, since the wisdom of the Gnostics has perished. The source of this knowledge must be sought in the earthly and cosmic New Year about 6,000 B.c. This was the knowledge from which Zarathustra gave forth his teaching; the knowledge, whose last great rays still illuminated the Gnostics, but of which only a few fragments remain. It is the winter of the Earth, but the Earth’s New Year to which we here look back.

If we now add four thousand years more to the years we have passed through since the founding of Christianity, we again come to a similar intermingling as that I have just indicated; to the mingling of our soul-consciousness with our astral consciousness, but at a higher stage. Man will once more experience a universal stellar consciousness. For this we endeavour to prepare ourselves through our Spiritual Science, so that there may be men ready to receive it.

We will seek to prepare for this cosmic New Year. IE we prepare for it through the keeping of the Christmas Festival, as I indicated in a recent lecture, we are preparing ourselves in the right way. If the birth of spiritual knowledge within us leads to that frame of mind which is in accord with the ‘Christmas Initiation,’ we are preparing ourselves for that new cosmic New Year on which we shall enter twelve thousand years after the previous cosmic New Year.

Twelve months pass by between one union of the plant-consciousness with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, and another. Twelve thousand years pass between one cosmic New Year and another: between one intermingling of the human soul with the Astral World-Soul, and another.

So at this sacred season, we turn from the little New Year to the great cosmic New Year, from the New Year’s Eve of our year, to that for which we are preparing ourselves, by endeavouring—now in this winter tune—to behold the light, which in a normal elemental way flows into man as inhabitant of the Earth, only at the cosmic New Year.

We really only see the world in the true light, when we grasp what is around us, not only as it is presented to our senses,—as materialists do—but when we accept all that is about us in the outer world as a symbol of the great secrets of the universe.

Then when New Year draws near, it seems as if a message from spiritual worlds approaches, and unveils for us the mysteries connected with the birth of the New Year; and declares, ‘Behold, now in the depths of the dark cold winter, the consciousness of the plant world unites with the mineral consciousness of the earth. Let this be to you a sign that the Earth too has its year—the great cosmic year, of which Zarathustra spoke long ago, explaining how the world passed on from one great New Year’s Eve to another; this must be understood by those who really seek to comprehend the course of human evolution.’

Zarathustra spoke of epochs of twelve thousand years. He meant the great cosmic years of which I have spoken to you today. He represented the course of human evolution as being divided into four divisions within the Earth year. This fact is deeply rooted in spiritual mysteries.

So, from a deeper understanding of our Spiritual Science, let us accept a true Christmas attitude of reverence. Let us develop within our hearts that inner warmth which comes, when in the frosty night of winter we receive the first intimation of the dawning of the Sun-Spirit on the Earth, and with it the mystery of the revolving year. The thirteen days are the days in which the plant-consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness. If a man is but able to place himself within the plant consciousness, he can dream of—can gain a conception of—the many mysteries which then crowd into his heart, such as did in the dream of Olaf Oesteson,¹ the description and explanation of which entered into and stirred our souls here, this time last year. When we feel such a mood of initiation, we evoke the proper feelings and the perceptions for the aims and objects of our spiritual knowledge and with such warmth of heart we shall make preparations for the new cosmic New Year. Through it we can worthily expect that day which is to usher in a New Year for the world, Thus; when in succeeding incarnations our souls experience the cosmic New Year under quite new conditions on Earth, we shall be able to pass through it as those can for whom the small New Year’s Eve (which recurs every twelve months instead of every twelve thousand years) becomes a symbol of the great New Year’s Eve of the world.

This is the secret of our existence. Everything is in great as in small, and in small as in great. The small, the yearly cycle, can only be understood aright when it becomes for us a symbol of the mighty events of the cosmos—of the vast cycle of thousands of years. The year is an image of the aeons, and the aeons are the realities of those images which we encounter in the course of a year. When we understand this yearly course aright we are filled, in this important night in which a New Year begins, with thoughts of the great cosmic mysteries. Let our endeavour be, so to attune our souls, that they may look forward to the New Year with this conscious thought: ‘I will accept the year as a symbol of the great cosmic year which contains all mysteries, through which pass and repass the Divine Beings who accompany our souls from aeon to aeon, as the lesser Gods follow the secret development of plant and mineral existence throughout the course of an Earth year.

• 1. Editorial Note: The dream of Olaf Oesteson referred to above, appears in the linotyped course of lectures entitled The Forming of Destiny and Life after Death (Lecture 6.)

[Part I]

What the mind, which is directed towards the finite (kama manas), calls truth is only a subspecies of what the esotericist seeks as “the truth”. For the truth of the mind refers to that which has become, which is manifest. And the revealed is only a part of existence. Every thing in our environment is at the same time product, creature (i.e. what has become, what is revealed) and germ (what is unrevealed, what is becoming). And only when we look at a thing as the two aspects (what has become and what is becoming), then we see that it is a link in the One Life, the life that has time not outside itself but within itself. Thus finite truth is also only a becoming; it must be enlivened by an evolving truth. The former is grasped; the latter is “noted”. All mere scientific truth belongs to the first kind. For those who seek such truth alone, “Light on the Path” is not written. It is written for those who seek the truth that is a germ today in order to become a product tomorrow; and who do not grasp what has become, but pay attention to what is becoming. If anyone wants to understand the teachings of “Light on the Path,” then he must generate them as his own and yet love them as completely different, just as a mother generates her child as her own and loves it as different.

The first four teachings, when understood, open the gateway to esotericism. — What does a person bring to the objects of his knowledge? Whoever examines himself will find that joy and pain are his response to impressions from the sensual and supersensible world. It is so easy to believe that one has discarded pleasure and pain. But one must descend into the most hidden corners of one's soul and bring up one's pleasure and pain; for only when all such pleasure and all such pain is consumed by the bliss of the higher self, only then is knowledge possible. One thinks that one will become a cold and sober person as a result. This is not the case. A piece of gold remains the same piece of gold - in weight and color - even when it is transformed into a piece of jewelry. Similarly, Kama remains what it is - in content and intensity - even when it is spiritually transformed. The power of Kama should not be eradicated, but incorporated into the content of the divine fire. Thus the eye's subtlety shall not discharge itself in tears, but gild the received impressions. Dissolve every tear and give the radiance it has to the ray that penetrates the eye. Wasted power is your joy and your pain; wasted for knowledge. For the strength that flows into this joy and this pain shall flow into the object of knowledge. “Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears.” He who still abhors the criminal in the ordinary sense, and he who still worships the saint in this ordinary sense, has not weaned his eye from tears. Burn all your tears in the will to help. Weep not over the poor; recognize his situation and help! Murren not over the evil; understand it and change it into good. Your tears only cloud the pure clarity of the light. You feel all the more tender the less sensitive you are. The sound becomes clear to the ear if this clarity is not disturbed by the rapture and sympathy that meet it at the entrance to the ear. “Before the ear can hear, its sensitivity must fade.” To put it another way, let the heartbeats of the other resonate within you and do not disturb them with the beating of your own heart. You should open your ear and not your nerve endings. For your nerve endings will tell you whether a sound is pleasant or not; but your open ear will tell you what the sound itself is like. When you go to the sick person, let every fiber of his body speak to you and absorb the impression he makes on you.

And to summarize the first two sentences: Reverse your will, let it become as powerful as possible, but do not let it flow into things as yours, but inquire into the nature of things and then give them your will; let yourself and your will flow out of things. Let the radiance of your eyes flow out of every flower, out of every star; but hold back yourself and your tears. Give your words to the things that are mute, so that they may speak through you. For they are not an invitation to your lust, these mute things, but they are an invitation to your activity. Not what they have become without you is there for you, but what they are to become must be there through you.

And as long as you impose your desire on a single thing, without that desire of yours being born of the thing itself, you wound the thing. But as long as you wound anything, no master can listen to you. For the master hears only those who need him. But no one needs a master who wants to impose himself on things. Man's lower self is like a sharp needle that wants to dig in everywhere. As long as it wants to do that, no master will want to hear its voice. “Before the voice can speak to the masters, it must unlearn the wounding.” As long as the sharp needles of the “/ch will” still stick out of the words of man, his words are the messengers of his lower self. Once these needles have been removed and the voice has become soft and pliable, wrapping itself around the secrets of all things like a veil, it weaves itself into a spiritual garment (Majavirupa), and the master's delicate sound clothes itself in it. With every thought that a person devotes to the inner truth of things in the true sense of the word, he weaves a thread to the garment in which the master may clothe himself when he appears. He who makes himself a messenger of the world, an organ through which the depths of the world's riddles speak, pours his soul's life into the world, his heart's blood moistens his feet so that they carry him swiftly to where work is to be done. And when the soul is where the lower self is not, when it is not where man stands enjoying himself, but where his active feet have carried him, then the Master also appears there. “And before them the soul can stand, the blood of the heart must moisten the feet.” He who remains within himself cannot find the Master; he who wants to find Him must let the strength of his soul - the blood of his heart - flow into his deeds - into his active feet.

Such is the first meaning of the four fundamental teachings. Those who live by this first teaching can have the second revealed to them, and then the following ones. For these teachings are occult truths, and every occult truth has at least sevenfold meaning.

[Part II: The following explanations refer to sentences 17 and 18 from Chapter 2 of “Light on the Path”]

§ 17.2. Chapter.

[Ask the innermost, the One, about its ultimate secrets, which it has held for millennia.

The great, difficult battle, the conquest of your own soul's desires, is a labor of millennia. Therefore, do not expect the prize of victory until you have gained experience over millennia. When the time comes that this last teaching becomes truth, man enters the threshold that lifts him above humanity.

These last few paragraphs of the second chapter of “Light on the Path” contain wisdom of the deepest kind. In No. 17, there is the invitation to ask the “innermost”, the “One” about his “secrets of the last”. Whoever shines a light into the depths of this “innermost being” will indeed find the results of “millennia”. For what man is today, he has become through long millennia. The “innermost being” has passed through worlds, and hidden in its bosom are the fruits it has taken from these worlds. That our innermost being is as it is now, we owe to the fact that countless formations have worked on its structure, that it has passed through many realms and that it has formed organs out of these realms over and over again. Through these organs, it has entered into an exchange with the worlds that have surrounded it in each case. And what it has gained from this interaction, it has taken over into new worlds, in order to have ever richer experiences on new levels, equipped with the achievements of the past. And today we use the differentiated essence of our innermost being to have a sum of experiences on the “planet” we call “Earth”. All the experiences of the “moon planet” and the earlier ones are in our innermost being. They were already in this innermost being when, through a pralaya, it developed into “earth”. And so these experiences were in the Pitri nature of this innermost being, just as the whole lily is - latently - in the lily seed. Of course, the lily seed is still something physically visible. But the Pitrisame, which slept its way from the moon to the earth, was incarnated in the highest kind of matter, perceptible only to the eye opened to the Dangma. But just as the lily seed, when it is placed in suitable soil, organizes the elements of earth, water and air in such a way that a new lily is formed, so the “Pitrisame”, in its cycles through earthly existence, the “Pitrisame” arranges the matters in such a way that in the course of these cycles the full “human being” gradually emerges, who, after the 6th and at the beginning of the 7th earthly round, may truly be called “God's image”. Until the middle of the fourth round - until the end of the Lemurian period - the human Pitrinatur divides itself in the work on its own organism with “formers” of the highest and higher kind; but from this point on, more and more of the human “innermost” must take over this work itself. K. H. says the following about this work: All you have to do is become a complete human being. For know that in your physical nature alone you are now already almost a human being. For you will only be a complete human being in your physical nature at the end of the fourth round. Your astral body, your mental body and your ego body (higher manas) are still unorganized and chaotic. Just as your physical body is complete after the fourth, so must your astral body be after the fifth, your mental body after the sixth, and your arupic (higher mental) body after the seventh, if you are to reach your destiny at the end of the earthly cycles. And only when you have reached this destiny can you, as a normal terrestrial Pitri, pass over to the next planet.

Those, however, who want to walk the occult path should work more and more consciously on this threefold externalization of their higher bodies from their “innermost being”. That is the meaning of meditation. One shapes (organizes) one's astral body by elevating it to the higher self and by self-examination. Just as extra-human forces have worked in past rounds to build the organs of today's physical body, so the inner human higher self works on the astral body so that it may become an “image of divinity” or also “fully human”. Then it becomes suitable to experience the secrets of higher worlds through its organs in the same way as the physical body experiences the secrets of the physical-mineral world through its sense organs. We examine ourselves in the evening with regard to our experiences during the day; we rise to our “higher self” through the well-known formula. In both activities we have an organizing, building effect on our astral body. Only through this do we make it into an astral organism, into a body with organs, whereas before it was only a kind of carrier. This “formula” is this: “Brighter than the sun, purer than the snow, more subtle than the ether is the Self, the Spirit, in the midst of my heart. I am this Self. This Self is me.” However, this opens up the view to a ‘work of millennia’, as it says further in $ 17. Just as millennia were necessary before the outer physical likeness was achieved, so a work of millennia will be necessary before this likeness is achieved for the higher bodies. Only then will man stand at the ‘threshold that lifts him beyond humanity’. And he must come to this threshold in the 7th round in the same way as he had to be at the threshold at the end of the lunarian (moon) epoch, which raised him above the lunarian pitritum.

Through the mental meditation of a sentence from the inspired scriptures, the meditator organizes his mental body. When a person takes such meditation sentences from the Bhagavad Gita or from other scriptures that the theosophical literature provides, then he is working on the organization of his mental body. It must be emphasized again and again that in this meditation it is much less important to intellectually go through the sentence - this should be done separately outside of the actual meditation - than to live with the sentence with a completely free field of vision of consciousness. It should tell us what it has to tell us. We should be the ones to receive from it. If it is an inspired sentence, then it begins to live in our consciousness, then something alive flows out from it, then it becomes abundance in us, previously unsuspected content. As long as we speculate about it, we can only put into it what is already in us. But that does not help us to progress.

The organization of the ego body depends on the devotional part of our meditation. The more we achieve through this devotion, the deeper and more earnest it is, the more we will resemble the being that we are to emerge from our planetary life to the tasks that will be set for us in a later being.

§ 18.

[The knowledge you now call your own is only yours because your soul has merged into one with all souls and become one with the innermost. A treasure from the Highest is entrusted to you. But if you betray its trust, abuse your knowledge, let it slumber when you should use it, then even from the heights you have reached, a fall is still possible. Even at the threshold, exalted ones still recoil, unable to bear the responsibility and unable to soar higher. Therefore, always remember this moment with holy fear, with anxious trembling, and prepare yourself in advance for the fight.

We must experience that we are one with all that lives. We must be clear about the fact that what we call our own has no life if it wants to be an idiosyncrasy. It has just as little life as our little finger would have life if it were cut off from our whole organism. And what for our little finger would be the physical-sensory cutting off, that would be for our peculiarity a knowledge that only wanted to refer to this peculiarity itself. We were one when we entered the planet, which was the third before our Earth, within an all-divine essence; we were within the all-divine essence and yet a peculiarity, just as each note in a symphony is a peculiarity and yet one with the whole symphony. And what we dare call our individuality shall have an effect on whatever it encounters in the 343 worlds through which it passes (seven planets, seven rounds on each planet, seven so-called globes for each round = 7 x 7 x 7 metamorphoses = 343). What we are able to experience there is laid in us at the beginning as an inclination. And that is the treasure, “familiar to you from on high.” And just as the treasure is familiar to us, so we should place it in the harmony of the planetary symphony. An experience will present itself again and again to him who fully understands these things. All deepening within us remains barren and empty if we want it only for ourselves. To strive for our own perfection is only to indulge a higher form of selfishness. Our knowledge must always flow out from us. This is not to say that we should always teach. Each person should teach as they can, and when they can. But the smallest action in everyday life makes it possible to be a living result of selflessly acquired knowledge. And when we have the feeling that all life is one, that all separateness is only based on Maya: then all our deepening into our inner being is also acquired with the living feeling that it should come to life in the All-One Life. But then our deepening is always rewarded with fertility. Then we are sure that we cannot fall. Those who strive for knowledge only to know, only for the sake of their own perfection, only to advance on the ladder of existence, can still fall even if they have already risen very high. And above all, we must be aware of the “responsibility” that we take upon ourselves by acquiring higher knowledge. Only a certain measure of development is allotted to humanity as a whole in the path of development. If we perfect ourselves, if we acquire a measure of perfection earlier than would be possible in normal progression, then we take something from the common measure of humanity for ourselves. We make the scale tip in our favor; the balance leaps up on the other side. Only by giving in some way can we make up for what we have taken. But we must not think that it is better not to take. That would mean being selfish again and avoiding taking so that we would also be relieved of the duty of giving. Not taking and not giving means death; but we are meant to serve life. We must acquire the ability to give; therefore we must take on the responsibility of taking. But we must be aware of this responsibility at every moment. We must constantly reflect on how we can best give when we have taken. This gives rise to a “struggle”, a serious, sacred struggle. But this struggle must be. We must not shy away from it. We must always prepare ourselves for this struggle. In particular, the great significance of this struggle was and is demonstrated to the adepts of all schools of initiation. They are admonished to fulfill themselves, to imbue themselves with the consciousness of this struggle. When our innermost being breathes the life of this struggle as the fundamental mood of the soul, then the inner sight and the inner hearing awaken in this innermost being. And when we are able to be calm, completely calm, on this battlefield, then higher secrets begin to flash across our astral and mental heaven. Then feelings and thoughts are symbolized in us as spiritually tangible realities; and out of the mist of these spiritually tangible realities, the voice of the Master sounds and the form of the Master takes shape. We begin to enter into higher communication. We no longer remain mere actors in the world, but become messengers (angelos) for it.

What is described here as an exegesis of No. 18 is, sentence by sentence, reality, higher reality to be experienced. And whoever imbues themselves with the meaning of this sentence (No. 18) in this way becomes a citizen of higher worlds. (To be continued in the very near future).

As a continuation of the lecture on Karma and Reincarnation, let us select for special consideration the problem of death in its connection with the whole subject.

The question: Why does man die? continually claims the attention of mankind. But it is not quite easy to answer, for what we today call dying is directly connected with the fact that we stand at a quite definite stage of our development. We know that we live in three worlds, in the physical, astral and mental worlds and that our existence changes between these three worlds. We have within us an inner kernel of being which we call the Monad. We retain this kernel throughout the three worlds. It lives within us in the physical world, but also in the astral and devachanic worlds. This inner kernel, however, is always clad in a different garment. In the physical, astral and devachanic worlds the garment of our kernel-of-being is different.

Now we will first look away from death and picture the human being in the physical world clothed with a particular kind of matter. He then enters the astral and devachanic worlds always with a different garment. Let us now assume that the human being were conscious in all three worlds, so that he could perceive the things around him. Without senses and perception he would be unable to live consciously even in the physical world. If man today were equally conscious in all three worlds there would be no death, then there would only be transformation. Then he would pass over consciously from one world into the other. This passing over would be no death for him, and for those left behind at most something like a journey. At present things are so that man only gradually gains continuity of consciousness in these three worlds. At first he experiences it to be a darkening of his consciousness when he enters the other worlds from the physical world. The beings who retain consciousness do not know death. Let us now come to an understanding of the way in which man has reached the stage of having his present day physical consciousness and of how he will attain another consciousness.

We must learn to know man as a duality: as the Monad and what clothes the Monad. We ask: How has the one and how has the other arisen? Where did the astral man live before he became what he is today and where did the Monad live? Both have gone through different stages of development, both have gradually reached the point of being able to unite.

In considering the physical-astral human being we are taken back into very distant times, when he was only present as an astral archetype, as an astral form. The astral man who was originally present was a formation unlike the present astral body, a much more comprehensive being. We can picture the astral body of those times by thinking of the earth as a great astral ball made up of astral human beings. All the Nature forces and beings which surround us today were at that time still within man, who lived dissolved in astral existence. All plants, animals and so on, the animal instincts and passions, were still within him. What the lion, and all the mammals, have within them today, was at that time completely intermingled with the human astral body, which then contained within it all the beings at present spread over the earth. The astral earth consisted of human astral bodies joined together like a great blackberry and enclosed by a spiritual atmosphere in which there lived devachanic beings.

This atmosphere—astral air one might call it—which at that time surrounded the astral earth was composed of a somewhat thinner substance than the astral bodies of human beings. In this astral air lived spiritual beings—both lower and higher—among others the human Monads also, completely separated from the human astral bodies. This was the condition of the earth at that time. The Monads, which were already present in the astral air, could not unite with the astral bodies, for these were still too wild. The instincts and passions had first to be ejected. Thus through the throwing off of certain substances and forces possessed by the astral body, the latter gradually developed in a purer form. What had been thrown off however remained as separated astral forms, beings with a much denser astral body, with wilder instincts, impulses and passions.

Thus there now existed two astral bodies: a less wild human astral body and an astral body that was very wild and opaque. Let us keep these strictly apart, the human astral body and what lived around it. The human astral body becomes ever finer and nobler, always throwing off those parts of itself it needed to expel, and these became ever denser and denser. In this way, when they eventually reached physical density, the other kingdoms arose: the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. Certain instincts and forces expelled in this way appeared as the different animal species.

So a continual purification of the astral body took place and this brought about on earth a necessary result. For through the fact that in consequence of this purification, what man once had within him he now had outside him, he entered into relationship with these beings, and what formerly he had had within him, now worked into him from outside. That is an eternal process which holds good also for the separation of the sexes, which from that time on affect each other from outside. To begin with, the whole world was interwoven with us; only later did it work upon us from outside. The original symbol for this coming back into oneself from the other side is the snake biting its tail.

In the purified astral body pictures arise now of the world surrounding it. Let us assume that a human being had perhaps separated off ten different forms, which are now around him. Previously they were within him and later he is surrounded by them. Now mirrored pictures arise in the purified astral body of the forms existing in the outer world. These mirrored pictures become a new force within him, they are active within him, transforming the nobler, purified astral body. For instance, it has rejected from itself the wilder instincts; these are now outside it as pictures and work upon it as formative force. The astral body is built up by means of the pictures of the world it has thrown off and which were earlier within it. They build up in it a new body. Formerly man had had the macrocosm within him, he then separated it off and now this formed within him the microcosm, a portion torn off from himself.

Thus at a certain stage we find the human being in a form which is given him by his surroundings. The mirrored pictures work on his astral body in such a way that they bring about in it differentiation and division. Through the mirrored pictures his astral body divided itself and he re-assembled it again out of the parts, so that he is now a membered organism. The undifferentiated astral mass has become differentiated into the different organs, the heart and so on. To begin with everything was astral and this was then enclosed by the physical human body. Thereby the human forms became more and more adapted to densification and to becoming a more complicated and comprehensive organism, which is an image of the entire environment.

What has become densest of all is the physical body; the etheric body is less dense and the astral body is the finest. They are in reality mirrored images of the outer-world, microcosm in the macrocosm. Meanwhile the astral body has become ever finer and finer, so that at a certain point of earth evolution the human being has a developed astral body. Through the fact that the astral body has become increasingly finer, it has attracted to itself the finer astral substance around it.

Meanwhile in the upper region the opposite evolutionary processes have taken place. The Monad has descended from the highest regions of Devachan into the astral region and in the course of this descent has become denser. Now the two parts approach each other. From the one side man ascends as far as the astral body, from the other side it is met by the Monad on its descent into the astral world. This was in the Lemurian Age. Thus they could mutually fructify each other. The Monad had clothed itself with devachanic substance, then again with astral airy substance. From below upwards we have the physical substance, then the etheric substance, then again astral substance. So both astral substances fructify one another and, as it were, melt into one another. What comes from above has the Monad within it. As though into a bed, it sinks itself into the astral substance.

This is how the descent of the soul takes place. But in order that it can happen the Monad must develop a thirst to know the lower regions. This thirst must be taken for granted. As Monad one can only learn to know the lower regions by incarnating in the human body and by its means looking out into the surrounding world. Man now consists of four members. Firstly he has a physical body, secondly an etheric body, thirdly an astral body and within this as fourth member of the ego, the Monad. After the four-fold organism has come into being the Monad can look through it into the environment and a relationship is established between the Monad and everything that is in the surroundings. Through this the thirst of the Monad is partially assuaged.

We have seen that the entire human body is put together, has been put together, out of parts which arose through the fact that the originally undifferentiated mass divided itself into organs, after the original astral body had thrown off various portions of itself which were then reflected back, causing images to arise within it.⁶⁰ These reflected images became forces within the astral body and these built up the etheric body, that is to say, through these manifold images the etheric body developed separate members. This etheric body now consisted of different parts and, as a further process, each of these parts densified within itself and so the differentiated physical body developed. Every such physical kernel, out of which the organs later develop, forms at the same time a kind of central point in the ether.

The intervening spaces between the centres are filled with the main etheric mass. We must think of the body as put together out of ten parts. These ten parts (shown in the diagram) hold the body together through their relationship; they are images of the whole of the rest of Nature and everything depends on how strongly they are connected. Different degrees of relationship exist between the separate parts. As long as these are retained the body is held together; when the various relationships cease, the parts fall away; the body disintegrates. Because during Earth evolution we have manifold forms, the parts in the etheric body only hold together to a certain degree. Human nature is an image of the beings which have been thrown off. In so far as these beings lead a separate existence, the parts of the physical body also lead a separate existence. When the relationship of forces has become so slight as to be non-existent, our life comes to an end. The length of our life is conditioned by the way in which the beings around us get on with each other.

The development of the higher man proceeds in such a way that, to begin with, man works upon his astral body. He works ideals into it, enthusiasm and so on. He fights against his instincts. As soon as he replaces passions with ideals, instincts with duties, and develops enthusiasm in the place of desires, he creates harmony between the parts of his astral body. This peace-making work begins with the entrance of the Monad, and the astral body gradually approaches immortality. From that time on, the astral body no longer dies but retains continuity to the degree in which it has induced peace in itself and established peace in the face of the destructive forces. From the time when the Monad enters, it brings about peace, to begin with in the astral body. Now the instincts begin to come into mutual relationship. Harmony comes about in the former chaos and an astral form arises which survives, remains living. In the physical and etheric bodies peace is as yet not established, and only partly so in the astral body. The latter retains its form for a short time only, but the more peace is established, so much the longer is the time in Devachan.

When someone has become a Chela he begins to establish peace in the etheric body. Then the etheric body too survives. The Masters also establish peace in the physical body; thus in their case the physical body also survives. The important thing is to bring into harmony the different bodies, which consist of separate warring parts, and transmute them into bodies having immortality.

Man has formed his physical body by putting out from himself the kingdoms of Nature, which then reflected themselves back into him. Through this, the single parts came into existence within him. Now he performs actions; through these he again has intercourse with his surroundings. What he now puts out are the effects of his deeds. He projects his actions into the surrounding world and gradually becomes a reflection of these actions. The Monad has been drawn into the human body; man begins to perform actions. These actions are incorporated into the surrounding world and are reflected back. To the same degree in which the Monad begins to establish peace, it also begins to take up the reflected images of its own actions.

Here we have come to a point where we continually create a new kingdom around us—the effects of our own actions. This again builds up something within us. As previously we fashioned the undifferentiated etheric body into separate members, we build into the monadic existence the effects of our actions. We call this the creation of our Karma. Thereby we can give permanence to everything in the Monad. Earlier the astral body had purified itself by casting off everything that was in it. Now man created for himself a new kingdom of deeds, as it were out of nothing, in regard to relationships, a ‘creation out of nothing’. That which previously had no existence, the new relationship, reflects itself in the Monad as something new, something having a pictorial character, and a new inner kernel of being is formed in the Monad, arising out of the reflected image of deeds, the reflection of Karma. As the work of the Monad progresses, the kernel of being becomes more and more enlarged. Let us observe the Monad after a period of time. On the one hand it will have established harmony out of the warring forces, and on the other hand out of the effects of deeds. Both unite and a unified formation arises.

Let us suppose that someone's earthly garment has been laid aside and the Monad remains. It retains the results of its deeds. The question is, how the results of the deeds are brought about. If these results have been so brought about that in the worlds in which the Monad now finds itself they can continue to be fruitful, then the human being can sojourn there for a long time; if not, for a short time only. In this case they must fall back again into the thirst of the Monad (for the physical plane) and once again inhabit a physical body.

Human life is a continual process of being enveloped in what surrounds us: Involution—Evolution. We take up image forms and according to these, shape our own body. What the Monad has brought about is again taken up by man as his Karma. Man will always be the result of his Karma. The Vedanta teaches that the different parts of the human being are dissolved and cast to the winds; what still remains of him, that is his Karma. This is the eternal which man has created out of himself, something which he himself had first to take up as image out of his environment. Man is immortal; he only needs to exert his will, he only needs to form his actions in such a way that they have a lasting existence. That part of us is immortal which we gain for ourselves from the outside world. We have come into being through the world and are beginning, through fructification with the Monad, to build up in ourselves the mirror of a new world. The Monad has quickened the mirrored images in us. Now these images can work outwards, and the effects of these images reflect themselves anew. A new inner life arises. With our actions we are continually changing our environment. Through this, new reflected images come about; these now become karma. This is a new life which springs up from within. The result of this is that in order to develop further from a definite point of time we must go out of ourselves and work selflessly in our surroundings. We must make possible this going out from ourselves in order selflessly to bring about harmonious relationships in our surroundings. This necessitates a harmonising of the reflected images in ourselves. It is our task to make the world around us a harmonious one. If we are a destructive element in the world, what is reflected into us is devastation: if we bring about harmony in the world, harmonies are reflected into us.

The highest degree of perfection which we have put out from ourselves, which we have established around us, this we shall take with us. Therefore the Rosicrucians said: Form the world in such a way that it contains within itself Wisdom, Beauty and Strength; then Wisdom, Beauty and Strength will be reflected into us. Wisdom is the reflection of Manas; Beauty, Piety, Goodness are the reflection of Buddhi; Strength is the reflection of Atma.

To begin with we develop around us a domain of Wisdom through ourselves fostering Wisdom. Then we develop a domain of Beauty in all regions. Then Wisdom becomes visible and reflects itself in us: Buddhi. Finally we bestow on the whole physical existence, Wisdom within, Beauty without.

If our will enables us to carry this through, then we have strength: Atma, the power to transpose all this into reality. Thus we establish the three kingdoms within us: Manas, Buddhi, Atma.

Not through laborious research does man progress further on the earth, but by embodying into the earth Wisdom, Beauty and Strength. Through the work of our higher Ego we transform the transient body given us by the Gods and create for ourselves immortal bodies. The Chela, who ennobles his etheric body (so that it remains in existence), gradually renounces the Maharajas. The Master, whose physical body also remains in existence, can renounce the Lipikas. He stands above Karma. This we must describe as the progress of man in his inner life. What is higher, outside ourselves, we must seek to approach. Therefore our Higher Self is not to be sought within us, but in the individualities who have ascended into loftier regions.

• 60. Text of this portion is very incomplete and cannot be considered as literal.

We will continue our study of particular karmic questions in relation to human life. What does occult science have to say about the origin of conscience? At our present stage of evolution conscience appears as a kind of inner voice telling us what to do and what to leave undone. How did such an inner voice come into being?

It is interesting to inquire whether in the historical evolution of mankind there has always been something comparable to what we call conscience. We find that in the earliest times, language had no word for it. In Greek literature it appears quite late, and in the language of the earlier Greeks no word for it exists. The same thing is true of the early periods of other civilisations. We may conclude, then, that the idea of conscience, in a more or less conscious form, came only gradually to be recognised. Conscience has developed fairly late in human evolution, and we shall see presently what our ancestors possessed in place of it.

How, then, has conscience gradually developed? On one of his journeys Darwin²⁷ came across a cannibal and tried to convince him that it is not a good thing to eat another human being. The cannibal retorted that in order to decide whether eating a man is good or bad you must first eat one yourself. In other words, the cannibal had not reached the point of judging between good and bad in terms of moral ideas, but in accordance simply with the pleasure he experienced. He was in fact a survival from an earlier stage of civilisation which was at one time universal. But how does a man like this cannibal come to distinguish between good and bad? He went on eating his fellow-men until one day he was due to be eaten himself. At that moment he experienced the fact that it could really happen to him. He felt that there was something wrong about this, and the fruits of this experience remained with him in Kamaloka and Devachan. Into his next incarnation he brought a dim feeling that what he had been doing was not quite right. This feeling became more and more definite in the course of further incarnations; he also came to take heed of the feelings of others, and thus he gradually developed a certain restraint. After various further incarnations the feeling became still more definite and gradually the thought emerged: Here is something one should not do. Similarly, a savage at a primitive stage would eat everything indiscriminately, but when he got [a] stomach-ache he came to realise by degrees that there were some things he could eat and some he could not. This kind of experience became gradually more and more firmly rooted, and finally it developed into the voice of conscience.

Conscience is therefore the outcome of experiences spread over a number of incarnations. Fundamentally, all knowledge, from the highest to the lowest, is the outcome of what a man has experienced; it has come into being as a result of trial and error.

An interesting fact is relevant here. Only since Aristotle has there been a science of logic, of logical thought. From this we must conclude that accurate thinking too, was born at a certain time. This is indeed so: thinking itself had first to evolve, and logical thinking arose in the course of time from fundamental observation of how thinking can go wrong. Knowledge is something mankind has acquired through many incarnations. Only after long trial and error could a store of knowledge be built up. All this illustrates the importance of the law of karma; here we have another example of something which has developed out of experience into a permanent habit and inclination. A motive such as conscience binds itself to the etheric body, becoming in time a permanent characteristic of it because the astral body has been so often convinced that this or that would not do.

Another interesting karmic relationship is between an habitually selfish attitude and a loving sympathy with others. Some people are hardened egoists—not only in their acquisitiveness—and others are unselfish and sympathetic. Both attitudes depend on the etheric body and may even find expression in the physical body. People who in one life have been habitually selfish will age quickly in their next life; they seem to shrivel up. On the other hand, if in one life you have been ready to make sacrifices and have loved others, you will remain young and hale. In this way you can prepare even the physical body for the next life.

If you recall what I said yesterday, you will have in mind a question: How is it with the achievements of the physical body itself? Its deeds become its future destiny; but what is the effect of any illnesses it may have had in this life?

The answer to this question, however strange it may sound, is not mere theory or speculation, but is based on occult experience, and from it you can learn the mission of illness. Fabre d'Olivet,²⁸ who has investigated the origins of the Book of Genesis, once used a beautiful simile, comparing destiny with a natural process. The valuable pearl, he says, derives from an illness: it is a secretion of the oyster, so that in this case life has to fall sick in order to produce something precious. In the same way, physical illnesses in one life reappear in the next life as physical beauty. Either the physical body becomes more beautiful as a result of the illness it endured; or it may be that an illness a man has caught from infection in his environment is compensated by the beauty of his new environment. Beauty thus develops, karmically, out of pain, suffering, privation and illness. This may seem a startling connection, but it is a fact. Even the appreciation of beauty develops in this way: there can be no beauty in the world without pain and suffering and illness. The same general law holds for the history of man's evolution. You will see from this how wonderful karmic relationships really are, and how questions about evil, illness and pain cannot be answered without knowledge of the important inner relationships within the evolution of humanity.

The line of evolution goes back into ancient, very ancient times, when conditions on Earth, and the Earth itself, were quite different. There was a time when none of the higher animals existed; when there were no fishes, amphibians, birds or mammals, but only animals less developed than the fishes. Yet man, though in a quite different form, was already there. His physical body was still very imperfect; his spiritual body was more highly developed. He was still enclosed within a soft ethcric body, and his soul worked on his physical body from outside. Man still contained all other beings within himself. Later on he worked his way upwards and left behind the fish form which had been part of himself. These fish forms were huge, fantastic-looking creatures, unlike the fishes of today. Then again man evolved to a higher stage and cast out the birds from himself. Then the reptiles and amphibia made their way out of man—grotesque creatures such as the saurians and water-tortoises, which were really stragglers from an earlier group of beings, even further removed from man, whose evolution had lagged behind. Then man cast out the mammals from himself, and finally the apes; and then he himself continued to advance.

Man has therefore always been man and not an ape; he separated off the whole animal kingdom from himself so that he might become more truly human. It was as though you gradually strained all the dye-stuffs out of a coloured liquid and left only clear water behind. In older days there were natural philosophers, such as Paracelsus and Oken,²⁹ who put this very well. When a man looks at the animal world, they said, he should tell himself: “I carried all that within myself and cast it out from my own being.”

Thus man once had within himself a great deal that was later externalised. And today he still has within him something that later on will be outside—his karma, both the good and the evil. Just as he has separated the animals from himself, so will he thrust good and evil out into the world. The good will result in a race of men who are naturally good; the evil in a separate evil race. You will find this stated in the Apocalypse, but it must not be misunderstood. We must distinguish between the development of the soul and that of races. A soul may be incarnated in a race on the down grade, but if it does not itself commit evil, it need not incarnate a second time in such a race; it may incarnate in one that is ascending. There are quite enough souls streaming in from other directions to incarnate in these declining races.

But what is inward has to become outward, and man will rise still higher when his karma has worked itself out. With all this something of extraordinary interest is connected. Centuries ago, with the future development of humanity in view, secret Orders which set themselves the highest conceivable tasks were established. One such Order was the Manichean, of which ordinary scholarship gives a quite false picture. The Manicheans are supposed to have taught that a Good and an Evil are part of the natural order and have always been in conflict with one another, this having been determined for them by the Creation. Here there is a glimmer of the Order's real task, but distorted to the point of nonsense. The individual members of the Order were specially trained for their great work. The Order knew that some day there will be men in whose karma there is no longer any evil, but that there will also be a race evil by nature, among whom all kinds of evil will be developed to a higher degree than in the most savage animals, for they will practise evil consciously, exquisitely, with the aid of highly developed intellects. Even now the Manichean Order is training its members so that they may be able to transform evil in later generations.

The extreme difficulty of the task is that these evil races will not be like bad children in whom there is goodness which can be brought out by precept and example. The members of the Manichean Order are already learning how to transform quite radically those who by nature are wholly evil. And then the transformed evil will become a quite special good. The power to effect this change will bring about a condition of moral holiness on Earth. But this can be achieved only if the evil has first come into existence; then the power needed to overcome the evil will yield a power that can reach the heights of holiness. A field has to be treated with manure and the manure has to ferment in the soil; similarly, humanity needs the manure of evil in order to attain to the highest holiness. And herein lies the mission of evil. A man's muscles get strong by use; and equally, if good is to rise to the heights of holiness, it must first overcome the evil which opposes it. The task of evil is to promote the ascent of man. Things such as this give us a glimpse into the secret of life. Later on, when man has overcome evil, he can go on to redeem the creatures he has thrust down, and at whose cost he has ascended. That is the purpose of evolution.

The following point is rather more difficult. The shell of a snail or mussel is secreted out of the living substance of the animal. The shell which surrounds the snail was originally inside its body its house is in fact its body in a more solid form. Theosophy tells us that we are one with all that surrounds us: this means that man at one time contained everything within himself. The Earth's crust, in fact, had its origin in man, who in the far past crystallised it out from within himself. Just as the snail at one time had its house within itself, so man had all other beings and kingdoms, minerals, plants and animals, within himself, and can say to them all: The substances were within me; I have crystallised out their constituent parts. Thus when man looks at anything outside himself, it becomes intelligible for him to say: All that is myself.

Even more subtle is a further idea. Imagine that ancient condition of humanity when nothing had yet been separated off from man. Man was there, and he formed mental pictures but they were not objective—not, that is, caused by external objects making an impression on him—they were purely subjective. Everything had its origin in man. Our dreams are still a legacy from the time when man, as it were, spun the whole world out of himself. Then he was able to look on the world over against himself. We as human beings have made everything, and in the rest of creation we can see our own products, our own being which has taken solid form.

Kant³⁰ speaks of the thing-in-itself as something unknowable by man. But in fact there are no limits to knowledge, for man can find, in everything he sees around him, the traces of his own being, left behind.

All this has been said in order to show you that nothing can be truly understood if it is looked at from one side only. Everything which appears to us in one condition was quite different in earlier times; only by relating the present to the past can it be understood. Similarly, if you do not look beyond the physical world of the senses, you will never understand illness, or the mission of evil. In all such relationships there is a deep meaning. Evolution had to take its course in this way, through a process of splitting off, because man was to become an inward being; he had to put all this out of himself in order that he might be able to see his own self. So we can come to understand the mission of illness, of evil, and even of the external world. We are led to these great interconnections by studying the law of karma.

We will now deal with several particular questions about karma which are often asked. What is the karmic reason that causes many people to die young, even in childhood? From individual instances known to occult science we may come to the following conclusion. If we study a child who has died young, we may find that in his previous life he had good abilities and made good use of them. He was a thoroughly competent member of society, but he was rather shortsighted. Because with his weak eyes he could not see clearly, all his experiences acquired a particular colouring. He was wanting in a small matter which could have been better, and because of his weak eyes he always lagged behind. He could have achieved something quite remarkable if he had had good sight. He died, and after a short interval he was incarnated with healthy eyes, but he lived only a few weeks. By this means the members of his being learnt how to acquire good eyes, and he had gained a small portion of life as a corrective of what had been lacking in his previous life. The grief of his parents will, of course, be compensated for karmically, but in this instance they had to serve as instruments for putting the matter right.

What is the karmic explanation of children born dead? In such cases the astral body may well have already united itself with the physical body, and the two lower members may be properly constituted. But the astral body withdraws, and so the child is born dead. But why does the astral body withdraw? The explanation lies in the fact that certain members of man's higher nature are related to certain physical organs. For instance, no being can have an etheric body unless it possesses cells. A stone has no cells or vessels, and so it cannot have an etheric body. Equally, an astral body needs a nervous system: a plant has no nervous system and therefore cannot have an astral body. In fact, if a plant were to be permeated by an astral body it would no longer be a plant, but would have to be provided with cells if it were to be permeated by an etheric body.

Now if the Ego-body is gradually to find a place for itself, there must be warm blood in the physical body. (All red-blooded animals were separated off from man at the time when the Ego-condition was being prepared for man.) Hence it will be seen that the physical organs must be in proper condition if the higher bodies are to dwell within them. It is important to remember that the form of the physical body is moulded by purely physical inheritance. It may also happen that the way in which the various bodily fluids are combined is at fault, although parents are well-matched in soul and spirit. Then the incarnating entity comes to a physical body which cannot house the higher members of its being. Thus for example the physical and etheric bodies may be properly united; then the astral body ought to take possession of the physical body, but the organism at its disposal is not in a suitable condition, and so it has to withdraw. The physical body remains, and is then still-born. A still-birth may thus be the outcome of a faulty mixture, on the physical level, of the fluids of the body, and this, too, will have a karmic connection. The physical body can thrive only in so far as the higher principles can live within it.

How are karmic compensations accomplished? If someone has done something to another person, there will have to be a karmic adjustment between them, which means that the persons concerned must be born again as contemporaries. How does this happen? What are the forces that bring the two persons together?

The way it works out is as follows. A wrong has been done; the victim has suffered it; the person who did it passes into Kamaloka, but first he has to witness the occurrence in the retrospective tableau of his past life. The injury he has inflicted does not then cause him pain, but in Kamaloka, as he relives his life backwards, the event comes before him, and now he has to suffer the pain he caused. He has to feel it in and through the very self of his victim. This experience imprints itself like a seal on his astral body. He takes with him a portion of the pain, and a definite force remains in him as the outcome of what he has experienced in the other man's being. In this way any pain or pleasure he has to live through turns into a force, and he carries a great number of such forces with him into Devachan.

When he returns to a new incarnation, this is the force that draws together all the persons who have had experiences in common. During the Kamaloka period they lived within one another, and they incorporated these forces into themselves. Hence within one physical human being there may be three or even more “Kamaloka men”, in order that the situation involving them may be lived out.

An example known to occult science will make this clear. A man was condemned to death by five judges. What was really happening there? In a previous life the man had killed these other five men and karmic forces had brought all six together for a karmic adjustment. This does not produce a never-ending karmic chain; other relationships come in to change the further course of events.

Spiritual forces, you see, are thus secretly at work to bring about the complicated patterns of human living. Further important aspects of the subject will become clear during the next few days, when we go on to study the whole evolution of Earth and Man.

• 27. Charles Darwin, 1809–1882.
• 28. Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, 1768–1825, author of La Langue hebraique restituee, 1816.
• 29. Lorenz Oken, 1779–1851, natural scientist and philosopher.
• 30. Immanuel Kant, 1724–1804.

A lecture delivered in Dornach, on December 31st, 1915. Lecture 17 of 19 from the lecture series: The Festivals of the Seasons (1928), and lecture 6 of 13 from the lecture series: The Spiritual Union of Humanity through the Christ Impulse. Published in German as: Die Geistige Vereinigung der Menschheit Durch Den Christus-Impuls.

Much that I should like to say regarding the spiritual world has to be hinted at pictorially, or rather half pictorially for the pictures must be taken in a real and active sense.

It is necessary to indicate pictorially such things as I desire to bring before your souls to-day for further meditation, because if one were not to speak symbolically but in ideas, one would have to speak at very great length. Each one of you can himself reach the depths of that of which I shall speak to-day, if he holds and ponders over it to a certain extent within his soul.

Every year at this season we pass from one division of time to another. This may at first appear simply a matter of convenience; but it is not so. The men who had to separate time into seasons followed by profound instinct certain great laws regulating the course of time. The festival of the passing of one year into another takes place with us in the depths of winter (naturally, I speak of our part of the world) at the time when all plants have suspended their growth, their blossoming and fruit-bearing. Only certain forest trees remain what is called evergreen through winter. The power of the Sun is then at its lowest.

We know that in all events and occurrences that take place before our senses, spiritual events are interwoven. We know that when we walk through the forest, we have not only the trees about us with their green foliage, but that in the background of existence spiritual and psychic beings are everywhere active. We are already familiar with this thought, which the clever people of our time regard as a childish superstition; we realise it as a true and actual fact.

It is absolutely clear to us that behind all the things of sense, whether they be solid or whether they be happenings which our senses perceive—are spiritual activities, and spiritual life.

Now let us, to begin with, consider what people call our lifeless inorganic Earth, the mineral kingdom of our Earth. This which is apparently lifeless substance, the mineral which to the materialist is merely lifeless, is to us not only endowed with life, but with soul and spirit, so that we speak also of a soul-and-spirit part of our so-called lifeless inorganic, purely mineral Earth. True, when we speak of the consciousness of the Earth, we do not in the first place see in the geological-mineral substance that which may be compared to a man's muscles and blood, but we see only what may be compared to his bony system, namely, the solid earth ; so that when we speak of the consciousness of the Earth, we have to think of it as connected with the whole Earth, not only with its bony system, but with water, air, ether, etc., corresponding to the muscles, blood, and so on.

The whole Earth has consciousness, a consciousness belonging to the mineral kingdom. We shall not occupy ourselves with the differences in this consciousness of the Earth in special regions during the course of the year, but we shall endeavour to evoke in our souls the conception that the whole Earth has consciousness. Let us now turn from the mineral Earth, and direct our attention to all that springs forth and sprouts on Earth, to the plant world.

Looked at in accordance with Spiritual Science, we must regard the plant world, in the first place, as an independent entity in reference to the Earth. That the whole plant world is an independent entity as regards the Earth only comes clearly before us when we consider the consciousness of these two entities or beings. We can speak of a consciousness of the whole mineral Earth, but we can equally speak of a consciousness of the whole plant world which evolves on the Earth. The laws of this consciousness are certainly entirely different from the laws of human consciousness. In speaking of plant consciousness, we must always speak of it as regards certain districts only, because it changes with different regions of the Earth.

As men we are not aware that there really is a certain parallel between our consciousness and the consciousness of the whole plant world, for we are apt to look on our waking consciousness as our complete consciousness, without taking our sleeping consciousness into consideration. To simplify our subject, we say: In the daytime when awake, our ego and astral body are within our physical body. I have, however, often remarked that this in fact refers to our blood and nervous system only, not to the remaining parts of our system. When the ego and astral body withdraw from our head, for instance, they are so much the stronger within other parts of us.

A parallel thing happens on the Earth, when on one part of it there is summer and on the other winter; this also is merely a change of consciousness. The case is the same with ourselves. We are not aware of this, however, because in man the two kinds of consciousness are not of equal clearness; they are of different strength. Night consciousness is beclouded consciousness, for us practically no consciousness at all; while day consciousness is full consciousness of our other side. In the night our lower nature wakes, while with our higher nature we sleep, and it is exactly the same with the Earth, when on the one hemisphere there is winter, on the other there is summer. On one side the consciousness is awake, on the other side it sleeps and vice versa. As I have just said, and as I have often explained, this only holds good in respect to the plant world. We know that the plant world sleeps in the height of summer when there is growth on every side; while it is outwardly unfolding its physical nature—it is asleep. But it wakes to full consciousness during the time when physically, externally, it is going through no development; then the plant world is awake. Thus we speak of all plant life on Earth as a whole; and this plant life, as a whole, has a consciousness.

When speaking of this consciousness which as a second consciousness intermingles with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, we can really say that during the height of summer in our part of the Earth the plant consciousness is asleep, and in depth of winter it is awake. At this season, however, during the time at which we now are, something further takes place.

Now I beg you to note that these two states of consciousness, that is, the general consciousness belonging to the mineral earth, and the general plant consciousness—are always distinct. They are throughout the whole year two separate beings. But these are not only two distinct Beings, for at one season they unite, so that at the present time of year, the one interpenetrates the other. At the time when one year is passing over into the other, the mineral things and events of the Earth and the whole plant world have but one consciousness, which means that these two consciousnesses interpenetrate each other.

What is the nature of the mineral consciousness of the Earth, the varieties of which (as I have said) we shall not study to-day as we shall those of the plant consciousness, which we realise wakes during winter time and sleeps in summer? What is the peculiar nature of this mineral consciousness, this consciousness of the great Earth-Being?

The man who is limited in his physical senses, and limited to the understanding that he considers appertains to these physical senses, can at first know nothing of this great Earth-consciousness. Spiritual Science, however, can instruct as to what this Earth-consciousness really thinks—thinks as we think of plants, animals, air, rivers, mountains, etc. Just as with our ordinary waking consciousness, we think of the things round about us, so, in like manner does the Earth think. Let us inquire to-day: of what does the Earth consciously think?

The Earth thinks with its consciousness the whole firmament of heaven nearest to the Earth. As we look with our eyes on trees and stones, so does the Earth consciously look into space and contemplate all that takes place in the stars. The Earth is a being that meditates on the occurrences of the stars.

Thus fundamentally the mineral consciousness contains the secret of the whole Cosmos. While we men move about on the Earth in a superficial way, thinking merely of the stones against which we knock, or of the many things which our senses reveal to us, the Earth thinks with its consciousness—through which we are passing as we move through space—of the whole Cosmos. She has indeed greater, more all-embracing thoughts than we have. In truth, it is an extraordinarily exalting thought, when we realise: ‘I am not simply passing through the air; I am moving through the thoughts of the Earth.’

Now let us again consider the other consciousness, that of the plants. These are not able to think so much as the Earth can. The thinking consciousness of the plants—not of individual plants, but of the whole united plant-world—is a much more restricted consciousness, it embraces a smaller circle of the Earth throughout the year; but this is not the case at the present season. Plant consciousness is now one with the whole consciousness of the Earth, and because the plant consciousness interpenetrates the earth-consciousness, the plant-world at New Year time, knows the secrets of the stars and applies them. Plants are thus able to unfold again in spring in accordance with the secrets of the cosmos, and can bring forth their blossoms and fruit. In this unfoldment the whole mystery of the cosmos is contained, in the way plants bring forth their leaves, blossoms and fruit.

But during the time the plants are producing their leaves, flowers and fruit, they are not able to meditate upon it. It is only at this present season they can think—now—when the plant consciousness is united with the consciousness of the whole mineral world. This is why it is said in Spiritual Science: About the season of the New Year, two cycles interpenetrate each other.

This is the main secret of all existence—that two cycles penetrate each other; then parting, continue separately their further development; again intermingle, and so on. Only think how marvelous this secret of existence is! Plant-consciousness and mineral-consciousness, two streams of evolution—progress apart through the whole year, then at the time when one year passes over into another, they unite. Again they pass through the year apart, uniting once more at the festival of the New Year. The cyclic advance of history is similar to this.

We turn from this mystic event, through which we are now passing, and which fills us with a deep feeling of holy awe in respect of the passing of one year into the other—we turn to a still deeper mystery.

We know that we are now living in that cycle in which the consciousness-soul is unfolding, that this was preceded by that of the unfolding of the rational or intellectual-soul, which was again preceded by the cycle in which the sentient soul was developed, before which again we go back to the time of development of the sentient body. This takes us back 6,000 years before our Christian era, to a time when all human thought was evolved within the cycle of the sentient body—of the so-called astral body.

We have now to advance through the cycle of the spiritual or consciousness-soul, and through that of the Spirit-Self, and further still man has to develop.

The consciousness-soul (since 1923 translated by Dr. Steiner as the spiritual-soul) is principally developed at the present time because man chiefly makes use of his physical body alone as an instrument. On this account—as you know already from many lectures—this present age is the high tide of materialism. A time will come, however, when man will not only make use of his physical body, but will again learn to use his etheric body, as in earlier times he used his astral body, in the cycle of evolution when that body was the main element of consciousness.

We can therefore say: Our condition at one time on Earth was such, that our soul experienced a contact of its consciousness with the consciousness of our astral body. Just as at New Year, plant-consciousness penetrates mineral consciousness, so, thousands of years ago, did our soul intermingle with our astral body. At that time our soul was one, in its consciousness, with the astral body. The time of that type of consciousness was six thousand years before our era. When that consciousness came about man celebrated a New Year on Earth; a mighty New Year!

Just as we regard the New Year as the mingling of the plant-consciousness with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, so we must realise that 6,000 years before our era a great, a mighty cosmic New Year of our Earth took place. Our Soul-consciousness then united with—passed through—the astral consciousness of our body.

What was it that then took place?

At that time when our inner soul-consciousness passed through (or intermingled with) the astral consciousness of our body—then our limited human consciousness, the consciousness which we have to-day, had progressed as far as the present plant-consciousness at New Year. Just as plants gaze abroad into the heavens because their consciousness has been united to the mineral consciousness of the Earth, so did man then see and perceive a wide field of wisdom six thousand years before our era, when his soul was united with his astral body at the time of the cosmic New Year.

From this time originated the knowledge which we have now lost, since the wisdom of the Gnostics has perished. The source of this knowledge must be sought in the earthly and cosmic New Year about 6,000 B.C. This was the knowledge from which Zarathustra gave forth his teaching; the knowledge, whose last great rays still illuminated the Gnostics, but of which only a few fragments remain. It is the winter of the Earth, but the Earth's New Year to which we here look back.

If we now add four thousand years more to the years we have passed through since the founding of Christianity, we again come to a similar intermingling as that I have just indicated; to the mingling of our soul-consciousness with our astral consciousness, but at a higher stage. Man will once more experience a universal stellar consciousness. For this we endeavour to prepare ourselves through our Spiritual Science, so that there may be men ready to receive it.

We will seek to prepare for this cosmic New Year. If we prepare for it through the keeping of the Christmas Festival, as I indicated in a recent lecture, we are preparing ourselves in the right way. If the birth of spiritual knowledge within us leads to that frame of mind which is in accord with the ‘Christmas Initiation,’ we are preparing ourselves for that new cosmic New Year on which we shall enter twelve thousand years after the previous cosmic New Year.

Twelve months pass by between one union of the plant-consciousness with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, and another. Twelve thousand years pass between one cosmic New Year and another: between one intermingling of the human soul with the Astral World-Soul, and another.

So at this sacred season, we turn from the little New Year to the great cosmic New Year, from the New Year's Eve of our year, to that for which we are preparing ourselves, by endeavouring—now in this winter time—to behold the light, which in a normal elemental way flows into man as inhabitant of the Earth, only at the cosmic New Year.

We really only see the world in the true light, when we grasp what is around us, not only as it is presented to our senses,—as materialists do—but when we accept all that is about us in the outer world as a symbol of the great secrets of the universe.

Then when New Year draws near, it seems as if a message from spiritual worlds approaches, and unveils for us the mysteries connected with the birth of the New Year; and declares, ‘Behold, now in the depths of the dark cold winter, the consciousness of the plant world unites with the mineral consciousness of the earth. Let this be to you a sign that the Earth too has its year—the great cosmic year, of which Zarathustra spoke long ago, explaining how the world passed on from one great New Year's Eve to another; this must be understood by those who really seek to comprehend the course of human evolution.’

Zarathustra spoke of epochs of twelve thousand years. He meant the great cosmic years of which I have spoken to you to-day. He represented the course of human evolution as being divided into four divisions within the Earth year. This fact is deeply rooted in spiritual mysteries.

So, from a deeper understanding of our Spiritual Science, let us accept a true Christmas attitude of reverence. Let us develop within our hearts that inner warmth which comes, when in the frosty night of winter we receive the first intimation of the dawning of the Sun-Spirit on the Earth, and with it the mystery of the revolving year. The thirteen days are the days in which the plant-consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness. If a man is but able to place himself within the plant consciousness, he can dream of—can gain a conception of—the many mysteries which then crowd into his heart, such as did in the dream of Olaf Oesteson, the description and explanation of which entered into and stirred our souls here, this time last year. When we feel such a mood of initiation, we evoke the proper feelings and the perceptions for the aims and objects of our spiritual knowledge and with such warmth of heart we shall make preparations for the new cosmic New Year. Through it we can worthily expect that day which is to usher in a New Year for the world. Thus: when in succeeding incarnations our souls experience the cosmic New Year under quite new conditions on Earth, we shall be able to pass through it as those can for whom the small New Year's Eve (which recurs every twelve months instead of every twelve thousand years) becomes a symbol of the great New Year's Eve of the world.

This is the secret of our existence. Everything is in great as in small, and in small as in great. The small, the yearly cycle, can only be understood aright when it becomes for us a symbol of the mighty events of the cosmos—of the vast cycle of thousands of years. The year is an image of the aeons, and the aeons are the realities of those images which we encounter in the course of a year. When we understand this yearly course aright we are filled, in this important night in which a New Year begins, with thoughts of the great cosmic mysteries. Let our endeavour be, so to attune our souls, that they may look forward to the New Year with this conscious thought: I will accept the year as a symbol of the great cosmic year which contains all mysteries, through which pass and re-pass the Divine Beings who accompany our souls from aeon to aeon, as the lesser Gods follow the secret development of plant and mineral existence throughout the course of an Earth year.

My dear friends, many secrets of the spiritual world must first be explained symbolically or half symbolically, although the images are real and should be taken as realities. It is necessary to use an imaginative language, as I mean to do to-day, it is necessary to speak in the form of images which you can meditate in your soul, because long explanations would be needed if one were to speak: in the form of concepts and not symbolically. But those who bear in mind the things which I shall explain to you to day and who meditate upon them, will not fail to discover the deeper essence which they contain.

About this time of year we always pass over from one period into another. To be sure, this may at first appear to us a mere subdivision of time, but this is not the case. For a deeper instinct led the people, who had to fix the seasons of the year, to follow certain great laws governing the course of time. The festival which marks the transition from an old year to a new one is celebrated in our part of the world in the midst of winter, when the plants cease to grow, blossom and bear fruit. Only certain forest trees keep their so-called evergreen foliage throughout the winter. The sun unfolds its weakest power.

We know that spiritual processes are interwoven with all the processes which we perceive through our senses. We know that when we go through the woods we are not only surrounded by the trees with their green needles or leaves, but that a soul-spiritual essence weaves and works in the mysterious depths of life. We have already seen that things which in the eyes of our “clever” modern people appear as childish superstition, can be experienced as something which points to the real essence of the world.

We are therefore convinced that spiritual forces and influences lie at the foundation of everything physical, of the solid substances or of the physical phenomena which we can perceive through our senses. Let us now look upon the so-called lifeless an-organic earth, upon everything which constitutes the earth's mineral kingdom; let us look upon everything which is not endowed with life. To the materialist these lifeless substances appear devoid of life. But in every lifeless object we can see a soul-element, a spiritual element, so that we can also speak of a soul and spirit pertaining to our so-called lifeless, an-organic, purely mineral earth. When we speak of the consciousness of the earth, we cannot perceive in its geological-mineralogical substance even the trace of anything that can be compared with man's muscles and the blood; we can only see the earth's skeleton, or the earth's solid substance, so that when we speak of the earth's consciousness, we must think of it as being contained in the whole earth, which does not only consist of a skeleton, or of solid parts, but also of water, air, etc., which correspond to the muscles, the blood, etc. of man. The whole earth is endowed with consciousness, with a consciousness which forms part of the mineral kingdom. We shall not speak of the change in the earth's consciousness during the course of the year in a definite region, but shall instead enter more deeply into the idea that the whole earth is endowed with consciousness. Let us now turn away our gaze from the whole mineral earth and observe the plants which sprout and blossom out of the earth.

If we study the vegetable kingdom from the standpoint of spiritual science we must first look upon it as an independent being in respect to the earth. The fact that the vegetable kingdom as a whole is an independent being in respect to the earth, becomes clearly evident if we study the consciousness of these two beings. We can speak of a consciousness pertaining to the whole mineral earth, but we can also speak of a consciousness pertaining to the whole vegetable kingdom which develops upon the earth. The laws which govern this consciousness of course differ from the laws which govern human consciousness. When we speak of the consciousness of plants, we can only bear in mind a definite region of the earth, because the consciousness changes according to the various regions of the earth.

As human beings we do not notice that there is a certain parallelism between our consciousness and, for instance, the consciousness of the vegetable kingdom of the whole earth, because our daytime consciousness, not our night-consciousness, is a fully conscious state. In order to simplify matters, let us say that during our waning daytime consciousness our Ego and our astral body are within our physical body. I have already explained to you that in reality this only applies to our blood and nerve system, but not to the other systems. For when the Ego and the astral body are, as it were, outside the head, they permeate all the more the remaining parts of our organism.

Parallel to this we have the fact that when, for instance, there is winter on one side of the earth, there is summer on the other side. This too is only a transformation of consciousness. It is the same with us human beings. But we do not notice it, because these two states of consciousness are not equally clear. They have different degrees of strength. The night-consciousness is a dulled state of consciousness, practically no consciousness at all, and the daytime consciousness is a full state of consciousness pertaining to the other side of our being. Our lower nature is awake during the night, when our higher nature is asleep, and this is also the case with the earth, for when it is winter on one side, it is summer on the other side. When there is a waiting state of consciousness in one part of our being, there is a sleeping state in the other and vice-versa.

As explained just now (this has frequently been dealt with in other lectures) this only applies to the vegetable kingdom. In the height of summer the vegetable kingdom sleeps, because it sprouts and grows; it sleeps, while it unfolds its physical part to the utmost. And it is fully awake at that time of the year when it does not pass through any external physical development. The vegetable kingdom is then awake. We therefore speak of all the plants upon the earth as a whole; and this whole is endowed with consciousness.

When we speak of this consciousness, which therefore constitutes a second state of consciousness permeating the earth's mineral consciousness, when we speak of this plant-consciousness; we can really say that in our part of the world this plant-consciousness is asleep during the summer and awake during the dark winter season.

But at this time of the year something else takes place. You see, these two states of consciousness, viz. the whole earth-consciousness pertaining to the mineral kingdom and the whole plant-consciousness are distinct and separate: throughout the year they are two separate beings. Yet they are not ONLY two beings, for they permeate each other, so that one is filled by the other during that time of the year in which we are now living. When the old year passes over into the new year, the mineral objects and processes of the earth and the whole vegetable kingdom have ONE consciousness; that is to say, the two states of consciousness interpenetrate.

Of what kind is the MINERAL consciousness of the earth? To-day, however, we shall not consider its different stages in the same way in which we shall consider the consciousness of the plants, which is awake in the winter and asleep in the summer. What is the characteristic of the mineral consciousness, of the consciousness pertaining to the great being of the earth? Those who only rely upon their physical senses and upon the intellect which they think forms part of the physical senses, cannot know anything of this great consciousness of the earth. But spiritual science teaches us to observe the thoughts of the earth-consciousness, for the earth has thoughts, even as we have thoughts of minerals, plants and animals, of the air, the rivers and mountains. The earth has thoughts, in the same way in which we have thoughts concerning our environment, when we live in our ordinary daytime consciousness. What does the earth think? What thoughts live in its consciousness?

In the consciousness of the earth there are to begin with, thoughts connected with the whole heavenly space pertaining to the earth. Even as our eyes look upon the trees and stones, so the consciousness of the earth looks out into the heavenly spaces and harbours thoughts of all that goes on in the stars. The earth is a being that thinks about the stars and the events connected with them.

The mineral consciousness thus contains the secrets of the whole cosmos in the form of thought. Whereas we human beings walk over the surface of the earth and only think of the stones on our path or of many other things in our surroundings which we perceive through our senses, the earth thinks of the cosmos outside; these are the things which live in the consciousness of the earth, and as we walk through space we pass through the consciousness of the earth. The earth has a far wider consciousness and far greater thoughts than we. And it is really an uplifting thought to know: “As you walk along over the surface of the earth, you do not only pass through its atmosphere, but you pass through the thoughts of the earth.”

Let us now envisage something else—let us consider the consciousness of the plants. You see, plants cannot have great thoughts like those of the earth, for their consciousness, the thinking consciousness of the vegetable world (of the WHOLE vegetable kingdom, not of single plants) is far more limited; throughout the year it embraces a far smaller sphere pertaining to the earth—EXCEPT IN THESE DAYS, for at this time of the year (end of December/early January) the consciousness of the plants permeates the consciousness of the earth. The vegetable kingdom becomes aware of the secrets of the stars, it comprehends the mysteries of the stairs and uses them, so that in the springtime the plants may unfold again and bear blossoms and fruits in accordance with the mysteries of the cosmos. For the whole mystery of the cosmos is contained in the way in which the plants bear leaves, blossoms and fruits.

But while the plants develop their leaves, flowers and fruits they cannot develop thoughts about these processes. They can think of these processes only at this time of the year, when the consciousness of the vegetable world unites with the consciousness of the mineral world.

In spiritual science we therefore say; Two cycles interpenetrate at this time of the year, approximately around New Year's Eve.

The secret of existence consists in the fact that cycles INTERPENETRATE, continue their development separately and again interpenetrate. How wonderful is this secret of life! Two streams of development—the vegetable consciousness and the mineral consciousness, which take their course separately throughout the year, unite when one year passes over into the next. Then they develop separately until the end of the year when they unite once more. This constitutes the cyclic course of history.

Let us now pass over from this mystery, which can fill us with a deep, sacred feeling of reverence for the secret of the transition of one annual cycle into the next, let us now pass over to a still greater mystery. You know that we are living in the cycle which is connected with the development of the Consciousness-soul, which was preceded by the cycle connected with the development of the Understanding or Intellectual soul and by the cycle connected with the Sentient soul? If we go back still further, we come to the development of the Sentient Body. This leads us to the year 5000 B.C., when all human thinking developed under the influence of the sentient body, the so-called astral body.

In the course of human evolution we shall have to pass through the consciousness soul, the Spirit-Self, and still higher stages of development.

At the present time the consciousness-soul develops chiefly through the fact that the human being only uses his physical body as an instrument of perception. This brought us to the present; climax of materialism (we dealt with this in other lectures), for we use above all our physical body. But a time will come when we shall not only use the physical body, but also the etheric body, even as we once used our astral body, during the epoch of human development when the astral body supplied the chief foundation of consciousness.

We may therefore say: Once upon a time we lived upon the earth in such a way that our soul passed through a phase in which its consciousness contacted with the consciousness of our astral body. Even as at the end of the year the plants' consciousness passes through the. mineral consciousness, so thousands of years ago our soul passed through our astral body, through the consciousness pertaining to our astral body. At that time, the consciousness of our soul and the consciousness of our astral body were one. This leads us back thousands of years, to the year 6000 B.C. When this state of consciousness began, humanity on earth celebrated a new year, a great cosmic new year. Even as the new year now brings with it a union of the consciousness of the plants with the consciousness of the minerals, so 6000 years before our Christian ere marked the beginning of a new cosmic year upon the earth. It was a great cosmic new year! Our soul's consciousness then passed Through the astral consciousness. of our body.

What took place at that time? At that time, 6000 years B.C., when our inner soul-consciousness passed through the astral consciousness of our body, our limited human consciousness, such as we have it now, extended as far as the consciousness of the plants at New Year. Even as the plant looks out into the heavenly spaces, through the fact that its consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness, so 6000 years B.C. the human being saw and perceived an extensive field of wisdom, during that ancient cosmic NEW YEAR, when his soul united with the astral body.

From that time comes the lost wisdom (we spoke of this a few. days ago), the gnostic wisdom which disappeared. We must look for the origin of this wisdom in the cosmic New Year about 6000 years before our era. This, is the source from which Zarathustra drew his knowledge; it is the wisdom that illumined the Gnostics with its last rays, but as already explained, only a few traces of this gnostic wisdom have remained to us. It is the winter of the earth, but at the same time a cosmic new year of the earth, to which we go back.

Now add about 4000 years to the time which has passed since the founding of Christianity; this will bring us to a time when we shall again pass through our astral consciousness, but upon a higher stage. Our soul will again pass through our astral consciousness, through a cosmic star-consciousness. Let us prepare ourselves for this event, so that it may not find us unprepared.

Let us prepare ourselves for this Cosmic New Year! By preparing ourselves for the Christmas Festival, as explained during one of my last lectures, we prepare ourselves in the right way for the Cosmic New Year. If the birth of spiritual knowledge lives within us as a sacred Christmas feeling, we prepare ourselves in the right way for the new Cosmic New Year, which begins 12,000 years after the old cosmic year.

Twelve months of the year pass by from the union of the earth's vegetable consciousness with the mineral consciousness, to another union. Twelve thousands of years pass by from one Cosmic New Year to the other Cosmic New Year of the earth, from one passage of the human soul through the astral world to a new passage of the human soul through the astral world.

In this solemn hour, we thus look from the new year upon a small scale to the New Year upon a great cosmic scale, from the ordinary New Year's Eve to the cosmic New Year's Eve, for which we prepare ourselves if we try to perceive in the very midst of winter the light which only streams towards us, as inhabitants of the earth, during a cosmic New Year. Then it comes to us in a natural, elemental way.

We really see the world in its true light if we perceive the surrounding world not only in the way in which it appears to our senses, not only in accordance with a materialistic mentality, but if we look upon the external physical world as a symbol for the great mysteries of the cosmos.

The approach of New Year's Eve may therefore appear to us like the approach of a messenger from the spiritual world, revealing to us the mysteries connected with the end of the year and bringing us the following message:

“Behold, in the midst of the dark cold winter season the vegetable consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness of the earth. Let this be a sign to you that the earth too has its own cycle, namely the great cosmic year mentioned by Zarathustra, which goes from one Cosmic New Year's Eve to the other, and which we must understand if we wish to grasp the course of human development.”

Zarathustra speaks of twelve thousands of years, the twelve thousand years mentioned just now. He described the course of one Earthly Year, and divided it into four seasons representing the course of human evolution upon the earth. This is deeply rooted in the spiritual mysteries.

Let us fill our hearts and souls with a festive, earnest feeling, born out of a deeper comprehension of our spiritual science. Let us unfold within our heart that inner warmth which can be felt when in the midst of the cold winter night we hear the message of the Sun-Spirit's descent to the earth and then learn to know the mystery of the year's course.

The thirteen days from the 24th of December to the 6th of January are the days in which the plants' consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness. If the human being can transfer himself into the consciousness of the plants, he can see and dream of many mysteries which pass through his heart in many forms—he can have dreams such as that of Olaf Åsteson.

If we develop such feelings and moods, we obtain the right attitude towards the aims of our spiritual knowledge; these warm feelings which stream through our heart are a preparation for the New Cosmic Year, and they enable us to await it worthily, to look forward to that cosmic New Year's Eve which brings a new cosmic year. In future incarnations, when our souls will pass through the great Cosmic New Year, we shall experience it in the right way if the end of the year which closes the small cycle of twelve months becomes a symbol for the great end of the year which closes a cycle of twelve thousand years.

This is the secret of our existence. The things which take place upon a small scale always correspond to the things which take place upon a large scale, and upon a large scale the things are the same as upon a small scale. The small scale, the course of one year, can only be grasped if it becomes a symbol for the great cosmic course, for the cycle which encompasses thousands of years.

The year is an image for the Aeons. And Aeons are the reality of symbols which we encounter in the course of one year. If we really understand the year's course, our hearts will be deeply moved toy the mysteries of the cosmos, at this time of the year which marks the beginning of a new year. Let us try to attune our soul so that it can look into the new year conscious of the fact that it can bear within it the year's course as a symbol for the great COSMIC course, which encompasses all the mysteries pursued, by spiritual Beings who surge and weave through the universe from aeon to aeon, in the same way in which the Lesser Gods pursue the mysteries connected with the development of the vegetable and mineral Kingdoms during the course of one year.

Held in Dornach on 27 May 1923, 23 October 1923, 3 January 1924 for the “Wachsmuth-Lerchenfeld Group” ¹

Text by Maria Röschl-Lehrs, “written down immediately afterwards from memory”.

I

n the introduction, it was explained why such a group is possible again now. A clear consciousness is necessary. In the past, people approached the institutions of anthroposophy with too little awareness, too little spiritual awareness.

If what had been given in those old esoteric contexts had been published, it would have given rise to many cults in the world. But because it was not published, hatred and betrayal of the cause arose.

These people here have not been summoned by him, they have gathered together themselves. He has refused to continue forming such groups himself in the face of the spiritual world. Don't be proud! There are more people who would be suitable, including those who are further along! Here are only those who have found each other. Through meditation. It is not just a personal matter, but has world significance. The Cosmos is interested in whether we do it or not.

Oh man...²

Legend [Temple Legend] new appendix two directions - in John the center. Recognizing what comes from the two directions. Fire, because both unite against the center. Hatred against the continuation of this center.

Wake up! Wake up to these two directions, but also in general. Wake up through right meditation! Goethe was fully awake, Schiller only half awake, Herder and Lessing slept completely.

In the face of the mystery of Golgotha, the words of an initiate were: Salem. Now the reversal: Melas... the circle is complete.

Addendum: Before that, Mach ben ach - son of the earth of suffering, or the physical body has separated from the soul and spirit.

Vocal exercise – pilgrimage to the self ³
O A J A O: I in the midst of light and space
A J O J A: Space for me and light
J O A O J: Light through space and me
I am

Now only that of the two directions and the fire.⁴

The Temple Legend

The wording of the temple legend from the esoteric hour of May 27, 1923, was reconstructed afterwards by various participants from memory and from texts from the earlier Erkenntnis cultic work context. The designation “New version, given in spring 1923”, under which this wording was passed on, actually applies only to the last conclusion (in the notes of Maria Lehrs-Röschl designated as “New Appendix”). In the first part, the legend text corresponds word for word to that of Rudolf Steiner's 1906 transcript (p. 365). The subsequent description of the casting of the brazen sea and Hiram's death, on the other hand, shows some variants compared to the earlier descriptions. The description in the 1923 version, which begins after the sentence from Rudolf Steiner's transcript (p. 367): “Hiram is only in possession of a real-human ego,” reads as follows:

From this point on, King Solomon is seized by violent jealousy against his master builder Hiram Abiff. The latter had three journeymen working on the temple construction who demanded the master's degree from him. However, they had shown their incompetence by cutting a mighty beam, which was irreplaceable for the construction of the temple, too short. Hiram had remedied the accident by stretching the beam to the correct length with his special powers. They are now Hiram Abiff's opponents because they had to be rejected by him when they demanded the master's degree and the master's word from him, for which they were not yet ready. The three treacherous companions have no difficulty in finding the ear of the king for the deed by which they want to corrupt Hiram Abiff.

The completion of the temple construction was to be crowned by a work in which Hiram Abiff sought to reconcile the tension and enmity between the Cain and Abel sons. It was the brazen sea, whose casting was to be made from the seven basic metals (lead, tin, iron, gold, copper, mercury and silver) and water, the metal of the earth, in such a way that the finished casting would be completely transparent. The thing was finished except for one very last step, which was to be carried out in front of the assembled court, including the Queen of Sheba, and which was to transform the still cloudy substance into one that was completely clear.

Now the three treacherous companions who had the task of adding the last ingredient mixed the water in the wrong proportion, and instead of becoming transparent, the casting sprayed in devastating flames. Hiram Abiff tried to calm the fire, but failed. The flames burst out on all sides.

But Hiram Abiff heard a voice from the flames and from the glowing mass: Plunge into the sea of fire, you are invulnerable. He plunged into the flames and realized that his path led to the center of the earth. Halfway there he met Tubal Cain, his ancestor. He led him to the center of the earth, where the great ancestor Cain was in the state he was in before the sin of killing Abel. He gave him the golden triangle with the master word. Halfway up, Tubal Cain gave him a hammer and instructed him to touch the casting of the brazen sea with it. There Hiram Abiff receives from Cain the explanation that the vigorous development of human powers on earth ultimately leads to the height of initiation, and that the initiation attained in this way must take the place of the old vision in the course of the world, that the latter will disappear. With the hammer, Hiram returns to the earth's surface; he touches the brazen sea with it, the casting is successful, and he was able to make it completely transparent.

Hiram wanted to see his work, the temple, for the last time and went there at night. There the false companions waylayed him. The first struck him on the left temple at one of the gates, so that the blood flowed down to the shoulder. Hiram Abiff turned to the second gate to leave the temple. There the second companion struck him on the right temple, so that the blood flowed down to the shoulder. He turned to the third gate. There the third journeyman struck him on the forehead, so that he collapsed. He still dragged himself out to a well, into which he sank the golden triangle. The three journeymen buried his body. Before his death, Hiram was still able to sink the golden triangle with the master word into a deep well. On his grave grew a cassia tree, an acacia. It was known to the initiated that a cassia tree grows out of the grave of an initiate. When his body was found, the new master word resounded: “Mach ben ach”.⁵ This means: The spiritual soul has separated from the physical body or: the otherness of the body.⁶ They then searched for the golden triangle and found it in the well. A cubic stone with the Ten Commandments was placed on the triangle and thus it was hidden and walled up in the temple.

With this symbolism, that which in meditation elevated the inner essence of human development on earth to imagination was given. The brazen sea can be seen as a symbol of what man would have become if the three treacherous forces had not found a place in the soul. These three treacherous forces are: doubt, superstition, and the illusion of personal self.

Hiram Abiff was reborn as Lazarus and was thus the one who was first initiated by Christ. With him began the (reconciliation of the differences) that stood between the Cain and Abel currents.

According to another record, the “new appendix” reads as follows:

Hiram Abiff was reborn as Lazarus and thus became the first to be initiated by Christ. With him began the current of the center, which stood between the Cain and Abel currents. Over time, the Cain current found its main representatives in the F. (Masonry current), while the Abel current found its expression in the priestly current of the (Catholic?) Church. Both currents of humanity remained strictly hostile to each other. Only once did they unite in harmony: in their hatred of the current of the center. The result of this harmonious union of two otherwise hostile directions was the destruction of the Johannesbau (Goetheanum).

II

First, the Indian mantram was given for the first time, the translation for the first time. After this Indian mantram, the regular invocation was made: “Brothers of the...”

True esotericism is initially incomprehensible. As an example, imagine a living person who expresses absolutely no spiritual life on the outside. His spiritual life is directed entirely inwards. Nevertheless, it is an intense inner life.

About the vowels: hierarchies are involved.
I A O Seraphim, Cherubim and partly Thrones are involved.
U Kyriotetes, Exusiai, Dynamis
E _ Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi.

The whole together means the ancient-holy word of Jahve in place of the I-am. To create this word of Jahve out of the hierarchies means an act. The execution of this act on earth: the butterfly meditation:

Catch the butterfly
Send it to the icy heights
Where the world's secrets prevail.
It will become a bird for you
Then you have done half the work
. Dip the bird
Into the depths of the sea - - - - - JAOUE
Where the will of the world is at work.
If the bird drowns,
Then you still have to do,
Purifying the bird's corpse
By burning it in the fire.
Then consume the ashes
And you are
The light in the darkness of the world.

The visualization of this butterfly meditation has an ethereal effect. Only a simple interpretation. Searching in memory with the three and a half years following the butterfly meditation. Its ethereal effect is connected with the fact that it causes one to occupy oneself with one's own will, and in the retrospective examination of one's own will, one can find a point in one's life where this will has had a very specific impulse towards certain tasks. It is often the case that when searching for such moments of volition, the non-fulfillment of which has caused dissatisfaction, one comes to a point about three and a half years ago. (Prevention by external circumstances, for example, threefolding.)

Once this point has been reached, the task is to cultivate the content of this longing, not to try to carry out the deed, but to cultivate the content as much as possible, in the highest way. Then, three and a half years after this point in time, there will be another opportunity for realization. And then the task will be to perform a selfless act that has nothing to do with the starting point of seven years ago. This can also be a very inconspicuous act outwardly.

Description of the times, the situation. The present lectures and this hour are, in comparison to the prevailing fanaticism at the height of democracy outside, just the opposite; they signify the height of aristocracy and hierarchy. An enormous abyss that evolution must leap across in order to overcome these contradictions. Descriptions of this abyss, over which some courageously leap, others are dragged, others are torn. The whole thing is a heroic tragedy in the history of mankind.

Falter-Meditation
Invocation
Indian Mantram

III

Brothers of the... Indian Mantram

Indication that the new society was founded without mentioning the esoteric reason. (He had previously said that the reasoning had esoteric reasons.) Esotericism does not tolerate playing around, everything so far has been playful [taken]. Now esotericism must be brought openly and seriously into life, from Dornach, as the center. But now we really must not play with esotericism anymore. For that, modesty is needed, above all modesty before the ego.

Therefore, wake up! Become aware that we are asleep! With each waking we enter into a new sphere of the world, for we live completely surrounded by spheres of the world, only we sleep and know nothing of them. So far, everything in man only happens in dreams. The importance of the Falter meditation (he had said last time that everything he said about the effect of this meditation and its connection with the two times three and a half years only applies to people over 28). Reading it out loud – J A O U E.

Something should be added to enhance the effect of this meditation by Falter:

4 stages of falling asleep: in thinking, feeling, willing, in the I
4 stages of waking up: in thinking, feeling, willing, in the I

Thinking:

The head is like a fruit, the heart like a glowing chalice. We should experience our head as self-illuminating right down to our heart. We should experience our thinking as an etheric organ that feels its way towards everything it is meant to grasp. The difference between the occultist and the non-occultist is that the occultist is aware that this organ radiates out into the etheric. We should experience ourselves as a snail stretching out its feelers. Thinking must become a feeling process! Help for this:

Awaken in thinking: you are in the spiritual light of the world.

Experience yourself as radiant, feeling the radiance.

Through such thinking, all of nature becomes radiant. Stone and plant shine forth in the earthly... as animal and human being... in the moral. Through the experience of thinking as touching, we develop something like a sense of touch: we see a dandelion blossom and experience it as sand; we see chicory and experience it as silk, a sunflower as a spiky animal...

Feeling:

This is still a deep dream. We should experience our heart as glowing, but in such a way that it absorbs light from our entire environment and reflects it back outwards like the moon. Through our awakening feeling, we must experience the world quite differently; the earth as a sentient being that laughs and cries. In the withering of autumn there is a kind of weeping in nature, but joy of the Ahrimanic beings in winter, joy of the luciferic beings in spring. Natural processes as deeds of spiritual beings! Trees - in winter they are only their physical body, the etheric is outside. One can come to see how the trees solve tasks in the etheric.

When one awakens in thinking, one expands into infinity. When one awakens in feeling, one sets oneself in motion, one leaves oneself.

Awaken in feeling: you are in the spiritual deeds of the world.

Experience yourself, feeling the spiritual deeds.

Wanting:

In this respect, the human being of the present is still in a state of deep sleep. But in the realm of the will, the human being is completely on his own. He has his thinking only in this embodiment, taking nothing of it with him into the afterlife. The gods need our thinking, but they do not need our feeling and willing. A person may be ingenious, but only because the gods need it that way. Geniuses are the lamps that the gods need. Our thinking abilities return to the gods after death.

Our will, on the other hand, goes with us through our embodiments; it is a result of our embodiments, we work on it through our earthly lives. In our cooperation in shaping the world, our will is what is essentially characteristic. The will is man's property, while man's thinking belongs to the gods. Envy of the gods! In our volition, we have a life of our own. But people are still asleep in their volition. They love their volition because they always believe that what they want is already the right thing. But with our volition, we are helping to shape the world. We wake up in our volition by becoming aware that we are not alone, but are responsible for the actions of others. For example, Kully: What he does, especially what upsets us the most, is our fault, we are actually participating; Goesch affair = Maya.⁷When we no longer feel ourselves as separate individual beings, but so connected in the general activity, then we awaken in the will, then we come to the living will, then we think the spiritual beings: Awaken in the will: you are in the spiritual beings of the world. The spiritual beings experience you thinking.

Awakening in the I:

We sleep in the I. We use the word “I” only because the gods once spoke it for us - our angeloi - and now, imitating them, we speak it. But we must awaken in the I! Imagination for this: altar, above it the sun. We approach the altar and experience ourselves entirely as shadows, entirely as insubstantial. So far we have said: I am. Now we consciously say: I am not. – Then a deity rises out of the sun above the altar and animates the shadow. We are like a bowl that receives the light of the deity rising out of the sun. – By grace we receive this deity, it gives itself to us. – Fichte experienced this, but only in a shadowy way. Therefore, what he says about it is completely abstract.

In the I awaken: you are in your own spiritual being.

Experience yourself as receiving from and giving to the gods.⁸

Then it was said:
The stones are mute...
Brothers of the...
Indian saying

• 1. Named by Rudolf Steiner (see page 466) because the initiative came from the two Wachsmuth brothers, Count Lerchenfeld and Harriet von Vacano. The following participants are known by name: Marie Steiner, Dr. Ita Wegman, Dr. Elisabeth Vreede, Albert Steffen, Dr. Günther Wachsmuth, Wolfgang Wachsmuth and his wife, Dr. Kurt Piper, Dr. Otto Palmer, Dr. von Baravalle, Dr. Maria Röschl, Count Lerchenfeld, Harriet von Vacano, Jürgen von Grone, Margarita Woloschin.
• 2. This mantram was later incorporated into the mantras of the first class of the School of Spiritual Science.
• 3. See original recording on page 473.
• 4. Regarding this, Maria Röschl-Lehrs' note: “Only very sparse notes here. The order is not clear.”
• 5. Here, according to the usual traditions, the intermediate link is missing: Solomon gave the order to search for Hiram's body. Since it was believed that the murderers had extorted the master word from Hiram, it was agreed that they would remain silent during the search. The first word that one of the masters spoke unintentionally while digging up the body was to be considered the new master word. When the body was found after a long search, the word “Mach ben ach” escaped from one of them at that moment. This was accepted as a new master word.
• 6. Another record has here: “Earth son of suffering”.
• 7. Kully and Goesch: two opponents actively appearing at the time.
• 8. Cf. the manuscript on page 477.

[ 1 ] Midway between body and spirit lives the soul. The impressions which come to it through the body are transitory. They are present only as long as the body opens its organs to the things of the outer world. My eye perceives the colour of the rose only as long as the rose is in front of it and my eye is itself open. The presence of the things of the outer world as well as of the bodily organs is necessary in order that an impression, a sensation, or a perception can occur. But what I have recognised in my intellect as truth concerning the rose does not pass with the present moment. And as regards its truth, it is not in the least dependent on me. It would be true even although I had never stood before the rose. What I know through the spirit is rooted in an element of the soul-life, through which the soul is linked with a world-content that manifests itself in the soul independently of its bodily basis. The point is not whether what manifests itself is essentially imperishable, but whether its manifestation for the soul takes place in such a way that the soul's perishable bodily basis takes no part, but only that which is independent of the perishable element. The enduring element in the soul comes under observation at the moment one becomes aware that the soul has experiences which are not bounded by its perishable factor. Again the important point is not whether these experiences come to consciousness primarily through perishable processes of the bodily organisation, but the fact that they contain something which does indeed dwell in the soul, but yet in its truth is independent of the transient process of the perception. The soul is placed between the present and duration, in that it holds the middle place between body and spirit. But it also mediates between the present and duration. It preserves the present for remembrance. It thereby rescues the present from impermanence, and takes it up into the duration of its own spiritual being. It also stamps that which endures upon the temporal and impermanent by not merely yielding itself up in its own life to the transitory incitements, but by determining things from out of its own initiative, and embodying its own nature in them in the shape of the actions it performs. By remembrance the soul preserves the yesterday; by action it prepares the to-morrow.

[ 2 ] My soul would always have to perceive afresh the red of the rose, in order to have it in consciousness, if it could not retain it through remembrance. What remains after an external impression, what can be retained by the soul, can again become a conception, independently of the external impression. Through this power of forming conceptions, the soul makes the outer world so into its own inner world that it can then retain the latter in the memory—for remembrance—and, independent of the impressions acquired, lead therewith a life of its own. The soul-life thus becomes the enduring result of the transitory impressions of the external world.

But action also receives permanence when once it is stamped on the outer world. If I cut a twig from a tree, something has taken place through my being, which completely changes the course of events in the outer world. Something quite different would have happened to the branch of the tree if I had not interfered by my action. I have called into life a series of effects which, without my existence, would not have been present. What I have done to-day endures for to-morrow; it becomes lasting through the deed, as my impressions of yesterday have become permanent for my soul through memory.

[ 3 ] For this fact of becoming permanent through action we do not, in our ordinary consciousness, form a definite conception, like that which we have for “memory,” for the becoming permanent of an experience which has occurred as the result of a perception. But will not the “I” of a man be just as much linked to the alteration in the world resulting from his deed as it is to a memory resulting from an impression? The “I” judges new impressions differently, according as it has or has not this or that other recollection. But it has also as “I” entered into a different relation to the world according as it has performed one deed or another. Whether in the relation between the world and my “I” a certain something new is present or not, depends upon whether or not I have made an impression on another person through an action. I am a different man in relation to the world after having made an impression on my surroundings.

The fact that what is here indicated is not so generally noticed as is the change in the “I” through the acquiring of a recollection, is solely due to the circumstance that the recollection unites itself, immediately on being formed, with the soul-life, which man always feels to be his own; but the external effects of the deed are independent of soul-life and work out in consequences which again are something different from what is retained in the recollection. But apart from this it must be admitted that, after a deed has been accomplished, there is something in the world which the ego has sealed with its own character. If one really thinks out what is here being considered, the question must arise as to whether the results of a deed on which the “I” has stamped its own nature might not retain a tendency to return to the “I,” just as an impression preserved in the memory, revives in response to some external inducement. What is preserved in the memory waits for such an inducement. Could not that which has retained the imprint of the “I” in the external world wait also, so as to approach the human soul from without, just as memory, in response to a given inducement, approaches it from within? This matter is put forward here only as a question: for certainly it might happen that the opportunity would never occur, through which the results of a deed, bearing the impress of the ego, could meet the human soul. But that these results do exist, as such, and that, through their presence, they determine the relation of the world to the “I” is seen at once to be a possible conception, when one really follows out in thought the matter before us. In the following considerations, we shall enquire whether there is anything in human life which, starting from this possibility, points to a reality.

[ 4 ] Let us first consider memory. How does it originate? Evidently in quite a different way from sensation or perception. Without the eye I cannot have the sensation “blue.” But through the eye I in no way have the remembrance of “blue.” If the eye is to give me this sensation now, a blue thing must come before it. The body would allow all impressions to sink back again into nothing were it not that whilst the present image is being formed through the act of perception, something is also taking place in the relationship between the outer world and the soul, as a result of which the man is able, subsequently, to form, through his own inner processes, a fresh image of that which he received in the first place as an image from outside himself. (Anyone who has acquired practice in observing the life of the soul will be able to realise how erroneous it is to say that a man has a perception to-day, and to-morrow, through memory, the same perception appears again, having meanwhile remained somewhere or other within him. No; the perception which I now have is a phenomenon which passes away with the “now.” When recollection takes place, a process occurs in me which is the result of something that happened, in addition to the calling forth of the actual present image, in the relation between the external world and me. The image called forth through remembrance is a new one, and not the old one preserved. Recollection consists in the fact that one can make a fresh mental image to oneself, and not that a former image can revive. What appears again in recollection is something different from the original image itself. These remarks are made here, because in the domain of Spiritual Science it is necessary that more accurate conceptions should be framed than is the case in ordinary life, and indeed also in ordinary science.) I remember; that is, I experience something which is itself no longer present. I unite a past experience with my present life. This is the case with every remembrance. Let us say for instance, that I meet a man and recognise him again because I met him yesterday. He would be a complete stranger to me were I not able to unite the picture which I made yesterday by perception, with my impression of him to-day. The picture of to-day is given me by the sense-perception, that is to say, by my sense-organisation. But who conjures yesterday's picture into my soul? It is the same being in me that was present during my experience yesterday, and is also present in that of to-day. In the previous explanations it has been called soul. Were it not for this faithful preserver of the past, each external impression would be always new to a man. Clearly the process by which perception becomes a recollection is that the soul imprints it upon the body, as though it were stamped upon it. But the soul must both make the impression and also itself perceive the impression it has made, just as it perceives any object outside itself. It is in this way that the soul is the preserver of memory.

[ 5 ] As preserver of the past the soul continually gathers treasures for the human spirit. That I can distinguish what is correct from what is incorrect depends on the fact that I, as a human being, am a thinking being, able to grasp the truth in my spirit. Truth is eternal; and it could always reveal itself to me again in things, even if I were always to lose sight of the past and each impression were to be a new one to me. But the spirit within me is not restricted to the impressions of the present alone; the soul extends its horizon over the past. And the more it is able to bring to the spirit out of the past, the richer does it make the spirit. Thus the soul hands on to the spirit what it has received from the body. The spirit of man therefore carries at each moment of its life a two-fold possession within itself: firstly the eternal laws of the good and the true; secondly, the remembrance of the experiences of the past. What it does, it accomplishes under the influence of these two factors. If we want to understand a human spirit we must therefore know two different things about it: first, how much of the eternal has revealed itself to it; second, how much treasure from the past lies stored up within it.

[ 6 ] These treasures by no means remain in the spirit in an unchanged form. The impressions man acquires from his experiences fade gradually from the memory. Not so their fruits. One does not remember all the experiences one lived through during childhood while acquiring the faculties of reading and writing. But one could not read or write if one had not had the experiences, and if their fruits had not been preserved in the form of abilities. And that is the transmutation which the spirit effects on the treasures of memory. It consigns whatever can merely lead to pictures of the separate experiences to their fate, and extracts from them only the force necessary for enhancing its own abilities. Thus not one experience passes by unutilised; the soul preserves each one as memory, and from each the spirit draws forth all that can enrich its abilities and the whole content of its life. The human spirit grows through assimilated experiences. And although one cannot find the past experiences in the spirit as it were in a storeroom, one nevertheless finds their effects in the abilities which the man has acquired.

[ 7 ] Spirit and soul have thus far been considered only within the period lying between birth and death. One cannot stop there. Anyone wishing to do so would be like a man who observes the human body also within the same limits. Much can certainly be discovered within these limits; but the human form can never be explained by what lies between birth and death. It cannot build itself up directly out of mere physical substances and forces. It can only descend from a form like its own, which arises as the resultant of what has been handed on by heredity. The physical materials and forces build up the body during life; the forces of propagation enable another body, a body which can have the same form, to proceed from it; that is to say, one which is able to be the bearer of a similar life-body. Each life-body is a repetition of its forefather. Only because it is such a repetition does it appear, not in any chance form, but in that passed on to it by heredity. The forces which make possible my human form lay in my forefathers. But the spirit of a man appears also in a definite form (the word “form” is naturally used in a spiritual sense). And the forms of the spirit are the most varied imaginable in different persons. No two men have the same spiritual form. Investigations in this region should be made in just as quiet and matter-of-fact a manner as in the physical world. It cannot be said that the differences in human beings in a spiritual respect arise only from the differences in their environment, their upbringing, etc. This is by no means the case: for two people under similar influences as regards environment, upbringing, etc., develop in quite different ways. One must therefore admit that they have entered on their path of life with quite different qualities Here one is brought face to face with an important fact which when its full bearing is recognised, sheds light on the being of man. A person who is set upon directing his outlook exclusively towards material happenings, could indeed assert that the individual differences of human personalities arise from differences in the constitution of the material germs. (And in view of the laws of heredity discovered by Gregor Mendel and further developed by others, such a view can say much that gives it the appearance of justification, even to a scientific judgment.) One who judges in this way only shows, however, that he has no insight into the real relation of man to his experience. For it is obvious to careful observation that external circumstances affect different persons in different ways, because of something which is not the direct result of their material development. To the really accurate investigator in this domain it becomes apparent that what proceeds from the material basis can be distinguished from that which, it is true, arises through the mutual interaction of the man with his experiences, but which can only take shape and form in that the soul itself enters into this mutual interaction. It is clear that the soul stands here in relation to something within the external world, which, by virtue of its very nature, cannot be connected with the material, germinal basis.

[ 8 ] Human beings differ from their animal fellow-creatures on the earth through their physical form. But in respect of this form they are, within certain limits, like one another. There is only one human species. However great may be the differences between races, tribes, peoples, and personalities, as regards the physical body, the resemblance between man and man is greater than between man and any animal species. Everything that finds expression in the human species is conditioned through inheritance from forefathers to descendants. And the human form is bound to this heredity. As the lion can inherit its physical form through lion forefathers only, so can the human being inherit his physical body through human forefathers only.

[ 9 ] Just as the physical similarity of men is clear to the eye, so does the difference of their spiritual forms reveal itself to the unprejudiced spiritual gaze. There is one very evident fact through which this is expressed. It consists in the existence of the life-history of a human being. Were a human being merely a member of a species, no life-history could exist. A lion, a dove, lay claim to interest in so far as they belong to the lion or the dove species. The single being in all its essentials has been understood when one has described the species. It matters little whether one has to do with father, son, or grandson. What is of interest in them, father, son and grandson have in common. But what a human being signifies begins, not where he is merely a member of a species, but where he is a single individual being. I have not in the least understood the nature of Mr. Smith if I have described his son or his father. I must know his own life-history. Anyone who reflects on the nature of biography becomes aware that in respect of the spiritual each man is a species for himself. Those people, to be sure, who regard a biography merely as a collection of external incidents in the life of a person, may claim they can write the biography of a dog in the same way as that of a man. But anyone who depicts in a biography the real individuality of a man, grasps the fact that he has in the biography of one human being something that corresponds to the description of a whole species in the animal kingdom. The point is not—and this is quite obvious—that one can relate something in the nature of a biography about an animal—especially clever ones—but the point is that the human biography does not correspond to the life-history of the individual animal but to the description of the animal species. Of course there will always be people who will seek to refute what has been said here by urging that owners of menageries, for instance, know how single animals of the same species differ from one another. The man who judges thus, shows however, that he is unable to distinguish the difference between individuals from a difference which reveals itself as acquired only through individuality.

[ 10 ] Now if genus or species in the physical sense becomes intelligible only when one understands it as conditioned by heredity, so too the spiritual being can be understood only through a similar spiritual heredity. I have received my physical human form because of my descent from human forefathers. Whence have I that which finds expression in my life-history? As physical man, I repeat the shape of my forefathers. What do I repeat as spiritual man? Anyone claiming that what is comprised in my life-history required no further explanation, but has just be accepted as such, must be regarded as being also bound to maintain that he has seen, somewhere, an earth-mound on which the lumps of matter have, quite by themselves, conglomerated into a living man.

[ 11 ] As physical man I spring from other physical men, for I have the same shape as the whole human species. The qualities of the species, accordingly, could thus be acquired within the species through heredity. As spiritual man I have my own form as I have my own life-history. I can therefore have obtained this form from no one but myself. And since I entered the world not with undefined but with defined soul-predispositions, and since the course of my life, as it comes to expression in my life-history, is determined by these predispositions, my work upon myself cannot have begun with my birth. I must, as spiritual man, have existed before my birth. In my forefathers I certainly did not exist; for they as spiritual human beings, are different from me. My life-history is not explainable through theirs. On the contrary, I must, as spiritual being, be the repetition of someone through whose life-history mine can be explained. The only thinkable alternative would be this: that I owe the form of the content of my life-history to a spiritual life only, prior to birth (or more correctly to conception.) But one would only be entitled to hold this idea if one were willing to assume that what acts upon the human soul from its physical surroundings is of the same nature as what the soul receives from a purely spiritual world. Such an assumption contradicts really accurate observation. For what affects the human soul out of its physical environment works in the same way as a later experience works on a similar earlier experience in the same life. In order to observe these relations correctly, one must acquire a perception of how there are impressions operating in human life, whose influence upon the aptitudes of the soul is like standing before a deed that has to be done, in contrast to what has already been practised in physical life. But the soul does not bring faculties gained in this immediate life to meet these impressions, but aptitudes which receive the impressions in the same way as do the faculties acquired through practice. Anyone who penetrates into these matters, arrives at the conception of earth-lives which must have preceded this present one. He cannot in his thinking stop at purely spiritual experiences preceding this present earth-life. The physical form which Schiller bore, he inherited from his forefathers. But just as little as Schiller's physical form can have grown directly out of the earth, as little can his spiritual being have arisen directly out of a spiritual environment. He must himself be the re-embodiment of a spiritual being, through whose life-history his own will be explicable, just as his physical human form is explicable through human propagation. In the same way, therefore, as the physical human form is again and again a repetition, a re-embodiment, of the distinctively human species, so too the spiritual human being must be a re-embodiment of the same spiritual human being. For, as spiritual human being, each one is in fact his own species.

[ 12 ] It might be objected to what has been stated here, that it is a mere spinning of thoughts; and such external proofs might be demanded as one is accustomed to demand in ordinary natural science. The reply to this is that the re-embodiment of the spiritual human being is, naturally, a process which does not belong to the domain of external physical facts, but is one that takes place entirely in the spiritual region. And to this region no other of our ordinary powers of intelligence has entrance, save that of thinking. He who will not trust to the power of thinking, cannot in fact enlighten himself regarding higher spiritual facts. For him whose spiritual eye is opened, the above trains of thought act with exactly the same force as does an event that takes place before his physical eyes. Anyone who ascribes to a so-called “proof,” constructed according to methods of natural science, greater power to convince than the above observations concerning the significance of life-history may be in the ordinary sense of the word a great scientist; but from the paths of true spiritual investigation he is very far distant.

[ 13 ] One of the most dangerous assumptions consists in claiming to explain the spiritual qualities of a man by inheritance from father, mother or other ancestors. Anyone who is guilty of the assumption, for example, that Goethe inherited what constituted his essential being from father or mother will at first be hardly accessible to argument, for there lies within him a deep antipathy to unprejudiced observation. A materialistic spell prevents him from seeing the mutual connections of phenomena in the true light.

[ 14 ] In such observations as the above, the antecedents are provided for following the human being beyond birth and death. Within the boundaries formed by birth and death, the human being belongs to the three worlds, of the bodily element, of soul, and of spirit. The soul forms the intermediate link between body and spirit, inasmuch as it endows the third member of the body, the soul-body, with the capacity for sensation, and inasmuch as it permeates the first member of the spirit, the Spirit-self, as consciousness-soul. Thus it takes part and lot during life with the body as well as with the spirit. This comes to expression in its whole existence. It will depend on the organisation of the soul-body, how the sentient soul can unfold its capabilities. And on the other hand, it will depend on the life of the consciousness-soul to what extent the Spirit-self can develop within it. The more highly organised the soul-body is, the more complete is the intercourse which the sentient soul will be able to develop with the outer world. And the Spirit-self will become so much the richer and more powerful, the more the consciousness-soul brings nourishment to it. It has been shown that during life this nourishment is supplied to the Spirit-self through assimilated experiences and the fruits of those experiences. For the interaction of soul and spirit described above can, of course, only take place where soul and spirit are within each other, penetrating each other, that is, within the union of Spirit-self with consciousness-soul.

[ 15 ] Let us consider first the interaction of the soul-body and the sentient soul. The soul-body, as has become evident, is the most finely elaborated part of the body; but it nevertheless belongs to the body and is dependent on it. Physical body, ether-body, and soul-body compose, in a certain sense, one whole. Hence the soul-body is also involved in the laws of physical heredity through which the body receives its shape. And since it is the most mobile and, so to speak, the most volatile form of body, it must also exhibit the most mobile, volatile manifestations of heredity. While, therefore, the difference in the physical body corresponding to races, peoples and tribes is the smallest, and while the ether-body shows, on the whole, a preponderating likeness, although a greater divergence as between single individuals, in the soul-body the difference is already a very considerable one. In it is expressed what is felt to be the external, personal peculiarity of a man. It is therefore also the bearer of that part of this personal peculiarity which is passed on from parents, grandparents, etc., to their descendants. True, the soul as such leads a complete life of its own; it shuts itself up with its inclinations and disinclinations, its feelings and passions. But as a whole it is nevertheless active, and therefore this whole comes to expression also in the sentient soul. And because the sentient soul interpenetrates and as it were fills the soul-body, the latter forms itself according to the nature of the soul and can in this way, as the bearer of heredity, pass on inclinations, passions, etc., from forefathers to children. On this fact rests what Goethe says: “From my father I have stature and the serious manner of life, from my mother a joyous disposition and the love of telling stories.” Genius, of course, he did not receive from either.

[ 16 ] In this way we are shown what part of a man's soul-qualities he hands over, as it were, to the line of physical heredity. The substances and forces of the physical body are in like manner present in the whole circle of external, physical Nature. They are continually being taken up from it and given back to it. In the space of a few years the substance which composes our physical body is entirely renewed. That this substance takes the form of the human body, and that it is perpetually renewed within this body, depends upon the fact that it is held together by the ether-body. And the form of the latter is not determined by events between birth—or conception—and death alone, but is dependent on the laws of heredity which extend beyond birth and death. That soul-qualities also can be transmitted by heredity, that is, that the progress of physical heredity receives an impulse from the soul, is due to the fact that the soul-body can be influenced by the sentient soul.

Now how does the interaction between soul and spirit proceed? During life, the spirit is bound up with the soul in the way shown above. The soul receives from it the gift of living in the good and the true, and of thereby bringing, in its own life, in its tendencies, impulses and passions, the spirit itself to expression. The Spirit-self brings to the “I,” from the world of the spirit, the eternal laws of the true and good.

These link themselves through the consciousness-soul with the experiences of the soul's own life. These experiences themselves pass away but their fruits remain. The Spirit-self receives an abiding impression by having been linked with them. When the human spirit meets with an experience similar to one to which it has already been linked, it sees in it something familiar, and is able to adopt a different attitude towards it from the one it would adopt if it were facing it for the first time. This is the basis of all learning. And the fruits of learning are acquired capacities. The fruits of the transitory life are in this way graven on the eternal spirit. And do we not see these fruits? Whence spring the innate predispositions and talents described above as characteristic of the spiritual man? Surely only from capacities of one kind or another which the human being brings with him when he begins his earthly life. These capacities, in certain respects, exactly resemble those which we can also acquire for ourselves during our earthly life. Take the case of a genius. It is known that Mozart when a boy, could write out from memory a long musical work after hearing it only once. He was able to do this only because he could survey the whole at once. Within certain limits, a man is also able during life to increase his capacity of rapid survey, of grasping connections, so that he then possesses new faculties. Lessing has said of himself that through a talent for critical observation he had acquired for himself something that came near to genius. One has either to regard such abilities founded on innate capacities as a miracle or to consider them as fruits of experiences which the Spirit-self has had through a soul. They have been graven on this Spirit-self, and since they have not been implanted in this fife, they must have been in a former one. The human spirit is its own species. And just as man, as a physical being belonging to a species, transmits his qualities within the species, so does the spirit within its species, that is, within itself. In each life the human spirit appears as a repetition of itself with the fruits of its former experiences in previous lives.¹ This life is consequently the repetition of others, and brings with it what the Spirit-self has, by work, acquired for itself in the previous life. When the Spirit-self absorbs something that can develop into fruit, it saturates itself with the Life-spirit. Just as the life-body reproduces the form, from species to species, so does the Life-spirit reproduce the soul from personal existence to personal existence.

[ 17 ] The preceding considerations give validity to that conception which seeks the reason for certain life-processes of man in repeated earth-lives. That conception can really only receive its full significance by means of observations which spring from spiritual insight, such as can be acquired by following the path of knowledge described at the close of this book. Here the only intention was to show that ordinary observation, rightly orientated by thinking, already leads to this conception. But observation of this kind, it is true, will at first leave the conception to become something like a silhouette. And it will not be possible to defend the conception entirely against the objections advanced by observation which is neither accurate, nor rightly guided by thinking. But on the other hand it is true that anyone who acquires such a conception through ordinary thoughtful observation, makes himself ready for supersensible observation. To a certain extent he develops something that one needs must have prior to this supersensible observation, just as one must have eyes prior to observing through the senses. Anyone who objects that through the formation of such a conception one can readily suggest to oneself the super-sensible observation, proves only that he is incapable of entering into the reality and that it is he himself who is thereby suggesting his objections.

[ 18 ] Thus the experiences of the soul become enduring not only within the boundaries of birth and death, but beyond death. The soul does not stamp its experiences, however, only on the spirit which flashes up in it; it stamps them on the outer world also, through its action. What a man did yesterday is to-day still present in its effects. The relationship between cause and effect in this connection is illustrated by the parallel relation between death and sleep. Sleep has often been called the younger brother of death. I get up in the morning. My consecutive activity has been interrupted by the night. Now under ordinary circumstances, it is not possible for me to begin my activity again just as I like. I must connect it with my doings of yesterday, if there is to be order and coherence in my life. My actions of yesterday are the conditions predetermining those actions which fall to me to-day. I have created my fate of to-day by what I did yesterday. I have separated myself for a while from my activity; but this activity belongs to me and draws me again to itself, after I have withdrawn myself from it for a while. My past remains bound up within me; it lives on in my present, and will follow me into my future. If the effects of my yesterday were not to be my fate to-day, I should have had, not to wake this morning, but to be newly created out of nothing. It would be absurd if under ordinary circumstances I were not to occupy a house that I have had built for me.

[ 19 ] The human spirit is as little newly created when it begins its earthly life, as a man is newly created every morning; let us try to make clear to ourselves what happens when entrance into this life takes place. A physical body, receiving its form through the laws of heredity, comes upon the scene. This body becomes the bearer of a spirit, which repeats a previous life in a new form. Between the two stands the soul, which leads a self-contained life of its own. Its inclinations and disinclinations, its wishes and desires, minister to it; it presses thought into its service. As sentient soul, it receives the impressions of the outer world and carries them to the spirit, in order that the spirit may extract from them the fruits that are to endure. It plays, as it were, the part of intermediary; and its task is fulfilled when it is adequate to this part. The body forms impressions for the sentient soul which transforms them into sensations, retains them in the memory as conceptions, and hands them over to the spirit to hold permanently. The soul is really that through which man belongs to his whole earthly life. Through his body he belongs to the physical human species. Through it he is a member of this species. With his spirit he lives in a higher world. The soul binds the two worlds together for a time.

[ 20 ] But the physical world into which the human spirit enters is no strange field of action to it. On that world the traces of its own former actions are imprinted. Something in this field of action belongs to this spirit. It bears the impress of its being. It is related to it. As the soul in the first place transmitted impressions from the outer world to the human spirit, in order that they might remain enduringly within it, so later the soul, as the organ of the human spirit, converted the faculties bestowed on it by the spirit into deeds which in their effects are also enduring. Thus the soul has actually immersed itself in these actions. In the effects of his deeds a man's soul lives further a second life of its own. Now this provides us with a motive for examining life from this angle, in order to perceive how the processes of fate enter into it. Something “happens” to a man. He is probably at first inclined to regard such a “happening” as something coming into his life “by chance.” But he can become aware of how he himself is the outcome of such “chances.” Anyone who studies himself in his fortieth year and in the search after his soul-nature refuses to be content with an unreal abstract conception of the “I,” may well say to himself: “I am indeed nothing else whatever than what I have become through what has ‘happened’ to me according to fate up to the present. Should I not be a different man, if, for example, I had had a certain series of experiences when twenty years old instead of those that I did have?” The man will then seek his “I,” not only in those educative impulses which came to him from “within” outwards, but also in what has formatively thrust itself into his life from “without.” He will recognise his own “I” in that which “happens to him.” If one gives oneself up unreservedly to such a perception, then only a further step of really intimate observation of life is needed in order to see, in what comes to one through certain experiences of destiny, something which lays hold upon the “I” from without, just as memory works from within in order to make a past experience flash up again. Thus one can make oneself able to perceive in the experiences of fate, how a former action of the soul finds its way to the ego, just as in memory an earlier experience finds its way into the mind as a conception, if called forth by an external cause. It has already been alluded to as a “possible” conception, that the consequences of a deed may meet the human soul again. A meeting of this kind in regard to certain consequences of action is out of the question in the course of one earth-life, because that earth-life was particularly arranged for the carrying out of the deed. Experience is derived from its accomplishment. A definite consequence of that action can as little react upon the soul in that case, as one can remember an experience while one is still in the midst of it. It can only be a question here of the experience of the results of actions which do not confront the ego while it has the same soul-content which it had during the earth-life in which the deed was committed. One's gaze can only be directed to the consequences of action from another earth-life. As soon as one realises that what “happens” to one seemingly as a destined experience is bound up with the “I,” just as much as what shapes itself “from out of the inner being” of that “I”—then one is forced to the conclusion that in such a destined experience one is concerned with the consequences of action from previous earth-lives. One sees that one is thus led, through an intimate grasp of life, guided by thinking, to what for the ordinary consciousness is the paradoxical assumption—namely, that the destined experiences of one earth-life are linked with the actions of preceding earth-lives. This conception again can only receive its full content through supersensible knowledge; lacking this it remains a mere silhouette. But once more, this conception, derived from the ordinary consciousness, prepares the soul so that it is enabled to behold its truth in actual super-sensible observation.

[ 21 ] Only the one part of my deed is in the outer world: the other is in myself. Let us make this relation of “I” to deed clear by a simple example taken from natural science. Creatures that once could see, migrated to the caves of Kentucky, and through their life in them have lost their power of sight. Existence in darkness has put the eyes out of action. Consequently the physical and chemical activity that is present when seeing takes place is no longer carried on in these eyes. The stream of nourishment, which was formerly expended on this activity, now flows to other organs. These creatures can now live only in these caves. They have by their act, by the immigration, created the conditions of their later lives. The immigration has become a part of their fate. A being that once acted, has united itself with the results of the action. It is so also with the human spirit. The soul could only mediate and make over certain capacities to the spirit through being itself active. And these capacities correspond to the actions. Through an action which the soul has performed, there lives in the soul the predisposition, full of energy, to perform another action, which is the fruit of that first action. The soul carries this as a necessity within itself, until the latter action has come to pass. One might also say: through an action, the necessity has been imprinted upon the soul to carry out the consequences of that action.

[ 22 ] By means of its actions, the human spirit has really brought about its own fate. In a new life it finds itself linked to what it did in a former one. One may ask, “How can that be, when the human spirit on reincarnating finds itself in an entirely different world from that which it left at some earlier time?” This question is based on a very superficial conception of the linking's of fate. If I change my scene of action from Europe to America I also find myself in new surroundings. Nevertheless, my life in America depends entirely on my previous life in Europe. If I have been a mechanic in Europe, my life in America will shape itself quite differently from the way in which it would, had I been a bank clerk. In the one case I should probably be surrounded in America by machinery, in the other by banking arrangements. In each case my previous life decided my environment; it attracts to itself, as it were, out of the whole surrounding world, those things that are related to it. So it is with the Spirit-self. It inevitably surrounds itself in a new life with that to which it is related from previous lives. And on that account sleep is an apt image for death, because the man during sleep is withdrawn from the field of action in which his fate awaits him. While one sleeps, events in this field of action pursue their course. One has for a time no influence on this course of events. Nevertheless, our life in a new day depends on the effects of the deeds of the previous one. Our personality actually incarnates anew every morning in our world of action. What was separated from us during the night is spread out as it were around us during the day. So it is with the actions of the former embodiments of man. They are bound up with him as his destiny, as life in the dark caves remains bound up with the creatures who, through migration into them, have lost their power of sight. Just as these creatures can only live in the surroundings in which they have placed themselves, so the human spirit can only live in the surroundings which by its acts it has created for itself. That I find in the morning a state of affairs which I created on the previous day is brought about by the direct progress of the events themselves. That I, when I reincarnate, find surroundings which correspond with the results of my deeds in a previous life, is brought about by the relationship of my reincarnated spirit with the things in the world around. From this one can form a conception of how the soul is set into the constitution of man. The physical body is subject to the laws of heredity. The human spirit, on the contrary, has to incarnate over and over again; and its law consists in its bringing over the fruits of the former lives into the following ones. The soul lives in the present. But this life in the present is not independent of the previous fives. For the incarnating spirit brings its destiny with it from its previous incarnations. And this destiny determines its life. What impressions the soul will be able to have, what wishes it will be able to have gratified, what sorrows and joys shall grow up for it, with what individuals it shall come into contact—all this depends on the nature of the actions in the past incarnations of the spirit. Those people with whom the soul was bound up in one life, the soul must meet again in a subsequent one, because the actions which have taken place between them must have their consequences. When this soul seeks re-embodiment, those others, who are bound up with it, will also strive towards their incarnation at the same time. The life of the soul is therefore the result of the self-created destiny of the human spirit. The course of man's life between birth and death is therefore determined in a three-fold way. And thereby he is dependent in a three-fold way on factors which he on the other side of birth and death. The body is subject to the law of heredity; the soul is subject to its self-created fate. Using an ancient expression, one calls this fate, created by the man himself, his karma. And the spirit is under the law of re-embodiment, repeated earth-lives. One can accordingly express the relationship between spirit, soul and body in the following way as well: the spirit is immortal; birth and death reign over the body according to the laws of the physical world; the soul-life, which is subject to destiny, mediates the connection of both during an earthly life. All further knowledge about the being of man presupposes acquaintance with the “three worlds” to which he belongs. These three worlds are dealt with in the following pages.

[ 23 ] A thinking which frankly faces the phenomena of life, and is not afraid to follow out to their final consequences the thoughts resulting from a living, vivid contemplation of life, can, by pure logic, arrive at the conception of the law of destiny and repeated incarnations. Just as it is true that for the seer with the opened “spiritual eye,” past lives, like an opened book, he before him as experience, so it is true that the truth of all this can become obvious to the unbiased reason which reflects upon it.²

• 1. See also under Addenda p. 58.
• 2. Compare what is said about this at the end of the book under Addenda p. 45.

The explanations which I took the liberty to give you, will have shown you that the acquisition of real super-sensible knowledge entails above all, with the aid of the exercises already characterized, that the two sides of human nature which are usually incorrectly designated as man's inner and outer being should be distinctly separated. Perhaps I may point out that in ordinary consciousness one does not carefully distinguish man's inner and outer being, when speaking of these. The way in which I characterized the exit of man's sentient and volitional being during sleep and the acquisition of conscious super-sensible knowledge outside the physical body, shows us that just this super-sensible knowledge enables us to separate distinctly those parts which are usually designated vaguely in ordinary consciousness as man's outer and inner being.

I might say that by this separation man's inner world becomes his outer world, and what we usually consider as his outer world becomes his inner world.

What takes place in that case? During sleep, man's sentient and volitional being abandons what we designated man's physical and etheric body, or the body of formative forces, and then this sentient-volitional being looks back objectively upon the physical body and upon the etheric body as if they were objects. We showed that in this retrospection the whole woof of thought appears outside man's inner being. The world of thoughts which fills our ordinary consciousness and which reflects the external world, does not go out with man's true inner being during sleep, but remains behind with the physical body, as the etheric body's real forces. In this way we were able to grasp that during our waking state of consciousness we cannot grow conscious of that part which goes out during sleep and which remains unconscious for the ordinary consciousness. (Self-observation can easily convince us that during our ordinary waking consciousness the world of thought produces this waking state of consciousness).

In that part of the human being which goes out of the physical and the etheric bodies during sleep, there is a dull twilight life, and we only learn to know this inner being of man when super-sensible knowledge fills it, as it were, with light and with warmth—when we are just as conscious within this inner being as we are ordinarily conscious within our physical body. But we also learn to know why we have an unconscious life during our ordinary sleeping condition. Consciousness arises when we dive down into our physical and etheric bodies at the moment of waking up. By diving down into the physical body, we make use of the senses which connect us with the external world. As a result, the sensory world awakes and we thus grow conscious of it.

In the same way we dive down into our etheric or life body; that is to say, into our world of thoughts, and we grow conscious within our thoughts. Ordinary consciousness is therefore based upon the fact that we use the instruments of our physical body, and that we make use, so to speak, of the etheric body's woof of formative forces. In ordinary life, man's true inner being, woven out of feeling and will, simply cannot attain consciousness, because it has no organs. By making the thought and will exercises of which I have spoken, we endow the soul itself with organs. This soul element, which is at first indistinct in our ordinary consciousness, acquires plastic form, even as our physical body and our etheric body acquire plastic form in the senses and in the organs of thought. Man's real soul-spiritual being therefore obtains a plastic form.

In the same measure in which it is moulded plastically and acquires (if I may use this paradoxical expression) soul-spiritual sense organs, the soul-spiritual world rises up around our inner being. That part of our being which ordinarily lives in a dull twilight existence and which can only perceive an environing world; namely, the physical world (when it uses the physical and etheric organs of perception), thus acquires plastic form and enters in connection with a world which always surrounds us, also in our ordinary life, even though we are not aware of it, a world in which we lived before descending into our physical being through birth or conception, as described the day before yesterday, a world in which we shall live again when we pass through the portal of death, for then we shall recognize it as a world which belongs to us and which is not limited by birth and death.

But there is one thing which rises up before us when we enter the soul-spiritual world. We cannot enter the soul-spiritual world in the same abstract, theoretical manner with which we can live in the physical world and in the world of thoughts or of the intellect. In the physical world and in the world of thoughts we use ideas and thoughts, which as such, leave us cold. With a little self-observation anyone can discover that when he ascends to the sphere of pure thinking, when he surrenders to the external sensory world without any special interest or a close connection with it, the external physical world, as well as the world of ideas, really leaves him cold. We must learn to know this in detail from single examples in life. We should note, for instance, how different are the inner feelings with which we consider our home, from these with which we look upon any other strange country which is indifferent to us. This will show us that in order to have a living interest for the environing world, our feeling and our will must be drawn in through special circumstances; we must include the feeling and the will which ordinarily dive down into the physical world only when we awake, obtaining from this physical world a connection with the senses and the understanding. The fact that love or perhaps hate are kindled in us when we encounter certain people in the physical world, the fact that we feel induced to do certain things for them out of compassion, all this demands the inclusion of our feelings and of everything which constitutes our inner being, when we come across such things in the external physical world. How conscious we are of the fact that our inner life grows cold, when we rise up to spheres which are generally called the spheres of pale, dry thought and of theoretic study!

The being which lives in a dull twilight state from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, must, as it were, connect itself during the waking daytime condition with our thoughts and with our sensory experiences through an inner participation in these processes, thus giving rise to the whole wealth of interest in the external world.

We thus recognize that in life itself feeling and will must first be drawn into the sensory world and into the world of thoughts. But we perceive this in the fullest meaning of the word only when super-sensible knowledge, which has become emancipated from the physical and etheric bodies, enables us to have experiences outside these bodies within our sentient-volitional being.

There we see that we simply must begin to speak of the world in a different way than is the case in ordinary life, during the ordinary state of consciousness. The dry ideas, the laws of Nature which we are accustomed to find in science and which interest us theoretically, though they leave us inwardly cold, these should be permeated with certain nuances and expressions which characterize the external world differently from the way in which we usually characterize it.

Our inner life acquires greater intensity through super-sensible knowledge. We penetrate more intensively into the life of the external world. When we try to gain knowledge, we are then no longer able to submit coldly to inner ideas. Of course, this gives rise to the objection that the objectivity may suffer through a certain inner warmth, through the awakening of feeling and of a subjective sense. But this objection is only raised by those who are not acquainted with the circumstances.

The things perceived through super-sensible knowledge make us speak differently of the super-sensible objects of knowledge. These do not change; they do not become less objective, for they are objective. When I look upon a wonderfully painted picture, it does not change through the fact that I look upon it with fire and enthusiasm; I would be a cold prosaic person if I were to face one of Raphael's Madonnas or one of Leonardo's paintings with a purely analytical artistic understanding, quite coldly and without any enthusiasm. It is the same when the spiritual worlds rise up in the super-sensible knowledge. Their content does not change through the fact that we connect ourselves with these worlds with inner feelings, far stronger than those which usually connect us with the external world and its objects.

When speaking from a knowledge of the higher worlds, many things will therefore have to be said differently, the descriptions will have to be different from those which we are accustomed to hear in ordinary life. But this does not render these worlds less objective. On the contrary, we might say: The subjective element which now comes out of the physical and etheric bodies becomes more objective and less selfish in its whole experience. The first experience which we have when going out of the physical body and experiencing our inner being consciously (whereas otherwise we always experience it unconsciously) is therefore the feeling of absolute LONELINESS.

In our ordinary consciousness we never have the feeling that by dwelling only within our inner self, independently of anything in the world pertaining to us, complete loneliness fills our soul, that we ourselves, with everything which now constitutes our soul-spiritual content, must rely entirely upon ourselves.

The feeling of loneliness which sometimes arises in the physical world, but only as a reflection of the real feeling, though it is painful enough for many people, becomes immensely intensified when we thus penetrate into the super-sensible world. We then look back upon that which reflects itself in the mirror of the physical and etheric body, as the spiritual environment which we left behind. We grow aware, on the one hand, of a complete feeling of loneliness, which alone enables us to maintain our Ego in this world … for we would melt away in this world of the spirit, if loneliness would not give us this Ego-feeling in the spiritual world, in the same way in which our body, our bodily sensation, gives us our Ego feeling here on earth. To this loneliness we owe the maintenance of the Ego in the spiritual world. We then learn to know this spiritual world as our environment. But we know that we can only learn to know it through the inner soul-spiritual eye, even as we see the physical world through our physical eyes.

It is the same when the human being abandons his physical and etheric bodies by passing through the portal of death, and in this connection I shall enlarge the explanations already given yesterday. It is true that in this case the physical body is given over to the elements of the earth and that the etheric body dissolves, as described, in the universal cosmic ether. But what we learned to know as our physical world, through our feeling and will, the world in which we experienced ourselves through the ordinary consciousness between birth and death, this world remains. The physical body filled with substance and the body of formative forces permeated by etheric forces, are laid aside with death, but what we experienced inwardly remains as a mirroring element.

From the spiritual world we look back into our last earthly life through death, through which we passed. Just because we have before us this last earthly life as a firm resistance which mirrors everything, just because of this, everything which surrounds us as we pass through the soul-spiritual world between death and a new birth, can also reflect itself. Through these experiences we perceive everything rising up in a far more intensive life than the one which we learned to know here in the physical world. And we first perceive as a soul-spiritual being everything with which we were in some way connected through our destiny, through our Karma. The people we loved, stand before us as souls. In our super-sensible vision we see all that we experienced together with them.

Those who acquire spiritual, super-sensible knowledge, already acquire the imaginative vision here in the physical world, through everything which I described to you. Those who pass through the portal of death in the ordinary way, acquire this faculty, though it is somewhat different to the spiritual vision on earth; they acquire it after having passed through the portal of death. From the sheaths of the physical and etheric bodies which were laid aside, emerges everything with which we were connected by destiny, or otherwise, in this earthly life—it undoubtedly arises in a different way, when those whom we left behind, still live on the earth, where the connection with them is more difficult, but when they follow us through death, this connection exists in the free, soul-spiritual life. Everything in our environment with which we were connected as human beings rises up before us. To super-sensible knowledge, the fact that people (if I may now express myself in words of the ordinary consciousness) who belonged together here in the physical world find each other again in the soul-spiritual world, after having passed through the portal of death, is not a belief to be accepted as a vague premonition, but it is a certainty, a fact just as certain as the results of physics or chemistry. This is something which the spiritual science of Anthroposophy can add to the acquisitions of modern culture.

People have grown accustomed to a certain feeling of certainty through the gradual popularization of a scientific consciousness. They strive to gain some knowledge of the super-sensible worlds, but no longer in the form of old presentiments handed over traditionally in the religious beliefs, for they were trained to accept that certainty which the external world can offer. In regard to that which lies beyond birth and death the spiritual science of Anthroposophy seeks to pave the way to this same kind of certainty. It can really do this. Only those people who tread the path already described, the path leading into the spiritual worlds, can lead the knowledge acquired in physics or chemistry beyond, into worlds which we enter when we pass through the portal of death.

Of course, not everything appears to us in this way when we look back upon our physical body through super-sensible knowledge outside the body. There is one thing which then appears to us very enigmatic, and this enigma can show us best of all that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy does not translate the truths which it includes in its spheres of knowledge into a prosaic, dry rationalism. It leads us to spiritual vision, or by communicating its truths it speaks of things which can be perceived through spiritual vision. But in being led to spiritual vision, we do not lose the full reverence towards the mysteries contained in the universe, towards everything in the universe inspiring reverence and which can now be clearly perceived, whereas otherwise they are at the most felt darkly. This enigmatic something which I mean and which appears to us, is that we now learn to know man's relationship with the earth, particularly his relationship with the physical-mineral earth.

I have already explained to you from many different aspects how our woof of thoughts, which is connected with the physical body, remains behind, and in addition to what has been described to you, in addition to what reflects itself and leads us to a knowledge of man's everlasting being, we can also recognize the true nature of this mirror which stands before us.

I might say: Even as in the physical world we face a mirror and in this mirror the environing world appears simultaneously with our own self, so in super-sensible knowledge the spiritual world appears through this mirror. And in the same way in which we can touch the material mirror with its foil and investigate its composition, so we can also investigate this super-sensible mirror; namely, our physical body and our etheric body, when our real soul-spiritual being is outside.

There we see that during his earthly life the human being constantly takes in substances from the external world in order to grow and to sustain his whole life. We absorb substances from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, but all these substances which we absorb from the animal and vegetable kingdoms also contain mineral substances. Plants contain mineral substances, for the plant builds itself up from mineral substances. By taking in vegetable nourishment we therefore build up our own body out of mineral substances.

By looking back upon our physical body from outside, we can now perceive the true significance of the mineral substances which we absorb. Spiritual vision reveals something of which our ordinary consciousness has not the faintest inkling; namely, the activity of thinking. We have left behind our thinking. Our thoughts continue, as it were, to glimmer and to shine within the physical body. Now we can observe the effect of thoughts in the physical body from outside, as something objective. And we perceive that the effect of thoughts upon man's physical body is a dissolution of its physical substances, which fall asunder, as it were, into nothing.

I know that this apparently contradicts the law of the conservation of forces, but there is no time now to explain more fully its full harmony with this law. The nature of my subject entails that I express myself in more popular terms. But it is possible to understand that the purely mineral in man, what he bears within him as purely mineral substances, must be within him because his thoughts must dissolve these substances. For otherwise his thoughts could not exist—this is the condition for their existence—his thoughts could not exist if they did not dissolve mineral, earthly substances, a fact also revealed by the spiritual sciences of earlier times, based more on feeling. This dissolution, this destruction of physical substances constitutes the physical intermedium of thinking.

When our sentient-volitional part, our true inner being, lives within the physical body and within the etheric body and is filled by the activity of thinking, we learn to recognize that this activity takes its course through the fact that physical substance is continually destroyed. We now learn to recognize how our ordinary consciousness really arises. It does not arise in such a way that forces of growth hold sway in us, forces which develop in the remaining organism through nutrition. For in the same measure in which the forces of growth are active within us, thinking is dulled. When we wake up, thinking must, so to speak, have a free hand to dissolve physical substances, to eliminate them from the physical body. To the spiritual science of Anthroposophy, the nervous system appears as that organ which transmits this elimination of mineral-physical substances throughout the whole body. This elimination gives rise to that thought activity which we ordinarily carry with us through the world.

You therefore see that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy not only enables us to recognize the eternal in man, but also how it works within his physical body; that, for instance, thought can only exist through the fact that man continually develops within himself the mineral substances; that is, something dead.

We can therefore say: If we learn to know man from this aspect, we also learn to know death from another aspect. Ordinarily death confronts us as the end of life, as a moment in life, as an experience in itself. But when we throw light upon man's physical and etheric body in the manner described, we learn to know the gradual course of death, or the elimination of physical-mineral substance—for death is nothing but the complete elimination of man's mineral-physical substance—we learn to know the continual elimination of a dead, corpse-like element within us.

We recognize that from birth onwards, we constantly pass through a partial process of death, and real death sets in when the whole body does that which we ordinarily do through the nervous system, within a small part of the body.

We therefore learn to look upon the moment of death by gaining insight on a small scale into its being through the activity of thinking in the human organism. Throughout the whole time after death, we can only look back upon our physical body because the following fact exists: Whenever a thought lights up within you during your ordinary life, this is always accompanied by the fact that physical matter is eliminated in the physical body, in the same way in which, for instance, physical substance separates from a precipitated salt solution. This lighting up of thought you owe to this obscuring, to this casting-off of physical mineral substance. When you abandon the physical body, you sum up in a comparatively brief space of time what lives in the continual stream of your thoughts. You confront the fact that in death there flares up all at once that which slowly glimmered and shone throughout your earthly life, from birth to death.

Through this strong impression, in which the life of thoughts illuminates the soul like a great flash of lightning, we acquire the memory of our physical lives on earth. The physical body may be cast off, the etheric body may dissolve completely in the universal ether, but through the fact that we obtain in one experience this powerful thought impression (to mathematicians I might say: this thought-integral in comparison with thought differentials, from birth to death), we always have before us, throughout the time after death, as a mirroring element, our physical life on earth, even though we have laid aside our physical and etheric parts—and this mirroring element reveals everything which we experience when the human beings with whom we were connected by destiny in love or in hate, gradually come up, when the spiritual Beings who live in the spiritual world and do not descend to the earth, whose company we now share, rise up before us.

The spiritual-scientific investigator may state this with a calm conscience, for he knows that he does not speak on the foundation of illusionary pictures; he knows instead that to super-sensible vision, when super-sensible vision arises through the organ of the physical and etheric bodies which are now outside, these things are just as real, can be seen just as really as physical colours are ordinarily perceived through physical eyes, or physical sounds through physical ears.

This is how the evolution of humanity forms part of the evolution of the world. If we study the development of the world, for instance the mineral life on earth, we understand why there should be mineral, earthly laws. They exist so that they might also exist within us, and thinking is therefore bound up with the earth. But in perceiving how the beings whose thinking is connected with the earth emerge from that which produces their thought, we also learn to recognize how man's true being rises above that which pertains only to the earth. This is what connects the development of the world with the development of humanity and unites them.

We learn to know the human being and at the same time we learn to know the universe. If we learn to know man's physical body and its mineralization through thinking, we also learn to know through man's physical body the lifeless mineral earth. This creates a foundation for a knowledge of the evolution of the world also from its spiritual aspect.

When we thus learn to know man's inner being, the development of the world appears in the same way in which the ordinary earthly experiences appear before us, the experiences through which we passed since our birth.

When you draw out of your memory-store an experience which you had ten years ago, this past event rises up before your soul as an image. You know exactly that it rises up as a picture. Yet this picture conveys a knowledge of something which really existed ten years ago.

How does this arise? Through the fact that in your organism certain processes remained behind which now summon up the picture. Certain processes remained behind in your organism and these summon up in you the picture, enabling you—as I once designated it—to construct what you experienced ten years ago. But super-sensible knowledge leads us deeper into man's inner being. We can perceive, for instance, that the physical body becomes mineralized during the thinking process; we perceive this in the same way in which we learn to know some past experience of our earthly life through the traces which it left behind within our being.

In the same way the development of the earth can be understood by envisaging the development of man; through the activity of the mineral in man we learn to know the task of the mineral kingdom within the development of the earth. And if, as already set forth, we learn similarly to know (I can only mention this, for a detailed description would lead us too far how the vegetable kingdom is connected with man, and how the animal kingdom is related with him (for this, too, can be recognized) the development of the world can be grasped by setting out from the human being.

Within the development of the world we can see something which is again of immense importance to those who are interested in modern civilization, just as interesting as the facts which I explained in connection with a knowledge of the human being, of the eternal inner kernel of man.

Modern civilization shows us that up to a certain point it is possible to consider man's relationship to the development of the world by linking up the human being with the evolution of the animals—even though the corresponding theories, or the hypotheses, as some people say, still contain many unclear facts, requiring completion and modification. We follow the development of the simplest organic beings up to the highest animals, and if we continue this line of observation we come to the point of placing man at the summit of animal development. One person does it in this way, and the other in that way; one more idealistically, and the other more materialistically in accordance with Darwin's theory of evolutionary descent, but methodically it can hardly be denied that if we wish to study man's physical nature according to natural-scientific methods, we must link him up with the animal line of descent (this has been done for some time).

We investigate how his head changed in comparison with the heads of the different animal species; we investigate his limbs, etc., and we thus obtain what is known as comparative anatomy, comparative morphology, comparative physiology, and also ideas on the way in which man's physical form gradually developed out of lower beings in the course of the world's evolution. But we always remain in the physical sphere. On the one hand people take it amiss today if the anthroposophical spiritual investigator speaks of the spiritual world as I take the liberty to do in this lecture; from many sides this is viewed as a pure fantasy, and although many people believe that it is well meant … they nevertheless look upon it as something fantastic.

Those who become acquainted to some extent with the things described by me, those who at least try to understand them, will see that the preparations and preliminary conditions for them are just as serious as, for instance, the preparations for the study of mathematics, so that it is out of the question to speak of sailing into a fantastic region. But just as on the one hand people take it amiss if a person describes the spiritual world as a real, objective world, so they take it amiss on the other hand if in regard to man's physical development one fully accepts those who follow man's development darwinistically, with a natural-scientific discipline, along the animal line of descent, as far as man. No speculations should enter the observations made in the physical sphere, as is, for instance, the case today in Neovitalism. This is full of speculations; the old vitalism was also full of speculative elements. But whenever we consider the physical world, we must remain by physical facts.

For this reason, the anthroposophical spiritual investigator who on the one hand ventures to speak in a certain way of the conditions after death and before birth, as I have done, does not consider it as a reproach (i.e., he is not touched by it) when people tell him that his description of the physical world is completely in the meaning of a modern natural scientist. He does not bring any dreams into the sphere which constitutes the physical world. Even though people may call him a materialist when he describes the physical world, this reproach does not touch him, because he strictly separates the spiritual world, which can only be observed with the aid of a spiritual method, from the physical-sensory world, which has to be observed with the orderly disciplined methods of modern natural science.

A serious spiritual-scientific investigator must therefore feel particularly hurt and pained at reproaches made to him on account of certain followers of spiritual science who sometimes rebuke natural science out of a certain pride in their spiritual-scientific knowledge and out of their undoubtedly shallow knowledge of natural science; they think that they have the right to speak negatively of science and of scientific achievements, but the spiritual-scientific investigator can only feel deeply hurt at their amateurish, dilettantish behaviour. This is, however, not in keeping with spiritual science. The spiritual science of Anthroposophy is characterized by the fact that it deals just as strictly and scientifically with the external physical world, as with the spiritual world, and vice-versa.

With this preliminary condition, the anthroposophical spiritual investigator entirely stands upon the ground of strictest natural-scientific observation in regard to the study of the world's development, but at the same time he turns his gaze towards the soul-spiritual world. And even as he knows that not only a physical process is connected with man's individual embryonic origin in the physical world, but that a soul-spiritual element unites with the human embryo, with the human germ, so he also knows that in the whole development of the world—though to the physical body it appears as a tapestry of sensory objects, and though it manifests itself to the woof of thoughts; i.e., to the etheric body, in laws of Nature—he also knows that the physical world is permeated and guided in its whole development by spiritual forces, handled by spiritual Beings, that can be recognized in their own appropriate way, as already described.

The anthroposophical investigator therefore knows that when he contemplates the external physical world in the meaning of genuine science, he comes to the true boundary, where he may begin with his spiritual investigation.

If we conscientiously trace the evolutionary development through animal descent up to man, as Darwin or other Darwinians or Haeckel did, and if we penetrate into the justifiable scientific aspects of the world development of man, we can continue this in a spiritual-scientific direction, after having reached the boundary to which we are led by natural science.

We now discover that a CONTEMPLATION OF THE FORM into which we penetrate through super-sensible knowledge, shows us all the SIGNIFICANCE OF FORMS, as they appear in the kingdom of man on the one hand, and in the animal kingdom on the other; we discover the whole significance of these forms.

Equipped with the knowledge supplied by super-sensible research, we see that the animal (this is at least the case with most animals, and exceptions can be easily explained) stands upon the ground with his four limbs, so that its spine is horizontal, parallel with the surface of the earth, and so that in regard to the spine, the head develops in an entirely different position from that of man. We learn to know the animal's whole form, as it were, from within, as a complex of forces, and also in relationship with the whole universe. And we thus learn to make a comparison: We perceive the transformation, the metamorphosis in the human form, in the human being whom we see standing upon his two legs, at right angles, so to speak, with the animal's spine, with his own spine set vertically to the surface of the earth and his head developing in accordance with this position of the spine.

By penetrating into the inner art of Nature's creative process, we learn to distinguish the human form from the animal form; we recognize this by entering into the artistic creative process of the cosmos. And we penetrate into the development of the world by rising from otherwise abstract constructive thoughts to thoughts which are inwardly filled with life, which form themselves artistically in the spirit.

The most important thing to be borne in mind is that when it seeks to know the development of the world, anthroposophical spiritual research changes from the abstract understanding ordinarily described—and justly so—as dry, prosaic, systematic thought, or combining thought, into concrete, real thought. Not for the higher spiritual world, in which concepts must penetrate in the manner described, but for the physical world, the forms in the world development should first be grasped through a kind of artistic comprehension, which in addition develops upon the foundation of super-sensible knowledge.

By thus indicating how science should change into art, we must of course encounter the objection raised by those who are accustomed to think in accordance with modern ideas: “But science must not become an art!” My dear friends, this can always be said, as a human requirement; people can say: I forbid the logic of the universe to become an art, for we only learn to know reality by linking up thought with thought and by thus approaching reality. If the world were as people imagine it to be, one could refuse to rise up to art, to an artistic comprehension of forms; but if the world is formed in such a way that it can only be comprehended through an artistic comprehension, it is necessary to advance to such an artistic comprehension. This is how matters stand. That is why those people who were earnestly seeking to grasp the organic in world development really came to an inner development of the thinking ordinarily looked upon as scientific thought; they came to an artistic comprehension of the world. As soon as we continue to observe with an artistic-intuitive eye the development of the world from the point where the ordinary Darwinistic theory comes to a standstill, we perceive that man, grasped as a whole, cannot simply be looked upon by saying that once there were lower animals in the world, from which higher animals developed, that then still higher animals developed out of these, and so forth, until finally man arose.

If we study embryology in an unprejudiced way, it really contradicts this idea. Although modern scientists set up the fundamental law of biogenetics and compare embryology with phylogeny, they do not interpret rightly what appears outwardly even in human embryology, because they do not rise to this artistic comprehension of the world's development. If we observe in a human embryo how the limbs develop out of organs which at first have a stunted aspect, how everything is at first merely head, we already obtain the first elements of what reveals itself in the artistic comprehension of the human form. It is not possible to link up the whole human being with the animals. One cannot say: The human being, such as he stands before us today, is a descendant of the whole animal kingdom. No, this is not the case. Just those who penetrate with genuine scientific conscientiousness into scientific Darwinism and its modern description of the development of the world, will discover that through a higher understanding it is simply impossible to place man at the end, or at the summit of the animal chain of development; they must instead study the human head as such, the head of the human being. This human head alone descends from the whole animal kingdom. Though it may sound strange and paradoxical, the part which is generally considered as man's most perfect part is a transformation from the animal kingdom.

Let us approach the human head with this idea and let us study it carefully. Observe with a certain morphological-artistic sense how the lower maxillary bones are transformed limbs, also the upper maxillary bones are transformed limbs, how everything in the head is an enhanced development of the animal form; you will then recognize in the human head that upon a higher stage it reveals everything which appears in the animals under so many different forms. You will then also understand why it is so.

When you observe the animal, you can see that its head hangs upon one extremity of the spine and that in a real animal it is entirely subjected to the law of gravity. Observe instead the human head; observe how the human being stands within the cosmos. The human head is set upon a spine which has a vertical direction. It rests upon the remaining body in such a way that the human being protects the head, as it were, against falling a prey only to the force of gravity. The human head is really something which rests upon the remaining organism with comparative independence. And we come to the point of understanding that through the fact that the human head is carried by the remaining body, it really travels along like a person using a coach; for it is the remaining body which carries the human head through the world. The human head has transformed limbs which have become shriveled, as it were, and it is set upon the remaining organism. This remaining organism is related to the human head in the same way in which the whole earth with its force of gravity is related to the animal. In regard to the head, the human being is related to his whole remaining body in the same way in which the whole animal is related to the earth.

We now begin to understand the human being through the development of the world. And if we proceed in this knowledge of the human form with an artistic sense and understanding, we finally comprehend why the human head is the continuation of the animal chain and why the remaining body of man developed later, out of the earth, and was attached to the human head. Only in this way we gradually learn to understand man's development.

If we go back into earlier times of the past, we can only transfer into these primordial epochs that part of man which lies at the foundation of his present head development. We must not seek the development of his limbs or of his thorax in those early ages, for these developed later. But if we observe the development of the world by setting out, as described by me, from the human being, if we observe it in the same way in which we would look upon some past experience, we find that the human being had already begun his development in the world at a time when our higher animals, for instance, did not as yet exist.

We can therefore say (let us now take a later epoch of the earth): In the further course of his development man developed his head out of earlier animal beings through the fact that his spiritual essence animated him. That is why he could raise his head above the former stage of development. He then added his limbs, which developed out of the regular forces of the earth. The animals which followed could only develop to the extent in which man developed with the exclusion of his head. They began their development later, so that they did not go as far as the human development of the head; they remained connected with the earth while the human being separated himself from it.

This proves that it has a real meaning to say: Man belongs to the development of the universe in such a way that he is related with the animal kingdom, but he rises above it through his spiritual development. The animals which followed man in their development could only develop as much as man had developed in his limbs and thorax … the head remained stunted, because a longer time of development should have preceded it, such as that of man, in order that the real head might develop.

Through an artistic deepened contemplation of the forms in the world's development the conscientiously accepted Darwinistic theory changes, insofar as it is scientifically justified today. We thus recognize that in the development of the world the human being has behind him a LONGER TIME OF DEVELOPMENT than the animals—that the animals develop as their chief form that part which man adds to his head. In this way man reaches the point of lifting one part of his being out of the force of gravity, whereas the animals are entirely subjected to the force of gravity. Everything which constituted our head with its sense organs is raised above the force of gravity, so that it does not turn towards ponderable matter but towards the ether, which fills the sensory world. This is the case above all with the senses; we would see this, could we study them more closely. In this way, for instance, the human organ of hearing depends upon an etheric structure, not only upon an air structure.

Through all this the human being forms part not only of the material world, of the ponderable physical world, but he forms part of the etheric world outside. Through the etheric world he perceives, for instance, what the light conjures up before him in the world of colours, etc., etc. Even through his external form he rises above heavy matter, up to the free ether, and for this reason we see the development of the world in a different way when we ascend from natural science to spiritual science.

But when we rise up to an artistic conception, we perceive the activity of the soul-spiritual in man, and we must rise up to such a conception if we wish to understand the human being. We should, for instance, be able to say: In regard to his soul-spiritual, sentient-volitional being, we must speak of loneliness and of a life in common with others, as if these were theoretical concepts, as described today; we must rise up to the moral world and finally we come to the religious world. These worlds belong together and form a whole.

If we study the human being in accordance with a natural-scientific mentality and in the meaning of modern civilization, we find on the one hand the rigid scientific necessity of Nature to which also the human being belongs, and on the other hand we find that man can only be conscious of his dignity—that he can only say “I am truly man”—if he can feel within him the moral-religious impulses. But if we honestly stand upon the foundation of natural science we only have hypotheses in regard to the beginning and the end of the earth, hypotheses which speak of the Kant-Laplace nebula for the beginning of the earth and of a death through heat for the end of the earth.

If in the face of the natural-scientific demands we now consider, in the meaning of modern civilization, the moral-religious world which reveals itself intuitively (I have shown this in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, if we consider this world we must say: We really delude ourselves, we conjure up before us a fog. Is it possible to believe that when the earth passes through the death by heat, in accordance with the natural-scientific concept, that there should still exist anything besides the death of all ideals?

At this point spiritual science, or ANTHROPOSOPHY, sets in, and shows that the soul-spiritual is a reality, that it is active within the physical and that it placed the human form, the human being, into the evolution of the world; it shows that we should look back upon animal beings which are entirely different from the present animals, that it is possible to adhere to the methods of modern science, but that other results are obtained. Anthroposophy thus inserts the moral element into the science of religion, and Anthroposophy thus becomes a moral-religious science.

Now we no longer look upon the Kant-Laplace nebula, but we look at the same time upon an original spiritual element, out of which the soul-spiritual world described in Anthroposophy developed in the same way in which the physical world developed out of a physical-earthly origin. We also look towards the end of the earth and since the laws of enthropy are fully justified, we can show that the earth will end through a kind of death by heat, but at the same time we can envisage from the anthroposophical standpoint the end of the single human being: his corpse is handed over to the elements, but the human being himself passes over into a spiritual world. This is how we envisage the end of the earth. The scientific results do not disturb us, for we know that everything of a soul-spiritual nature which man develops will pass through the earth's portal of death when the earth no longer exists; it will pass over into a new world development, even as the human being passes over into a new world development whenever he passes through death.

By surveying the development of the earth in this way, we perceive IN THE MIDDLE OF ITS DEVELOPMENT THE EVENT OF GOLGOTHA. We see how this event of Golgotha is placed in the middle of the earth's development; before this event, there only existed forces which would have led man to a kind of paralyzation of his forces. We really learn to recognize (I can only allude to this at the end of my lecture) that in the same way in which through the vegetable and animal fertilization a special element enters the fertilized organism, so the Mystery of Golgotha brought something into the evolution of the world from regions outside the earth, and this continues to live; it accompanies the souls until at the end of the earth they pass on to new metamorphoses of earthly life. I would have to describe whole volumes were I to show the path leading in a strictly conscientious scientific way from what I have described to you today in connection with the evolution of humanity and of the universe, to the Mystery of Golgotha, to the appearance of the Christ-Being in relationship with the earth.

But through a spiritual-scientific deepening many passages in the Gospels will appear in an entirely new light, in a different way from what it has hitherto been possible through the occidental consciousness. Let us consider only the following fact: If we entirely stand upon a natural-scientific foundation, we must envisage the physical end of the earth. And those who continue to stand upon this scientific foundation, will also find that finally the starry world surrounding the earth will decay; they will look upon a future in which this earth will no longer exist, and the stars above will no longer exist. But spiritual science gives us the certainty that even as an eternal being goes out of the physical and etheric body every evening and returns into them every morning, so an eternal being will continue to live when the single human bodies shall have decayed. When the whole earth falls away from all the soul-spiritual beings of men, this eternal part of the earth will continue to live and it will pass over to new planetary phases of world development.

Now Christ's words in the Gospels resound to us in a new and wonderful way; “HEAVEN AND EARTH SHALL PASS AWAY, BUT MY WORDS SHALL NOT PASS AWAY,” and connected with these words are those of St. Paul: “NOT I, BUT CHRIST IN ME.” If a Christian really grasps these words, if a person who really understands Christianity inwardly and who says, “Not I, but Christ in me,” understands Christ's words, “Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away”—that is, “what lives within my everlasting Being shall not pass away”—these words will shine forth from the Gospel in a peculiar manner, with a magic producing reverence, but if one is really honest they cannot be understood without further ado.

If we approach such words and others, with the aid of spiritual science and in the anthroposophical meaning, if we approach many other sayings which come to us out of the spiritual darkness of the world development, of the development of the earth and of humanity, a light will ray out of them. Indeed, my dear friends, it is as if light were to fall upon words such as “heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away”—light falls upon them, if we hear them resounding from that region where the Mystery of Golgotha took place, and the whole development of the earth only acquires its true meaning through such words!

Thus we see that spiritual science in the meaning of Anthroposophy strives above all after a conscientious observation of the strict methods of the physical world, but at the same time it seeks to continue these strict scientific methods into regions where our true eternal being shines out towards us, regions where also the spiritual being of the world development rays out its light towards us, a light in which the world development itself with its spiritual forces and Beings appears in its spiritual-divine character.

My dear friends, at the conclusion of my lecture (I thank you that you showed so much interest in it) let me express the following fact: Spiritual-scientific Anthroposophy can fully understand that modern humanity, particularly conscientious, scientifically-minded men, have grown accustomed to consider as real and certain the results of causal natural-scientific knowledge, the results of external sense observation, intellectual combinations of these sensory observations, and experiments. This gave them a feeling of certainty. And by acquiring this certainty, they acquired a certain feeling in general towards that which can be “sure.” Up to now no attempt has been made to study super-sensible things in the same way in which physical things are studied. This certainty could therefore not be carried into super-sensible regions. Today people still believe that they must halt with a mere thought at the threshold of the super-sensible worlds, that feelings full of reverence suffice, because otherwise they would lose the mystery, and the super-sensible world would be rationalized. But spiritual science does not seek to rationalize the mystery, to dispel the reverent feeling which one has towards the mystery: it leads to these mysteries through vision. Anthroposophy leaves the mystery its mystery-character, but it sets it into the evolution of the world in the same way in which sensory things exist in the sphere of world evolution.

And it must be true that people also need certainty for the spheres transcending mere Nature. To the extent in which they will feel that through spiritual science in the meaning of Anthroposophy they do not hear some vague amateurish and indistinct talk about the worlds, but something which is filled by the same spirit which comes to expression in modern science, to this same extent humanity will feel that the certainty which it acquired, the certainty which it is accustomed to have through the physical world, can also be led over into the spiritual worlds. People will feel: If certainty exists only in regard to the physical world, of what use is this certainty, since the physical world passes away? Man needs an eternal element, for he himself wants to be rooted in an eternal element. He cannot admit that this certainty should only be valid for the transient, perishable world. Certainty, the certainty of knowledge, must also be gained in regard to the imperishable world.

This is the aim pursued in greatest modesty (those who follow the spiritual science of Anthroposophy know this) by Anthroposophy. Its aim is that through his natural certainty man should not lose his knowledge of the imperishable; through his certainty in regard to perishable things he should not lose the certainty in regard to imperishable things. Certainty in regard to the perishable; that is to say, certainty in regard to the riddle of birth and death, the riddle of immortality, the riddle of the spiritual world developments, this is what Anthroposophy seeks to bring into our civilization.

Anthroposophy believes that this can be its contribution to modern civilization. For in the same measure in which people courageously recognize that certainty should be gained also in regard to imperishable things, and not only in regard to perishable things, in the same measure they will grow accustomed to look upon Anthroposophy no longer as something fantastic and as an individual hobby, but as something which must enter our whole spiritual culture, like all the other branches of science, and thereby our civilization in general.