The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It will be my task today to speak of the nature and being of Man, in order that the next lecture may contribute to an understanding of the development of mankind as a whole.

We will begin by considering something of primary and immediate importance in the life of the human being as he stands before us on the Earth. You know, of course, that the human being, as we see him, is not the creation of the Earth alone, but that his origin must be traced back to much earlier conditions of existence. From many writings and lectures you know that through spiritual-scientific research these preceding conditions of evolution, the preceding embodiments of the planet Earth, can be discovered and appropriately known as the pre-earthly “Saturn-condition,” the pre-earthly “Sun-condition” and the pre-earthly “Moon-condition” of our planet. The forces in man as a “whole” being do not proceed merely from processes that have been in operation on the Earth: the being of man contains heritages, as it were, from the earlier planetary conditions. These heritages have remained and are active in man. The human being in his whole nature can be understood only when we know that the first foundations of the physical body were laid during the ancient Saturn period; development proceeded through the Old Sun period and the Old Moon period, and the present form and structure of the human body did not unfold until the period of Earth-evolution proper. In the other principles of human nature, too, heritages of pre-earthly conditions, not merely forces originating on the Earth, are actively in operation. Today, however, we will think of what man is as a creation of the Earth, living out his existence on the Earth; we will think of what is incorporated in his being during the Earth-period, in pursuance of the mission of the Earth.

The powers or principles derived specifically from the Earth can be differentiated into three. There is, firstly, man's earthly consciousness; it is derived from the Earth and the forces of the Earth. It is, of all principles, the one that is most immediately present in the human being as he moves about the world today; and the purpose of everything that has come to pass in the process of the Earth's evolution has been to enable the human being, here on the Earth, to unfold his present consciousness. Consciousness is the most intensely present, the most familiar reality; it pervades and fills all waking existence; in it your thoughts, perceptions, feelings and impulses of will run their course, in so far as you are “awake” human beings. This consciousness you know so well was not possessed by man in the pre-earthly conditions of the Earth, nor indeed during the first period of Earth-evolution proper—which, to begin with, was only a recapitulation of pre-earthly conditions. Man acquired it gradually; or rather, it was bestowed upon him by the Creator-Powers of the Universe.

In order to possess this consciousness the human being must waken from sleep and must make use of the senses, that is to say, of the instruments of the body. That he must also make use of instruments other than the senses, is obvious; for in this everyday, waking consciousness he does not merely formulate ideas and thoughts but also has feelings, experiences, impulses of will. This whole content of consciousness, filling and forming it, needs the outer, physical body, the earthly body; when an idea or thought is formed, the being of soul-and-spirit makes use of the instrument of the physical body. From this it is easy to realise that the consciousness into which the human being wakens in the morning is dependent upon the earthly body; and that when he thinks, feels or wills in this ordinary consciousness, he can only do so because he has the physical earth-body as an instrument.

As you will have read in the book Occult Science, the states of consciousness between death and a new birth are essentially different from those of consciousness as it is on Earth. For consciousness changes according to its instrument, and between death and rebirth, as a being of soul and spirit, man has at his disposal instruments of a different character from those available to him during life in the physical body. The physical body, from which the instruments of the everyday consciousness are formed, disintegrates and decays at death. Or rather, in the sense of Spiritual Science it would be better, instead of using the word “decay,” to say that it is given over to the element of universal Nature, for the dissolution or decay of the physical body to be observed outwardly is only illusion, maya. In reality, a great and mighty process underlies what is called the “dissolution” or “decay” of the human body. Whatever in man belongs to Nature passes over to Powers standing behind existence. At death the physical body of earthly man slips away, falls away from him; so that in speaking of man as a being of the Earth, we can only say that the instrument of his everyday consciousness falls away from him at death.

The first of the three principles of the Earth-man, therefore, is his consciousness. In considering his whole being, however, something must be kept separate and distinct from what is known as “consciousness” per se in ordinary sense-existence—something that is not, in the same sense as thinking, feeling and willing, to be included in the general sphere of consciousness. What we call memory is distinct from these other processes. The thoughts and feelings arising from the store of memory and of remembrances, are not subject to the same laws as the consciousness of which we have here been speaking. In order that consciousness may exist at all, the physical body must be preserved in its accustomed form. In respect of its “substance” the physical body is being renewed all the time; after seven or eight years we have within us quite other physical substances than were previously there. The physical substances change, but the “form” remains. And the form must remain, for it is the instrument for the ordinary consciousness. The ordinary consciousness can unfold thinking, feeling and willing during the time the physical body retains its form. If, however, the memory and the remembrances were bound up with the “physical body,” they would not be able to survive for very long—at most for as long as the various substances of the physical body remain. This means that if the memory were bound up with the physical body, we should be able, at most, to remember back for six or seven years. The physical body is not, however, the instrument of the memory; in earthly man the instrument of the memory is the ether-body, or life-body. The ether-body is actively in operation through the whole life of man on Earth—so that what has been taken into the memory, from the first moment of consciousness to death, can remain all the time. It is this ether- or life-body which carries remembrances, memory pictures, from one period in life across to the other. The instrument for the earthly consciousness, therefore, is the physical body; the instrument for memory and remembrance is the ether-body. We should not be able to carry the remembrances of our life across the period stretching between death and a new birth if something quite definite did not take place—if, after forsaking the physical body at death we did not remain for a certain space of time in the ether- or life-body. This is the interval after death during which the past life spreads out like a great panorama, a great tableau. This “life-tableau” can only appear to us because after death we retain the ether-body for a short time. The ether-body is the instrument for acts of remembrance or recollection and if we were to lose it altogether at death or immediately afterwards, no such tableau could rise-up before us. We must be able to use the ether-body as an instrument, and something takes place while this life-tableau is before us after death. This whole life tableau is gathered into, “inscribed” as it were, into the universal life-ether permeating space. And there it remains—in the universal life-ether. What was retained at the beginning for a few days only, is now inscribed in the universal life-ether in which we live perpetually. Because it is thus inscribed it is present throughout our further existence between death and the new birth in the future. We take with us through that period an “extract” of our ether-body, so that a connection can always be established with the life-tableau that has been inscribed into the universal life-ether. This is a kind of permanent organ whereby the remembrances of the last life remain accessible.

In consciousness per se there is, and can only be, the immediate Present; the immediate reality of “being” would vanish with the passing moment if, as men of Earth, we could only unfold consciousness in acts of thinking, feeling and willing. That we are able to preserve what is contained in our life of thinking, of feeling and of will, is due to the ether-body; and even after death it is still preserved, in the universal life-ether. There we have the second principle of earthly, human existence: that which does not take flight with the passing moment, but remains in existence, preserved in the universal life-ether. Thus in the man of Earth, two principles are to be specified: earthly consciousness, and memory or remembrances—which are not to be identified with the consciousness as such.

What, then, is the third principle?

The second principle is distinct from the first in that it does not permit experiences simply to pass away, but preserves them. The third principle of earthly man differs in an important respect from the second. In so far as thoughts have become memories, they have a definite character. Everything that is entrusted to the memory has this characteristic: during your life it is your own, personal possession, part of your own, personal “estate.” Memories that go with you through life until the time of death, are your innermost possession, a possession remaining in you as a personality, until your death. It will not be difficult to realise that what you carry with you through life in your memory, in your remembrances, really means nothing in the outer world. It is within you, and only after death does it begin to mean something in the outer world—when it is inscribed into the universal life-ether. In the universal life-ether it is the “registered mark” of your personality. It was inner experience during life and after death it remains for the following period of eternity as the register of your personality. There it is—inscribed into the life-ether. The “Inner” during life becomes the “Outer” in the life-ether after death. Up to the time of death these memories and remembrances are carried within us as our own, inner possession, and from death onwards they are inscribed like an open secret, as it were, in the life-ether; there they live and we remain connected with them because an “extract” from the life body goes with us and we can always look back to what we once experienced. Just as memories and remembrances remain within us during earthly life, so, after death, we are in the life-ether, together with the experiences of our past earthly life.

It is different with all that even during our lifetime became outward reality—not remaining inward as did the remembrances and memories. Truth to tell, every single step we take with our feet during earthly life becomes outer fact, outer reality; for not only are we able to remember it, but the very step registers our “mark” upon the earthly realm—in that we move through the air, for one thing. Even in the physical sense, the whole of our active life becomes outer reality. And to what a still greater extent is this true of the moral life!

Good and kind-hearted actions in very truth become outer reality. Deeds born of compassion or of sympathy with the joys of our fellow-men do not live on only within us but also in the other human being, in our whole environment. All the time, the marks and traces of our life are being impressed upon Earth-existence. The man for whom we performed a deed of compassion or a deed born of fellow-feeling with his joy or suffering, carries the influence and effect of our action on with him through life. What we have felt and done lives on in the others, in the outside world. Think about this, and it will soon become plain that such actions do not belong exclusively to the man who performs them in the sense that his memory-pictures belong to him, but pass over into the world outside as active influences.

What is imparted in this way to the outer world during a man's lifetime is not like his memory-pictures inscribed in the ether-body. The ether-body is too intimately and fundamentally part of the whole personality to enable these actions and the effects of them to be registered in it. Nor would this be for the good during earthly life. For if some unkind or mischievous deed, for instance, were immediately to be inscribed in the ether-body, the man would be doomed, throughout his whole life, to be aware of it; it would be a force in his ether-body and in certain circumstances suffering would be entailed; working its way into his life-forces, the bad action would make him ill, discontented, feeble. If acts were inscribed in the ether-body, as are the remembered thoughts, life would be made impossible for earthly man. Just as the ether-body is the instrument for the thoughts, in so far as they become remembrances and memories, so is the astral body the instrument for deeds. Deeds proceed from the astral body. The astral body is the instrument for every action—as I have said, an action becomes part of and works as an influence in the outer world. Everyday consciousness is bound up with the physical body; remembrances and memory with the ether-body; delicate and rarified though the astral body is, every action, remaining as it does as an influence in the outer world, has its source in the astral body. The consequence of this is that actions remain in a certain sense bound up with the astral body, just as memory remains with the ether-body. While the human being is still living in the ether-body after death, the “tableau of memory” unfolds—the memories of the life that is just over remain in the ether-body. When the ether-body has been laid aside after death and all that has been preserved in the form of personal memories has been inscribed into the universal life-ether, man's life continues, but now wholly in the astral body. In the astral body he has to live for a long time, bound up with the outer effects caused by his life. After death the human being lives through his actions in backward sequence; he lives backwards through everything he has done to other beings on the earth. For a period amounting approximately to a third of the time of his life, he is living in his astral body through all the actions he performed on Earth. And just as the personal memories are inscribed into the universal life-ether when the ether-body is laid aside a few days after death, so in the period during which the human being is bound up with the astral body, all his deeds are inscribed into the all-pervading cosmic astrality. They are within the cosmic astrality and he remains connected with them, just as he is connected with his personal memories which have been recorded as an abiding inscription in the cosmic ether—only his deeds are inscribed as it were into a different cosmic register. While the human being is living backwards through the deeds and acts performed in the past life, they are all inscribed in the cosmic astrality and he remains connected with them. Through his astral body, therefore, the earthly man remains connected with his deeds.

What I have just described is Karma. What has been inscribed into the all-pervading cosmic astrality by a man's deeds—that, in very truth, is karma. That a strong moral stimulus lies in such knowledge, is quite obvious, and possible allegations to the effect that Spiritual Science does not provide the deepest moral basis for life would be malicious calumny.

In what sense may we speak of a strong moral impulse in the principles of knowledge here described? Deeds performed during life are inscribed, after death, into the cosmic astrality. If a man has committed wrongs and has not, to the best of his ability, been able karmically to put them right during life, all such actions are written into his karma and remain connected with him. (Assuming that already in earthly life he did all he could to right some wrong or sinful action, he would thereby be spared from having it inscribed into his karma.) In that as a human being of the Earth he has an earthly astral body, he has his karma.

As a being of the Earth, then, man has, firstly, consciousness, of which the physical body is the instrument; secondly, his memory, with the ether-body or life-body as its instrument; and thirdly, karma—which belongs to him just as consciousness belongs to him in the physical body. In this sense, earthly man is a threefold being, consisting of his earthly consciousness, his memory, and his karma. Without these principles he is not, in the real sense, an Earth-man. A being who were to go about on Earth without unfolding in his physical body the consciousness belonging to human existence on Earth, would not be Man. A being who did not unfold the faculty of memory belonging to human existence on Earth, would not be man. Nor would a being who went through life in an earthly body without creating karma, be Man. What constitutes the Earth-man is that he unfolds consciousness through the physical body, memory and remembrance through the ether-body, and through the astral body creates karma. These are the “earthly” principles in the being of man. A fourth principle must be added, namely, the Ego, the “ I.” This is the principle of which we know that it flashed up, for the first time, in Earth-existence. The “ I ” passes from incarnation to incarnation, is within us while we are unfolding our earthly consciousness, while we are preserving picture after picture in our memory and while we are accumulating karma from one incarnation to another. The “ I ” is within us, within these three principles of earthly manhood. What, then, still remains to be said about the earthly man?

The “ I ” flashed into manifestation for the first time on the Earth. The foundations of the physical body of earthly man were laid down during the Old Saturn period of evolution. Although after the Old Moon period, Earth-evolution changed the nature of the physical body, the physical body is not a product of the Earth proper. The same is to be said of the ether-body—which was laid down in germ during the Old Sun period—and of the astral body for which the first foundations were laid during the Old Moon period. Let us try to picture the human being the following way. When Earth-existence began, man came over from a pre-earthly evolution, as a being consisting of physical body, ether-body and astral body. In the course of Earth-evolution his physical body was transformed into the instrument for his earthly consciousness, his ether-body into the instrument of his personal memory, and his astral body into the bearer of karma. Physical body, ether-body, astral body—these were bestowed upon man by earlier, pre-earthly periods of evolution, after which the Earth, in accordance with its mission, elaborated these three principles of his being. Let us keep them distinct. The physical body of man has become the marvellous, wonderful structure it is, because it has passed through three stages of metamorphosis, together with the three earlier embodiments of the planet Earth; if it had remained as it was after the expiration of the Old Moon period, it would have been endowed with all the inner qualities it now possesses, but would not have been metamorphosed in such a way as to enable it to become the instrument of consciousness for earthly man. The physical body has not only the perfection it had attained at the end of the Old Moon-evolution but, in addition, it has been so transformed as to become the bearer of the earthly consciousness of man. In the same way, the ether-body has all the perfections previously contained within it, but only since the beginning of Earth-evolution has it developed the forces which make it the bearer of man's personal memory. The astral body had acquired many perfections during the Old Moon period, but only through the operation of earthly processes could it become the instrument for the creation of karma. The “ I ” alone has been equipped with all its powers solely by the Earth. What the Earth itself worked into the being of man is to be observed only in the “ I,” the Ego.

What, then, has really been added to the human being by the “ I ”?

Let us suppose that man had all the qualities and attributes which the Earth-mission has instilled into him, but not the “ I.” This is, of course, an impossible hypothesis because the “ I ” had necessarily to be bestowed upon him.—But let us assume that without unfolding the “ I,” a being possessed the earthly qualities contained in physical body, ether-body, astral body. Even if it had not been possible to develop these qualities and attributes on the Earth, their development might have been possible on other planetary bodies, and Spiritual Science is able to study the conditions of existence prevailing on other planets. A being of this kind would be able to unfold waking consciousness as it exists in man, would possess the faculties of thinking, feeling and willing, but would not connect his thoughts, experiences, feelings or impulses of will, with an “ I ”-consciousness. Nevertheless it would be possible for such a being to have, like earthly man, consciousness, remembrances, the power to retain ideas and thoughts in the memory, and also karma. Such a condition would not be possible in an earthly man; but let us envisage that there might exist a being of his kind. What would there be within him? Consciousness, Memory, Karma—as they are within the human being. But in the earthly human being, the “ I,” too, is present. What, then, is brought about by the “ I ”? Since karma is created, essentially, by the astral body, how does the “ I ” operate within its own sphere of karma?

What is brought about by the “ I ” itself is of even greater moment than human karma. For karma remains connected with the human being. Deeds performed in some life persist as his karma, and he can make compensation for them in a later life. In reality it is the astral body which causes karma to remain. But the “ I ” is a spiritual potency, a spiritual being. What the “ I ” creates, as the astral body creates karma, does not remain connected with man but detaches itself from him as forms created by thoughts. Whereas what is inscribed in his karma remains connected with him and is instilled into subsequent phases of Earth-evolution, something else—of a very definite character—is brought into existence by the human “ I,” and passes over into other worlds—as memories pass over into the cosmic life-ether. Just as karma is inscribed in the cosmic astrality, so the creations of the “ I ”—the forms created by thoughts and feelings—go forth into the world. Karma remains connected with the human being; but there are other creations—creations of the “ I ”—which detach themselves from him, to begin with, simply as forms, and live on as spiritual forms in the universe. What, then, is it in the human being that lives on? Firstly, his personal memories; secondly, his karma; thirdly, the forms born of his thoughts and feelings. But whereas he remains connected with his memories and with his karma, these thought-forms detach themselves from him and, as forms, become independent. As lifeless forms—which actually go forth as forms—the creations of the “ I ” live on in the outer world.

If we wish to know the nature of the spiritual forces powers active in the different kingdoms of nature in the heavenly bodies, we must first become acquainted with these spiritual beings themselves, as we have already begun to do in the three lectures which have been given. We tried to characterise the so-called nature-spirits, and then ascended to the beings which stand immediately above man and which we can find in the higher world to our own. We will continue these considerations to-day, and must therefore link them to what has already been said on the way in which we can link ourselves to the beings of the Third Hierarchy. As shown in the last lecture, it is possible for man to rise above himself, to subdue all his own special ego interests in order, by that means, to rise into a sphere which he first of all finds his own guide, who can give him some idea of those beings called, in the sense of western esotericism, Angels, Angeloi.

We then pointed out how further progress along the path leads to knowledge of the Folk or Nation-Spirits, of whom we have spoken as Archangels, Archangeloi; and how, in the course of cultural civilisation we find the so-called Spirits of the Age, the Archai. If a man follows the path roughly indicated yesterday, he gains a certain feeling of what is meant by these beings of Third Hierarchy, but even if he goes through an occult development, he will for a long time only have a sort of feeling. Only if he goes in patience and persevere through all the feelings and perceptions mentioned yesterday, can he pass over to what may be called clairvoyant vision of the beings of the Third Hierarchy. If, therefore, we progress further along this way, we shall find that gradually we educate ourselves, developing in ourselves a different state of consciousness, and then we can begin to have a clairvoyant consciousness of the beings of the Third Hierarchy. When a man follows this way further he will find that he gradually trains himself to another condition of consciousness and that then a clairvoyant perception of the Third Hierarchy can begin.

This other condition of consciousness can be compared with the sleep of man, because in this condition a man with his ego and his astral body feels freed from his physical and etheric bodies. We must have a perception of this feeling of freedom. We must gradually learn what it means not to see with our eyes, hear with our ears, or think with our intellect, which is connected with the brain. Again, we must distinguish this condition from that of ordinary sleep, inasmuch as in it we are not unconscious, for we have perceptions of the spiritual beings in our environment;—at first, only dimly sensing them, and then, as has been described, clairvoyant consciousness lights up within us, and we get a living view of the beings of the Third Hierarchy and of their off-spring, the nature-spirits. If we wish to describe this condition more accurately, we may say that he who raises himself through occult development to this condition actually perceives a sort of demarcation between his ordinary consciousness and this new condition of consciousness. Just as we can distinguish between waking and sleeping, so to him who has gone through occult development, there is at first a distinction between the consciousness in which he sees with his ordinary eyes, hears with his ordinary ears, and thinks with the ordinary intellect—and that clairvoyant condition in which he has nothing at all around him of what he perceives in the normal consciousness, but has instead another world around him, the world of the Third Hierarchy and its offspring. The first achievement is learning to remember in ordinary consciousness what one has experienced in this other condition of consciousness. Thus we can accurately distinguish a certain stage in the occult development of man, when he can live alternately in his ordinary consciousness, when he sees, hears, and thinks like other men, and in the other condition of consciousness which he can, in a sense, produce voluntarily, and in which he perceives what is around him in the spiritual world of the Third Hierarchy. And then just as we remember a dream, so can he, in his ordinary consciousness, remember what he experienced in the other, the clairvoyant condition. He can talk about it, can translate into ordinary conceptions and ideas what he experiences in the clairvoyant state. Thus if a seer in his ordinary condition of consciousness, himself wishes to know something of the spiritual world, or to relate something about it, he must call to mind what he experienced in the other, the clairvoyant conditions of consciousness. A clairvoyant having reached this stage of development, can only know something of those beings whom we have described as the beings of the Third Hierarchy and their offspring; he can at first know nothing of higher worlds. If he wishes to know of these he must attain a still higher stage of clairvoyant vision

This higher stage is reached by continually practicing those exercises described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How to Attain It and especially going through those exercises there described as the observation—let us say—of the plant, of the animal, etc. If a man continues his exercises in this way, he attains a higher stage of clairvoyance. This consists not only in his having two alternate conditions of consciousness and being able to remember his clairvoyant experiences in the normal condition; but having attained this higher stage of clairvoyance, he can also perceive spiritual worlds, spiritual beings and spiritual facts when in his ordinary condition of consciousness, looking at the things of the external world through his eyes. He can then, so to speak, carry his clairvoyant vision over into his ordinary consciousness, and can see behind the beings around him in the external world, the spiritual beings and forces everywhere more deeply concealed, as though behind a veil.

We may ask: “What has happened to a clairvoyant, who is able not merely to remember the experiences of another condition of consciousness, but who can have clairvoyant experiences in his own everyday consciousness?” If a man has only ascended to the first stage, he can only make use of his astral body in order to look into the spiritual world. Thus the body which a man makes use of at the first stage of clairvoyance is the astral body; at the second stage of clairvoyance which has just been described, he learns to make use of his etheric body. By means of this he can even in ordinary, normal consciousness, look into the spiritual world. If a man learns to use his etheric body in this way as an instrument for clairvoyance, he gradually learns to perceive everything in the spiritual world belonging to the beings of the Second Hierarchy.

Now, however, the clairvoyant must not stand still here, only perceiving his own etheric body, so to speak; but on attaining this second stage of clairvoyance he has a very definite experience. He has the experience of seeming to go out of himself, and as it were, of no longer feeling enclosed within his skin. When he—let us say—encounters a plant or an animal, or even another human being he feels as if a part of himself were within the other being; he feels as if immersed in the other being. In normal consciousness and even when we have reached the first stage of clairvoyance, we can still say, in a certain sense, “I am here; and that being which I see is there.” At the second stage of clairvoyance, we can no longer say this; we can only say, “Where that being is which I perceive, there am I myself.” It is as though our etheric body stretched out tentacles on all sides and drew us within the beings into which we, perceiving them, plunge our own being. There is a feeling belonging to our ordinary normal consciousness which can give us an idea of this clairvoyant experience; only, what the clairvoyant of the second stage experiences is infinitely more intense than a feeling; it amounts to a perception, an understanding of, an immersion in another being. The feeling to which I refer, which can be compared to this experience of the clairvoyant, is sympathy, love. What does it really imply when we feel sympathy and love in ordinary life? If we ponder more closely on the nature of sympathy and love—this was slightly touched upon yesterday—we find that sympathy and love cause us to detach ourselves from ourselves and to pass over into the life of the other being. It is truly a wonderful mystery of human life, that we are able to feel sympathy and love. There is scarcely anything among the ordinary phenomena of normal consciousness which can so convince man of the divinity of existence, as the possibility of developing love and sympathy. As human beings we experience our existence in our own selves; and we experience the world by perceiving it with our senses or grasping it with our reason. It is not possible for any intellect, for any eye, to look into the human heart, to gaze into the human soul; for the soul of another keeps enclosed in its innermost chamber what it has within it of joy or sorrow, and truly it should appear as a wonderful mystery to anyone, that he can, as it were, pour himself into the being of other souls—live in their life and share their joys and sorrows. So just as we with our normal consciousness can by means of sympathy and love plunge into the sorrows and joys of conscious beings, so does the clairvoyant learn, at the second stage of clairvoyance, not only to plunge into everything conscious, into everything that can suffer and rejoice in a human way or in a manner resembling the human; he learns to plunge into everything that is alive. Mark well, I say everything living;—for at this second stage one only learns to plunge into living things, not yet into that which is without life or which appears lifeless, dead, and which we see around as a mineral kingdom. But this immersing oneself into living things is connected with a view of what goes on in the inner nature of those beings. We feel ourselves there, within the living beings; we learn to live with the plants, the animals, and with other human beings, at this second stage of clairvoyance. But not only this; we also learn to recognize behind all living things a higher spiritual world, the beings of the Second Hierarchy. It is necessary that we should form a clear idea of these connections for if one only enumerated what sort of beings belonged to the various hierarchies that would seem but a dry theory. We can only gain a living idea of what lives and weaves behind the sense-world if we know the path by which clairvoyant consciousness penetrates it.

Now, beginning once more from man, we will try to describe the beings of the Second Hierarchy. We saw yesterday, that the beings of the Third Hierarchy are characterised by the fact that in place of human perception, they have manifestation of their own being, and instead of human inner life they have what we may call “being filled with the spirit.” In the beings of the Second Hierarchy we experience when we plunge into them, that not only is their perception a manifestation of their being, not only do they manifest their own being, but that this manifestation remains, as something independent, which separates from these beings themselves. We can gain an idea of what we thus perceive if we think of a snail, which separates off its own shell. The shell—so we understand—consists of a substance which is at first contained in the body of the snail. The snail then detaches it. Not only does the snail manifest its own being externally, but detaches something which then becomes objective and remains. So it is with the actual nature, with the selfhood of the beings of the Second Hierarchy. Not only do they manifest their self-hood as do the beings of the Third Hierarchy, but they detach it from themselves, so that it remains as an independent being. This will be clearer to us, if we picture on the one hand, a being of the Third Hierarchy, and on the other hand a being of the Second Hierarchy. Let us direct our occult vision to a being of the Third Hierarchy. We recognize this being as such because it manifests its selfhood, its inner life externally, and in this manifestation it has its perception; but if it were to change its inner perception, its inner experience, the outer manifestation would also be different. As the inner condition of these beings of the Third Hierarchy changes, and their experiences vary, so do the external manifestations continually change. But if you look at a being of the Second Hierarchy with occult vision, it is quite different. These beings also perceive and experience inwardly; but what they experience is detached from them like a sort of shell or skin; it acquires independent existence. If the being of the Second Hierarchy then passes on into another inner condition, has a different perception and manifests in a new way, the old manifestation of the being will still exist; it still remains and does not pass away, as in the case of a being of the Third Hierarchy. So then, what appears in the place of manifestation in a being of the Second Hierarchy, we can call a self-creation, a sort of shell or skin; it creates, as it were, an impression of itself, makes itself objective, in a sort of image. That is what distinguishes the beings of the Second Hierarchy. And if we ask ourselves what appears in these beings in the place of the “being filled with the spirit” of the beings of the Third Hierarchy, it is shown to occult vision that every time the being detaches such a picture, or image of itself, life is stimulated. The stimulation of life is always the result of such a self-creation.

Thus, in the beings of the Third Hierarchy we must distinguish their external life in their manifestation, and their inner life in their “being filled with spirit.” In the beings of the Second Hierarchy we must distinguish their external side as a creating of themselves, a making of themselves objective in images, in pictures; and their inner activity as the stimulation of life, as if fluidity continually rippled in itself and congealed as it detached its image externally. This approximately represents to occult vision the external and internal fulfilment of the beings of the Second Hierarchy. Whilst to occult vision the “being filled with the spirit” of the beings of the Third Hierarchy appears in picture and imagination, as a sort of spiritual light, so is the fluidic life, the stimulation of life which is connected with an external separation, perceived in such a way that occult perception hears something like spiritual tone, the Music of the Spheres. It is like spiritual sound, not spiritual light as in the case of the Third Hierarchy.

Now in these beings of the Second Hierarchy we can distinguish several categories just as we did among the beings of the Third Hierarchy. To distinguish between these categories will be more difficult, for the higher we ascend the more difficult it becomes. We must in the course of our ascent, first of all gain some idea of all that underlies the world surrounding us, in so far as the world around us has forms. I have already said that as regards this second stage of clairvoyance, we need only consider that which lives, not that which appears to us lifeless. What lives comes into consideration, but what lives has in the first place, form. Plants have forms, animals have forms, man has a form. If clairvoyant vision is directed with all the qualities described to-day, to everything around us in nature which has form, and if we look away from all the other parts of the being and only see the forms, considering among the plants the multiplicity of the forms, as also in the animals and in man, this clairvoyant vision then perceives from the totality of the beings of the Second Hierarchy those which we call the Spirits of Form— the Exusiai. We can, however, turn our attention to something besides the form in the beings around us in nature. We know indeed, that everything which lives changes its form, in a certain respect, as it grows. This change, this alteration of form, this metamorphosis, strikes us more particularly in the plant-world. Now if we direct, not the ordinary vision but the clairvoyant vision of the second stage, to the growing plant-world, we see how the plant gradually gains its form, how it passes from the form of the root to the form of the leaf, to the form of the flower, to the form of the fruit. If we look at the growing animal, at the growing man, we do not merely consider a form as it exists at a given moment, we see the growth of the living being. If we allow ourselves to be stimulated by this contemplation of the growth of the living being; reflecting how the forms change, how they are in active metamorphosis—then, the clairvoyant vision of the second stage becomes aware of what we call the category of the Spirits of Motion—Dynamis.

It is still more difficult to consider a third category of such beings of the Second Hierarchy. For we must consider neither the form as such, nor the changes of form, nor the movement; but that which is expressed in the form. We can describe how a man may train himself to this. Of course it does not suffice to train the ordinary normal consciousness in such a way as has just been described, he must he helped by the use of the other exercises which raise man to occult vision. He must perform these; and not educate himself by means of his ordinary consciousness but by clairvoyant consciousness. This must first train itself as to how man himself becomes, in his outer form, the expression of his inner being. As we have said, that can also be done by the normal consciousness, but in that way one would attain to nothing but conjecture, a supposition of what may lie behind the bearing, gestures, and the facial expression of the human being. But when the clairvoyant vision which has already been trained to the second stage of clairvoyance, allows the physiognomy, gestures, and facial expression in man to work upon him, it produces stimulations through which he can gradually train himself to observe the beings of the third category of the Second Hierarchy. But this cannot take place—please take note of this—if he merely observes the gestures, imitative expression, and physiognomy of man; if he remains at this stage very little can really be gained. He must pass on—occult education is carried on in this most rational way in this realm—he must pass over to the plants. The animals can be left out, it is not very important to study them, but after one has trained oneself a little, clairvoyantly, to learn the inner being of his soul from a man's physiognomy and gestures; it is important to turn to the plant-world and educate oneself further by means of this. Here someone clairvoyantly trained can have very remarkable experiences; he will feel profoundly the difference between the leaf of a plant which—let us say—runs to a point (diagram a.) and the leaf of a plant which has this form (diagram b.); between a blossom which grows upwards in this way (c.) and one which opens outwards. (d.) (See Figure 2) A whole world of difference appears in the inner experience if one directs the occult vision of the second stage to a lily or to a tulip, if one lets either a panicle of oats or a wheat or barley stalk work upon one.

You can realise from this that only to the occult vision of the second stage are those beings which we call the group-souls, actually perceptible. Only for those occultly developed individuals who can extend their own etheric body as tentacles, is it possible to know the beings of the Second Hierarchy and also the group-soul-beings which exist in the various kingdoms of Nature. Still more difficult is the ascent to the beings of the First Hierarchy, and to those beings which are their offspring in the kingdoms of nature. We shall speak further about these in the next lecture.

In the last lecture I was trying to show you how the thinking of the present day, which tends to the formation of abstract concepts, is not really a gift of the outer physical world but a gift of the spiritual world. I tried to show you how at bottom this abstract thinking enters man's soul in exactly the same way as the revelations of the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. The point then is this, that in our most ordinary life we really have something in us that is already of like nature to clairvoyant perception. Now we have something else in us as well, which is even more akin to clairvoyant perception even though in a more hidden way. I mean that consciousness that appears between our ordinary waking state and our sleeping—our dream consciousness. We cannot become familiar in a practical way with the ascent of the soul into higher worlds without trying to get a clear idea of the peculiar life that the soul leads in the twilight consciousness of dreaming. What now is a dream in reality?

Let us begin by considering the dream pictures we have around or before us, which in general are more fleeting, less sharply outlined than the perceptions of ordinary life. These pictures seem to flit past our souls. When, afterward, we come to analyze them objectively we can be struck by the fact that in most cases they have some kind of connection with our life on the physical plane. Of course, there are people who are only too ready to see something high and wonderful in their dreams, or to interpret them at once as revelations of higher worlds. There are those who really believe that a dream has given them something altogether new, something that has never been there before. In most cases we shall be mistaken in interpreting our dreams in such a way. In our careless haste we fail to recognize how, after all, some experience or other we have had on the physical plane more or less recently, or perhaps even many years ago, has reappeared in the changing, weaving pictures of our dreams. For this very reason it is quite easy for the materialistic science of our age to reject the idea that there is anything remarkable in the revelations of our dreams, and instead point out that dreams are simply copies or reflections of what has been experienced in external life. If you are acquainted with the present-day science of dreams you will realize that it is always at pains to prove that a dream contains nothing more than the reflections of the physical world that the brain carries in itself. It must be admitted that such an attitude can easily reject any higher significance in our dream life, showing that the higher revelations many people claim to have are pictures characteristic of the age in which they live, pictures that could not have been seen at all in any other age. So, for example, people today often dream in images derived from inventions and discoveries only made in the nineteenth century. It of course is easily proved that images derived from external life steal their way into the ever-changing play of dreams.

A person who would gain a clear idea of his dream experiences, learning something from them to help him in entering the occult worlds, must therefore be exceedingly careful in this realm. He must make a habit of carefully following out all the hidden connections. If he does so, he will realize that most of his dreams give him no more than he has already experienced in the outer world. But it is just when we become more careful in analyzing our dream life—and every aspiring occultist should do so—that we shall gradually begin to notice how one thing or another wells up before us that we could not possibly have experienced in our external life during this incarnation. One who follows such indications as are given in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment will notice that his dream-life gradually begins to change. His dreams do actually begin to assume a different character. One of the first experiences he can have may be the following.

Perhaps he has been thinking for a long time about some perplexing problem and has at last concluded that his understanding is not yet equal to solving it, nor is all that he has been able to learn from external sources adequate for solving it. Now it will not generally happen that he is immediately conscious of having a dream in which this problem is solved for him. Even so he will be able to have a certain higher consciousness at a comparatively early stage. As if awaking from a dream he will seem to remember something. He can say to himself, “I have not been dreaming about this problem, nor was I conscious of a dream I have had before. Yet a kind of memory is arising in me. It is as though some being had come near to me who solved this problem for me by giving or suggesting a solution.”

One who gradually widens his consciousness by following the indications I have given will have this experience fairly easily. He will recall something he has lived through as though in a dream, and will know that at the time he was not aware of experiencing it. Such an experience will seem to shine upward from the depths of his soul and he will say to himself, “When I was not there with my intelligence, my cleverness, when I was protecting my soul from the suggestions of my intellect, then my soul had greater power. My soul could come freely in touch with the solution of the problem, before which I was powerless with my intellect and understanding.”

No doubt scientists will often find it easy here too to give a materialistic explanation for such an experience. But one who has had it knows full well that what has appeared to him, emerging like the recollection of a dream experience, reveals something quite different from a mere reminiscence of ordinary life. The whole mood of his soul afterward tells him he has never had such an experience before. It brings him into a wonderful feeling of bliss and elation to realize that in the depths of his soul something more is active than is present in his ordinary consciousness. This recognition can become still more distinct, and it happens in the following way.

If we carry out energetically the exercises given in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and if we continue to do so for a long time—even perhaps for several decades—then an experience may arise in our soul quite similar to what I have just been describing. For example, one which is mixed up with the recollection of an experience in everyday life we had years ago, perhaps a most disagreeable experience that we felt as a hard blow of fate and could never recall without pain and bitterness. Now something like the memory of a dream arises in our consciousness but it is a strange dream. It tells us that feelings live within us that drew this bitter experience to us with irresistible force and welcomed it gladly. Something lives in us that felt a kind of delight in bringing about all the circumstances that led up to this stroke of fate. When we have had such a dream remembrance, we know full well that while in our usual consciousness, which regulates our external affairs, there has not been a single moment—not one in the whole course of our present life—when we did not feel this stroke of fate with bitter pain. Yet, deep down within us there is something that stands in quite a different relation to this blow of fate. It used all its power and magnetic force to draw together the circumstances needed to bring about this misfortune. We did not know it at the time. Now we notice that behind our everyday consciousness another, deeper layer of our soul life was wisely at work.

If we have such an experience—and we shall have them if we earnestly carry through the exercises I have indicated—from then onward we have an extended area of knowledge and conviction. In ordinary life we feel ourselves in a certain relation to the outer world and the events that come to us in the course of our destiny. We meet these events with sympathy and antipathy. In the case mentioned this particular blow of fate was felt as a bitter and hateful experience. We did not know that all the time our soul had another wider life that had longed to live through what we felt to be so unwelcome. This feeling is quite different in its quality from any recollection out of ordinary life, for in our innermost being we are very different from what we imagine. It is just this difference that now becomes evident in our soul. It enters in such a way that we know it has brought us revelations from realms into which our everyday consciousness cannot penetrate. It widens our whole concept of our life of soul. We know then, by experience, that our soul-life contains something far more than its content within the limits of birth and death. If we do not penetrate into these deeper regions we have no idea that beneath the threshold of consciousness we are quite different beings from what we imagine ourselves to be in everyday life. When a new, significant feeling thus arises, the horizon of what we call our world expands into a new region. We realize why it is that in ordinary life we can enter it only under certain conditions.

In attempting to describe to you what may be called the occult development of dream-life, I have set before you two quite different conditions. Our ordinary dream-life, that most people experience continually at the border of sleeping and waking and that is nourished by images of everyday life, and an altogether new world of inner life that can arise on going through a certain training. We have the power to plunge into the regions of dream-life in such a way as to find a new world dawning upon us, one in which we have actual experiences of the spiritual worlds. One condition must be fulfilled, however, if we would have these new experiences between sleeping and waking during the night. We must be able to exclude the recollections and images of our ordinary life. So long as these interfere in this realm of dreams, so long do they make themselves important in it and block the way to real experiences of the higher worlds.

Why is it that the images from our everyday life thrust so insistently into this higher realm? Because, whether we confess it or not, we have the liveliest interest in all that concerns our particular selves in the external world. If some people imagine that they no longer take any special interest in their life, that makes no difference at all. No one who realizes how in this connection people can give themselves up to the grossest illusions, will be misled by such imaginings. After all, man is closely attached to the sympathies and antipathies of his everyday life. If you really try to carry out the exercises I have given for soul development you will soon realize that it all comes to this, that you must detach your interest from your everyday life. People carry out the directions given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment in all sorts of ways. The book is read by many different people, and for many different reasons, and one's reason for looking into it will determine one's attitude to it. Thus, someone begins reading perhaps with the most beautiful feelings of how he may gain insight into the higher worlds. Then his curiosity is aroused—and why indeed should we not be curious about this realm! Curiosity often begins to stir even if one begins with the most holy feelings. That will only carry through for a little while, however, for all sorts of inner feelings begin coming in and make us stop, so we give it up.

But these feelings that we do not wish to recognize clearly, and generally interpret wrongly, are just those connected with sympathies and antipathies. We have to free ourselves from them in quite another way if we really mean to carry out these exercises. In fact, we do not free ourselves from them. That is why we stop doing the exercises. Though we say we want to break free of them we do not do it, but when a person is really in earnest about doing the exercises the effect they can have is seen very soon. His sympathies and antipathies toward life change a little. I must say this does not happen very often. When it does happen the change is of very great significance because it means we are struggling against the very forces that allow the images from our everyday life to arise in our dreams. They can no longer find their way in if we have come so far as to alter our sympathies and antipathies in any sphere of life, no matter which.

This alteration in the forces of sympathy need not occur in a high realm of life, but in some domain it must be carried out, perhaps in the most everyday affairs. There are people who say they do their exercises every day, morning and evening, and for hours at a time, and cannot go even one step into the spiritual worlds. Sometimes it is difficult to explain to them how easily one can understand that. In many cases they only need to realize this fact, that they are still grumbling about the same things they were grumbling about twenty, even thirty years ago, although they have been doing exercises all the time. The very language of their grumbling is still the same.

Then there are those who try to apply external means that can have certain effects in occultism. For example, they become vegetarians. In spite of all their endeavors to break away from a liking for meat, however, they attain no results from continued exercises. They may ascribe it to quite other reasons, thinking for instance that they need meat for their body, their brain, and therefore return occasionally to the flesh-pots of Egypt. Let us not imagine that it is an easy thing to transform one's sympathies and antipathies. To quote a passage from Faust, “Easy it is, yet is the easy hard.” This is an apt expression of the situation of the evolving soul that is trying to rise into higher worlds.

It is not a question of changing this or that particular sympathy or antipathy but of changing any whatsoever. If we do, then after certain exercises we can enter the domain of dream life in such a way that we bring nothing into it of our everyday sense experiences. Thereby in a certain sense new experiences have room to enter. When, through an occult development, we have really gone through such experiences in practice, we become aware of a certain layer of consciousness present in us that lies behind the everyday consciousness with which every person is familiar. In ordinary life our dreams take place in this second layer of consciousness, “dream-consciousness,” but it only becomes such through our carrying into it what we experience from our waking consciousness. If, however, we hold back all our everyday experiences from this region then experiences from the higher worlds can enter. These higher experiences are present in our surrounding world here every day. When they first arise we begin to realize that our everyday consciousness itself seems like a dream compared to the reality of those experiences. We find that reality only begins on that higher level.

Returning to the example of suffering a blow of fate that subsequently caused such bitter feelings, let us try to understand how one actually comes to realize the beginning of higher consciousness. Along with this bitterness we notice that there was something in us that sought out this misfortune, even feeling the need of it for our development. Now for the first time we realize in practice what karma is. We entered this incarnation with an imperfection in our soul. We felt it deeply, and thus were drawn by a magnetic power toward this blow of fate. By fully experiencing it we have mastered and done away with the imperfection. That is something real, and important. How superficial then is everyday judgment in creating a feeling of antipathy toward the misfortune. Here rather is the higher reality: Our soul goes forward from one life to another. How short is the time in which it can feel antipathy toward a blow of fate! When it looks out beyond the horizon of this incarnation, it feels one thing only to be necessary, to become ever more perfect. This feeling is stronger than any we have in our ordinary consciousness. Ordinarily, if it had been confronted previously by this blow of fate it would have slunk past it like a coward, would not have chosen the compensating necessity. But the deeper consciousness of which we know nothing does not do this. Instead it seeks its destiny, and feels it as a process of growth toward perfection. It says, “I entered into this life. I was aware of an imperfection that has been in my soul since birth. If I would develop my soul this imperfection must be remedied, but to do this I must go on to meet this misfortune. I must seek it out.”

There we have the stronger element in the soul, compared to which the web of ordinary life with all its sympathies and antipathies is like a dream. There beyond we enter into that life and feeling of which we can say, “It knows us better, is stronger in us than our ordinary consciousness.”

Now we notice another thing. If we really have the experience just described, if we do not merely know it in theory but truly experience it, then of necessity at the same time we have another experience. While we feel we can already enter into those regions where everything is different from what it is in ordinary consciousness, a feeling arises in us, “I do not want to enter.” This feeling is very deep. As a rule the curiosity that impels people to enter the spiritual worlds is not nearly strong enough to overcome the feeling of revulsion that says, “I will not enter.” The aversion we feel at this particular stage arises with tremendous force, and all sorts of misunderstandings about it are possible.

Suppose that someone has even received personal instructions. He comes to his instructor and says, “I cannot get on at all, your instructions are of no use.” Indeed he may honestly think so. If the instructor gives him the answer due him, however, he would not be able to understand it at all. This answer is, “You can enter perfectly well but you do not want to.” The pupil honestly believes he has the will to enter because his reluctance remains hidden in his subconsciousness. Indeed, the moment he begins to realize his reluctance he lessens it. The idea that he does not want to enter horrifies him so, he immediately begins to damp down his unwillingness.

This reluctance is a subtle and insidious thing. We feel that we cannot enter with the ego, the self, that we have acquired in this world. If a person wants to evolve to higher things he feels very strongly that he must leave this self behind. That, however, is a difficult thing to do because man would never have developed this self if he did not feel in his daily consciousness that he has it in order to develop it here. His ordinary ego has come into this world in order to evolve. Thus, when man wants to enter the real world he feels he must leave behind what he has been able to evolve in the ordinary world. Then there is only one way. He must have developed this self more strongly than he needs for his ordinary consciousness. As a rule he only develops it as far as he needs it in his ordinary life.

Now if you observe the second point in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, you will find it amounts to this, that the self must be made stronger than is necessary for the purposes of daily life. Only then are we able to go out of our body at night and still retain something that we have not used up. It is only when we have fortified our ordinary self by our exercises, and have an excess of self-reliance in us that we no longer want to shrink back from the higher worlds. But then a new and considerable danger arises. We no longer perhaps bring the recollections of ordinary life into our dreams but we bring something else—our expanded and strengthened self-consciousness. It is as though we filled that realm with it.

Anyone who carries through such exercises as given in my book and thus comes to have experiences like the inner soul experiences of Arjuna, enters the realm of dream-life with an expanded, strengthened self. The result is the same whether done by special training or whether we were destined to expand it at a definite period in our life. Arjuna is in this position. He stands at the boundary between the everyday world and that of dreams. He lives his way into that higher region because through his destiny he has a more powerful self in that realm than he needs in his ordinary life. This point I shall have to elaborate still further, showing why Arjuna has this more powerful consciousness, because now, as soon as he penetrates into that realm, Krishna at once receives him. Krishna lifts him out of the self he has acquired in ordinary life, and thus he becomes a different man from what he would have been if with his expanded self he had not met Krishna. In that case he would certainly have said to himself, “Blood relations are fighting against one another, events are taking place that must ruin the ancient holy caste-distinctions and the service to our ancestors—events that must corrupt our womankind, and conditions that will prevent us from kindling the fires of sacrifice to our forefathers.” All these things were part of Arjuna's everyday consciousness. By his destiny he was torn out of it. He must stand on ground where he has to break with all these accustomed feelings connected with old traditions. Thus he would have to say to himself, “Away with all I hold sacred; with all the traditions that have been handed down to me. I will hurl myself into the battle.” But that is not what happens. Krishna appears, and utters what must appear to Arjuna as the most extreme unscrupulousness, as egoism driven beyond all bounds. The excess of force that Arjuna would otherwise have experienced, that he would have used to live through his own life, Krishna uses as a power whereby he makes himself visible to Arjuna. To make this thought still more clear we may say that if Arjuna had simply met Krishna, even though the latter had actually come to him, he would have known nothing of him, just as we would know nothing of the sense-world if we had not received something from the sense-world itself that formed our senses for perceiving it. Similarly, Krishna must take from Arjuna his expanded and strengthened consciousness. He must in a sense tear his self out of him, and then by its help make himself visible to Arjuna. He makes a mirror, we can say, of what he has torn from Arjuna, so that he may be able to appear to him.

We have sought out what in Arjuna's consciousness enabled Krishna to meet him. There still remains unexplained how Arjuna came to it at all. Nowhere do we see the statement that Arjuna had done occult exercises. In fact he had not done any. How then is he able to meet Krishna? What was it that gave Arjuna a higher and stronger self-consciousness? We shall start from this question in the next lecture.

When schools come under external legislation, we must obviously agree to compromise with regard to religious teaching, and also with regard to the curriculum. But we must keep clear what are the right and good foundations of a curriculum, so that where it imposes something which we feel to be organically inconsistent we can correct it personally here and there.

The discovery of the right curriculum for the period between the seventh and fourteenth or fifteenth year is on the whole bound up with the real knowledge of the child's development at this age. In the last lecture I drew attention to a phase in this development, which lies between the ninth and tenth year, that is, the time when the child has completed his ninth year and is beginning his tenth. When we trace the child's development from the age of seven through the eighth and ninth year, before we come to the tenth year we pass at some point the phase which I described to you, in relation to the whole development, as follows: The ego consciousness is strengthened and consolidated, so that from this time onwards we can introduce the child to the concepts of natural history, as I showed in the last lecture, from the cuttle-fish, the mouse or lamb or horse, and the human being. But you will have seen that there must still be taken into account the reciprocal relation of man to his surroundings, that attention must be paid to man as the real compendium of all other kingdoms of nature, to the importance of not isolating him sharply from the other natural kingdoms. A tremendous amount of harm is done to the growing being unless he is constantly referred, in the tenth and eleventh year, with his feelings and his experiences, to the intimacy of man with external nature, to man as a synthesis of the world of nature outside him.

But another important phase in the child's development lies between the twelfth and thirteenth year. At this time of life the spirit and soul element in man is strengthened and reinforced in so far as soul and spirit are less dependent on the ego. What we are used, in spiritual science, to call the astral body, permeates the etheric body, and unites with it. Of course the astral body is only really born as an independent entity at puberty, but it manifests itself in the etheric body in a peculiar way by charging and permeating it with its own force at the age of twelve to thirteen.

Here, then, lies another important point in the child's development. It is expressed in the fact that the child, if we deal wisely with him at this age, begins to understand the impulses of the outside world which resemble those of the spirit and soul and are expressed in the external world as historical forces. I showed you in an illustration how the sway of such historical forces can be brought within the scope of teaching in the elementary school.¹ But although it is left for you to translate into children's terms what I have explained to you, however much you adapt yourself to children you will not be able to awaken in the child the right understanding of historical impulses if you introduce him to the study of history in this way before he has completed his twelfth year. You can tell the child history earlier than this in the form of stories; you can tell him biographies. He will grasp these. But he will not grasp historical connections before he has completed his twelfth year. That is why you will do harm unless you punctually observe this phase in his development. At this point the child begins to feel a yearning to get what he once learnt in the form of stories in real historical form. And if you have told the child before, for instance, stories of this or that crusader, or of other heroes, you must now try to recast these, so that in the remodelled form he realizes the underlying historical impulses and historical connections. You will see, you will notice unmistakably, that the child responds with understanding from the twelfth year onwards to this right procedure, and you will say to yourself: “I shall confine myself chiefly, until his ninth year, to what we have already described as art, and derive from it writing and reading and later go on to arithmetic; but I shall only pass on to natural history after the age described in the last lecture, and I shall only touch on history, as far as it is more than stories, after he has reached his twelfth year.” At this point he begins to take an inner interest in the great historical connections. This will be quite especially important in the future, for more and more it will become obviously necessary to educate people to a comprehension of historical connections, whereas hitherto they have never arrived at a real conception of history. They have been more like members of an economic State system whose demands and interests they have followed as if they were machines. It has been considered sufficient to know a few paltry anecdotes about rulers and wars, and the dates of battles and famous people.

An especial subject of teaching in the future will have to be the development of the impulse in humanity towards culture. But teaching will then have to include the study of historical impulses, and these will have to be timed in the curriculum to answer to the appropriate moment in the child's development.

But there emerges in the child, when he has crossed the Rubicon of his twelfth year, a further glimmering of understanding. You may talk to the child before this about the organization of the human eye as clearly as possible—but before he is twelve he will not be able to master its formation properly and with understanding. For what are you really doing when you teach the child about the formation of the human eye? You are drawing his attention to the way in which rays of light strike the eye, enter it, are taken up by the lens and refracted, how they then pass through the vitreous humour and form an image upon the back wall of the eye, etc. You must describe all these as physical processes. You describe a physical process which really occurs in man himself, namely in a human sense-organ. If you want to do this you must already have developed the ideas in the child which enable him to respond. That is, you must have already shown the child the refraction of rays of light. That is very easily explained by showing him a lens, explaining the focus, and showing how the rays of light are refracted. But you are then describing purely physical facts which take place outside the human being. This can be done between the turning-point of the child's ninth year and the turning-point of his twelfth year. Only at the end of the twelfth year should this physical description be applied to the organs of man himself, because only then does the child begin to estimate at its right value the action of the outer world upon man, the process by which the activity of the outside world is projected into the human being and prolonged within him. He cannot understand this before he is twelve. He can understand physical processes—but not the consummation of physical processes in the human being.

There is some relation between the comprehension of historical impulses in humanity and the comprehension of the external physical impulses of nature in the human organism. The essence of real humanity lives in historical impulses, but the power concentrated in them persists as an external historical course of events and reacts on man. When you describe the human eye you describe an activity of external nature repeated in the human being. Both processes require an understanding of the same quality, and this understanding does not really emerge until the twelfth year. For this reason we shall need to arrange the curriculum so that the child is trained from the ninth to the twelfth year in the physical ideas suited to a comprehension of man himself, that is that he learns, along with natural history, simple physics, but that we wait until the twelfth year before applying the laws of physics to man himself—just as we should cultivate the telling of stories until he is twelve and then turn the stories into “history.”

My explanations so far refer to the beginnings of this subject. Naturally, the further organization of physics-teaching can then be continued into the period after twelve. But neither physics nor natural history should be embarked on before the child is nine, nor history lessons, nor lessons of a physiological kind, that is, the description of human manifestations, be given before the end of the twelfth year. If you remember that understanding something is not just what arises exclusively in the human intellect, but that it always comprises feeling and will, you will not feel quite antagonistic towards what I have just said. And if people do not observe these distinctions it is because they succumb to illusions. You can acquaint the human intellect in a scanty fashion with historical or physiological concepts before twelve years of age, but it ruins human nature, it really un-suits it for the whole of life. You will therefore find that you must talk to a child of nine to twelve, little by little, for instance, about how light-rays are broken up, how images are formed through lenses or other instruments. For instance, you will be able to discuss with him at this age how opera glasses function. At this age, too, you will be able to talk to him of the nature and the functioning of a clock, you will be able to explain the difference between a pendulum-clock and a watch and all such things. But you must not explain to him before he is twelve the application of light-refraction and image-formation to the human eye.

Now you will have realized from the approaches already indicated how you should proceed to draw up a curriculum in which the subjects of teaching are arranged so as to develop the child's aptitudes in the right way. It remains for us to make another observation from this point of view. It is undoubtedly important in teaching not to deviate too much from life, but at the same time not to accommodate yourself too much to it in trivialities. Saying to the child: “What have you got on your feet?” Answer: “A pair of shoes;” “What are your shoes for?” “To put on,” is called by many teachers an “object lesson,” and serves to reveal absurd trivialities. When you carry on an object lesson on the lines laid down in books on method you tire the child horribly in his subconscious soul, and that again does the child a great deal of harm. We should concern ourselves less with this staying “put” too close to life and this continual dragging up into consciousness of concepts which can really quite well remain in the unconscious, and which simply haul into blatant consciousness purely habitual actions. But because of this we must not keep too great a distance from life and teach the child empty abstractions too early. That will be particularly important in the teaching of physics. Indeed, physics teaching of itself will offer sufficient opportunity to bring into close relationship things near at hand in our everyday life—and things far removed from external life. You should therefore take care to develop physical concepts from life itself. As far as you are able, and according to your gift for invention, you should let the child realize such things as, for instance, these: that it is sometimes still “cold to the feet” in our room after we have turned on the heating, while it is already warm near the ceiling. In pointing this out you draw the child's attention to a fact of life, and from it you can start to explain to him that of course the air below, round the stove, is warmed first. The top of the room obviously does not get warm first of all. But the warm air has the tendency always to rise and the cold air must then fall, so that the process is explained to the child like this: “The air down below, around the stove, gets warm first; this warm air rises, so that the cold air has to fall, and so it is still cold to the feet in a room where the air up above has been warm for some time.” In this way you have set out from a fact of life from which you can now find the transition to pointing out that the warm air expands and the cold air contracts. Here you are already leaving everyday life. But in other cases, too, for instance, if you are speaking in a physics lesson of a lever, it is not wise simply to confront your class with the abstract lever. Start with the lever of a balance, and then come from this to the way a lever functions. Start, that is, from what is useful in ordinary life, and go on to what can be thought out from it in physics.

But at this point I cannot withhold from you the fact that many of our physical concepts themselves work havoc on the child, and that very much depends on the teacher's sound knowledge, on his attempts in the first place to acquire a certain maturity of mind from which to form opinions. You cannot avoid saying to the bigger children: “Here you have an electrical machine; what I have here is called a friction-electrifying machine. By rubbing certain objects I can produce electricity, but to do this I must always be careful to wipe the objects which are to be electrified, for they must be dry. If they are wet the experiment will not work; no electricity is produced.” You then enlarge to the children on the reasons why it will not do to try to produce electricity with wet instruments. Then you go on to explain how lightning is produced, and you speak of it as an electrical process. Now many people say: “There is friction between the clouds, which produces an electric discharge in the form of lightning.” The child will believe it, perhaps, because the teacher believes it himself, but in his subconscious nature a quite peculiar process is going on—of which he is naturally unaware. He says to himself: “Yes, the teacher always carefully wipes—so that they are not wet—the instruments which are to rub against each other and produce electricity, but afterwards he tells me that electricity is produced by the friction of the clouds, which, after all, are wet!” The child notices such contradictions. And much of the tormenting restlessness of life arises from the fact that the child has continuously to put up with such contradictions. They may arise in the outer world; but within our thoughts they are out of place. Because the knowledge and experience of men to-day is not profound enough, there persist, in what we teach the children and in what later we teach young people, contradictions of this kind, which really torture the unconscious inner nature of the human being. For this reason we must at least see that what we consciously teach the child does not contain too many statements which the child then visualizes differently in his subconsciousness. In science we shall not, of course, be called upon as teachers to sift such nonsense as the foolish confusion which is introduced into physics between lightning and electricity. But when we are dealing with, let us say, more transparent questions, we should always at least be conscious that we are not, of course, merely influencing the child's consciousness, but always his subconscious nature too. How can we adapt ourselves to this subconsciousness?

We can only do it by becoming, as teachers, more and more the kind of people who do not adjust their understanding to suit the child. I have already mentioned in another connection what this involves. You must cultivate in yourself the capacity for letting the lesson in which you are engaged with the child absorb you as entirely as the child is absorbed in it—no matter what the subject. You must not let yourself be infected with the thought: “Of course I know a great deal more, but I am making it up to suit the child. I am above the child and serve up whatever I have to say to him in a suitable way.” No, you must have the gift of so transforming yourself that the child literally awakens in your lessons, that you yourself become a child with the child. But not childishly. Nursemaids often make this mistake; they talk with the child in baby-talk; when he says “Daddy,” they say “Daddy,” too, instead of father. The point is not to be childish superficially, but to transform into childlike experience what is more mature. Of course, to be able to do this properly you must penetrate a little deeper into human nature. We must take seriously the fact that man must become productive in just the most important of spiritual gifts, that he must keep a childish nature all his life. You are a poet, an artist, if, as a mature man, you can always live over in your own soul the child's participation in life. To be always a solemn or stodgy person, to be no longer able to behave like a child, inwardly like a child, in your thinking and feeling and willing (which have now acquired the maturer conceptions of thirty years), to be always only a composed and rigid person, is not the attitude suited to a teacher. But the right attitude is this: always to be able to transport yourself back into childhood in every personal experience, in every new knowledge acquired. You will not transport yourself like this into childhood if you are a person who relates a newly learned fact in baby-language. But you will be able to transport yourself back by rejoicing as intensely in this new fact as the child rejoices in the realization of a new fact of life. In a word, it is the soul and spirit which must transport itself back into childhood, and not the external body.

Much, of course, will depend on the atmosphere which is created between the teacher and the pupils. For the right atmosphere is created when, for instance, in talking about life, about nature, you take a delight in it like the child himself, marvelling at it in the same way. For example, you have all learnt something about physics and understand the so-called Morse-telegraphy to some extent. You know the process by which a telegram is sent from one place to another. You know that, by means of different devices, by means of the Morse keyboard on which the telegraphic operator presses now for a short time, now for longer, the circuit is closed either for a short or a long time, while it is interrupted when there is no pressure on the keyboard. You know that the actual Morse telegraph apparatus is joined to the circuit in the form of an iron lever attracted by an electro-magnet. Then you know that there is also connected, into this current, the so-called relay. You know that this, with the help of a wire, sets up contact between the telegraph apparatus at one station and that at another, so that at the second station there is reproduced what was produced at the first station. According to whether I apply the current for a short or long time, something is heard at the other station, which, on being set down, produces what is then read by the telegraph operator at the other station. The short or long interruptions become visible as an impression on a strip of paper, a point being seen on the paper for a short duration of the current and a dash for a long duration. The strip of paper is run through rollers. For instance, you see a dot, then perhaps after an interval, three dots, etc. Out of dots and dashes the whole alphabet is composed: an A is .—, Ð’—..., and one dash is T, and so on. In this way we can read off what passes from one station to another.

But all this explanation of the telegraph apparatus is really only an object of intellectual consideration. You really do not need to exert much psychic energy to make intelligible all that is involved in this mechanical process, where the mechanism is saturated with the action of electricity, about which modern science only offers hypotheses. But one aspect of it remains a miracle, and we may as well call a miracle a miracle. I must confess that when I think of the contact which is established between the Morse apparatus of one station and that of another I am always most profoundly moved by the way in which the electrical circuit is closed. It is not, of course, closed by a wire passed from the first station to the second, and a second wire from this back to the first. That could be done; in this way the interruption would be effected by interrupting the circuit. But the closed circuit is not produced by wires which pass to and fro and into which the Morse apparatus is then fitted; actually only one part of the current is conducted by the wire. The wire from the one station goes into the earth and there enters a metallic plate, and at the other station in the same way the wire goes into the earth through a metal plate. The contact, therefore, which could be set up by a wire is established by the earth itself. In the earth itself the process takes place which could otherwise only be produced, in the case of a closed circuit, by means of the other half of the wire. And whenever you have to think how one telegraph apparatus at one station is connected with that of another you cannot but be conscious of a miracle in the fact that the earth, the whole earth, adopts the role of transmitter, that it takes, as it were, the current in its protection and delivers it faithfully up at the other station, for it is the earth alone which undertakes the transmission. All explanations of this are hypotheses. But the important thing for our human relations is that we should be able again and again to feel this as a wonderful fact, that we should not blunt our feelings to the realization of physical processes. Then we shall find the atmosphere in which to explain these to the child, in which we can always transport ourselves back again to our first experience of a fact. A physical explanation will thus transform us with the marvelling child into marvelling children. And such things are everywhere present, even in the physical processes of the world.

Imagine for the moment that you are giving this lesson. There stands something like a bench; on this bench lies a ball; I pull the bench quickly away—the ball falls to the ground. What will the modern teacher generally say when he is explaining a phenomenon of this kind to the child? “The ball is attracted by the earth; unless it is supported, it succumbs to gravitation.” But that really means nothing. For this phrase: “The ball succumbs to gravitation” is actually meaningless; it is one of those verbal definitions of which we have already spoken. For the physicists again confess that no one knows anything about gravitation and the nature of gravitation; but they talk about them nevertheless. But we cannot avoid speaking of gravitation. We are bound to speak of it. For otherwise our pupil will go out into the world and find himself required to qualify for some position, and quite properly is asked: “What is gravitation?” And imagine what would happen if a fifteen-year-old youngster or a fifteen-year-old lassie did not know what gravitation is! So we must tell the child what gravitation is; we must not foolishly close our eyes to the demands of the modern world. At the same time, by acting on the child's subconscious nature we can excite beautiful ideas in him. Having taught him other things, we can explain, for instance, the following fact: suppose you have here the receiver of an air-pump in which there is no air; if you now take out the stopper the air pours quickly in and fills up the void. In the same way there is everywhere the tendency in things to pour into empty space. This tendency is connected with the other case in which you speak of the action of gravitation; if you draw the stopper away in a downward direction something streams in, too. The difference is only that in the one case the outside air pours into the empty space while in the other case the action is in one direction only. Now compare the phenomena.² Do not give the child verbal-definitions, but bring out the connections between the concepts and the phenomena connected with air and those connected with solid bodies. If one were, even with firm bodies, to come to the conception of “streaming in” when they move in a certain direction unsupported, one would abandon the present idea connected with air streaming into an empty space; one would altogether come to sounder conceptions than those now spread all over the world, e.g. the Relativity Theory of Professor Einstein. I only say this as a passing observation on modern civilization, but I must draw your attention to the fact of much mischief being active in our civilization through the Relativity Theory, particularly in its latest form, and to the fact that this will have an injurious effect when the child becomes a scientist.

This already gives you a considerable idea of how the curriculum must be composed, and on what basis.

• 1. See The Art of Education (“Erziehungskunst”). Elementary school is a translation of “Volkschule,” which in these lectures includes every school up to fourteen.
• 2. See Allgemeine Menschenkunde als Grundlage der Pädagogik, Lecture 7.

The mode of expression in which we use to abridge or to simplify somewhat our ideas, when we say etheric body, astral body, etc., can be traced back to the imprint of these higher bodies in the realm of physical functions. Nowadays, people are not very ready to link up expressions in the realm of physical functions with the spiritual foundations of existence. But this must be done if medical thinking and conception are to become permeated with Spiritual Science. For instance, it will be necessary to study in detail the exact manner of the interaction between what we term the etheric body and what we term the physical. You have learned that this interaction is at work in man and we have just dealt with its coming into a kind of disorder in relation to the influence of the astral body. But the same interaction also takes place in extra-human nature.

Think this out thoroughly to its conclusion, and then consider that you are gazing profoundly into the relationship between man and nature. Man is surrounded—let us choose this one thing to begin with—by all the earth's flora in their many species, which he perceives through his different senses. You can at least admit the possibility of an interplay between the flora and all that our earthly atmosphere contains, in the first place, and all that lies outside this earthly sphere, in the planetary and astral regions, in the second place. In considering the flora, suppose the earth's surface to be here (See Diagram 15)—then we can say that the plants refer us to the atmospheric and astral regions (in the literal sense of a pointing to the stars, to the extra-telluric). And even apart from occult research, we can intuitively sense a living interchange between what manifests in blossom-bearing and fruit, and what flows into them from the whole wide universe. (Of course you must make use of a certain intuition here; but as I have already remarked, you will not get very far in medicine without intuition.) Let us Suppose that having realised the external cosmic interplay, we turn our thoughts to our own inner being. There, too, we shall find a certain relationship to that which surrounds us. Just as the etheric and the physical are closely united in in the plant-world, so must we surmise a certain kinship between this union and the manner of connection of the etheric and the physical in man himself.

How then can we speak concretely about this relationship of the etheric with the physical? From the abstract point of view, we can say that the etheric is nearer to the astral than to the physical; for the etheric is open to the forces from above. But we must expect also some relationship between the etheric and the physical. So we must take this two-sided kinship and must look for something which guides us to it. I shall try to do this in the most concrete manner possible.

Walk through an avenue of lime trees in bloom, and try to visualise what happens as you pass between the trees, enveloped in the scent of the lime blossoms. Realise that something is taking place between this fragrance of the limes in flower and, so to speak, the nerve ramifications in your olfactory organs. Turning your conscious thought to this process of perception, you become aware of a certain opening-out or release of the capacity for smelling, which meets the scent of the lime blossom. And you conclude that a process takes place through which an internal sphere in yourself opens to meet something outside, and that the two combine in some way to produce something by virtue of their inner kinship. So you must say that what is diffused in the air as scent from the lime trees—arising without a doubt from an interplay between the flowers and the whole extra-terrestrial environment as they open out towards it—is inwardly felt by you through your sense of smell. There you undoubtedly have something that passes from the etheric body to the astral, for otherwise you could not perceive it, and there would only be the mere process of life. The perception of smell itself proclaims the participation of the astral body. And that which reveals the kinship with the external world, simultaneously shows that the production of the sweet fragrance of the lime blossoms is the polar process to that taking place in your olfactory organs. The fragrance flowing from the blossoms shows the interaction of the plant-etheric with the astral element that embraces it and fills the surrounding universe. So in our sense of smell, we have a process that enables us to take part in the relationship between the plant-life of the earth and the astral element outside the earth.

Now take the sense of taste, and, as an example, something not unlike the scent of the lime blossom, though appealing to another sense, say the flavour of liquorice or of sweet ripe grapes. Here we have to do with a process in our taste organ in contrast to that of smell. You know how closely related they are; and you will also realise the resemblance between what happens functionally in the two cases. But you must, at the same time, understand that tasting is a much more organic and internal process than smell. Smelling is far more a surface activity; a participation in extra-human processes widely diffused in space. But that is not so with taste. Taste reveals certain properties inherent in the substances themselves, and therefore closely interwoven with matter. You can learn more of the internal quality of plants by taste than by smell. Call some intuition to your aid and it will help you to know that all connected with the solidification of matter in plants, and all that is revealed in the organic processes of solidification, is disclosed if we taste the contents of the plant. The essential nature of the plant defends itself against solidification and this is manifested in the tendency of the plants to be fragrant. So you really cannot doubt that taste is a process associated with the relationships of the etheric and the physical.

Now compare smell and taste. As you react to the plant-world through both these senses, you experience the twofold relationship which the etheric has to the astral on one side and to the physical on the other. You literally enter the etheric, or its expression, if you study these two processes of taste and smell. Where they occur in man, there is a physical revelation of the etheric in its dual relationship to the physical and the astral. When we examine what takes place in the acts of tasting and smelling, we live, so to speak, near the surface of man. Our task today is to pass beyond the abstract, mystical view and to approach the concrete grasp of spiritual truth, so that a true science may be fertilised by spiritual science. What can it avail people to listen to perpetual talk of the need to grasp the Divine in man, if they only understand by that a purely abstract Divinity? This method of approach only becomes fruitful if we can consider concrete instances in detail, and trace, say, the interiorisation of outer processes. For example, if we trace in smell and taste the etheric element which is external yet related to man, we perceive, in what is, perhaps, the crudest of our upper sensory processes, the interiorisation of external processes. It is so extremely important for our time to get beyond mere abstract and mystical notions.

Now you are fully aware that in nature every process tends to pass over into another, to be metamorphosed into some other process. Take what we have just said, for instance, that the sense of smell is located more on the surface of our organism, (See Diagram 16) while that of taste is more inward (we are speaking here with reference to the plant-world). Both these sense activities occur within the etheric, which opens into the astral on the one hand and solidifies into the physical on the other. The sense of smell reaches outwards towards the evanescent scent of the flowers, while that of taste lives in the process that opposes aromatisation, and interiorises that which externally produces solidification. When we carefully examine smell and taste, we find that in them the outer and the inner merge, as it were.

But in nature, all processes merge into others. Consider again the aromatic qualities of plants, through which, in a certain sense, they tend away from solidification and towards diffusion even so to speak, going beyond their limits in striving towards the active the amateurish term—into the atmosphere, so that this bears in itself some of the plant existence in the aroma. The phantoms of the plants are still bound up with the aroma. What actually happens when the plant pours its fragrant phantoms into the air, frustrating the process of solidification, and sending forth from the blossoms something that tended to become blossoms too? Simply a process of combustion held back. If you picture to yourself the further metamorphosis of this aromatic activity, you reach the conclusion that it is a combustion that is held back. Compare the process of combustion proper, with the aromatisation of plants. They are two metamorphoses of the same unity. I would even say that combustion is aromatisation on another level.

Let us now see what is in plants that produces flavour. It is more deep-seated and does not urge the dispersal of formative forces into the air like a phantom, but gathers them together that they may be used to build up the internal structure. If you follow up this formative activity with your taste, you come to the process lying below solidification in plants, i.e. to salification, which is a metamorphosis, on another level, of solidification (See Diagram 16). In plants, therefore, we find a strange metamorphosis. The aroma-process directed upwards is, in a certain sense, suspended combustion, which may lead to the initial stages of combustion (for processes of efflorescence are combustion processes). While in the downward tendency you have solidification and salification, and what you taste is something that is held back on the way to salification. But if saline substance is deposited in the tissues of the plant itself, it is something that has gone a step beyond the path of plant-formation; the plant has pressed the phantom of its form down into its actual being.

Here we have the “ratio” for finding remedies and light is thrown on the whole plant-kingdom because one now begins to realise what takes place there. I must again emphasise that this consideration of concrete facts is the only thing that can help us.

To find the next step, you need only remember that wherever it is possible, and from motives of opportunism in a higher sense, I shall link up what I have to explain with current ideas. Thus you should be in a position to build the bridge between what spiritual science is able to give and what is taught by external science. Naturally the contents of the following paragraphs could be stated in a more strictly spiritual-scientific way. But I will connect my remarks with the customary ideas of modern science, because they exist. The physiologist today keeps to the material that lies before him; the spiritual scientist does not need this material before him in the same way, for he does not use the method of dissection. We need not imitate the methods which over-rate anatomical inspection, yet we must reckon with the fact that they have been used and that their results have been established for some time. They will only cease to be employed when natural science has been fertilised to some extent by spiritual science.

Let us examine the close relationship, to which spiritual science will give the key, between the process taking place within the eye, and the processes of smell and taste—particularly of the latter. Let us compare the ramifications of the nerve of taste into neighbouring tissues, with the optic nerve within the eyeball. The relationship is so close that we could hardly avoid looking for an analogy with the process of taste, if we wanted an inward characterisation of the process of sight. Of course the nerve of taste is not continued into anything like the highly intricate structure of the eye, which is situated in front of the retina, and therefore sight is in many ways different.

But what begins as the process of sight, behind the wonderful instrument of the physical eye, has a close inner relationship to the process of taste. I mean that in the act of seeing, we are performing a transformed tasting, metamorphosed because the organic processes of taste are supplemented by the processes due to the intricate structure of the eye. In each one of our senses, we must distinguish between what our organism brings to meet the outer world and what the outer world brings to meet our organism. We must look at the inner process that takes place when the blood runs into the choroid of the eye, where the organism works into the eye. This process is more pronounced in certain animals, which not only have our ocular apparatus but the pecten and the xiphoid processes as well. Now the latter are organs of the blood circulation thrusting the ego forward into the interior of the eye, whereas with us, the ego recedes leaving the eyeball inwardly free. But by means of the blood, our whole organism works through the eye into the whole process of vision. And there, within the process of vision, the transmuted tasting is present. Therefore we may call sight metamorphosed tasting. And in our diagram (See Diagram 16), we have to put sight as metamorphosed tasting above taste and smell.

The processes of taste and of sight correspond to something external that co-operates with something internal. Thus the, process of taste must metamorphose itself upwards; sight is the upper metamorphosis of taste. Now there must also be a complementary downward metamorphosis of the process of taste, diving down into the lower bodily sphere. In the visual process we raise ourselves to the external world; the eye is enclosed in a bony socket, it belongs to the outside; it is a very external organ, built in accordance with the external world. Now we turn to the opposite direction and imagine the metamorphosis of the process of taste downwards into the depths of the organism. Here we come to the opposite pole of the sense of sight; we find, as it were, what corresponds in the lower part to the visual process in the upper part of the body. And this will throw much light upon our further inquiries.

In tracing the metamorphosis of the process of taste downwards, we find the digestive function.

You can only come to an inner understanding of this function, by recognising it, on the one hand, as a metamorphosed continuation of the process of taste, and on the other, as the complete polar opposite of the exteriorised process of sight. For the exteriorised visual sense enables you to recognise what in the outer world around you corresponds to digestion, of what digestion is an organic interiorisation. On the other hand, you become aware to what extent digestion must be called akin to the process of taste. It is not possible to understand the more intimate activities of our organism, in so far as they focus in the digestive process, unless you visualise that entire process as follows: good digestion is founded on capacity to taste with the whole alimentary tract, and bad digestion results from an incapacity of the whole tract to carry out this function of tasting.

Let us remember now that the process we are considering divides itself into taste and smell. As we have pointed out, taste is more involved in the relationships of the etheric with the physical: and smell, on the other hand, in those of the etheric with the astral. The continuation of the process of taste downwards into the organism is likewise bifurcated. This appears in the tendency of the digestive function towards faecal excretion, while on the other hand, we have excretion through the kidneys in the form of urine.

The two bifurcations, upper and lower, are exactly complementary. There are two polar opposites, one dividing upwards into taste and smell, while downward you have the division into digestion proper, and into that function which separates from mere digestion and is based on the more intimate activity of the kidneys and is accessory to their work in the body.

Thus it becomes possible to regard all that happens within our bodies, bounded by the surface of our skin, as an introverted external region. Every continuation upwards leads into the external world; man opens himself up to the exterior in this region.

Now we can follow the matter up in another way. There is, again, a faculty in us which lives in our soul, but is bound to the organism, not bound indeed in any materialistic sense, but in that peculiar sense of which you know from other lectures. For in thinking and the forming of “representations,”¹ (see Diagram 16) we have a metamorphosed seeing, once more turned inward in a certain sense.

Just consider for a moment how many of the representations you use in thinking are simply continuations of visual images; compare for a moment the soul-life of the congenitally blind or deaf person with your own! In thinking we have an interiorised continuation of seeing. And we may even find light thrown upon the remarkable interaction between the anatomy of the head and brain, and the process of thought itself. (This would furnish fine material for medical essays!) When we carefully examine our thinking processes, especially the connection between the powers of combination and association and the cerebral structure, we come upon formations resembling a transformation of the olfactory nerve. So we may say that from an internal point of view, our discontinuous, analytic thinking is very like its counterpart, seeing. But the combination of “things seen,” the association of representations, resembles smell in its internal organic formation. This contrast is expressed in a remarkable way in the anatomical structure of the brain.

Thus we find thinking and representation as the one end of a metamorphosis. What then may be regarded as the complementary interiorised process? Remember the power of representation can be termed a transformed sight; something that is exteriorised in sight and radiates back into the interior in thought. In thinking we try to reverse our vision, as it were, and to direct it again into the organism. So its polar opposite will be a process that does not in any way try to lead into the interior, but to lead out. This polar opposite is the process of evacuation—the conclusion of digestion. (See Diagram 16). Thus evacuation becomes the counter-image of representation. Here you have in a more intimate aspect what I have already dealt with from the standpoint of Comparative Anatomy, when I tried to show the close relationship between the so-called mental (spiritual) capacities of man and the regulated or non-regulated process of excretion; basing my argument on anatomical structure and the existence of the flora of the intestines.

Here is the same truth revealed by another approach. In thought we have an internal continuation of sight, and in evacuation an external continuation of digestion. Now refer to what we said before, that the aroma process in plants is a suspended combustion, and their solidification a suspended salt-process. This again throws light on what takes place within the body! Only—we must be clear that a reversal takes place. In representation, we have the sense of sight reversed and turned inwards, while in the lower bodily sphere there is a reversal towards the outside. So we have to recognise the relationship of the upper process to salification and of the lower to combustion, or to “fire.” (See Diagram 16). So if you apply a suitable remedy containing aromatisation and suspended combustion in plants, to the hypogastrium, you will help and relieve it. Conversely, if you apply to the upper part of man what tends to keep back or to interiorise the salt-process within the plant, you will give help in this sphere also. This rule we shall have to discuss and apply in detail.

Thus the whole external world may reappear in our human interior. And the more deeply internal the process, the greater the need to find its external analogue. We must see something very closely akin to the aromatic and combustion processes—but akin in the sense of polarity—in the activities of the digestive organs, especially of the kidneys. Again in the upper region, from the lungs upward, through the larynx into the head, we must see something related to the tendency to salt formation in the plant; all this tends to salification in man. We might even say, or rather we can say, that if we have once acquired a knowledge of the different ways in which plants absorb and collect salt, we need only look for their analogies in the human organisation. We have dealt with this in general today, and we shall go on to consider it in detail.

With this you have a basic principle for the whole of plant therapy. You have a general picture of the whole process of mutual action and reaction between the interior and the exterior world. But you will already be able to see some specific applications. Take, for instance, some of the odours which even as such are linked with taste, so that they may be fully experienced if the plant is not only sniffed, but chewed. Then we find a synthesis of smell and taste, aroma and flavour, as for instance in balm or ground ivy. In such cases we find that in the scent there is already an element of salification; there is a collaboration between the saline and aromatic tendencies. And this is an indication of their correspondence in the organism, an indication that balm, for instance, is suitable for the external organs and the chest, whereas such very fragrant forms as lime or rose blossom are akin to that which lies deep within the abdomen or in the neighbourhood of the abdominal wall.

All the organs and functions of our upper sphere in the regions of the smell and taste activities, are interlocked with a life-process, which can be so termed in a deeper sense—i.e.—respiration (See Diagram 16). Let us look for the polar complementary activity; it must be something branching from the digestive process, before digestion passes into evacuation, and be the polar counterpart of “representation.” Yet it must be something organically adjacent to the process of digestion, just as respiration is organically adjacent to the process of smell and taste. So we find the converse of respiration in the lymph and blood processes, in the process of blood formation and especially in what branches off and is pushed inward from the digestion, i.e., the processes in the lymphatic glands and similar organs contributing to blood formation. Here then are two polar processes; the one branching from the digestive system, the other from the more external sensory processes; one, respiration, in the second line behind the sensory organs; and the other situated just in front of where the digestive process leads to excretion—the process of blood and lymph. It is remarkable how, starting from actual processes, we come to an insight into the whole human being, whereas in current medicine man is studied only from the organs, considered externally. Here, however, we take our start from the processes and we try to understand the individual person out of the whole relationship between man and the external world. We find interactions that directly depict the etheric activities in man; and these have been our object of study today. And the two processes of breathing and blood formation meet again in the human heart itself. The whole outside world (including man) appears as a duality that is dammed up in the heart, and in it strives for a kind of equilibrium.

Thus we come to a remarkable picture, the picture of the human heart, with its interiorising character, its synthesis of everything that works from outside into our bodies. Outside in the world there is an analysis, a scattering, of all that is gathered together in the heart (See Diagram 17). You come here to an important conception that might be expressed thus: You look out into the world, face the horizon and ask:—What is in these outer surroundings? What works inwards from the periphery? Where can I find something in myself that is akin to it? If I look into my own heart. I find, as it were, the inverted heaven, the polar opposite. On the one hand you have the periphery, the point extended to infinity, on the other you have the heart, which is the infinite circle concentrated to a point. The whole world is within our heart. To use an illustration, perhaps one that is somewhat crude:—Picture to yourselves man standing looking on into the infinite expanses of the world; perhaps standing on a high hill, looking out and around. And suppose that the tiniest dwarf imaginable is put in the human heart. Try to realise that what the dwarf sees within the heart is the complete inverted image of the universe, contracted and synthesised. This is perhaps purely a picture, a kind of imagination. But if righty conceived and taken up, it can work as an orderly regulative picture, a regulative principle, that is able to guide us, and to help us rightly to combine our isolated attainments of knowledge.

Most of the foundations for our special studies and inquiries have now been laid down, and they will be the basis for answering the many questions you have addressed to me.

• 1. The term “representation” renders the German Vorstellung better than the usual translation “idea,” which is ambiguous.

Today, I will try to pass on some things which will bring our studies of tone eurythmy to a provisional conclusion, so that a stimulation for the advance of the substance of tone eurythmy will have been given. The first step in this direction will be to digest those things I have given. Then, a little later on, it will be necessary to hold a further series of lectures, either on tone eurythmy or speech eurythmy, [50] for it is quite clear that a living stream of development has to be maintained. I have frequently said that eurythmy is only just beginning (perhaps only an attempted beginning), and it must be developed further.

From yesterday's study, which dealt more with the bodily aspect of the human being, and with the way in which the body is brought into activity in the movements of eurythmy, I should like to pass over today to the aspect of soul, and make clear to you how the life of the soul is brought to expression in every single movement or gesture. Your attitude to eurythmy must always be such as to prevent any form of pedantry. You will realize more and more that many things can be expressed either in one way or another, and that in art it is a question of taste. And with several things you will have to consult your own feelings: ‘What special means must I employ to bring this or that to expression?’

Let us consider an effectual means of expressing that most essential element of music, the phrase in Melos. Let us consider the progression of the phrase (since it really is the phrase which truly carries music into being), and direct our attention to that which gives the phrase its actual content, and makes it a true means of expressing the musical element: pitch. Further, we must distinguish note values and dynamics. The three elements of pitch, note values and dynamics really give us the inner content of the musical phrase. The more external aspect will be considered later.

Now everything musical, in so far as it is wrought out of the inner nature of the human being, comes from feeling, from the realm of feeling. And it is true to say that nothing is musical which is not in some way rooted in human feeling. Similarly, when music streams over into eurythmic movement, everything which is brought to life in this movement must also be rooted in feeling. When we studied the anatomical, physiological aspect of the matter yesterday, we saw that in its more physical, bodily aspect, movement springs from feeling. The scale is the human being, but actually the human being as he encloses his chest, or in so far as his chest is able to be revealed outwards via the collar-bone. The chest is connected with feeling, and carries within it the central organ of feeling, the heart. And the physical characteristic we touched upon yesterday simply points to the fact that in music we have to do with feeling.

If I may put it in this way, feeling can be coloured either more towards the head- or more towards the limb-organization. Should feeling tend in the direction of the head, it is expressed so to speak in the roundabout way of the intellect. Now I must beg you not to misunderstand this, and think that it is my intention to intellectualize the musical element. I have no such intention! It is a fact, however, that precisely in the element of pitch, something is manifest which causes feeling to tend in the direction of the intellect, only it does not reach the intellect, but remains in the realm of feeling. And so a musician need not in the least be interested when the intellectual physicist comes along and speaks of the frequency and the pattern of sound-waves. The musician can justifiably answer: ‘This may be all very well, and so on, but it has nothing to do with me. I am not interested in this.’ An intellectual conception of music leads away from the sphere of music. It may be left to the physicist. [51] That element of music which tends towards the intellect is also felt. Pitch, in all its differing manifestations, is an experience of feeling. And it is just because music inclines away from the intellect that the head has so little to do in tone eurythmy. Indeed in speech eurythmy, too, the head should play practically no part, though naturally it should humanly accompany the movements carried out by the speech eurythmist.

Of course, in a humorous poem it would not be good for a eurythmist to make a face as if he had drunk a pint or so of vinegar! This would obviously be out of place. Generally speaking, the whole mental attitude should be suited to the content of the words. But if anyone attempted to do eurythmy with the face (and some people miss mime or a special play of the facial features) we could well answer that this would be equivalent in real speech eurythmy to someone accompanying his speaking with grimaces.

In tone eurythmy, exactly the same as in speech eurythmy, the head need not remain inactive. But just where it is a concern of manifesting the intellectual tendency of the musical element, that is pitch, the activity of the head should be restrained as much as possible. Otherwise interpretation, or the element of seeking meaning, enters into the musical element, and this is its ruination. This introduces thinking into art, and the moment you begin to think, artistic activity ceases. I am not saying that art may not present thoughts, but thoughts must be there already in finished form, they cannot just be made up on the spot. A majestic, elevated thought may, for instance, be contrasted with lesser thoughts, or an idea may frequently recur in a train of thought, just as a musical motif may recur, for then the musical element is effective in the . train of thought. This is certainly possible. But you must not be thinking! [52] The same even applies to poetry. When a poet begins thinking he ceases to be a poet. Certainly he may embody thought in artistic form—but that is a very different matter.

Now as we have already seen, pitch (which lives in the musical phrase) initially finds expression in movements made in the upward-downward direction. The expression of pitch is up, down. Why should the movements be upwards and downwards? What lives in pitch?

You see, in the case of ascending pitch we feel a rising up into the spiritual element, in the musical element a rising up into the spiritual, rising with the ascending pitch. This is exceedingly significant. What really happens here is that the astral body and ego ascend. The human being is freed from his physical and etheric bodies. If he were to do this in an inartistic or even an anti-artistic manner, then he would faint. If he were to go out of his physical body without sufficient preparation, he would faint. The experience of musical sound (so long as it remains an experience of musical sound, of Melos) permits us to pass out of the physical body. Then we instantly come back into it. In ascending pitch there is a continuous rising out of the physical body, an identification of the human being with the spiritual element. In tone eurythmy every ascending movement basically signifies ethos. Ethos of the human being is a uniting of the soul with the spiritual weaving and essence. Ascending pitch: ethos.

When, alternatively, pitch descends, and we are consequently obliged to follow, to make the movements lower in space (making each movement lower than the one preceding), we sink more deeply into the physical body with the astral body and ego. We are united more with the physical element. Descending pitch signifies a closer connection than normal with the physical element. This is pathos. Ascending pitch: ethos. Descending pitch: pathos.

If you observe the unfolding of a piece of music with sound musical feeling, you will see that this is always the case. You will always experience ethos, that is to say, a uniting with the spiritual element, when the pitch carries you upwards. You will always feel something of the nature of pathos present in the music when the pitch causes you to descend. This can find expression in change of posture, and may indeed be specially clearly expressed by the movements of tone eurythmy.

Note values: note values are the feeling element as such. The faculty of feeling tends neither in the direction of the intellect nor in the direction of the will, but lives in its own element in note values. From what I have said about the way in which rests, for instance, or the pedal- point may be expressed in eurythmy, you will already have realized that feeling is active in note values. For it is indeed a fact that feeling is active to the greatest extent in note values. You need only recall in a feeling-way what you experience concerning a semibreve (whole-note), let us say, or a minim, crotchet or quaver (half-note, quarter-note or eighth-note). The shorter the length of the notes, the more your soul becomes inwardly filled, inwardly more formed and shaped. A vivid means of musical expression is made possible to a high degree by the contradistinction between notes which are short and those of longer duration. Long, slow notes denote a certain indifferent emptiness of soul (to put things baldly), an indifferent emptiness of soul. And in this fullness in the soul or this emptiness in the soul, the second factor, the actual feeling element, is active. The feeling concerning long notes may be likened (there is a real resemblance here) to that of waiting for something which still does not want to come. pn the other hand, when someone continually seeks to stimulate us to activity, this is akin to the feeling- experience underlying short notes.

The head may be brought to our assistance when it is a question of experiencing note values; indeed, a certain use of the head in eurythmy now becomes necessary. But the question is: How may this be done?

You see, in pitch, the soul is purely concerned with itself. Consequently in pitch, the soul rises up to God or sinks down to the Devil, [53] living to the extreme completely within its own essence.

In note values a certain enjoyment and participation in the world outside, a contact with the world, exists. A relationship of the human being with the outer world is expressed in note values. For this reason an aesthetic and pleasing impression will be created when, in the case of short notes (beginning perhaps with minims, or half-notes, [54] and working up in ever-increased activity) you look in the direction of what you are doing with your arm, fingers or hand, looking at your own eurythmy, carefully following your own movements with your eyes.

When, alternatively, you have long semibreves (whole-notes), do not look towards but rather away from your movement, either straight in front of you or in some other direction. You will see that although this does not fully express the feeling involved here (this must be expressed through sustaining the note or through moving on), it will be accompanied in the right manner. There can be no doubt about the fact that in note values we have to do with feeling. That is why the head may be brought to our aid. The head is not used here as a little interpreter; it simply expresses its participation in the feelings, and that looks quite pleasing.

The third element is dynamics. In the phrase, dynamics, the realm of feeling (which is always the source of the musical element), are coloured towards the element of will. The will as such does not come into play in the musical element, for the musical element always remains in the sphere of feeling. But just as in pitch, where feeling tends to be coloured towards the intellectual element, so in dynamics, feeling tends to be coloured towards the will. Here it is somewhat different than with the head. In the head, that which is manifested in the arms as movement is brought to rest. The jaws can only move a little; they are at rest. Indeed the head is entirely at rest. On the other hand, the legs and feet do retain a certain similarity to the arms and hands, so the movements of the arms and hands might possibly be accompanied with parallel movements of the feet when expressing a certain emphasis, or a certain dynamic marking. If this were not so, there would be no dancing. Eurythmy should not become dancing, but there may be times when a tendency towards dancing may be a justifiable means of expression (when the dynamics demand that feeling be coloured through the element of will). In musical dynamics, the human being's relationship with the world is even more relevant. Only pitch remains entirely inward. Note values bring the human being into a certain connection with the outer world. Dynamics make this complete, for forte gains its strength from the will, whereas in piano the will-impulse is lacking. Here, then, the movements of hand and arm can be reinforced by corresponding leg movements. These movements, of course, have to be graceful in the highest sense of the word; they should not be awkward, but have to be similar in style to what the arms and hands do. You will feel then what the legs have to do.

Dynamics may be substantially supported if you are aware of the fact that increased dynamics find is expressed by pointing the fingers, and a weakening of the sound makes the fingers rounded, so you can achieve something very expressive. Just think how much expression can be brought into the phrase which is already very expressive from a musical point of view. Think, in the first place, how we are able to express the phrase by emphasizing varied pitch in the way we have learned. This may be accompanied by bringing out note values by a use of the head, looking either towards or away. The dynamics of the phrase may be lit up by a pointing or rounding of the fingers. This gives you the possibility of becoming a very expressive being within the phrase. You will be able to express much when you observe this variety in the phrase, in the continuation of the phrase, and so on.

There is another way of accompaniment which can increase your means of expression. You see, with certain very high notes (notes which ascend two octaves or more above middle C) [55] you may follow the movements with your eyes. Try, however, not to conjure up an active gesture of looking (looking gives an impression of note lengths), but let your eyes be swept up with the movement. And so when you would especially like to express very high notes, you will follow the movement with your eyes, too. You will try, though, not to produce the gesture of looking, but of being swept up with your eyes. Produce the gesture of being swept up with your eyes, as if they [56] would do this movement—and they should be swept up with the movement! In such a case the eyes do not look, but turn in the direction of the movement. Here we have still another means of expressing the things that are present in the phrase.

These things are initially bound up with the inner essence of the phrase, with the actual life of the phrase. And if you concern yourselves further with the phrase you will actually find, fundamentally, when you use these things; that you will be able to follow transforming and developing phrases.

I should just like to add the following. It is, of course, necessary that everything we have studied in these lectures (which have aimed at deepening eurythmy) should be developed with particular inner activity.

Let us now take the development of a phrase as it progresses through various musical sentences. Here we are able to differentiate whether it is developed in the form of repetition—so that the development signifies a certain intensification, a confirmation of the original phrase. In such a case, if other aspects do not indicate the contrary, much can be expressed by the treatment of the form.

Let us suppose that you have to carry out some form such as this (a) in a certain piece of music. Quite apart from what you express by means

Fig. 23

of your body, this form has to be carried out. If you follow your musical feelings you will be able to add, according to the progression of the phrase, certain steps backwards and forwards, still following the direction of the form (b)

Fig. 24

Fig. 25

If, however, the progression of the phrase is such that a second phrase follows the previous one similar to that between question and answer, it would be good if the progression of the form were treated in this way (c)—with a more complicated development introduced into the form.

Another means of expressing either a sequence or an answering phrase, the repetitive sequence or the contrast of phrases, is this. At specific points in the progression of a phrase, where the progression of the phrase is specially felt (where, let us say, a new metamorphosis of the phrase commences), the direction of the form can be directed towards the right (b). If another phrase is brought into conjunction with the first, at the point where this second phrase begins, make a turn towards the left.

Such things make the movements exceedingly expressive. And further, if you make the movements of this latter type stronger in a four-bar phrase, let's say, and bring out the eight-bar phrase (which has four main accents) by clearly showing the alternating direction of left-right, then you will succeed in expressing in eurythmy this plastically-formed development in the progression of the phrase.

When you come to apply the things we have been discussing, you will invariably reach a point where, in some way or other, the essential nature of the musical element is revealed in its onward progression. Here you actually pass out of the inner experience inherent in the soul of Melos (as I'd like to put it) and you approach instead the life of Melos. We can certainly differentiate between the soul and the life of Melos. And the element which is less bound up with the soul and more with the life of Melos is tempo, especially tempo changes. The human being, by living in time, has to live either at a quicker or slower pace. This is something which exerts a certain influence on his or her life from outside. A person certainly does not become someone else if circumstances compel him or her to do something in a shorter time than usual. It is not a question of becoming cleverer, or more stupid, but simply of becoming quicker. It is, then, the external element of time which causes increase of tempo

Now it is a fact that in the musical element nearly everything depends upon changes, just as in movement generally everything depends upon changes. For this reason, change of tempo must be given special consideration in eurythmy. Let us suppose that we have an increase in tempo. An increase in tempo may not be shown simply by increased speed of movement, as this may be applied for pitch, for note values, and so on, but the body must make an abrupt movement (Ruck) towards the right. When you change to a retarded tempo, the body must be drawn (Zug) towards the left. Here you have a means of expressing change of tempo in such a way that the external element in it is given its adequate place in the moulding of the phrase.

You will say: ‘What a terrible amount there is to do!’ But bring imagination to your aid and think how beautiful it will be when you carry out all this detail, how articulated and expressive a piece of music will become when interpreted in this way. A tempo remaining either quick or slow may be particularly well expressed when, with a quick tempo, the head is turned forwards to the right, and, with a slow tempo, backwards to the left. Naturally this cannot be intellectually proved, but, as with everything in art, has to be felt and experienced.

You will, then, have to do many different things simultaneously, and by means of this simultaneous attention to one thing and another, it will be possible for you in the whole management of your body to go beyond yourself and enter into the movement in such a way that you will succeed in giving a perfectly adequate revelation of the musical element.

Now, in doing all these things just feel how far we remove ourselves especially in tone eurythmy from anything of the nature of mime. Mime can have no place in tone eurythmy, and anything in the nature of dance is only permissible at most as a faint undercurrent. It is only with deep bass notes that the eurythmist may be tempted to add dance-like movements to colour his eurythmy. In this way eurythmy will really be kept in a sphere which justifies the name of ‘visible singing’. Eurythmy is not dancing, not mime, but visible singing—a visible singing by means of which everything sounding in one way or another in instrumental music may be expressed. The feeling must never arise that we are dealing with anything other than visible singing. Here we come across something very instructive. With the means given here you will have no difficulty expressing anything that is purely musical. Certain difficulties will only appear when you have a musical phrase which you cannot bring to a conclusion. I am not going to rail against what is called ‘continuous melody’, but you will invariably experience difficulty when you try to express this in eurythmy. As we saw yesterday, genuine cadences can be expressed in eurythmy. But what always wants to move on (and not to come to a close) will hold great difficulty in store for you when you try to find a means of expression for it. I will suggest, then, that you accompany the passage where a melody fades away, which just meanders on (as is frequently the case with Wagner's ‘continuous melodic phrases’) [57] with some sort of movement, but this, when you pursue it eurythmically, will in fact appear extraordinary, will appear forced. In eurythmy it will appear laboured and artificial. It cannot be otherwise.

It may well be said that by its very nature, eurythmy will oblige people to return more and more to the pure musical element. When you come to apply all the means of expression of which I have been speaking, it will be necessary to engage your feeling for phrasing in music to the utmost. If you do not divide the separate phrases correctly, and are not clearly aware of how the notes should be grouped together, and then try to apply what I have discussed for a rest or a sustained note, it will appear ugly. Wrong phrasing, or a note falsely grouped and included wrongly in a phrase or allowed to remain isolated, will instantly be apparent. The very moment you phrase wrongly, the movement will become uncouth and clumsy. This is why it is of primary importance, when practising tone eurythmy, first to come to terms with the larger matters. As soon, then, as you have determined upon the phrasing and made up your mind about the progression of the music, the next step will be to discuss the phrasing with your pianist. [58] This simply belongs to the matter. When you are practising it will be necessary first Co experiment and find your way into the experience of the music. Only then will you realize what the effect of this or that kind of movement will be. You will be filled with inner warmth or inner cold. This is what the inner life is. A eurythmist may often be able to feel how notes are grouped even better than the person sitting at the instrument. It is really necessary to come to an understanding with the musician so that the phrasing may be correspondingly carried out. Of course, people do generally phrase correctly, but in eurythmy it will be frequently noticeable that an accepted phrasing must be altered, owing to the very nature of eurythmy. You will discover that several matters need correction.

Now, these are the things I wanted to give you in this course of lectures. In the first place it should be a stimulus to deepen tone eurythmy, and eurythmy in general. If in the near future it is shown that, through this, much in eurythmy (in tone eurythmy in particular) achieves a greater degree of perfection, and if it may be seen that speech eurythmy too receives fresh life through what has been said, we will hold another course. In this way we shall be able to develop ever further what today is still only a beginning. But if, instead of the eight lectures, I had given fourteen, I would have been concerned that the subject matter be properly assimilated. Then let us stay with what we have now received as a stimulus.

Herr Stuten: [59] Dear Herr Doctor, I know that I speak for everyone when I express our heartfelt thanks to you at the close of these lectures. Once again you have cast light on so many questions which we all carried within us, and given us much stimulus, that we see a great but completely unconstrained work before us. It is a great joy especially today to be allowed to express our thanks.

Dr Steiner. Thank you very much. I have intentionally not asked for questions because I think the material needs to be worked through and in the course of time there will be many opportunities where the one or other question can be dealt with. Very little comes when questions are asked after the first hearing, and everything becomes hurried and mixed up.

I tried to show you last time how initiation took place in the ancient Druid Lodges. Today I should like to speak about a related subject, but one which may appear a little remote. But we shall see how our understanding of human development will grow ever more profound.

You have certainly gathered from the Friday lectures¹ that the sagas of the different nations have a very deep content, and that myths are an expression of profound esoteric truths. I should like to speak today about one of the most interesting sagas, which has to do with the whole development of our fifth Great Epoch. At the same time you will see how a pupil of spiritual science passes through three stages in the understanding of sagas.

To begin with, sagas live in a particular nation, and are understood exoterically in an outer literal meaning. Next, disbelief sets in with regard to their interpretation, and an attempt is made by scholars to arrive at a symbolic meaning. Behind these two interpretations, however, five others can be found, for every saga can be interpreted in seven ways. The third is the one that can be taken literally again up to a point. But certainly one must learn to understand the language of sagas first. Today I wish to speak about a saga which is not easy to understand; it is the Prometheus saga.

You will find something about it in a chapter in the second volume of H.P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, and from this conclude what a profound meaning lies hidden in it. Nevertheless, it is not always possible to write about ultimate truths in something which is to be published. Today we are able to take the subject a little further than did H.P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine.

Prometheus belongs to the world of the Greek sagas. He and his brother, Epimetheus, are the sons of one of the Titans, called Iapetus. And the Titans themselves are the sons of the oldest of the Greek gods, of Uranus and his wife, Gaia. A translation of the word Uranus would be the ‘heavens ‘ and of Gaia, the ‘earth’. I would emphasise especially that the Uranus of the Greeks is the same as Varuna of India. Prometheus, therefore, is one of the Titans and a descendant of the sons of Uranus and Gaia, likewise his brother, Epimetheus. The youngest of the Titans, Chronos or ‘Time’, usurped the throne from his father Uranus, and was himself dethroned by his son Zeus and, along with the other Titans, was cast into Tartarus or Hades. Only the two brothers, Prometheus and Epimetheus, remained loyal to Zeus. They rallied round Zeus and fought against the other Titans.

Zeus, however, wished to destroy the race of man, which had become insolent. Prometheus became the protagonist of man. He pondered how he could give man something which would enable him to save himself and make himself independent of the help of Zeus. So, we are told, Prometheus gave man writing and the other arts and, more especially, he instructed him in the use of fire. Through this, however, he drew down the wrath of Zeus upon himself, and because of the wrath of Zeus he was chained to the Caucasus and made to languish there for a long time in great torment.

It is further recounted how the gods, with Zeus at their head, caused a female statue to be made by Hephaestus, the heavenly smith. This female statue was endowed with all the outward attributes of the man of the fifth great epoch. This female statue was Pandora. She was required to bring gifts to mankind, but in the first place to Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus. Indeed, Prometheus warned his brother about accepting the gifts, but Epimetheus let himself be persuaded and took the proffered presents. All the gifts were showered upon mankind; only one thing was retained: hope. The gifts consisted mostly of plagues and suffering for humanity; only hope was retained in Pandora's box.

Prometheus, therefore, was chained to the Caucasus and a vulture gnawed incessantly at his liver. Here he languished. He was aware, however, of something which was a pledge for his deliverance. He knew a secret which was unknown even to Zeus himself and which Zeus was anxious to learn. He would not disclose it, however, even though Zeus sent the messenger of the gods, Hermes, to him.

In the course of the tale his strange deliverance is recounted. We are told that Prometheus can only be set free through the intervention of an initiate. And such an initiate was the Greek Heracles; Heracles who performed the twelve labours. The enactment of these labours is the achievement of an initiate. They are the symbolic representation of the twelve tests which have to be performed by someone undergoing initiation. In addition, it is said that Heracles underwent initiation in the Eleusinian mysteries. He was able to rescue Prometheus. Someone else had to sacrifice himself, however, and the Centaur Chiron did this for Prometheus. He was suffering from an incurable illness. He was half beast and half man. He suffered death and thereby released Prometheus. That is the outer form of the Prometheus saga.

In this saga lies the whole history of the fifth Great Epoch and true mystery wisdom is revealed in it. This was actually recounted as a saga in Greece. But also in the mysteries it was so portrayed that the candidate for initiation was actually confronted by the destiny of Prometheus. And in this destiny he was enabled to visualise the whole of the past and the future of the fifth Great Epoch. An understanding of this is only possible when you take one thing into account.

It was only during the middle of the Lemurian epoch that what is described as human incarnation came about; incarnation in the sense in which people are born on earth today. Humanity of that time was under the leadership of great teachers and guides, whom we call the ‘Sons of Fire-Mist’. At present, humanity of the fifth Great Epoch is also led by great initiates, but our initiates today are of a different kind from the leaders of that time.

You must now become quite clear about what constitutes this difference. There is an enormous difference between the leaders of the two previous Root Races and the leaders of our present fifth Root Race. The leaders of those former Root Races were also united in a White Brotherhood. Its members, however, had not undergone their previous development on our Earth, but on other planets. They descended to Earth already in the state of more highly developed, mature human beings in order to instruct the rest of humanity, still in its infant stage, into the primal arts of which it had need. This time of instruction lasted throughout the third, fourth and even into the fifth epoch.

This fifth Great Epoch took its start from a handful of men, who had been sifted out from the previous Great Epoch. They were collected together and prepared in the Gobi Desert and from there radiated out over the whole of the world. The first of these leaders, who was the founder of this impulse in the development of mankind, was one of the so-called Manus—the Manu² of the fifth Root Race. This Manu was still one of that company of leaders who descended to earth at the time of the third Root Race—He was one of the leaders who underwent development not on the earth only, but who came to earth with fully developed maturity.

It is only during the fifth Root Race that the development is beginning to take place of such Manus as are akin to ourselves; who have risen, as it were, from the ranks of humanity. We have men, therefore, who are already great masters and advanced leaders of humanity, and we have those who are striving to become such. In the fifth Root Race we have Chelas and masters who have experienced all that can be undergone by human beings only since the middle of the Lemurian epoch. One of these great masters who are leaders of the fifth Root Race is predestined to take over the leadership of the sixth Root Race. The sixth Root Race will be the first great epoch to have as its Manu one who is a brother to earthly man. The earlier masters, the Manus from other worlds, are handing over their leadership to a fellow human being.

The development in the realm of the arts coincides with the dawn of the fifth Root Race. The man of Atlantean times had a quite different mode of life. He did not make inventions or discoveries as we do. He worked in quite a different way, It is only during the fifth Root Race that everything connected with technical science and the arts, in our sense of the term, has taken place. The most important discovery was the use of fire. Be clear on that point.

Just call to mind all the things in technology, industry and art which depend for their existence on the use of fire. I think that an engineer would be inclined to agree with me when I say that, without the use of fire, nothing of all our modern technology would be possible; so that we may say that the discovery of the use of fire was the main discovery which gave the impulse for all later discoveries.

To that you must add that at the time when the Prometheus saga arose, fire was comprehended as including everything which had to do with warmth. The causes of lightning and all other natural phenomena connected with heat were also included under that heading. The consciousness of the fact that man of the fifth Root Race himself stood under the Fire Sign³ came to expression in the saga of Prometheus. Prometheus himself is nothing else than a representative of the whole of the fifth Great Epoch.

The brother of Prometheus is Epimetheus. First let us translate these two words: Prometheus can be interpreted as being the one who thinks in advance, Epimetheus as the one who thinks about things after they have happened. Here you have expressed quite clearly the two activities of human thinking in the foresight and hindsight of these two human beings. The one with hindsight is the one who lets the things of this world work upon him and then thinks about them afterwards. A kind of thinking such as this is ‘Kama-manasic’ thinking (earthly consciousness, or intellectual soul activity). Considered from a certain point of view, this is what this kind of thinking is: letting the world work upon, one and thinking about it afterwards. The man of the fifth Root Race thinks chiefly in the manner of Epimetheus.

But in so far as a man does not merely let the things of his surroundings work upon him, but creates something for the future, is an inventor and discoverer, just so far is he a Prometheus, one who thinks ahead. There would never be any inventions made if men were all like Epimetheus. An invention comes about because man is able to create something which was not there previously. First of all the thought is there and then the thought is transformed into reality. This is Promethean thinking. Promethean thinking is the ‘Manas’ thinking of the fifth Root Race (the thinking of spiritual thoughts). Earthly thinking and spiritual thinking flow side by side in the fifth Root Race. Gradually the spiritual thinking will become more and more widespread.

This ‘Manas’ thinking of the fifth Root Race has one particular feature which we shall understand if we look back to the Atlantean epoch. At that time thinking was more instinctive and was still connected with the life forces. The people of Atlantean times were still able to transform the power inherent in seeds into a driving force. Just as man today has a kind of reservoir of power stored up in the coal seams, which can produce steam to drive locomotives and move loads, so Atlantean man had great storehouses of plant seeds containing a force which could be used to drive vehicles, as described by Scott-Elliot⁴ in his booklet about Atlantis. This art has been lost to mankind. The spiritual power of the Atlanteans could control living nature and make use of the latent power in seeds. The spiritual powers of the fifth Root Race are only sufficient to control the forces of the inorganic world of minerals. Thus the Manas of the fifth Great Epoch is bound up with the mineral forces in the same way as the man of Atlantean times was bound up with the life forces. All Promethean powers are chained to the rock, to the solid earth. For that reason, the apostle Peter is the ‘rock’ upon which Christ founded His Church. It is the same as the rock of the Caucasus. Man belonging to the fifth epoch has to seek his destiny on the physical plane alone. He is bound up with inorganic mineral forces.

Just try to imagine what is meant when one speaks about the technology of the fifth epoch. What is it there for? If you are able to form a comprehensive view of it you will see that, however great and impressive the result may be, when the forces of the intellect and Manas are applied to the inorganic mineral world, it is nevertheless, in the main, only self-interest and egoism which is the motive behind the application of all these forces of discovery and invention.

Start with the first discoveries and inventions and carry your thoughts through to the most modern inventions of the telephone and so on. You will see how great and mighty are the forces which have been put at our disposal, certainly—but to what end? What is it that is being conveyed to us from distant lands by means of railways and steamships? We transport foodstuffs; we order foodstuffs by telephone. Basically it is human greed and the substance of our wishes and desires which creates a demand for all these inventions and discoveries during the fifth epoch. It is this which must become dear to us in objective considerations. Then we will understand how it is that the higher human being, which has been placed into physical existence, is actually chained to matter during the fifth epoch, through the fact that man's astral body seeks its satisfaction within the realm of matter.

If you consider the principles of man's nature from an esoteric point of view, you will see that they stand in definite relationship to certain bodily organs. I shall elaborate on this theme still further, but today I will only indicate those specific organs with which our seven principles⁵ are connected.

First of all we have the so-called physical principle. This stands in occult relationship to the upper part of the human face, to the root of the nose. Man's physical frame—man was only astral at first and then incorporated into the physical—took its start from this point. The physical Organisation spread out and formed the base of the nose first of all, so that the occultist ascribes the mineral-physical to this part of the anatomy.

The second principle is Prana, the etheric parallel body. This is ascribed to the liver, with which it stands in occult relationship. Next comes the astral body, Kama, which has developed its activity in building up the digestive organs, having their seat in the stomach. If the astral body had not borne this particular character that it has in man, then the human digestive organs and stomach would not have had the special form which they have today.

If you behold the human being, first with regard to his physical body, next with regard to his etheric body, and thirdly with regard to his astral body, you there have the basis for what, as you see, is chained by the mineral fetters in the fifth Great Epoch.

Through his higher bodies, man frees himself again from these fetters and rises to higher worlds. Kama-Manas, in which the ego is active, works its way upwards again. Man frees himself again from the purely physical basis given by nature. For this reason there is an occult connection between this principle and that which raises man up again out of the physical, by which man is severed, so to speak, from the physical basis given by nature This occult connection is what exists between that principle in man and his umbilical cord. If this principle in man were not developed the embryo would never be severed from the body of its mother in the way it is.

It we, then proceed to Higher Manas, or Spirit Self, this is connected in a similar way with heart and blood circulation. Buddhi, or Life Spirit, has an occult connection with the larynx, with the larynx and the gullet. And Atma, or Spirit Man, has an occult connection with something which extends through man's whole being, namely the Akasha, or immortal part of man's being.

Those are the seven occult relationships. If you pay attention to these, then you will discover that the most important ones for our epoch are the relationships with the etheric and astral principles. And if you add to that what I said before about the Atlantean's control over the life forces—the life forces are those forces which weave in the etheric parallel body—then you will be able to understand that, in a certain way, Atlantean man was at a stage lower than we are. His etheric parallel body still retained its original connection with the etheric forces around him and he controlled with his own etheric body the Prana, or etheric forces of the outside world. Through the fact that man has progressed one stage higher, the field of his activities lies one stage lower. That is an occult law: that when, on the one hand, progress takes place, on the other hand, a retrograde step accompanies it. Whereas man previously worked upon the astral plane out of his etheric forces, he now has the task of working upon the physical plane out of his astral forces.

Now you will understand how profoundly these occult connections are symbolised in the Prometheus saga. A vulture is gnawing at the liver of Prometheus. Astrality is symbolised by the vulture, which truly devours the forces of the fifth epoch. The vulture gnaws at man's liver, at the foundation of his existence, and thus this energy belonging to the fifth Root Race really gnaws at the life forces of mankind, because man is chained to mineral nature, to the Petrine rock, the Caucasus. Through that, man has to pay for his affinity with Prometheus. And thereby man is obliged to become master over his own nature, so that he need no longer remain chained to the mineral world, to the Caucasus.

Only those who are initiated as human beings of the fifth epoch can bring release to fettered mankind. Heracles, who was a human initiate of this kind, had himself to press through to the Caucasus in order to free Prometheus. But this is how initiates raise up man from his fetters and all that is predestined to perish must sacrifice itself.

Man who still has an affinity with his animal nature, the Centaur Chiron, has to sacrifice himself. The man of previous epochs must be sacrificed. The sacrifice of the Centaur Chiron is just as important for the progress of the fifth epoch as the freeing through the initiate.

It is said that in the Greek mystery schools the future was foretold to the people. It was no vague, abstract account of what was to happen to man in the future, but instructions which would lead him along the pathway to the future, and he was shown what he had to do for his future development. And what still remained to be unfolded as human strength was portrayed in the mighty mystery drama of Prometheus.

One has to imagine the three races of the gods, Uranus, Chronos and Zeus, as three successive great leaders of humanity. Uranus denotes heaven, Gaia the earth. If we go back in time beyond the middle of the Lemurian epoch, we do not find man in the form we know him today, but one called Adam Cadmon⁶ by occult science, who is still asexual, and who had never belonged to the earth previously, who had not developed organs of sight for physical observation, but was still a part of Uranus, of the heavens. Through the union of Uranus with Gaia, man was born, man who descended to the earth and at the same time became involved in time. Chronos (Time) was the leader of the second divine race from the middle of Lemurian times until the beginning of Atlantis. These leading figures were symbolised by the Greeks, first under the name Uranus, then Chronos, and later Zeus. Zeus, however, is one of those leaders who underwent his training elsewhere than on the earth. He is one of the great immortals, as are all the rest of the Greek gods.

Mortal man has to learn to stand on his own feet during the fifth Great Epoch. He is represented by Prometheus. Man was the inaugurator of the arts and, above all, of the primal art of the use of fire. Zeus is jealous of him because he is predestined to produce his own initiates, who will take over the leadership in the sixth epoch. Mankind has first to pay for that, however. That is why the first great initiate of humanity must take upon himself the whole of life's suffering.

Prometheus is the archetypal initiate of the fifth epoch, who has undergone initiation, not only in knowledge, but also in deed. He it was who underwent the whole of suffering and will be released from his bondage by him who is becoming mature enough to set free the whole of humanity in gradual stages and to raise it up out of the mineral realm.

Great cosmic truths are thus portrayed to us in the sagas. That is why I said to you at the beginning: whoever reaches the third stage in their interpretation is able to take their meaning literally once more. ... [Here follow a few unclear sentences]⁷ In the case of the Prometheus saga one is confronted by the picture of the vulture gnawing at the liver. That is to be taken quite literally. The vulture really is gnawing at the liver of the people of the fifth epoch. It portrays the fight which is going on between the stomach and the liver. In every single human being of the fifth epoch, this Promethean struggle is being repeated. We can take what is here said in a completely literal sense. If this struggle were not present in the man of the fifth epoch, our destiny would be entirely different at the present day.

There are thus three ways of interpreting the sagas: firstly, the exoteric literal rendering; secondly, the allegorical one—the struggle within human nature; thirdly, the occult understanding, in which again the literal meaning can be taken. From this you can judge that all sagas—at least those which bear a significance of this kind—are derived from the mystery schools, and are no less than a representation of what was enacted therein as the great drama of human destiny. As I was able to show you in connection with the Druidic mysteries that [the saga of] Baldur was no less than a portrayal of what took place in the mysteries, so, in the saga of Prometheus, you have a portrayal of what was experienced by the pupil for initiation in the inner sanctuaries of the mystery schools of Greece to provide energy and new strength for life in the future.

• 1 . During 1904 Rudolf Steiner not only spoke at the regular Group Meetings, which took place on Mondays, but occasionally also on Fridays to a very small circle which gathered in the flat of Fraulein Klara Motzkus in the Schluterstrasse. The main subject dealt with was the myths and sagas. We do not have reports from all the lectures which were held there; at the most they are very fragmentary notes. These lectures of 1904, except for lecture 1 of 23rd May 1904, were all held for this small circle of friends. The May and June lectures of 1905 (lectures 11 to 14), and lecture 20 of 2nd January 1906, were held on the Mondays for the official Berlin Group. The October lectures of 1905 (lectures 15 to 19) were held for the General Meeting audience of the German Section.
• 2 . The name ‘Manu’ comes from the Sanskrit root ‘man’ = ‘thinking.’ In Indian theosophical terminology this denotes high spiritual beings, who have the task of forming new cultures or epochs. For further details concerning the Manu of the fifth epoch see Rudolf Steiner's Cosmic Memory, Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1971; Occult Science, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1969, and a lecture given in Heidelberg on 21st January 1909; Some Aspects of Reincarnation and the Life After Death, typescript copy Z 360.
• 3 . This is expressed in H.P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, Volume 3, ‘Esotericism,’ p. 330, in the following way: ‘Prometheus is a symbol and a personification of the whole of mankind in relation to an event which occurred during its childhood,—“Baptism by Fire”—which is a mystery within the great Promethean Mystery, one that may be at present mentioned only in its broad general features.’
• 4 . The Story of Atlantis, by W. Scott-Elliot, The Theosophical Publishing Society, London. See also: Cosmic Memory, Atlantis and Lemuria, by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Publications.
• 5 . These seven principles and the organs with which they are occultly connected are enumerated as follows:
  
  Physical body—base of the nose.
  Etheric body—liver.
  Kama or Kama-Rupa (astral body)—digestive system, stomach.
  Kama-Manas (astral-ego)—umbilical cord.
  Higher Manas (Spirit Self)—heart and blood circulation.
  Buddhi (Life Spirit)—larynx.
  Atma (Spirit Man)—the Akasha.
• 6 . Compare also: Man's Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds, second lecture, Oxford, 22nd August 1922.
• 7 . The unclear sentences are as follows: ‘Every saga undergoes change. It derives from the most ancient tradition and undergoes change at a certain definite point. It is the same in the case of every saga, even those which can again be taken literally.’

We come today to what man experiences in the physical world, in so far as these experiences are determined by an earlier incarnation. At the outset it must be emphasised that life is not determined by previous incarnations alone but also, though in a small degree, by the present life. The law of how man's past, present and future are connected, is called in Spiritual-scientific literature, the Law of Karma. It is the true law of human destiny; an individual life is only a specific application of the great law of the Cosmos, for the law of Karma is a universal, cosmic law with a specific application in the life of a human being. Whenever we envisage a connection between preceding conditions and subsequent effects, we are thinking in line with this law. I want therefore to explain in detail the individual application of this cosmic law in the life of the human being.

Suppose we have two vessels of water in front of us and put into one of the vessels a red-hot iron ball. The water will hiss and become warm. If we take the ball out and put it into the other vessel, the water in this case neither hisses nor gets warm, because the ball is no longer red hot; it has been cooled by immersion in the first vessel of water. The effect of the behaviour of the iron ball in the first vessel determines its behaviour in the second. Thus are cause and effect always connected in physical life. Subsequent behaviour depends upon what has happened previously.

Another example is afforded by certain animals whose organ of sight has atrophied in consequence of having made their home in dark holes and caves. In such animals, the substances which formerly nourished the eyes were led to other parts of the body because as it was no longer necessary for the eye to see, these substances were not required. The eyes atrophied and remain atrophied in all subsequent generations. Through their earlier wanderings these animals determined the actual behaviour of their organs; the destiny of subsequent generations was determined by what had happened in the past; these animals prepared their destiny for the future. And it is the same in human life.

Man determines his future by his past and because his innermost being is not confined to one incarnation but passes through many, the causes of what confronts him in a given life are to be sought in an earlier life.

We will now consider the chain of happenings which can be understood if we think of the consequences of human deeds, thoughts and feelings. It is so often said in everyday life: Thoughts are duty-free!—meaning that we can think what we like and nobody in the external world will be affected. This is one important point where a man who has really grasped spiritual impulses is at variance with the materialistic thinker.

The materialist agrees that injury is caused if he throws a stone at a man, but he thinks that a thought of hatred which he may harbour against a fellow-creature, does not hurt him. Those however who have real knowledge of the world know that far, far stronger effects proceed from a thought filled with hatred than can ever be caused by a stone. Everything that a man thinks and feels has its effects in the outer world and the seer can follow with great precision the effect of a loving thought that goes out to another man, and the very different effect that is produced by a thought filled with hatred. When you send out a loving thought to someone the seer perceives a form of light shaped like a sort of flower-calyx, playing around his etheric and astral bodies, thereby contributing something to his vitality and happiness. On the other hand a thought of hatred bores its way into the etheric and astral bodies like a wounding arrow.

Very varied observations are to be made in this domain. There is a tremendous difference in the astral world if one voices a thought that is true or a thought that is untrue. A thought is related to a thing and is true if it coincides with that thing. Every event that happens causes an effect in the higher worlds. If someone relates this event truly, an astral form rays out from the teller, unites with the form emanating from the event itself, and both are strengthened. These strengthened forms help to make our spiritual world richer and more full of content—which is necessary if humanity is to make progress. But if the event is related untruthfully, in a way that does not coincide with the facts, then the thought-form of the teller comes up against the thought-form that has proceeded from the event; the two thought-forms collide, causing mutual destruction. These destructive “explosions” caused by lies work on the body like a tumour which destroys the organism. Thus do lies kill the astral forms which have arisen and must arise, and in this way they obstruct or paralyse a part of evolution. Everyone who tells the truth actually promotes the evolution of humanity and everyone who lies, obstructs it. Therefore there is this occult law: Seen with the eyes of Spirit, a lie is a murder. Not only does it kill an astral form, but it is also self-murder. Everyone who lies places obstacles along his own path. Such effects are to be observed everywhere in the spiritual world. The clairvoyant sees that everything a man thinks, feels and experiences has its effect in the astral world. A man's disposition, temperament, enduring qualities of character, thoughts that are not merely transient—all this streams continually not only into the astral world but into the world of Devachan as well. A man with a happy disposition is a source, a centre, of certain processes in Devachan; a man who is hypocritical has the effect of multiplying the essences and substances associated with hypocrisy in human character. Thus Spiritual Science shows us that we do not live as isolated beings but that our thoughts continually produce forms which cast shadows in the world of Devachan and permeate it with all kinds of substances and essences. The four regions of Devachan-the “Continental,” the “Oceanic,” the “Atmospheric” and the region of original “Inspirations” are influenced all the time by the thoughts, feelings and sensations of human beings.

The higher regions of Devachan, in which the Akasha Chronicle appears, are influenced by deeds. What happens in the external world plays into the very highest region of Devachan—the “world of Reason.” We shall understand in this way how on his descent to a new incarnation the human being reconstitutes his astral body and attaches it to himself All his thoughts and feelings and experiences had become integral parts of the astral world, leaving many traces there. If his thoughts had contained much truth, these traces gather together to form a good astral body for him. What he had incorporated into the lower Devachanic world as his temperament and so on, gathers together the new etheric body, and from the highest regions of Devachan where the Akasha Chronicle is to be found, his past deeds play their part in establishing the station, the localisation of the physical body. Here are the forces which bring a human being to a definite locality. If a man has done evil to someone, this is an external fact which reaches into the highest regions of Devachan; when the time comes to enter a new physical body it works as forces which the man has left in his trail, and impels him—under the guidance of higher Beings—to the associations and to the place where he will now be able to experience the effects of his past deeds in the physical world.

Experiences in the external world which do not inwardly affect us very strongly work upon our astral body in the next incarnation, drawing into it corresponding feelings and a characteristic life of thought. If a man has spent his life profitably, if he has been very observant and has acquired wide knowledge, his astral body in the next incarnation will be born with special gifts in these directions. Experience and acquired knowledge thus express themselves, in the next incarnation, in the astral body. Inner experience, all that a man feels in the way of happiness, sorrow and so on—this works down to the etheric body in the next incarnation and imbues it with lasting propensities. The etheric body of a man who experiences much happiness will have a temperament disposed to joy. A man who tries to perform many good deeds, will, as a result of the feelings evoked, have a decided talent in the next life for good deeds; he will also possess a thoroughly developed conscience and will be a person of high moral principles.

That of which the etheric body is the bearer in the present life—the permanent character, talents etc.—appears in the next life in the physical body. For instance, a man who has developed bad inclinations and passions in one life will be born in the next with an unhealthy physical body. On the other hand, a man who enjoys good health, who has great powers of endurance, unfolded good qualities in the previous life. A person who is continually prone to illness, has worked bad impulses into himself. Thus we have it in our power to create for ourselves health or illness in so far as these inhere in the natural constitution of the physical body. All that is required is the elimination of bad tendencies for we then prepare a healthy, vigorous physical body for the next life.

It is possible to observe, in all details, how the tendencies that were present in one life, work, in the next, on the physical body. A person who is disposed to love everything around him, who is loving to all creatures, who pours out love, will have in the next incarnation a physical body that remains young and fresh until late in life. Love for all beings, the cultivation of sympathy, gives rise to a physical body that preserves its youthful vigour. A man who is full of antipathy against other human beings, who criticises and grumbles at everything, trying to keep aloof from it all, produces, as the result of these tendencies, a physical body that ages and becomes wrinkled prematurely. Thus are the tendencies and passions of one life carried over to the physical, bodily life of subsequent incarnations.

The very details can be observed and it can be found that a passion for acquisition, an urge that makes a person hoard possessions and becomes a rooted disposition in him, produces, in the next life, a tendency to infectious diseases in the physical body. Absolute confirmation is possible of cases where a pronounced tendency to infectious diseases leads back to an earlier, very strong sense of acquisition, the bearer of this quality being the etheric body. On the other hand disinterested striving, free from any desire for self-profit and wishing only to work for the well-being of all mankind—this tendency in the etheric body gives rise, in the next life, to a strong power of resistance to infectious diseases.

Thus knowledge of the connection between the physical and the astral world enables us to have a clear understanding of the world in its inner process of development; things are often connected in quite a different way from what people like to imagine. Many people deplore pain and suffering, but from a higher point of view this is quite unjustified, for if they are overcome and the person is ready for a new incarnation, suffering and pain are the sources of wisdom, prudence and comprehensiveness of vision. Even in writing emanating from the modern, materialistic standpoint, we find it stated that there is something like “crystallised pain” in the face of every thinker. What this materialistically minded author says here has long been known to the occultist, for the greatest wisdom of the world is acquired by the quiet endurance of pain and suffering; this creates wisdom in the next incarnation.

No one who shudders at the unpleasantness of pain, who is unwilling to bear pain can create in himself the foundations for wisdom; indeed when we look deeper, we cannot really bemoan illnesses, for regarded from a higher standpoint, from the standpoint of Eternity, they take on a very different aspect. Illnesses calmly borne often appear in the next life as great physical beauty; great physical beauty in a human being is acquired at the cost of illnesses in the preceding life. Such is the connection between impairment of the body through illness, particularly also through external circumstances, and beauty.

The following words of the French writer, Fabre d'Olivet can be applied to this very remarkable connection: “When we observe the life of the human being, it often seems to be like the formation of the pearl in the oyster-shell—the pearl can only come into being through disease.” And so it is actually in human life: Beauty is karmically connected with illnesses and is their result. When I said, however, that a man who unfolds reprehensible passions creates in himself the disposition to illness, it must be fully realised that in this case it is a matter of inherent tendency to illnesses. It is a different matter if a man falls ill through working in a poisonous atmosphere; this too may be a cause of illness but is not connected with the inherent constitution of the physical body.

Everything that is a fact on the physical plane, everything that constitutes a deed, expressing itself in such a way that it has a definite effect in the physical world, from a footstep and movement of the hand to the most complicated processes, for instance the building of a house, comes to the human being in a later incarnation from outside as an actual physical effect. As you see, we live our life from within-outwards. What lives as joy, pain, happiness, sorrow in the astral body appears again in the etheric body; the lasting impulses and passions that are rooted in the etheric body appear in the physical body as constitutional tendencies; deeds that require the agency of the physical body appear as outer destiny in the next incarnation. What the astral body does becomes the destiny of the etheric body; what the etheric body does becomes the destiny of the physical body; and what the physical body does comes back from outside in the next incarnation as a physical reality.

Here you have the actual point where external destiny intervenes in human life. This working of destiny may be postponed for a long time but must inevitably approach the human being sooner or later. If a man's life is followed through the different incarnations it can always be seen that his life in a subsequent incarnation is prepared by Beings who work at his physical embodiment in such a way that he is led to a particular place in order that his destiny may overtake him.

Here again is an example drawn from life. At a Vehmic Court in the Middle Ages a number of judges condemned a man to death and executed the sentence themselves. Earlier incarnations of the judges and of the dead man were investigated and it was found that they had all been contemporaries; the prisoner who had been put to death had been the Chief of a tribe who had ordered the death of those who were now the Vehmic judges. The deed of the former physical life had created the connection between the persons, and the forces had inscribed themselves in the Akasha Chronicle. When a man again comes down to incarnation, these forces cause him to be born at the same time and place as those to whom he is tied in this way, and they work out his destiny. The Akasha Chronicle is a veritable source of power in which everything that is due to be expiated between one human being and another, is inscribed. Some people can sense these processes, but very, very few are really conscious of them.

Suppose a man has a profession in which he is apparently happy and contented; for some reason or other he is forced to leave it and finding no other occupation in the same place is driven far away—into another country, where he has to strike out on an entirely new line of work. Here he finds a person with whom he has in some way to be associated. What has happened in such a case? He had once lived with the person whom he has now met and remained in his debt for some reason or other. This is inscribed in the Akasha Chronicle and the forces have led him to this place in order that he may meet the man and discharge his debt.

Between birth and death the human being is perpetually within a network of these forces of soul which weave around him on all sides; they are the directing powers of his life. You bear within you all the time the workings of earlier lives; and all the time you are experiencing the outcome of former incarnations.

You will realise, therefore, that your lives are guided by Powers of which you yourselves are not aware. The etheric body is worked upon by forms which you yourselves previously called into existence on the astral plane; beings and forces in the higher regions of Devachan, inscribed by you yourselves in the Akasha Chronicle, work upon your destiny. These forces or beings are not unknown to the occultist; they have their own place in the ranks of similar beings. You must realise that in the astral body and in the etheric body, as well as in the physical body, you feel the workings of other beings; all that you do involuntarily, everything to which you are impelled, is due to the working of other beings; it is not born from nothingness. The various members of man's nature are all the time actually permeated and filled by other beings, and many of the exercises given by an initiated teacher are for the purpose of driving out these beings in order that a man may become more and more free.

The beings who permeate the astral body and make it unfree are known as “Demons.” Your astral body is always interpenetrated by demons and the beings you yourselves generate through your true or false thoughts are of such a nature that they gradually grow into demons. There are good demons, generated by good thoughts; but bad thoughts, above all those that are untruthful, generate demoniacal forms of the most terrible and frightful kind and these interlard the astral body—if I may so express it. The etheric body is also permeated by beings from which man must free himself; these beings are called “Spectres”, “ghosts.” And finally, permeating the physical body there are beings known as “Phantoms.” Besides these three classes there are yet other beings, the “Spirits,” who drive the Ego hither and thither—the Ego itself also being a Spirit. In actual fact the human being generates such creatures who then determine his inner and outer destiny when he descends to incarnation. These beings work in your life in such a way that you can feel the “demons” created by your astral body, the “ghosts” or “spectres” created by your etheric body and the “phantoms” created by your physical body. All these beings are related to you and approach you when the time comes for reincarnation.

You will remember that religious documents express these truths. When the Bible speaks of the driving-out of demons, this is not an abstraction but is to be taken literally. Christ Jesus healed those who were possessed of demons; He drove the demons out of the astral body. This is an actual process and, the passage is to be taken literally. The wise man Socrates also speaks of his “Daimon” which worked in his astral body. This was a good demon; such beings are not always evil.

There are, however, terrible and corrupt demonic beings. All demons that are born of lying work in such a way as to throw man back in his development; and because owing to the lies of eminent figures in world-history demons who grow into very powerful beings are all the time being created, we hear of the “Spirits of Hindrance”, “Spirits of obstruction.” In this sense Faust says to Mephistopheles: “Thou art the Father of all hindrances!”

The individual human being, membered as he is within mankind as a whole, has an effect upon the whole world according to whether he speaks the truth or lies; for beings created by truth or by lies produce quite different effects. Imagine a people which was composed entirely of liars, the astral plane would be populated solely by the corresponding demons and these demons would be able to express themselves in constitutional tendency to epidemics. Thus there is a certain species of bacilli who are the carriers of infectious diseases; these beings are the progeny of the lies told by human beings; they are nothing else than physically embodied demons generated by lies.

You see therefore that lies and untruths of earlier ages appear in world-karma as a definite host of beings. A passage in Faust indicates how much deep truth is contained in myths and sagas. You will find there a connection between vermin and lies in the role played by rats and mice in connection with Mephistopheles, the Spirit of Lies. Legends have often preserved wonderful indications of the connection between the spiritual world and the physical world.

In order to understand the Law of Karma we shall have to speak about many other things. The Movement of Spiritual Science itself is the outcome of an intimate knowledge of the Law of Karma.

You have just heard that forces which lie in the etheric body work upon the physical body in the next incarnation. Thus the attitude of mind, the tendency to think along particular lines, works upon the physical body. A spiritual or a materialistic attitude of mind is by no means without importance for the next incarnation. A man who has some knowledge of the higher worlds—he need only believe in their existence—has in his next life a well centred physical body and tranquil nervous system, a body which he has well in hand, including the very nerves. On the other hand, a man who believes in nothing except what is to be found in the world of the senses, communicates this kind of thinking to his physical body and in the next incarnation has a body prone to nervous diseases, a frail, fidgety body in which there is no steadfast centre of will. The materialist scatters himself in pure details; the Spirit binds together, for Spirit is Unity!

The tendency or disposition comes to light, in the case of the individual, through destiny in his next incarnation, but it continues through the generations, so that the sons and grand-children of materialistic fathers have to pay for this by badly constituted nervous systems and nervous disorders. An “epoch” of nerves is the outcome of the materialistic attitude of the last century. And as a counteraction, the Great Teachers of mankind have recognised the necessity of allowing the inflow of spiritual ways of thinking.

Materialism has also found its way into religion. There are people who “believe” in the spiritual worlds but have not the will to acquire real knowledge of them. Can it be said that such people are not materialists? It is materialism in religion which makes people want to have the mystery of the Six Day of Creation—as the Bible describes the evolution of the worlds—displayed before their very eyes; it is materialism which speaks of Christ Jesus as an “historical personality” and ignores the Mystery of Golgotha. Materialism in natural science is primarily a consequence of materialism in religion, and would not exist if the religious life were not saturated with materialism. Men who have been too lazy to deepen their religious life—it is they who have introduced materialism into science. And the derangement of the nerves caused by this materialism works itself out among racial stocks and among whole peoples, as well as in the individual.

If the stream of spirituality is not powerful enough to influence lazy and easy-going people as well, the karmic consequence of nervous derangement will gain greater and greater hold over humanity, and just as in the Middle Ages there were epidemics of leprosy, so, in future, materialistic thinking will give rise to grave nervous diseases; there will be epidemics of insanity besetting whole peoples.

Insight into this domain of the Law of Karma reveals that Spiritual Science should never be a matter of strife but a healing power in humanity. The more spiritual men become, the more will troubles connected with diseases of the nervous system and derangement in the life of soul, be expunged.

When words are to be spoken at the dedication of an Anthroposophical Group, it is of greater importance to make clear the object and the aim of spiritual scientific work than to give important revelations concerning mysteries of the higher worlds. If we wish to visualize the significance of the spiritual scientific world-conception for the human soul, we must cast our eye over many different realms.

Picture to yourselves a person living in the 13th or 14th century! Such a person lived at a time when the art of printing had not yet been invented—an art by means of which such a powerful influence has been exercised upon the human soul in modern times. Picture to yourselves a person living at that time and ask yourselves what took place within his soul when for instance he looked up at the sky. This person whose way of viewing the world was not yet influenced by accumulated knowledge and materialistic learning as is the case with those living to-day, saw space resplendent with the brilliant light of the sun in the day-time, and at night agleam with shimmering stars, and at such a time his soul felt cosmic space to be pervaded by spiritual forces and spiritual beings. He felt them. Through the culture of those times, images of divine-spiritual facts arose within him, and he felt them directly. And so it was also in the spring-time when he saw the plants springing up out of the earth; his soul felt Nature to be illumined and imbued by the forces of divine, spiritual beings.

Such a feeling, such direct experience of the living spiritual forces diminishes the more we approach our present time. This statement is not meant as an adverse criticism of our time, for the diminishing of this feeling has been accompanied by the rise of another way of approaching Nature, by a more intellectual, external way of regarding the world; and it is only right that hereby mankind has gradually gained control ever the forces of Nature, has learned to investigate the world in detail with the aid of the microscope and to follow the stars in their courses through space with the telescope. It is right that in a certain sense men are proud that they are able to increase their mastery of the forces of Nature more and more, but at the same time we must make clear to ourselves that hereby all human impulses have become different.

When a human being looked up to the stars in former times, he said to himself, “I feel something divine and spiritual in the stars”. To-day, however, he only sees them as physical objects, and it is difficult for any one living in our day to picture to himself the divine and the spiritual. Humanity has really lost its understanding of this divine-spiritual vision. In spite of this fact it is true that even to-day there are many souls which are wonderfully stirred by their understanding of that which is divine and spiritual. Oh, the soul thirsts to imagine how space is filled with divine spiritual beings, filled with a spiritual power, and it feels the need of learning to know this power. Now the materialistic development here described has come to such a pass that just the most earnest and most ardent seekers after truth have gradually begun to think of late that it can be only a childish point of view to feel something divine in the world, and that mankind has now matured far enough to do away with such antiquated ideas. Even our school-children have to experience a discord which leads to the profoundest consequences in life. On the one hand the child is given lessons in natural science in a purely materialistic way, on the other, lessons in religion. Between them there is no bridge, no connecting link. What is the result in later life? We can say that the whole of humanity is divided into two camps, according to the consequences arising from this discord. On one hand there are those who have become indifferent and no longer care about anything, and on the other hand those who take things tragically, who brood, but still do not gain clear insight, and at last despair of solving the riddles of life. Thinking humanity is really divided into these two camps. Perhaps it is, in the end, only the simple souls who have kept a certain feeling for the spiritual. He who does not regard everything from the outside only, knows that just in the middle of the 19th century the danger that humanity would sink completely into materialistic life was at its greatest. The whole disposition and frame of mind of man tended towards materialistic feeling and experience. Therein lay a dreadful danger for humanity. Do you know what would have happened if spiritual science had not intervened? Man's manner of thinking would have become submerged ever deeper in the materialistic element; the forms of thought would have become gradually harder and more rigid; their outlines would have become ever sharper and more unalterable, instead of adapting themselves in constant active flow. No one would have been able to feel for anyone else, or sympathise with anyone else; but everyone would have felt that he alone was in the right and would have despised and hated all those that [who] thought or felt differently. Quite rigid in form, devoid of all love, our thinking would have become; and the spirit would finally have been pushed back so far into the background that all contact with it would have been made forever impossible, and the way into the spiritual world have been lost. The earth would have become a moon. For this reason, those who have insight into the higher spiritual worlds have brought spiritual science to mankind.

But from what sources does the science flow which is destined to save humanity from this great danger?

Precisely on a day like this, when a newly-founded Group is to be dedicated, it is indeed appropriate to speak about these things.

These sources are still concealed to most people, but gradually they will be revealed more and more. And from out these sources spiritual science was created. Now what does spiritual science say? It speaks of many things which the ordinary human being, with his ordinary senses, does not perceive. It says, for instance, that man does not only consist of the externally visible body, but that he has a fourfold nature. Besides the visible body he has also a life, or etheric body, not visible for ordinary man, a sentient or astral body, and, as a fourth member, he possesses the Ego, which passes from incarnation to incarnation, in order, throughout a long period of time, to complete its course of evolution. And spiritual science tells us still more. It tells us, for example, that the earth itself also goes through an evolution from one incarnation to the other, an evolution of a cosmic nature. It shows us further how the sun and the planets play the most important parts in this process of evolution, and how the existence and development of all these celestial bodies are connected with the existence of spiritual beings.

But what then is all this? Where are the sources of these truths? They come from the initiates. And who are the initiates? They are those whose spiritual eyes have been opened, and who can therefore speak of the spiritual world because they know this world. They are like those who can see among the blind. Fichte has already alluded to this relationship, and in truth for him “who can see”, spiritual things are just as real as the physical ones,—yes, even more real, for the latter are for him only an outward expression of the former.

It is true that when the seer speaks of the etheric body, the sentient body, etc., and of other revelations of a spiritual nature, many people will say that he is a dreamer and a fantast and takes theories and mere hypotheses for realities. The seer understands perfectly that those who do not see should raise such objections. Among a group of physically blind people we may speak as much and as exactly as we please about colours and light, yet for the blind this remains mere theory; and one who can see physically will be unable to disclose the concept, the actual reality-laden, concept, of colour and light to one who is physically blind. For to grasp this concept, the blind would have to be able to see for themselves; and only when a blind person has undergone a successful operation can the world of light dawn upon him.

Let us try to picture this relationship in still another way. Let us imagine that we had a large receptacle full of water before us, and let us suppose that there were a person who could neither see nor feel water with his senses, nor perceive it in any way. For this person the receptacle would be empty. Now let us suppose further that, in some way, cold currents could be made to pass through the water, causing it to freeze. At first ice-crystals, like needles, would form here and there, and as they continued to form they would accumulate into large clumps. But as ice is a solid substance, this person, who is unable to perceive water, would nevertheless be able to perceive the particles of ice as they formed. And what is it that he now perceives? He perceives that ice is forming. But out of what does it seem to him to be forming? Out of nothing!

This is the situation in which the initiate finds himself in his relation to other men. Where they see nothing, he sees. But now people say, “How can I believe that which I cannot verify for myself? And inasmuch as I cannot do so, what object is there in occupying myself with such things or in entering into them at all?” In this respect it is especially the dogmatists of monistic philosophy who make the following demands—firstly, that everything be admitted which they themselves assert, and secondly, that no one may know more than they know themselves. They set themselves up as infallible and as able to determine the limits of knowledge.

The true initiate will never deny the facts found by scientific investigation, but will whole-heartedly acknowledge the truths and merits of science. He must refuse, however, to admit that the scientific dogmatist is capable of determining the limits of knowledge. The scientist is proud of understanding, in contrast to believing. But if it is here a question of believing and not believing, and the scientist is of the opinion that belief plays no part in the results of his researches, he is mistaken. It is simply impossible to investigate or to teach anything without believing. Consider, for example, the cellular theory. In books we have very fine representations of cells, the division of the cells, the life of the cells, and so forth, clear and exact in every detail. But who among us has ever really seen this for himself with such distinctness? We all simply believe that it is so. Even the university professors, who teach these things, have in the rarest cases seen all this with their own eyes, and yet they lecture on it. They have not been able to see it for themselves, because things of this kind are both so difficult and so rarely possible to observe that only a few single individuals have succeeded in seeing them, and also because in reality they are by no means so clear and distinct as they appear in the pictures. Let us also consider embryology, for instance. Scientists believe that they know exactly how the embryo looks at every moment throughout pregnancy. But how extremely seldom is a scientist in the position, perhaps through a sudden case of death occurring at a particular moment of pregnancy, to have insight into these things! How many of these scientists have never seen the things which they teach! But until he is able to see for himself, the scientist is obliged to believe, and the others with him. Yet he demands of spiritual science that no one shall believe, and that no one shall know more than himself.

The essential character of the initiate lies in the fact that he is able to see into the spiritual world. For him the sources are spiritual scientific knowledge.

Yes, but of what use is this to those who do not possess this knowledge? A comparison will show us this.

Look for a moment at this stove! And now imagine that someone were to stand before this stove and say to it: “Thou stove, thou hast been created to spread warmth! Bethink thee of thy mission and warm this room!” Would it do so? Would these words have any effect? No, the stove would not stir. But if instead of speaking, we get wood and coal and light the fire, then it will fulfill its mission.

So it is with the communications of spiritual-scientific truths. They are fuel for the human soul. For thousands of years morality has been preached and people have been told, “Be good and love one another”. But do they really then do so? Do not matters look rather sad in spite of all Christian doctrines? In a town in southern Germany, a preacher once said to me, “I can make no objection whatever to all that you say of the Gospels, but what is the use of founding little conventicles for spiritual science here and there, when the church carries on practical education on a large scale?” Yes, if this preacher were right, then it would indeed be of no use. But he is not right, for if the church really performed its task in full measure, from whence do so many evil deeds still continually arise? And does everyone really go to church? In truth the church does not teach practical morality, but “stove morality”. In our day there are no longer many people who grow better simply upon urgent request. And indeed it is just the most able and gifted people who have turned away from the church. And were this to go on, the adherents of the church would become scarcer and scarcer, and materialism would become greater and greater, until one day not very much would be left of the church. And this is just the reason why spiritual science has come; it has become necessary, in order to supply the “fuel”! It is itself fuel in this sense, for the simple communication of truths from out the spiritual world animates and furthers the spiritual development of the individual, helping it forward not only in the sphere of morals, but also in spiritual vision.

Even among students of spiritual science there are those who are of the opinion that we need only be good and noble and strive to attain perfection, and then in the end our spiritual eyes will open of their own accord. At the same time they think that the communication of higher truths is of no great significance, and that we should only wait till we can see for ourselves, till the veil is of itself withdrawn from before our eyes. Those who think in this way are mistaken. They fail to recognise the character of these communications which act as fuel. The essential point it to stimulate active inner motion within the soul which would not come about in any other way, nor develop of its own accord.

But what is it that can shine forth within man, that will indeed shine forth within him, if he understands and pursues his development aright, which is the task of spiritual science? To explain this we shall have to go far back in history.

We must go back as far as the ancient Indian culture, which we call the age of the Seven Rishis. These Seven Rishis were the initiates of this age and guided the development of humanity. When, out of their spiritual vision, they bore witness of the highest mysteries, they said, “High above all that exists there is a Cause, a Being, which we call Vishva-Karman. We can neither know nor fathom it, it can only be divined. It lies too distant, as it were, to be known by us. Later on however, long after our time, it will draw nearer to humanity.”

Then in a much later period another initiate spoke about this Being. It was Zarathustra; not the historical Zarathustra, but one who preceded him. When he spoke to the people in his old, holy Persian language, the splendour of which can scarcely be described to-day, he said, “I see the Highest Being in the sun, round about the sun. It is, indeed, in the atmosphere of the sun.” And that is why he called it Ahura Mazdao—the great Aura—in contrast to man, the small aura. In the great Aura he saw an image or a model for the small aura, man. Ahura Mazdao is the same as Ormuzd. And Zarathustra taught that in days to come Ahura Mazdao would manifest himself in man. This was what he foresaw. But he saw also that there are forces in man which hold him back and prevent the manifestation of the Highest Being within him. These forces he called Ahriman—the Evil.

Still later, in another period, we again meet with a great initiate. Knowledge had, we might say, drawn still closer to him. In the case of the Rishis the Highest Being was concealed within universal space, as it were, immensely tar away. For Zarathustra it had approached as far as the sun. But for Moses knowledge was already close enough to be actually grasped. In the burning thorn-bush which spoke to Moses, the Aura had become part of the earthly elements. Moses knew that the Highest Being was present in the earth. For the initiate, this Being had descended first to the sun and then to the earth. Here it now lived within the elements. And when Moses asked this Being what he was to tell the people, the answer was—“I am the I am, Jahve.” With these words it becomes clear that this Being has come in order to unfold its life more and more within the human Ego. This was, however, not yet the case at that time. Man had not yet brought to birth a consciousness of the Highest Being within his inmost self. Moses, however, knew that this would come to pass.

And later still another man appears upon whom spiritual vision was bestowed, namely, Paul. He knew that this Highest Being was embodied in Jesus Christ. But he could not believe, could not comprehend, that this Being had to die upon the cross. Then he was initiated. That this was possible was due to the peculiar circumstance that he had been born too early. One who is born prematurely, a child that has not been carried in the womb for nine months, has not descended quite so far into the world of matter. For this reason it will be easier for such a person to attain insight into the spiritual world. And when Paul became clairvoyant, he saw that the Highest Being lived in Christ. Now it had actually come to life in man. Therefore Christ said at the Last. Supper—The bread is My body, the wine is My blood. Bread—earth; wine, or the juice of the plant—Spirit.

I wanted to lead you thus far to-day, so that you might feel what it signifies that such a Being has approached the earth, has descended into the earth. And this is what took place at Golgotha.

Did this Being really stream out over the earth at Golgotha? In order to answer this let us examine and compare a time 600 years before the birth of Christ, let us say, with a time 600 years after the birth of Christ. What has happened here—wherein does the difference consist?

600 years before Christ, Buddha lived. He lived in a king's palace. Then he went out into the world and learned to know old age, sickness, poverty, death, and the corpse. He saw that the whole life of man is suffering. Old age is suffering, sickness is suffering, poverty is suffering, birth is suffering, death is suffering, to be parted from those whom we love is suffering; in short, the whole of existence is suffering. So he said to himself, and taught the people, that they must lose, must learn to forget, their craving for existence. Here we have the hopeless renunciation of all creation

But 600 years later came the Mystery of Golgotha. As a symbol we see a cross erected, and upon the cross a human corpse. And the people look up to the corpse and are filled with a sense that all suffering can be healed. Herein lies a great difference. In death human beings no longer see the token of suffering, but the token of the healing of suffering. They can become victors over all that their life here on earth brings them. And this means that a fruit will be carried over into the other life.

If man now understands that birth and life are not suffering, but afford the possibility of emerging from it, inasmuch as life gives him the opportunity to develop the Spiritual which leads out beyond all suffering—if man understands this, old age is no longer suffering, but a drawing nearer to the fruit of life. Death is no longer suffering, but redemption; not to be united with those he loves is no longer suffering, if he has united himself with the Christ-Being, the Being of infinite Love, and thus envelops with his love all beings and all worlds.

All this was felt 600 years after Christ, and since that time it has been possible for man to feel united with the Christ, the Spirit of the Sun, Who is also the Spirit of the Earth—Who, even as he permeates the earth, permeates also each one of us, and calls forth mildness, warmth and love within our souls—Who awakens infinite love and transforms the earth.

Because spiritual science, in communicating spiritual truths, does not teach morals, but gives a basis for practical morality, it will build a bridge leading into the spiritual world for the man of to-day. It may well be that those who stand at the apex of our present culture, the leading personalities in industry and learning, those who have the greatest influence, will smile at these small conventicles of spiritual science, and also at all that is investigated here. But let them think what they like! At one time there was also a mighty world of Roman culture—that ancient, imperial Rome, the ruins of which we still admire. In the ancient gigantic Coliseum incense was burned to drown the smell of flesh which arose where the Christians had been torn to pieces by wild beasts. That was ancient Rome, above, in the daylight. And below? Let us descend into the catacombs! There we find the first followers of Christianity, of the Mystery of Golgotha, persecuted and despised. There below, hidden away, they worship Christ; there they perform their symbolic rituals. Down there the first Christian communities are founded. Although small in number and despised, they never doubt. Down below a little flock, despised and outcast; up above, a mighty throng who have great influence. Yet a few centuries later ancient Rome has disappeared; and those who were there below, in the under-world, have ascended. In the same way spiritual science will ascend in a few centuries, will rise above industry, learning, and the various concerns of humanity to-day. Yet if, in your little conventicles, you compare yourselves with those of subterranean Rome, do so, not with a feeling of pride, but with humility. And if you picture to yourselves how the brilliant science of our present day will melt away before spiritual science, then picture this to yourselves in humility only. If you take this feeling with you and carry it with you from this hour, so that it always remains alive within your souls, you will help to spread universal human love, and you will enter into a new culture.

I call upon all the good spiritual forces that they may watch over this newly-founded Group, and may help you to attain your goal and facilitate your work.

In the lecture yesterday which dealt with Spengler's Decline of the West, I tried to bring home to you the significance of anthroposophical Spiritual Science by emphasising the difference between merely abstract concepts and that which also arises in the soul in the form of ideas and concepts but is, nevertheless, reality. Let us realise once for all that with his materialistic frame of mind, and his tendency to reject spiritual conceptions and occupy himself only with ideas concerning the natural world, man is making himself more and more akin to the material, is descending so deeply into the material world that he is no longer speaking falsely when he declares that it is the material substance of his body which thinks, that his brain actually does the thinking. Man is becoming a kind of automaton in the universe, and as the result of his denial of the soul and Spirit he is losing the soul and Spirit. I said before that this thought is by no means popular; people will not accept it because they cherish the belief that the soul-and-spirit will be saved to man for all eternity without any action being necessary an his part. By no means is it so. A man may give himself up to material life to such an extent that he severs himself from the soul-and-spirit altogether, sinks into the realm of the Ahrimanic Powers and passes with them into a cosmic stream which does not belong to our world. But thereby he loses his own Ego, for the Ego does not belong to the world of Ahriman and can only find its true path of development when a human being pursues the normal course of progressive evolution; that is to say, when he unites with the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha and when he realises that in the pr sent age he must find a link with all that spiritual research can contribute to the civilised life of mankind. Since the middle of the fifteenth century man has been living through the phase of evolution in which, as he looks out into his environment, he sees nothing but the material world. And as he looks into his own being he intellectualizes the inner experiences of his life of soul; these become abstract and shadowy. This has been the tendency since the middle of the fifteenth century.

The thoughts and concepts with which we build up our picture of the world to-day, drawn as they are from the dicta of orthodox science, have no connection with existence as it actually is. Neither can they lead to the heart of reality. It is merely a convention to imagine that man's life of soul is fundamentally involved in the forming of abstract thought. These abstract thoughts are quite remote from reality; they are nothing but a series of pictures. We may say, therefore, that externally man perceives the material world and inwardly a world of pictures having no essential connection with existence. This has been the lot of mankind since the middle of the fifteenth century and we shall presently see what effect it has upon a conception of the universe to see, externally, nothing but the material world and, inwardly, to have experiences that have become a mere series of pictures. We may ask: Why is it that since the middle of the fifteenth century man's life of soul has gradually come to the point of having no more reality than a picture? The reason is that only in this way is it possible for man to attain his real freedom.

In order to understand this let us consider the world as it lies before us to-day and our own place in the world. To begin with we will think of the world, leaving aside the human being altogether. Looking at clouds, mountains, rivers, at the minerals, plants and animals, we ask: What is there, in reality, in the whole wide world, when we leave the human being out of the picture? In other words, we think of all that surrounds us in the mineral and plant kingdoms, and to a certain extent also, in the animal kingdom, but apart altogether from man. In reality, of course, this is quite impossible, but we will assume hypothetically a Nature divested of the human being. In this Nature that is divested of the human being, there are no Gods. That is what we must bring home to ourselves. In this Nature that is divested of the human being there are no Gods, any more than an oyster is there within an empty oyster-shell or a snail in an empty snail-shell. This whole world which we assume hypothetically, a world without the human being, is something which the Gods have separated off from themselves in the course of evolution, just as the oyster sheds its shell. But the Gods—the spiritual Beings—are no longer within it. The world that surrounds us, is a world of the Past. When we look at Nature we are looking at something which represents the spiritual Past, we are looking at a residue of the Spiritual. And that is why religious consciousness in the real sense can never arise from contemplation of the external world alone. Let us not imagine for a moment that any element of the life of the divine-spiritual Beings who work creatively in mankind, is contained in this external world. Elementary beings, spiritual beings of a lower order, are there, of course; but the creative spiritual Beings who should live in our religious consciousness belong to this external world only inasmuch as represents their shell, being a residue of spiritual evolution in the Past.

Certain outstanding personalities have felt the truth of these things. In the spiritual life of the nineteenth century the man who felt most deeply of all that the Nature surrounding man is a residue of divine-spiritual evolution was Philip Mainländer whose philosophy of self-destruction was born from the gravity of this knowledge and who finally put an end to his own life. It is often the destiny of human beings to steep themselves in one-sided truths of this kind and the inevitable consequence is that this destiny itself becomes one-sided and difficult to bear. Philip Mainländer, the unfortunate German Philosopher, is an outstanding example of this.

Having realised what has been put forward hypothetically in connection with external Nature, you may ask: Where then, are the Gods; where are the creative spiritual Beings? If I were to make a drawing, I should have to draw the Gods within the human being. The truly creative Gods have their habitat in the realm that is bounded by the human skin, within the organs—if I may use this expression. The being of man is now the bearer of the Divine-Spiritual. The Divine-Spiritual, the truly creative principles is within the human being. Try to picture to ourselves external Nature as it is to-day, and then a future lying thousands of years ahead—in this future there will be no clouds, no minerals, no plants, even no animals. There will be nothing left of all that now lives in external Nature outside the bounds of the human skin. What will continue its evolution is the soul and Spirit permeating the inner organisation of man. This will constitute the future. The Nature by which man is now surrounded will pass away, and the Human-Divine principle now within his being will become his outer environment.

Insight into the truth that the Divine-Spiritual—the only truly creative principle in our time—lives inside the bounds of the human skin, must be taken in deepest seriousness, for it lays upon man a responsibility in regard to the whole universe. It enables him to understand the words of Christ: “Heaven and Earth”—the world of external Nature—“will pass away but my words will not pass away.” And when in the individual human being the saying of St. Paul, “Not I but Christ in me,” is fulfilled, then the words of Christ will live in the individual human being. “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away” or My words in the individual human being, namely all that lies inside the human skin and is received into Christ, this will not pass away.

All this is an indication of the fact that since the middle of the fifteenth century, through his abstract, intellectual concepts, man has been making his inner being empty and void. And to what end has he been making himself empty? It is in order to receive the Christ Impulse, the Divine Spiritual, into his inner being. I said that as we look into the external world, we see only the material. It is the divine Past. (In this residue of a divine Past there are, of course, the Elemental Spirits who have remained at lower stages of evolution.) As we look into our inner being, we see, to begin with, nothing but abstract concepts which can only become concrete and real when we receive the impulse of the Spirit into our being through Spiritual Science and unite the impulse of the Spirit with our inner life. Man has the choice—a choice which has become a matter of greater and greater seriousness since the middle of the fifteenth century—either to remain at a standstill with his abstract intellectual concepts or to receive into himself the living substance of Spiritual Science. Abstract intellectuality enables him to evolve a brilliant science of Nature, for intellectual concepts are dead and by their means he can unfold an admirable understanding of dead Nature. But all this mummifies him, makes him akin to matter, and leads him ultimately into the clutches of the Ahrimanic world. To further the Progress of earthly existence and the whole evolution of the earth, he must receive the Spiritual into his being, and in our time the Spiritual does not draw near to man by way of atavistic instinct. It must be reached by his own efforts. The assimilation of Spiritual Science is not, therefore, the assimilation of a theory but the development of something absolutely real, an impulse that will fill the otherwise empty recesses of the soul with spiritual substance.

In the mass to-day, men prefer to have this emptiness inwardly and the Past outwardly manifest before them. They will only admit the validity of thought when it has been proved by experiment and they resist the quickening impulses of spiritual life. The danger confronting the world to-day is not so much the spread of false theories but the loss of the very Mission of the Earth.

Only those who have really thought through and perceived the task of the human race will realise how much depends upon the assimilation of Spiritual Science. These souls will never lose sight of the importance of knowledge of the being of man, but in modern natural science and in the ancient religious tradition this knowledge simply does not exist. What is the trend of ancient religious tradition? It directs the minds of men to unworldly abstractions and is silent an the subject of the Gods indwelling the being of man, indwelling his very organism. This thought would he condemned by religious tradition as out-and out heresy. If any attempt were made to bring home to the traditional religions in Europe and America to-day the truth of the ancient saying that “the Body of man is the Temple of the Gods,” they would indignantly refuse to countenance such heresy.

And an the other hand we have a materialistic natural science which precisely because it is materialistic has no real understanding of matter. What does science really know about the functioning of the human brain, of the human heart? I have often told you, and I have also said in public, that one of the views held by modern science is that the human heart is a kind of pump which drives the blood through the body. This dictum of academic science is universally accepted but it is simply a piece of nonsense—pure nonsense. We shall never understand the essential nature of the heart we imagine that it pumps the blood in every direction and then lets it flow back again. The circulating blood itself is the living force. The driving force in the human organisation is contained in the blood, in the circulating blood, and the heart is the outward expression of this; the movement reveals itself in the heart. To say in accordance with modern science that the heart drives the blood into the Body, is rather like saying: “At ten minutes to nine one hand of the clock pointed to nine, and the other a little past ten, and these hands, in conjunction with the mechanism of the clock, drove me to the speaker's desk and left a great many still outside (because in the Anthroposophical Society people have a habit of unpunctuality). In reality, it is not so at all. Obviously the clock is simply an expression of what is happening—it is the expression and nothing more. The heart is not the pumping machine by means of which the blood is driven through the body; the heart is inserted into and is the expression of this whole system of movement.

Natural Science, as it is to-day, never leads into the inner being of man. All that science does is to make the inner into the outer by the dissection of dead bodies. But dissection of the dead body merely takes the inner and transfers it to the outer world. I mention this in order to bring home to you that in the spiritual life of to-day there is no inclination whatever to penetrate into the inner being and inner nature of man, and it devolves upon Spiritual Science to bring that real knowledge of man's being which scares the great majority of our contemporaries. Why are they scared? It is because religious traditions through the centuries have utterly hood-winked mankind so far as striving for real knowledge is concerned. Just think of the way in which the traditional creeds mystify human beings with apocryphal utterances culminating in a warning that it is not meant for man to know the Supersensible, that he may only have faith in it and feel its existence darkly. This is all done with the object of playing upon man's pride and self-conceit and also upon his inherent laziness. He must be led to believe that it is not necessary for him to think about the Divine, that his conception of the Divine must be a matter of instinct and dim feeling. But ideas that arise from this region of man's being are merely emanations from the organs—emanations which become illusions, and these illusions are distorted into all kinds of nebulous ideas by theologians and others who know quite well how much they can count an man's inherent love of ease.

The instinct for knowledge which alone can promote the earthly evolution of man and also lead him to the path of spiritual development, has been stifled and suppressed for many long centuries. People to-day are frightened at the very thought of developing knowledgE of realities or of experiencing the spiritual world. But to the extent to which they are frightened—to that extent do they sever themselves from the Spirit and soul and make themselves akin to the material.

It is so indeed; people are scared when the gravity of these things dawns upon them, because everything to-day is regarded from the external point of view. And here, in parenthesis, let me repeat certain remarks made a short time ago. In Stuttgart we have the Waldorf School. The Waldorf School was founded out of the very spirit of anthroposophical Spiritual Science; that is to say, fundamental principles of education and of teaching were laid before those who were specially Chosen to work in the School. Everything is a question of the Spirit in this art of education. Yet we are finding to-day, a sensation, that people visit the school and actually think that in a couple of hours or so they can inform themselves about the essentials of education there given. But it is of course only through Spiritual Science that one can gain insight into the spirit of the Waldorf School; it cannot be done by short brief visits which only disturb the teaching.

To assimilate anthroposophical Spiritual Science, however, is much more difficult and much less sensational than visiting the School as an outsider. As I have often said, the education at the Waldorf School takes account of the existence of the spiritual world, and, above all, of the pre-earthly existence of the human being. What is there to be said about this pre-earthly existence? We may take the year of our birth and say that this is the time when we descended to physical life on the Earth. Children born later have been living in the spiritual world while we were already on the Earth. These children have just descended to the physical world, whereas we ourselves have been living through our earthly existence for a considerable length of time. And they bring with them something of what they were experiencing in the spiritual world while we were already living in the physical world.

One can realise this quite clearly among children who are taught according to the principles of Waldorf School education. To give this kind of education is to prepare for the application in everyday life of thoughts and ideas which are the natural outcome of Spiritual Science. But it is precisely here that people are kept back by traditional religions, for the last thing these religions want is the development of inner activity in human beings. Inner activity leads to a real knowledge of the being of man and brings home the truth that the dwelling place of the Gods is inside the bounds of the human skin.

Suppose we see a planet in the sky. There is nothing of the Divine-Spiritual in anything upon that planet except in Spiritual Beings whose nature in some way resembles the nature of man. From these Beings the Divine pours its radiance upon us. Why, then, should this radiance be any the less because it shines from the bodies of men? You will begin to feel at home with this thought if you dissociate it from earthly life and relate it to conditions as they are upon another planet. Living an the Earth as you do, you will find that there is something oppressive, something rather coercive in the thought that you and your fellow men are bearers of the Divine-Spiritual. But if you turn the gaze of your soul to one of the other planets it will be much easier for you to grasp the fact that the Beings who there constitute the highest kingdom of Nature are the point from which the Divine Spiritual shines down upon you.

In a certain respect the thought we have been considering to-day amplifies the thought which occupied our minds in the last lecture, namely that something is unfolding in the inner being of man upon which the future evolution of the Earth essentially depends, but also that it lies within the powers of the human will to hinder the Earth's evolution, to receive the stream of Ahrimanic forces only. And to-day we added the other thought, namely, that Nature around is transient and external, for it already represents nothing more than a residue of Divine Spiritual creation. The process of Divine-Spiritual creation which dominates the present and will dominate the future, lies inside the bounds of the human skin. Strange as it may seem, it is therefore quite true to say that everything our eyes can see and our ears hear will all pass away with the Earth. Only that which is contained in the regions enclosed by the human skin lives over to the Jupiter stage of evolution, bearing existence as it is an the Earth into future conditions of planetary evolution.

When it is once realised that a knowledge of the nature of man is a burning necessity, the urge to understand the connection of the human being with the universe will again make itself felt. You know that man really lives between two extremes, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic as we are accustomed to call them. We can also understand the nature of these two extremes from a more elementary point of view. Philosophers have declared again and again that Being in itself eludes the grasp of thought. This is quite true, for whence comes the sense of being, the feeling of existence which there is in man? The human being exists before he enters earthly existence through conception and birth; he exists in super-sensible worlds. From super-sensible worlds he descends into his earthly, material existence. Here he experiences something quite new, something he did not experience in the super-sensible worlds. He is encompassed by it as soon as he has descended to earthly existence. It is the attractive force of the Earth, gravity, ‘to have weight,’ as we say, but only by way of illustration. As you know, the expression ‘to have weight’ is drawn from the most palpable phenomenon of all. The fatigue of which we become aware is similar to ‘having weight,’ and what we feel in our limbs when they move is also akin to this. But because the fact of ‘having weight’ is merely the representative phenomenon, we can say: The human being places himself within gravity. And in a hidden way man always enters, a little more into this element of gravity when he approaches a thing of Earth and calls it real.

It is exactly the reverse when the human being is passing through his life between death and rebirth. Just as here on the Earth he is allied with gravity, in the life between death and rebirth he is allied with light, for ‘light’ too is used in a representative sense. Because we receive most of our higher sense-perceptions through the eye, we speak of the light. But what lives as light in the sense-perception of the eye is the same element that sounds in the sense-perception of the ear and reveals itself in different tones, just as the light reveals itself in different colours. And it is the same with the other senses. fundamentally speaking, the element we speak of in a representative sense as the light, just as we speak of gravity in a representative sense, is the ‘tincture’ of all the senses. We are received into the extreme pole of gravity when we descend to the Earth. We are received into the extreme pole of light when we are living in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. are, in reality, always in the middle condition between light and gravity; and every sense-perception, as we experience it here on Earth, is half light and half gravity. When, as the result of some pathological condition, or in dream, we experience without the element of our own gravity, we are experiencing only the Spiritual, as for instance in a dream or in delirium. Psychologically, delirium is a state in which the human being has experience, but his own gravity is no factor in them. This state of balance between gravity and light into which we are placed, is something that is intimately connected with the riddle of the world, inasmuch as it is bound up with many of the experiences we have as beings of soul and Spirit in the world.

It will surely be obvious to you from what has been said that neither the traditional creeds nor the fantasies of natural science succeed in finding their way from merely abstract concepts into the light nor from sense perception down into gravity. People have become blind and deaf to these things. Man is bound to the Earth by gravity. He experiences gravity as the element which draws him to the Earth. Think of a crystal. A crystal gives itself its form. Within the crystal there is the same force which the human being feels drawing him downwards—the force which gives the whole Earth form. And now think of the oceans and seas. Here the Earth can give form, or rather the element of gravity gives the form. This very same force also gives the crystal its form but in this case it works from within. According to science, nobody knows what is behind matter or within matter. This is said to be a world-riddle. But inasmuch as we experience our own gravity, we experience what is behind the surface of matter; for in relation to the whole Earth we are placed within the same forces which are active in small bodies (as, for instance, the crystal) and by which the various parts are held together. We must reach the point of being able to recognise the small in the great, the great in the small and not to lose ourselves in speculation as to what presumably lies behind matter.

Knowledge of the Divine-Spiritual which transcends matter must be kindled by those forces in man's inner being which enable him to understand ideas such as that of the Temple represented in ancient tradition by the human being himself.

I have said many times that the sayings of ancient atavistic wisdom contain much that is worthy of deep veneration. In the present age it is our task once again to raise these truths from the depths of our being and to make them the guiding principles of life and action.