The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We need only recall the fact that the physical and etheric aspects of the human being, as he stands before us today, are denser forms of the astral. Man was previously a purely astral being before he became an etheric being and then a physical being. In truth, all the denser substances, that is, the etheric substance and the physical substance, are differentiated out of the astral substance, just as ice is differentiated out of water. Just as water condenses and becomes ice, so the astral substance becomes 'condensed into etheric and then into physical substance. In the time when man was still a being like you are today, when you sleep, where you are outside your physical and etheric body, the forces that shaped his astral substance were pure powers of sensation and imagination. The astral substance works quite differently from the etheric or physical substance. The astral substance is in perpetual motion. Every passion, every instinct, every desire is immediately realized in the astral substance, so that in the next moment it is of a completely different form, if it is the expression of a different passion. Today, the mental no longer has such an easy effect on the dense physical body of man. Nevertheless, the mental and the emotional still have an effect on the physical body of man. You only have to observe that when a person is frightened or afraid of something, they turn pale. This means that the entire blood mass is moving differently in the body than in a normal state. It pushes the blood mass from the outside inwards. Or take the blush of shame, where the blood is driven from the inside to the periphery, outwards. These are only slight effects that the soul still has on the body today. But if you consider long periods of time, you will find much more significant effects of the soul and the mind on the body. If you could follow the human forms through the millennia, you would see that the shape, the whole physiognomy, everything about the human being changes. This happens in such a way that the soul and spiritual processes are there first. Man has certain ideas, and as he forms his ideas, so in the course of millennia his physical form and physiognomy are formed, even if this is not immediately noticeable to an external biological observer. Everything is formed from the inside out. Our external materialistic science is still far from understanding how these effects relate to each other over the course of millennia. But they are there.

To make it clear to us what such connections are like, let us just recall the first appearance of Gothic architecture, where certain processes in the development of humanity were expressed for the first time in Gothic architectural forms. Those people who devoted themselves to prayer in rooms built in the Gothic style experienced the thoughts that were the inspiration for the Gothic buildings. These thoughts, which were active in the souls of men, formed the souls, the inner powers of man, right into the etheric body; they reshaped the powers of man. And after centuries, as a consequence of these impressions received by the senses, and the ideas formed after these sensory impressions, that mystical movement emerged, which we find in Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler and others. In what they devised, we have the after-effects of what their ancestors had received as impressions from Gothic buildings. And those higher individualities who lead humanity in its development consciously guide this process of human development. They consciously look ahead into the centuries and millennia, and at a certain time humanity is given what is to develop these or those qualities. Thus we see how, here in the course of a few centuries, by looking at the external forms of Gothic architecture, the pointed arch style, that mysticism striving towards heaven is expressed in Meister Eckhart, Tauler and so on. If we were to consider millennia instead of centuries, we would see how even the human body forms according to the thoughts and feelings and ideas that people had millennia ago; and the great leaders of humanity give people the right ideas at the right time in their development, so that even the human form is transformed.

Now let us imagine ourselves in the period of transition from the Atlantic to the post-Atlantic period. We know that our ancestors, indeed our very souls, lived in other bodies, in ancient Atlantis. In the last days of Atlantis, this continent, especially the northern parts, was largely covered by masses of fog, and everything that lived on the earth, on this continent, was shrouded in dense fog. And if we go back even further, we come across times when there were not only masses of fog, but where our air circle is today, there were masses of water trickling down. The first Atlantean man was even more of a water creature. It was only gradually during the Atlantean period that he transformed into an air being. At that time, man had a completely different distribution of his etheric and physical bodies. Today, the etheric body and the physical body are distributed in such a way that they are almost the same in shape and size in the upper parts. This is by no means the case with other beings. If you were to look at a horse's etheric body, you would see the horse's etheric head shining out far above its physical head. In humans, too, the etheric body of the head used to extend far beyond the physical head, and it was only towards the end of the Atlantean period that the two parts merged. A point that is now within the head used to be outside it, and only gradually was it drawn in. These two points drew closer and closer together, and in the last third of the Atlantean epoch they coincided. That was the time when the pre-Semitic race descended from the northeast of Atlantis, from the area of present-day Ireland. At that time, man acquired the ability through which the two points coincided and came to overlap. Due to the etheric body of his head being outside, the Atlantean man had a kind of misty clairvoyance. He could not calculate or count, nor develop any kind of logic of thought. This is only a result of the post-Atlantean time. But they had a kind of primitive clairvoyance because they were much more out of their heads than in them with the ether part of the head. At that time, when this ether part of the head was outside the physical head, the thoughts and feelings of the astral body also had a much greater influence on this part of the ether body and thus on the formation of the physical body. That which first lived in the astral body as feelings, sensations and thoughts continued as a process of movement in the etheric body and shaped the physical body into its present form.

Where did the present length, width and height of the physical body actually come from? It is an effect of what was first present in the astral body and in the etheric body. First there were thoughts, images, sensations and so on. You will be able to understand this better if you remember the process that occurs immediately after physical death; the physical body is first left by the etheric body and then by the astral body. During sleep, only the ego and the astral body go away, while the etheric body and the physical body remain in bed. Death differs from sleep in that the etheric body also leaves with the astral body and the ego. A peculiar phenomenon occurs, something that could be described as a sensation, but which is linked to a certain idea. The person feels as if he were growing, as if he were expanding in all directions; he takes on dimensions in all directions. This expansion of the etheric body, which it takes on immediately after death, this seeing of the etheric body in large dimensions, is a very important concept. In the ancient Atlantean man, this idea had to be awakened when the etheric body was not yet as closely connected to the physical body as it is today. The fact that it was awakened, that man was introduced to the magnitude that he feels today when he grows after death, is how the cause, the thought form, was formed to bring the physical body into the form that it has today. When, in those days, when the physical body and etheric body were still more separated, man was presented with these forms, these measurements, it stimulated the physical body to take on the form it has today. And these forms were suggested by those who are the leaders of human evolution. In the various flood legends, especially in the biblical flood legend, there are traces of precise details. If you imagine the human being surrounded by the forms that his etheric body must have in order for the form of the physical body to be formed in the right way, then you have the size of Noah's Ark. Why does the Bible state that Noah's Ark was 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits high and 300 cubits long? Because these are the proportions that a person needs in the transition from the Atlantic to the post-Atlantic period in order to form the right thought form, which is the cause that the body of the post-Atlantic person was formed in the right way in length, height and width. In Noah's Ark you have a symbol for the proportions of your present body. These proportions are effects of those thought forms which Noah experienced and which he had built into the ark in such a way that by looking at them the world of thought was created according to which the organism of the post-Atlantean man was to be built. Mankind was educated through effective symbols. Today you carry within you the proportions of Noah's Ark in the dimensions of your physical body. When a person stretches out their hands upwards, the dimensions of Noah's Ark are contained within the dimensions of the human body.

Thus man has passed from the Atlantean era into the post-Atlantean era. In the sixth cultural epoch, the epoch that will follow our own, the human body will be shaped quite differently again. Today, too, people must experience the thought forms that can provide the basis for the human body to take on the right proportions in the next cultural epoch; this must be demonstrated to people. Today man is formed according to the measurements of 50 : 30 : 300. In the future he will be formed quite differently. How is the thought-form given to man today, through which the future form of man will be formed in the next race? It has already been said that this is given in the measurements of Solomon's Temple. The measurements of Solomon's Temple are a profound symbol of the entire organization of the form of man as he will be in the next, the sixth race.

All the things that are effective in humanity happen from within, not from without. What is thought and feeling in any one period is external form in the following period. And the individualities that guide the development of humanity must implant the thought forms into humanity many millennia in advance, which are to become external physical reality afterwards. There you have the function of thought forms, which are stimulated by such symbolic images as Noah's Ark, the Temple of Solomon, and the four apocalyptic figures of man, lion, bull and eagle. They have a very real significance. We have thus already said something about the images that guide the human being when he devotes himself to them. Yesterday we also mentioned images in the four forms of man, lion, bull, and eagle; and today we are talking about images. Images lead the human being to an interest in the world that directly borders his own.

When we ascend to an even higher world, we no longer deal with mere images, but with the inner relationships of things, with what is called the sound of the spheres, the music of the spheres, the world of sounds. When we travel through the astral plane, we essentially have a world of images that are the archetypes of our things here. The higher we ascend, the more we enter into a world of sounds and tones. You must not imagine, however, that the world of sounds is a world of sounds in the external sense. You do not hear the devachan world with the outer ear. You cannot compare the essence of the sounding spiritual world with our physical sounds, which are only an external manifestation of the devachanic world of sound. The spiritual tones are substances of the devachanic world, of the spiritual world, which begins where the world of images passes into the world of sounds. These worlds are thoroughly interwoven. Here, around the physical world, is both the astral and the devachanic world; one permeates the other. It is the same as if you were to lead someone born blind into this illuminated room; the colors and the burning candles are around him, but he cannot perceive them; only when he acquires sight through a successful operation can he also perceive what has been around him all along. Likewise, the astral and spiritual worlds around us are only perceived when the senses are opened to them; then it is also perceived that these worlds do not border on each other, but penetrate each other. One can perceive everything that is in one world in the other worlds.

What spiritual music is in the Devachan world is reflected in the astral world and expressed through numbers and figures. What is called Pythagorean music of the spheres is usually taken as an image by abstract philosophers. But it is a true, genuine reality. The sound of the spheres is there, and the one who trains his hearing - the expression is not quite correct, but we have to use it - in order to perceive in the higher worlds, perceives not only the images and colors of the astral world around him, but also the sounds and harmonies of the spiritual world. Just as the things around us on the physical plane are revelations of the astral world, so they are also revelations of the spiritual world, which express themselves through the mediation of the astral in the physical. The spiritual world expresses itself in all our physical things, and the more uplifting and meaningful the sensual things are, the clearer, more beautiful, more magnificent they also show themselves as expressions of the spiritual world. If we take an insignificant thing of our physical plane, it is usually very difficult to trace it back to its spiritual archetype. On the other hand, when we look at more significant, uplifting things in the physical world, the spiritual archetypes reveal themselves with great beauty. For example, we have given an expression of the spiritual world in the interaction of the planets of our planetary system. What is present in our planetary system in the most diverse forms can be traced back to what is called the harmony of the spheres for those who can recognize these things. The movements of our planets are such that he who is able to perceive this in the spiritual world 'hears' the mutual relationships of the movements of our planets. For example, from the point of view of higher worlds, Saturn moves 2 1/2 times faster than Jupiter. This movement of Saturn is perceived in the spiritual world as a correspondingly higher tone, “with spiritual ears,” as Goethe puts it.

Let us visualize the relative speeds of the planets in our solar system. If you take the speed of Saturn's movement in relation to Jupiter, then Saturn moves 2 1/2 times as fast as Jupiter, that is, at a ratio of 2 1/2: 1, and the speed of Jupiter's movement in relation to Mars is 5 : 1. For the spiritual ear, the movement of Jupiter in relation to the movement of Mars is therefore perceived as a much higher tone. If you take the speed of the movements of the Sun, Mercury and Venus, which is approximately the same, this stands in relation to the movement of Mars at 2:1, so it is just twice as fast. If you take the movement of the Sun, Mercury and Venus in relation to the Moon, this ratio is 12:1, so the speed is twelve times as great. From a spiritual point of view, if you consider the movement of all the stars visible to us in relation to their background, the starry sky advances by one degree in one century. And the speed of Saturn's movement in relation to the starry sky is 1200:1.

We therefore have

Saturn: Jupiter = 2½ : 1
Jupiter : Mars = 5 : 1
Sun, Mercury, Venus: Mars = 2 : 1
Sun, Mercury, Venus: Moon = 12 : 1
Saturn: Starry sky = 1200 : 1

These ratios are expressed for spiritual perception through tones that can be perceived in the spiritual world by the spiritual ears. These are the real backgrounds of what is called “music of the spheres”. These numbers actually indicate harmonies that really exist in the spiritual world. So you see, just as the clairvoyant sees images and colors in the astral world, so the clairaudient hears the spiritual harmonies of things in the spiritual or Devachan world. For the one whose spiritual ear is trained for it, everything that manifests itself here in the physical world has tones as a spiritual background. Thus, for the occultist, the four elements of earth, water, air and fire produce different tone relationships that are quite beyond the perception of the ordinary person. The initiates have recreated tone relationships in the physical world that they could hear from the spiritual background of earth, water, air and fire. And the result of these tone vibrations has been captured in the original tuning of a musical instrument, the lyre. The lyre's string vibrations correspond to the notes that the initiates recognized as the four elements. The bass

string corresponds to the Earth
the D string to Water
the A string to Air
the G string to Fire.

In this way we would be able to understand much if we could go back to times long past, and we could then see how many things in culture that today are taken for granted by man have been developed out of observations in the spiritual world. The physical tones of the lyre are modeled on what first existed spiritually as the relationship of the four elements to one another.

The fundamental idea underlying this is that everything that happens in man, in the microcosm, should be modeled on what lives in the macrocosm. When everything in the microcosm resonates with the macrocosmic spiritual events, then the world and man are in harmony; and because there is no disharmony, man can truly connect with the evolution of the world and feel at one with it. But when man leaves this harmony, when he does not join the world-sounds, then his outer condition also becomes disharmonious, and it becomes impossible for him to go on with the course of the world.

All this should give us an idea of how the symbols were created out of the higher worlds, which are real facts in these higher worlds. Many of the things in our culture are symbols, symbols to be realized, through which it is ensured that the human being can be prepared to develop in the future on the physical plane that which is only on the higher planes today. It is the course of evolution that everything that is in the higher worlds today descends into the physical world. Since man is called upon to help create the outer world, he must descend with his thoughts into the physical world. He forms the world around him, and he also forms what is in his own physical being. Through Theosophy, man must develop a feeling for the fact that everything he does, feels and thinks in one time continues to have an effect in another time, in the future. When man builds temples, works of beauty, or when he creates statesmanship for the social coexistence of people, these are all things that have significance for the future. What man builds today with the help of natural forces, he forms the natural products of the future. When man builds a Gothic cathedral, for example, he assembles it according to mineral laws. It is true that the substance, the materiality, the bricks and stones, of which the cathedral is composed, will disintegrate. But the fact that the form once existed is not meaningless. The form that was imprinted on the matter by human beings remains, it is incorporated into the etheric and astral body of the earth and develops as a force with the earth. And when the earth has passed through the present stage of development and the pralaya and reappears as Jupiter, this form will grow out of the earth as a kind of plant being. We are building the works of art and beauty today, we are not building the works of wisdom in vain on our earth. We are shaping them so that they will later merge with the earth as natural products. And just as we build cathedrals and houses today whose forms are lasting, which combine with the earth and will emerge again in the future as a kind of plant, so too have our present-day plants and crystals been shaped by what our predecessors built in the pre-world, by the gods and spirits that preceded us. Everything that man incorporates into the earth from the point of view of knowledge, wisdom and beauty and of true social life, everything that he brings into the outer world in the form of symbols, even if he only forms them in his thoughts, becomes a great, joyful, progressive force for the further development of the earth; they will be real forces and forms of the future. Our machines and factories, however, everything we make to serve external utility, the principle of utility, will be a harmful element in the next embodiment of our earth. If we imprint symbols on matter that are expressions of higher worlds, they will have a progressive effect; our machines and factories, on the other hand, which only serve external utility, will have a kind of demonic, corrupting effect in the next incarnation of our earth. Thus we ourselves shape our good forces and also the demonic forces for the next age of humanity.

Today, in the fifth post-Atlantic cultural epoch, we are most deeply immersed in matter and creating the worst demonic forces for the next epoch. Where we transform the ancient and sacred into physical and mechanical things, we are working down into the physical plane. What man fashions in this way will become the underworld. It must be clearly understood that the evil powers of the earth's evolution must also be integrated. At the time when they must be overcome, man will have to expend a tremendous amount of energy to transform evil and demonic forces back into good. But his strength will grow as a result, because evil is there to steel the strength of man by overcoming it. All evil must in turn be transformed into good, and it is providentially designed to develop strong, energetic effects in man, much higher than if he never had to transform evil into good.

All the things we think up in the physical world with our minds have a spiritual background, and we can see these things in the spiritual world. I would now like to give an example of how something that is conceived on the physical plane expresses itself in the spiritual as a figure: the Caduceus, the rod of Mercury.

Our present consciousness is the so-called bright day-consciousness, where we perceive through the senses and combine through the mind. This day-consciousness has only developed to its present level. It was preceded by another consciousness, a dream-like pictorial consciousness. At the beginning of the Atlantean period, man still perceived the world and its spiritual and soul entities clairvoyantly in astral and etheric images. Today's dream is still a last remnant of this atavistic pictorial consciousness. Let us draw a picture of this. First we have the bright day consciousness. This was preceded by consciousness, which today only plants have, which we can call sleep consciousness in humans. Then there is an even duller consciousness, as our physical minerals have it today; we can call it a deep trance consciousness. (During these explanations, the following was written on the blackboard, from bottom to top: day consciousness, image consciousness, sleep consciousness, deep trance consciousness. See drawing next page.) We can connect these four consciousnesses with a line (drawn as a straight line from top to bottom). However, man does not develop in this way. If man were to develop in the same way as the straight line, he would start from a deep-trance consciousness, then descend to the sleep consciousness, then to the image consciousness and finally to today's day consciousness. But it is not that simple for man; instead, he has to go through various transitional stages. Man had a consciousness of deep trance on the first earth embodiment that we can trace, on Saturn; there he developed this consciousness to various degrees. We draw it here in such a way that we let consciousness develop in this line. Man separates himself from the straight line and reconnects with it on the sun, where he undergoes the sleep consciousness, then continues as this spiral line shows to reach the image consciousness on the moon. And today, after various transformations, man stands at the level of bright day consciousness. Man now retains this clear day consciousness for all subsequent periods, and consciously acquires for himself the states of consciousness which he had in a dull form on earlier levels. In this way he consciously acquires for himself the pictorial consciousness again on the Jupiter condition of the earth; this will enable him to perceive again soul-life around him. This development takes place, however, in such a way that his clear day-consciousness is not weakened or dulled, but that on Jupiter he will have the image consciousness in addition to his day-consciousness. One could say: the day-consciousness brightens up into the image consciousness (see drawing: broken line). Then he will again have the sleep consciousness that he had on the sun when the earth was in its Venus state; this will enable him to look deeply into the beings, as today only the initiate can do. The initiate goes the straight way; he develops in a straight line, whereas the normal development of man is a winding one. And then, ascending, man also regains on Vulcan the first consciousness, the consciousness of trance, while retaining all the other states of consciousness. Thus man undergoes an evolution in a descending and one in an ascending line. You can see this line recurring again and again. This path of descent and ascent is a real line that has found expression in the Caduceus, in the staff of Mercury.

[The following section is only incompletely reproduced in all the lecture notes.] Thus we see how the symbols that we obtain in this way are deeply rooted in the whole essence of our world process. And a line like the Caduceus also has an educational significance for people when they devote themselves to this figure in meditation. No one can memorize this figure without it having a profound educational effect on them. The seer brought this line out of the spiritual worlds to give people something that would make them future seers. What one must develop when meditating on this line are certain sensations. At first you feel a dull darkness. You stare into the darkness, and gradually it begins to brighten and take on a violet color, then indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and now back, with a certain reflection of the evolution taking place, until you have risen again to violet. As you follow this shaded line, your feelings will change from the quality of the color nuances to moral feelings. If you do not perceive this line merely as a chalk or pencil line, but, by looking into the black, try to imagine the dark before your soul, and at the violet imagine the devotion, and so on through the other colors, blue, green, yellow, orange, then call the joyful before your soul with the red, then your soul will go through a whole gamut of sensations, which are first color sensations and then become moral sensations. By reflecting the form of the staff of Mercury in sensations, something is incorporated into the soul that enables it to develop the higher organs. Through the real symbol, it is transformed so that it can receive the higher organs within itself.

Just as the influence of outer light once magically transformed indifferent organs into eyes, so too does devotion to the symbols of the spiritual world magically transform the organs for the spiritual world. It is quite impossible to say: I still cannot see what is to arise there. That would be just as if the person who had not yet had eyes had said: I do not want to let the light work on me. We must first be taught what can lead to the development of the inner organs, then we can perceive the secrets of the spiritual world around us.

Today I would like to continue the meditation I undertook yesterday by bringing it even closer to the human being himself. You can well imagine that what one is actually trying to depict through such a description is so rich and varied inwardly that any such description, like yesterday's, which covers such wide areas, can only grasp the matter from one point of view, and that a feeling for what is actually intended by such a description can only arise from descriptions from the most diverse points of view.

When we consider the human head formation, the head formation, we must be clear about the fact that this head formation does not only concern the externally observed head, limited downwards by the neck, but also the processes that take place in the human head, the internal organ processes. These are mainly present in the head as head processes, but they continue throughout the organism; so that essentially the head organization is found in the whole human being, but outwardly it reveals itself primarily in the head. The same applies to the chest organization, which essentially comprises breathing and blood circulation. This too extends into both the head organization and the metabolism and limb organization. We can speak of the human being in such a way that we distinguish between its individual organizational elements, but we must be clear about how they interact in the whole person.

If we now consider the organization of the human head, it undergoes quite different metamorphoses than the other parts of the human organism when passing through the spiritual world between death and a new birth. In the head we have an actual reproduction of that cosmic which, as a spirit germ, develops through such activity as I have characterized yesterday and already on the previous days. In the human head we have the complete reproduction, filled with material substance, of the universal whole.

If we could study the human head not with a physically constructed microscope but with our spiritual and soul abilities to enlarge, we would find the whole cosmos reproduced in its physical, etheric, astral and ego structure. We actually carry this entire cosmos within us, and most of it in our head organization. It is also true for this head organization that, between death and a new birth, the human being, in union with higher spiritual beings of the upper hierarchies, works out what will find the continuation of its development within human inheritance, which, so to speak, has been brought to a certain point by the human being himself in union with the beings of the higher hierarchies in the spiritual world, falls into the physical world and continues its development in the mother's organism through conception.

What we see as head formation has actually emerged from the cosmos, so that it itself comes down to earth in an astral state, which it finally reaches through the processing of the human being, and there, before conception, up to the physical state of development, , so that later on that which has now been left behind by the human being itself is clothed with an etheric body, after it has first cast off the germ of the physical body in the spiritual, and can then in turn connect with this spirit germ that has become physical.

But now it is the case that during the waking state, on a small scale, we are constantly continuing what we have accomplished on a large scale, in the universal between death and a new birth in union with divine spiritual entities. This activity, which is carried out here, takes place, so to speak, behind the ordinary human consciousness.

I would like to sketch this out for you. If we look at the human head of a normally functioning person, the following appears to the spiritual view: While we are awake, while the impressions of the external world are constantly approaching the human head through our waking state, everything that lives in the sense perception takes place for the consciousness. I would like to characterize what lives in sensory perception by first drawing the eye (see drawing), the nose, where the olfactory sensations take place, palate, mouth, where the taste experiences take place. This part, marked in red, is intended to schematically represent everything that a person actually experiences in their ordinary consciousness. But in the world of facts that takes place in a person, not only that takes place. You know, of course, that the brain is structured in the most diverse ways. I will only hint at this schematically (blue-green). What is combined and structured here in the brain is an image of the whole universe, the whole universe contracted into a small size and lined with earthly substances. The fact that this brain, in its ego part, its astral and etheric part, is then lined with physical earthly substance means that the earth, with its forces and components, has influence over this part of the human being.

While our sensory perception is taking place, while the colors flood in and form internally into images, while the auditory impulses vibrate through the human organism and form through the structure of the auditory organ into auditory perceptions, while a similar thing happens with taste, smell and tactile perceptions, while this whole waking experience is maintained by the influence of the external physical-sensory world, it comes to life as a force within the unconscious parts of the human head organization. And while we perceive a color, hear a sound or have a taste perception, we unconsciously work to create an afterimage of, say, Jupiter's position in relation to the sun or to Mars (yellow). We are mapping a cosmic relationship within our own being. Throughout our waking life, something happens that we accomplish behind our ordinary consciousness: the reproduction of cosmic activity. What is accomplished behind our ordinary consciousness is nothing other than the echo of what we go through cosmically between death and a new birth or conception. There we have gone through it on a large scale, in the universal. We have gone through it in the spiritual, unperturbed by the earthly substance. We did not need to take off the earthly substance in fine portions, wrap it around axes in spiral lines and so on. We did everything in a spiritual substance. The spiritual-divine powers of the highest hierarchies accompanied us in our work. What we accomplished in their community, we do here in an unconscious way, by surrendering to the sensory perceptions in our brain, by reproducing what we have done outside in a spiritual way with spiritual beings in an earthly way with earthly substances. Through this activity, we carry our pre-earthly life into our earthly life and into our physical organization.

What we see through colors, hear through sounds, smell through scents, is there for us during our earthly existence. What takes place in the background are thoughts that have an ethereal vitality, which in the materiality of the brain have only their physical expression. The essential thing that matters is what ethereally weaves in the finest substantiality of the brain. There, living thoughts weave into each other. Our thoughts are, after all, only reflex images that are formed in this inner cosmos, where what we receive from outside reflects back and then becomes conscious to us. But what I have just described takes place behind the level of memory. Nothing needs to take place behind an ordinary mirror; but behind the mirror that reflects our abstract ideas back to our consciousness through our brain, an entire world existence is reflected in miniature in every single person. And these living thoughts that we develop are for the third hierarchy, for the hierarchy of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, the same as our abstractly reflecting thoughts are for us. Behind our consciousness, through our humanity, the third hierarchy unfolds its activity. There the essences of the archai, archangeloi and angeloi develop what must and can only be accomplished by placing the human being in the cosmos and on the earth. In the formation of his brain, he not only develops a mirror that reflects his ordinary earthly consciousness, the abstract ideas, but within the head something takes place that the hierarchy of the angels, archangels, and archai has to carry out on earth and through earthly existence. This is an event that is just as much connected with earthly existence as another event.

You can characterize earthly existence in such a way that you say: through the minerals this and that happens; through the plants it happens that they bloom, bear fruit; through the animals, yet another thing happens. Through man, the angeloi, archangeloi and archai pour their activity into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth. But this happens indirectly through the subconscious activity of the human head organization.

Our earthly existence is not exhausted by the blossoming of plants and the running around of animals, but continues into a spiritual existence. Beyond plants, beyond animals, beyond man, there is an activity of the angelic world, the spiritual world, the third hierarchy, and this activity is possible through the human mind.

I was able to point out to you yesterday that there is something astral about a plant (see drawing) when it grows out of the earth (green and pink). So we also have an astral form above it, a higher spiritual form (yellow) than is represented in the plant blossom itself. Thus the activity of the human head continues into the spiritual, and if we seek where it continues to, we find the activity of the beings of the third hierarchy in connection with earthly existence.

This activity also has a very deep significance in cosmic evolution. In the background of one's own human existence on earth, in the background of what man must do without knowing it in his organic activity, the beings of the third hierarchy are his helpers. Man dies in his earthly existence. We have considered dying and sought to understand it. But what dying is for man, that is for the entities of the third hierarchy, submerging in human nature. If they only had this, this submerging in human nature, their consciousness would fade away; they would lose their entity. They must nourish their entity again and again, as it were. The entity of these creatures of the third hierarchy must be nourished from the substance of the world.

Now, as I said before, what is woven behind human consciousness are primarily etheric forms. Even during our earthly existence, there is not such a sharp boundary between the inner human ether and the outer cosmic ether that what is produced by human thoughts, by this human work of the brain behind the conscious thoughts, does not vibrate out into the cosmic ether. Man is actually surrounded around his head by the vibrations that are generated in the cosmic ether through his head activity, which is accomplished in union with the beings of the third hierarchy. And when man passes through the gate of death, then it is as I said yesterday: that the head activity drops away first, also in relation to the etheric. But in reality this means that whatever takes place in the head, even as subconscious matter, first disperses rapidly in the cosmic ether. Everything that is brought about by man in this way takes shape in the World Ether, and the beings of the third hierarchy feed on these shapes. Thus the beings of the third hierarchy, on the one hand, help man in relation to his head organization, and on the other hand, they themselves develop through what is accomplished within this head organization.

The fact that man is interwoven with the evolution of the earth during his earthly existence means that these entities of the third hierarchy also come into contact with earthly existence through him. Otherwise these entities of the third hierarchy would belong to a world from which they could not come into contact with earthly existence at all. But they must draw their spiritual nourishment from earthly existence in the way described. Thus man is included in a cosmic activity mediated by these entities of the third hierarchy. This cosmic activity passes, as it were, through his being. Of the higher entities standing directly above man, these beings of the third hierarchy are the least powerful. They could not transform what vibrates out into the world from man and should become his spiritual nourishment, if it were quite foreign to their nature. That is why it is also the case that what arises through the human head organization as a human effect is mixed as little as possible with what the human being is through his other being. Our thoughts remain logical even when a person accumulates much evil in terms of morality through his life. Thoughts remain cool towards the other human being. They remain cool to such an extent that they can become the aforementioned nourishment for higher beings.

If everything that a person has in his emotions were also to pass over into these living thoughts, which take place behind consciousness, then the angels, archangels and so on would not be able to absorb that either. It would be useless nourishment for them. It does, however, play into our ordinary reflected thoughts, whether we are moral or immoral beings. But if I now express the matter in localized terms, which can only be in the form of a suggestion: what takes place there in the back of our heads, behind ordinary consciousness, that is something that remains, so to speak, innocent, untouched by human moral aberrations. These human moral aberrations only exert an influence on the cosmic ether and on the cosmic astrality to the extent that the soul of the human being is bound to the chest, respiratory and blood circulation systems. In a sense, the head is a pure image of the cosmos. And what happens during life on earth as an image of universal cosmic activity behind the ordinary consciousness, where worlds are continually being formed and destroyed, what goes on there, is present in a certain purity in relation to the rest of human nature. But it is nevertheless the case that if one could, as it were, turn one's eyes around and they would become spiritually seeing, and these eyes, turned around in their cave and having become spiritually clairvoyant, could look back into the interior of the human cranial cavity, they would see stars shining continuously, stars that are in motion in relation to each other, a world of fixed stars. A whole little cosmos would become visible.

The human chest is organized differently from the human head. The place where breathing and blood circulation take place as a rhythmic human being is also influenced by the cosmos, but earthly conditions have a much greater influence there. They change much more what comes in from the cosmos as a replica. When our lungs are active, we could see what is going on inside the lungs as a star, as a planet, as a solar and lunar world, if we could, as it were, turn around and see what is only lined with earthly matter in its etheric-astral existence. But earthly conditions continually interfere with this inner existence. Here the earth itself has a much greater influence. You must bear in mind that only something as fine as what the eyes make of the world of colour, what is made out of the world of sound by the body, plays a direct, immediate role in the organization of the head for the formations that I have just described. This blends in with cosmic activity. And only that which is brought about by the rest of the organism through the breath, through the blood that also functions in the brain, is pushed in. This is precisely the material that fills it. It pushes itself in. But the configuration, the sculpture, this inner sculpture that takes place there, is thoroughly an afterimage of the cosmic. The earth has little influence there.

The chest organism is in a completely different situation. The chest organism takes in the air we breathe and processes it. This is something that is in the immediate vicinity of the earth, that does not enter the human organism in such a fine way as what the eyes make of colors. The air we breathe is coarser than the colored light that enters our organism. Therefore, the coarser inhaled air has a much stronger, more transformative influence on everything that is present in the chest organism as a reproduction of cosmic processes. And just wait until we look at the blood circulation! All human foodstuffs play a role in the blood circulation. They are first absorbed as food, changed by the digestive and nutritional activity, and sent into the circulating blood.

When the blood reaches the head, it is in an extremely refined state, one that the ancient intuitive art of clairvoyance correctly called a phosphoric state. It is an extraordinarily refined state. Here the reproduction of cosmic activity has power over matter, so that matter cannot unfold its own forces. If any salt that enters the brain wants to unfold its own forces, it is drowned out, overgrown by the directions and activities that the reproduction of the cosmos exerts in the even thicker blood circulation that takes place in the chest organs. In the chest organs, what comes from within the person has a much greater influence. There, what replicates the cosmos is changed in a much stronger way. And that is why, when you look at the human chest organization with a spiritual eye, it presents itself as I can roughly characterize it in the following way (see drawing).

You can see how an image of the cosmos really does light up during inhalation. In the brain you can actually see an entire cosmos at play. This is only interrupted for the brain during sleep. Here, sleep does not interrupt anything, but the matter itself is constantly interrupting itself. Seen with spiritual eyes: the chest organization shows stars, and also shows star movements, but backwards in distortion and becoming quite indistinct towards the front. In a certain respect, man is also an after-image of the cosmos in terms of his chest organization, insofar as there are processes on our earth that depend entirely on the regular course of the year and the months. The plants come out and then pass away again. There is regularity. In the plant forms, those spiral paths that I have described unfold. There is a mineral tendency, which is admittedly spread over long periods of time, but which also occurs in a certain way in cosmic regularity. Certain changes take place in the air currents above the earth, which we can observe, for example, in the metamorphoses of the change in weather that occurs over the course of the year. But everything that is irregular in cloud formation, everything that is actually changing weather, falls into this. The whims of meteorology fall into this. The whims of meteorology fall into the cosmic.

Thus, in the human chest, with respect to what is connected to the back, there is a distorted cosmos, a cosmos that gives the impression as if we took our cosmos, which surrounds us, once at night , one giant tugging on one side, another giant tugging on the other, so that instead of a rounded cosmos we would get an elongated cylinder, somewhat thicker in the middle. Thus, in the mind's eye, the Cosmos appears to be receding, and towards the front it appears to be in confusion. Just as what is happening above the earth's surface is changeable, so the Cosmos appears to be in confusion towards the front. The whole thing is such that the Cosmos sometimes shines, sometimes disappears: it shines with inhalation and disappears with exhalation. Just as a person causes physical processes in himself through breathing, inhaling causes the distorted cosmos to shine, while exhaling causes it to darken.

The Indian yogi sought to relive this shining and darkening of the distorted cosmos through his yoga exercises. And from this he then tried to deduce the real form of the world by what he perceived in this way, by breathing in a lively manner until he had a perception of this inner distorted cosmos, and then by reflecting on it, he was able to explore it. Thus, as chest people, we also experience the cosmos a second time, but in a sense as if in a struggle against chaos. And we experience the cosmos a third time, and in such a way that it actually appears quite indistinct. This is because it is integrated into the human metabolic and limbic systems. It is hardly recognizable to what extent what is astral and, according to the I-being, integrated has emerged from the cosmos. That is why, during the lectures I have given here, I had to call what is incorporated “embryonic,” because it is actually an evolving cosmos. It is only when the human being moves his limbs or when the metabolism is active that what appears to be an evolving cosmos behaves very similarly to that in which it is immersed. When I lift a leg, the spiritual essence of this third human limb, as it were, strikes into the leg movement and into the inner processes that arise in connection with the leg movement.

Schematically, I have to draw this third thing (see drawing) in such a way that there is no longer any sign of a cosmos like this, as it is clearly present in the human head organization, as it is present in the distortion, weakened in relation to the spiritual light, clouded, both in the arm organization and in the leg organization and in the nutrition organization (red). In fact, everything is still in a state of cosmic nebula. We can study cosmic nebulae out in the far reaches of space. But with spiritual vision we can also study the world nebulae on a small, microcosmic scale when we look at the third part of the human being, the limb-metabolic system, and when we see how this nebulous structure (bluish) is embedded in the stars (yellow), as if they wanted to emerge as a halo of light, but then immediately fade away at the moment of emergence. We can see how this is completely overwhelmed by what emanates from the earth. The chemical affinities, the chemical forces of the earth's substances play a major role in this.

During a person's life on earth, it is much more important how the individual earth substances relate to each other in their chemical forces than how what a person has brought with them from the cosmos relates. Nevertheless, the human being is also related to spiritual worlds through this part of his organization. He is related to spiritual worlds through his chest organization in that a spiritual hierarchy plays into his chest organization just as it does into his head organization. In the case of the head it is the third hierarchy; in the case of the chest organization it is the second hierarchy: the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes. These develop through the earthly human being a cosmic activity in which they make use of what is taking place in the human chest organization. And their activity is such that it is much more spiritual than the activity of the third hierarchy; this third hierarchy can therefore bear what arises in the material image. Therefore, in the human head formation, one really has a material image of the cosmos. Here in the chest organization, there is a distortion for the very reason that the material does not become a faithful replica of the cosmos, so that it can be destroyed again and again, and also dissolved. The cosmic formation is not completed. So there is the earthly, which plays a strong role, and the cosmic, which is not finished in man, remains cosmic, so that a cosmic activity permeates man, insofar as he breathes, insofar as he has a circulation, in which the entities of the second hierarchy work, weaving and floating. And into this, man inserts that living photograph of which I spoke yesterday and in previous lectures, which is an image of his moral and spiritual qualities.

Thus, because man has lungs and the processes of the lungs continue as the breathing processes, because he has a circulation and what is affected by the circulation vibrates into the world ether and even into the world astral, he is enmeshed in the activity of the second hierarchy. His being itself creates cosmic effects, and the beings of the second hierarchy are integrated into what is accomplished cosmically through him. But into this, the further his earthly life progresses, man pushes more and more, the living image of his moral-spiritual qualities, this elemental being, of which I have told you that it is produced by man during his earthly life. Incidentally, every night this elemental being moves out of the person a little, and one can see the activity carried out by the second hierarchy in it. When you are awake, it moves back into the person, and the waking activity further intersperses it with the moral and spiritual evaluations of the person's quality.

The first hierarchy is now connected with the activity that takes place in the metabolic-limb man. The connection is primarily with seraphim, cherubim and thrones. Here man is most physical, most devoted to physical forces. The cosmic plays into him only as a mist. But into this, which is present in him as a faint cosmic activity, which is permeated by a strong, intense material activity in chemistry, in physical action, the activity of the seraphim, cherubim and thrones flames and undulates and pushes into it. For these, through their spirituality, master the strongest material substance, and it will be the entities of this Hierarchy that will one day transform the earthly processes of chemistry, of the physical itself, from the earth form into the form of Jupiter, as I have described in my “Occult Science in Outline”. But into this activity, which actually takes place in the cosmic, is inscribed during earthly life that which has been touched by the will part of the soul, as I have explained in the other lectures, and in which cosmic processes are involved in loose compositions with the actually earthly and the chemical and physical processes that overwhelm the cosmic.

In the limb metabolism system (see drawing), I would say that the earth is in its full possession of the human being. During the earthly course of life, the earthly predominates over the cosmic in this part. In the chest organization, the cosmic balances the earthly. In the head organization, the cosmic predominates. But the head organization can only be connected to the lowest kind of beings of the higher hierarchies. Where the earth predominates, the strongest spiritual beings work in man, because he is more torn from the earth of his being: seraphim, cherubim and thrones.

And when man passes through the 'gate of death', when the physical organism falls away, that which is only a nebulous spiritual being is taken up into the activity of the seraphim, cherubim, thrones and gradually woven into them. But that which was previously formed in the chest organism as the living image of the moral and spiritual man sinks down into this activity. That which was only, I might say, in the current of the middle hierarchy, now enters into the current of the first hierarchy. Thus it acquires greater intensity in the context of the Cosmos, so that man develops his karma as a living elemental being in its middle link. This is then taken over by the current of the first hierarchy. And while man lives through the time between death and a new birth, while he, as I have described to you, frees himself from his karmic image, ascends to the world where he can actually work together with higher beings on the spiritual archetype of the physical organism, while man experiences all this, which he then finds again in this image when he descends, something else is also taking place. While the human being enters the spirit world from the soul world and dwells there, that living image of his self-made destiny is in the meantime being led back by the beings of the highest hierarchy, the seraphim, cherubim and thrones, to the second hierarchy and finally handed over to the third hierarchy, the angels, archangels and archai. On descending again, the human being takes up this image, which he left with the first hierarchy, from the third hierarchy. When he now enters life again, it is incorporated into what takes place between the third hierarchy, the angeloi, archangeloi and archai, and his head organization. Everything that man has produced through his most earthly being and handed over to the cosmos after death, everything that man has developed within himself through having a substance organization dominated by the earth, everything that he must hand over after death to the seraphim , cherubim and thrones, and what he lets flow into the cosmos in this way, he actually receives again in the way in which the angels, archangels and archai work through his head organization in a new life on earth. Man hands over to the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones that which he has prepared for himself as his destiny, and receives it again from the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. These carry it over into the activity that he will carry out in a new life on earth. In this way, what he handed over to the first hierarchy when he left his last life on earth is taken up into his new earthly destiny from the hand of the third hierarchy.

So you see that you can only understand the universe as a whole if you place the connection that our senses can survey and our minds can think into the context that arises from real vision. For there not only growing plants appear, not only water in cloud formations, in currents, there not only physical stars appear, there the whole cosmos appears in its living activity, spiritualized by a series of hierarchies, which also exercise a physical activity, an activity that permeates and surges through this physical activity. And events of a kind take place that, while man experiences existence between death and a new birth, his human destiny passes from the hand of the seraphim, cherubim and thrones to that of the angeloi, archangeloi and archai. In this way, each person receives what he or she is destined to experience in a new life. What a person has left to the highest hierarchy, he or she receives back from the hand of the third hierarchy, and together with the third hierarchy, he or she must bring it back into the world balance through balancing deeds during his or her earthly existence.

Yesterday I tried to take a kind of century-long view by describing to you how, especially in the western European regions, people entered into social bonds that were connected with the class on the one hand and with professional life on the other, and we saw how these connections, these socializations, were based on the spiritual. Yes, we even had to penetrate to the astral and to the ego-being of man, so that we could study the two opposing professional associations, the “Dévorants” and the “Gavots”. And the peculiarity of these associations, which, as I said, belong more to the western regions of Europe and in which more recent civilization has developed mainly in the west, the essence of these associations is that man, with all his soul, feels at home in such a community and that the various identifying marks, the symbols of which I have spoken to you, the legends, have some connection with working life, even though they have a thoroughly spiritual background.

Just as I described this life for Western European countries a century ago, it would be impossible to describe the life of Central European regions, for example. Therefore, it must be understandable that when George Sand wanted to write a novel in which she addressed certain social problems, she chose this socialization as a backdrop. It can certainly be said that Goethe also strove for something similar with his “Wilhelm Meister”. He wanted to describe how the human being is connected with humanity and with the spiritual and professional life of humanity, how the individual human being develops out of humanity. Goethe attempted this in his “Wilhelm Meister”. There is no doubt that if it had been a reality for him, he would also have chosen such craftsmen's associations as George Sand. He did not do it because it was simply not possible in the circles to which Goethe belonged by virtue of his education.

That is the peculiar thing: in Central Europe, ever since the advent of what I have often referred to as intellectualism, that is, since the 15th century, human problems have been understood quite differently than in the West. Yesterday I had to describe to you how the individual craftsman makes his way through France, how he gets himself admitted to such a, one could almost say secret, society in some city, how he gets his identifying marks there, how he, when he now begins his journeyman's travels, finds a similar branch of his association in some other city: he makes himself known, he is admitted within this branch of his association. As already mentioned, this was still the case in 1823. And these associations then had a profound influence on the life of the corresponding class.

One could not describe this for Central Europe. For Central Europe, one would have to say that, since the beginning of this newer time, that is, since the 15th century, there has always been an aspiration in people to cultivate individuality, the human self. There was not such an intense connection between the individual human being and his occupation or social class as in the West. Therefore it was the case that people took their occupation, one might say, sine ira, in a more external way. They did not grow together with their occupation in this way, they did not connect their spiritual life with their occupation.

The terms and symbols were taken from the main occupations in the West. This was not the case in Central Europe. It was rather the case that the spiritual life was more separate from the occupation, and also more separate from the class. Of course, one was also part of a class of people, but when one turned to the spiritual life, this spiritual life was more set apart, both from the occupation and from the class of people. Therefore, if one wanted to devote oneself to spirituality, one lived more in such a way that one completely freed oneself in one's thoughts from one's occupational life. And therefore, in Central Europe, those branches of spirituality were particularly cultivated which had nothing to do with professional life, nothing with class life.

Man's relationship to the world was understood without regard to nation, without regard to any national context. Man as such stood in the foreground. And then, if the individual, let us say, the craftsman, wanted to devote himself to a spiritual life, he did so as an individual human being. He thought more about the tasks of life as an individual human being. At the beginning of the 19th century, he had little more of such a spiritual life from some social connections than I described yesterday. Therefore, the spiritual stimuli in Central Europe developed in a completely different way,

The individual craftsman who had a particular urge, who, to use the southern German expression, became a Sinnierer – the wonderful word Sinnierer is present – who therefore thought a lot, he became acquainted with the remnants of of the old alchemy remained in the way of knowledge, which therefore has nothing to do with any class, with any nationality or with any profession; he familiarized himself with what remained of the old astrology. And what he absorbed in this way, he carried with him like a treasure that was important and valuable to his fellow human beings. He wandered from place to place a lot. There were always only a few people, and they had no identifying marks, they had come just as a human being. At first they had strange names for such a person. These names arose in the time when it was all topsy-turvy with the views of ancient and newer times; and those who stood out from the people were not immediately accepted. Such thinkers were considered eccentrics. They were called “spur knights” when they appeared like that. And such a man first had to gain his reputation by having something to say to the people and by coming together with them. Since no permanent connections had been formed, he had to gain his reputation only when the opportunity arose, with the people with whom he came together and who wanted to know something from him. And by asserting what he had devised, he gained a certain influence. And long before one of them came, there was already talk in an unspecific way that one should come.

At first it seemed strange to people, but later, when he left the place, they thought long and hard about what such a thinker had said, such an especially clever one, who had so much knowledge in his head that you couldn't even begin to grasp that a human head could be so big that it could contain everything he had in his head.

So the whole way in which the spiritual life was handled in the human dimension was different. And that is why it had to come about that in western countries education remained much more popular, much more broad-based, because it was related to professional and class life. In Central Europe, on the other hand, there was a gradual emergence of this abyss between the educated and the masses, who could no longer keep up. Now, this is often connected with the deep tragedy of Central European life, this abyss between those who, under the demands of modern times, summarized what remained of ancient wisdom - be it alchemical or astrological - and from this point of view looked deeper into human life, and those who only stopped at the subordinate concepts of religious life.

These were the conditions Goethe faced. So that Goethe could not have described in his “Wilhelm Meister” as, for example, George Sand did in the novel “Le compagnon du tour de France”. Goethe described the individual human being, the individual human individuality, their relationship to the upper worlds, their relationship to the lower worlds. In France, we encountered, as it were, the effectiveness of the astral in the Dévorants, the effectiveness of the ego in the Gavots, which came through in the furnishings. Within Central Europe, there was a search for how man is connected to heaven on the one hand and to the earth on the other.

In a beautiful way, Goethe has – but, I would say, very much in the educational sublimation, carried into the strongly abstract – that which, basically, within Central Europe, in terms of human and human wisdom that has been lived in Central Europe since the 15th century, brought into the two figures that appear in his “Wilhelm Meister”: on the one hand, Makarie and, on the other, the metal-sensing woman.

Then this remarkable figure appears in Goethe's “Wilhelm Meister”, Makarie, a mature female personality who, due to her sickly, pathological nature, has little more in common with earthly life, who, so to speak, has completely detached herself from earthly life, who rarely moves within the earthly confines, and is revered by all those around her, by all family members in the narrower and broader sense, and who, by becoming independent of the earthly, develops a remarkable cosmic life. And this cosmic life, which Goethe describes as if Makarie lived with the peculiarities of the stars, not with the peculiarities of the earth, leads to the fact that, so to speak, all physical world observation disappears from the spirit, from the soul of Makarie, and she is completely devoted to the cosmic laws. But the more she surrenders to cosmic laws, the more the earthly laws of nature cease to have any meaning for her, and the more the laws of nature are transformed into cosmic moral laws. She becomes a moral authority for all who meet her. And she does not represent a morality based on commandments, not just any morality borrowed from this or that source, but a morality that appears to a person when he is free from the earthly, but still has it, as if it were revealed by the stars themselves in their course. And what Makarie proclaims for her surroundings in this way, through her star-gazing, is interpreted by her friend, the astronomer, who now becomes the seer's student in the cosmic realms.

Goethe only portrayed in a subtly sublimated way in a higher social class what you have to vividly imagine was still happening everywhere in the first third of the 19th century. For example, you have to imagine that during this time there were still families, albeit scattered, who had family members, female family members, who simply were no longer able to move around on earth after a certain age , who became bedridden, whose skin turned white and transparent, showing interesting blue veins running to the surface of their bodies through the white, transparent skin, who rarely spoke. But when they spoke, everyone in the vicinity listened carefully to what was said, because then these female personalities proved to be the kind of seers that Goethe only typified in his Makarie. And after all, in the first third of the 19th century, you can find circles of legends everywhere in Central Europe. They tell the story: such a seeress lies in such and such a place; she has spoken this or that from her prophetic gift. — And such things were carried far and wide. And they were carried with the poetry that was possible in the social order of humanity when there were no newspapers, for the newspapers have contributed enormously to the destruction of spiritual life.

So Goethe has such a figure appear in his Makarie. And now, at a certain point in the “Wanderjahre”, this Makarie is opposed by the metal-feeler. Her friend is Montanus. The metal-feeler also feels what is going on inside the earth, that is, I would say, the very spiritual of earthly nature. She can speak of the secrets of the metals of the earth, she can speak of how the individual metals affect people. And Montanus interprets what happens with the metal feeler in the same way that the astronomer interprets what is revealed through Makarie.

Thus Goethe juxtaposes the cosmic seer with this metal-sensing woman, who reveals the secrets of the earth through her special organization - again, a somewhat pathological organization. Goethe shows that he does not seek what makes man capable, what enables man to carry out his deeds on earth, either from those who live on one side of the cosmos or from those who live on the other side, inside the earth. He seeks that which makes man capable of earthly life, where man is unaware of either ability in his state of consciousness, where they unconsciously take effect, but where, as in the balance beam, there is a balance between the two.

Goethe does not know what is at the root of this. But he senses, from his own adherence to an old education, how these two extremes of life and of spirit interact and actually make a human being a true human being, not when one or the other is in effect, but when both disappear with their own character, but work together and bring about a balance in human nature.

Today, when we can speak from the point of view of anthroposophy, we can say: first of all, we have the upper human being, the nerve-sense human being; then we have the middle human being, the rhythmic human being; and finally we have the lower human being, the metabolic-limb human being. If the upper human being predominates in a person, and if this does not balance out with the lower human being, then, as a result of a morbid development, as in the case of Makarie, the entire metabolic-limb human being has fallen into a kind of torpor, a torpor that which does not yet take life, but which makes man incapable of moving in the earthly space, then the event in the head predominates in such a personality, then man becomes a cosmic seer. If, as in the case of the metal-sensitive person, the nerve-sense organization recedes and the metabolic-limb system develops particularly significantly, then the person lives primarily with the earthly, with the forces and effects of the metals of the earth, the minerals of the earth. And in the middle of the human being is the balance.

This is how Goethe actually wanted to imply at this point in his social novel “Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years” how the human was sought in Central Europe, how the human being was structured on the one hand according to the cosmos, on the other hand according to the earthly, and how the right humanity consists in the balance between the two.

Much thought was given to this balance between astrology at the top and alchemy at the bottom. And when individual figures such as Paracelsus or Faust emerged, wandering from place to place, surprising people with what they knew of these secrets through their contemplations, people pricked up their ears to hear what man could know about man. But when individual significant personalities emerged, they were not the only ones. There were little Paracelsuses, little Fausts everywhere, who just did not travel so far, who had a smaller territory. And what is being explored again today in the secrets of dowsing was something that was quite common in those days. It happened not only once that something like the following occurred.

There came such a thinker to some place and impressed the people there with what he had to say about the upper and lower worlds. And when he had impressed the people mightily, when they began to believe unconditionally in his authority, then they said at last: But Master, now you must still do something for us. You know, we need a well, and you have to tell us where the well should be built. So the man who had come as a contemplator to the villages went around with the people in the area, and in some places he stopped, went on again, stopped again, but then he finally stopped in a place where he said: “There it is! There we have it!” – That's where the well was built.

These things are not recorded in history, and they extend into the first third of the 19th century, when they became increasingly rare and scarce. But these things are real. And that is something that has been particularly cultivated in the lower classes of the people, which, so to speak, constituted the spiritual life here. The spiritual life was definitely in these things because one had the innermost urge to grasp the human as such, I would say, not only symbolically but even cosmically. One asked here less: How does man, through his class, through his occupation, relate to the outside world? That was asserted even in the times of the guild system, when people wanted to appear in public with their insignia, when they wanted to make processions and the like, but that didn't really have the same deep spiritual significance as in the West. By contrast, here, this life, stripped of the external, had its great spiritual significance.

I would like to say: In the West, the aim was to understand humanity in terms of the external forces of living together. In Central Europe, it was the human being within his skin who also wanted to experience what he experienced socially as a human being. That is what drove Central European intellectual life to a certain height, so that it could not become popular as it did in the West. And this is also what at the same time brought about the deep spiritual tragedy of Central Europe. And we are already living in a time when these things should become conscious in the broadest circles, when people in the broadest circles should wake up to these things. For it is only to be hoped that our civilization, which has become chaotic, can in turn receive new impulses, that new life forces can be supplied to it, if one can grasp the real connection with historical life in this way.

In Central Europe, people were already descending to the earth. This is particularly evident in Goethe, who wanted to strike a balance between the upper and lower human beings, juxtaposing the two extremes, the metal-sensing and the cosmic-seeing. On the one hand, people wanted to see man as a doer on the earth; but on the other hand, they wanted to look up into the region of the cosmic, and they wanted to look down into the region of the earthly, the telluric, in order to recognize man as an earthling. These are the differentiations that modern civilization has brought up from its foundations.

That is why something like Schiller's 'Aesthetic Letters', which I have mentioned several times, could only be written in Central Europe. In these letters, man is seen purely as a human being, detached from nationality, and is to be understood only as a human being. And basically it was self-evident that part of the problem - even if neither Goethe nor the period that followed provided the solutions for it - was how to get people to understand this universal humanity in the modern way.

That is why a large part of Goethe's “Wilhelm Meister” novel is the so-called pedagogical province. The education of the human being becomes a problem: a problem for which the time had not yet come at that time, for which the time has only come today, when one can search for anthroposophical knowledge of man.

In the West, I would say, people had already gone beyond the human skin. They groped their way: How do you connect with another person? How do you reveal yourself to another person? How do you take his hand? How do you speak so that he recognizes you? The signs, gestures and words that later appeared in a somewhat luxurious way in the Masonic societies were something that was practiced in the West as something vitally active until the end of the first third of the 19th century. In Central Europe, people did not have as much of an appreciation for such special symbolism, but they did have a great sense of wanting to get behind the mystery of the human being in general.

It is interesting to compare this with Eastern Europe. There, not only until the end of the first third of the 19th century, but until a much later time, people came from their inner being, I would say, not to their skin. In a certain sense, he remained in a state of soul that did not completely lift him out of the divine, did not advance him to the point of becoming human. Therefore, I would like to say: While in the West the attitude has arisen that the world is the world - at most one has to think about social utopias - the world is the world, one has to live in it, one has to have social institutions in order to live in it, or one has to regard those who are already there as if they were quite wonderful to live in – while it was the case in the West, it was the case in Central Europe that one actually demanded: Man must first become human, he must first work his way to humanity, then he will find the earth. – In the East, one was convinced: Both ideals are actually wrong. The moment man thinks of working his way up to becoming a human being, he is on the wrong track, because in so doing he actually leaves Paradise. And man should always be able to see the piece of earth on which he lives as a paradise, otherwise life becomes impossible. One must go back more to what is unconsciously within man, and not go out too strongly into life.

For this reason, although there has always been a certain tolerance in Eastern Europe towards the West and towards Central Europe, out of a certain good nature and also out of philanthropy, there are nevertheless regions where either the outer humanity of the West or the individual human individuality of Central Europe has been reckoned with, and these regions have been regarded, so to speak, as a departure from the divine human being. And when, for example, the tendency arose in the East to acquire Western views, we see that because man does not want to come out of himself, we see, as is the case with the best, a tolerance, a toleration, but no inner engagement with the rest of the world. The Russian, if he is a real Russian, does not go as far as his skin; he remains deeper within himself. It is already far too earthly to go as far as his skin; one must remain more within.

You see, that was a mood of the soul that still occurred to a great extent in Dostoyevsky. And so it is interesting, after all, to hear what Dostoyevsky, one of those who are above all representative of Eastern European life, says to people in the West.

In the latest issue of the journal “Wissen und Leben” (Knowledge and Life), which has now been published, where letters that Dostoyevsky wrote to Apollon Maikov in 1868 are printed, you can read it. But such letters could have been written if traveling had already become so common in the first third of the 19th century.

I may have to apologize to some of the people sitting here for my reading out some parts of Dostoyevsky's letter, but it is Dostoyevsky who says it, not me, and I am of course far from wanting to say anything other than letting Dostoyevsky speak. Dostoyevsky therefore feels stranded in Geneva; and the Westerners of Geneva and those who live nearby will have to excuse me if I read just a few passages from a letter from Dostoyevsky from 1868 as a way of characterizing them.

"In Geneva, we suffered most from material discomfort and cold. If only you knew how stupid, dull, insignificant and wild this people is! It is not enough to visit the country as a tourist. No, try living here for a change! But I cannot even give you a brief account of my impressions now; there are far too many of them. Bourgeois life in this republic has reached a dead end. In the government and throughout Switzerland, there is nothing but parties, incessant disputes, pauperism, and a frightening mediocrity in everything. The local worker is not worth the little finger of ours: it is laughable to look at and listen to him. The morals are wild; oh, if you only knew what is considered good and bad here. Low education: what drunkenness, what thievery, what petty swindling that has become the law in trade. There are, however, some good traits that place them immeasurably above the Germans.

Now I must apologize again on the other side!

“In Germany I was most amazed at the stupidity of the people; they are extremely stupid, they are incommensurably stupid. Even Nikolai Nikolaevich Strachov, a man of great intellect, does not want to see the truth in our country: he said, ‘The Germans are clever, they invented gunpowder.’ But that is how their lives turned out!”

So he doesn't count the fact that they invented gunpowder as something that would reduce their incommensurable stupidity. Now:

”... In Switzerland there are still enough forests, and there are incomparably more of them in the mountains than in the other countries of Europe, although they are decreasing terribly from year to year. Now imagine: for five months of the year there is terrible cold here, and on top of that the Bisen. And for three months here it is almost the same winter as with us. Everyone shivers from the cold, never taking off their flannel and cotton (and they don't have any steam baths, so you can imagine the dirt they are used to). They don't have winter clothes, they walk around in almost the same clothes as in summer (but flannel alone is not enough for such a winter), and they lack the sense to improve their homes even a little! What good is a fireplace that burns coal or wood, even if they keep it burning all day long? But keeping it burning all day costs 2 francs a day. So much forest is needlessly destroyed, but they get no warmth from it. What do you think? If only they had double windows, then you could live with the fireplaces! I'm not saying that they should install stoves. Then they could save the entire forest. In 25 years there will be no forest left. They really live like savages! They can take some of it. In my room, with the terrible heating, it is only +5 degrees R&aumur (5 degrees heat). I sat in my coat in this cold, waiting for money, moving things around and thinking about a plan for a novel - is that nice? They say that in Florence this year there were temperatures as low as -10 degrees. In Montpellier, there was a cold snap of 15 degrees Reaumur. Here in Geneva, the temperature didn't drop below -8 degrees, but it doesn't matter if the water in the rooms freezes. Recently I changed apartments and now I have nice rooms; one is always cold, but the other is warm, and in this warm room I always have +10 or +11 degrees of heat, so you can still live.” And so on and so on.

So you see: the Central and Western Europeans do not exactly come off very well in this description by one of the most outstanding Russians. And that must be attributed to the fact that a going out even to the skin of the human being is not present there. There is still the closedness in itself, and therefore the non-adaptation to the environment, but rather, I would say, the demand that everything be as one is oneself.

As I said, from a certain contemporary historical point of view, it is quite interesting to take a look at this recently published passage from the letters. That is why I have chosen this one and not, for example, one from the first third of the 19th century for this century-long consideration. Because in Russia things only emerged with such clarity later on; but they have always been there, woven into the fabric of life. And one also characterizes the time of a century ago when one considers these statements about a time that has already changed somewhat. Yes, even things that one can probably be quite astonished about in the West can be found there. If you take Western or Central European descriptions, then the following letter, which is from the same time - March 1, 1868, will be interesting to you. You will see from it that you can look at the things of the world from different points of view.

“I have formed the following opinion about our courts (based on everything I have read): the moral character of our judges” - namely the judges in Russia - “and, above all, of our jury is infinitely higher than in Europe; they regard criminals as Christians. Even the Russian traitors living abroad admit it. But one thing does not yet seem to be established: I believe that in this humane relationship to the criminals, there is still much that has been created by books, much that is liberal and not independent. This sometimes happens. Besides, I can be terribly wrong from a distance. But our basic nature is infinitely higher in this respect than that of Europe.” And so on.

So you see, the view of the courts here is also given from a different point of view than you often hear it given in Western Europe.

I would like two things to emerge from yesterday's and today's reflections: Firstly, that it is absurd to believe that today's standards can somehow be applied to living conditions even a century ago, but that one must actually look lovingly at past conditions if one wants to come to a valid judgment that takes reality into account. But even with those people who live at the same time, it is important to acquire a certain broad-mindedness of judgment. That is what we have to find today. We have to find a way to refrain from these national points of view in order to actually find a point of view of a citizen of the world.

But then it is the case that this can only come from a deeper knowledge of the human being. This deeper knowledge of the human being is something that the world could not penetrate as long as the world did not seek anthroposophy. And one might say: If you look at what was available in Europe a century ago, you can see that there was a yearning for knowledge of the human being. But with what was known about nature at the time, it was not yet possible to arrive at a knowledge of the human being in the modern sense. Then, in the second half of the nineteenth century, natural science flooded everything. And now we have to seek again what was longed for a hundred years ago, what the best in Europe longed for, and what was only temporarily submerged.

This alone will provide humanity with the strength that can somehow lead to an ascent of culture in the face of decline. It is dismal that so little history and so little geography in the sense mentioned yesterday is cultivated, that things have taken on such an external form. The point is to really seek the spirit in history, in history and across the earth in a geographical sense. History and geography in particular must undergo a spiritual metamorphosis. This is necessary.

This is something that the Goethean province of education did not yet have in “Wilhelm Meister”, but it is what the figures who appear there long for. And much of this yearning of that time must break into civilization today. Men must awaken to what was then the special yearning of their dreams, so that the dreams of that time may now, through the power of spiritual insight, become reality. For this reality is what men need for their civilization.

It has often been emphasized here on other occasions that what is called spiritual science or, in more recent times, theosophy, that these are by no means mere theories floating in worlds far away, that theosophy does not merely seek to satisfy curiosity about higher worlds. Theosophy should not be something far-removed from the world, something unworldly. If it wants to fulfill its task, its mission, it must draw the forces and the impulses for its work from the higher worlds, and its work towards its goal and its mission must take place under the authority of these forces. Only then can it help in the further development and salvation of humanity. It would be a rather idle knowledge of the higher worlds if one did not want to apply it in practice, to life. For no one can understand life who does not know the deeper forces on which it is based. These forces do not lie on the surface; they lie hidden in the depths. Just as iron, when first seen as a substance, does not reveal that it contains electricity, which only becomes apparent when it is rubbed, so too these forces must lie dormant in iron and must first be drawn out of it. If we wanted to work on the service of progress for humanity without knowing these hidden realities, then our work could only be superficial. Beneficial work is only possible if we explore the deeper forces and entities.

Of course, we must also recognize the goals of our work. What does man work for? For the future! But nothing lies in the lap of the future that is not already present in the present. Let us look at the plant. It does not yet bear flowers or fruit. It will only produce these in the future. But the forces for these flowers and fruits already lie dormant in the plant. It already contains in an invisible form what will happen in the future. And only because people usually remember how similar plants have borne blossoms and fruits can they say that this plant will bloom in this way and not in another way, and bear fruit in this way and not in another way. But if man could see into the interior of the plant, then he could see the forces at work in the plant that will produce those flowers and those fruits.

There is something that lies in the future and that we cannot know, whose development we cannot foresee, and that is the body of the human being. What will one day be in the physical world already rests today in humanity, just as the flower and fruit already rest in the plant. If we are not able to delve into what lies dormant in the womb of humanity today, we cannot become rulers over the forces that will unfold in the future. Those who want to work on the development of humanity are thereby working on something that has not yet existed, and those who want to grasp that must descend below the surface. The theosophical worldview must take on this task and carry it out in practice.

Nowhere is the eminently practical nature of the theosophical world view more evident than in the field of child education. In the child, we have before us, so to speak, the riddle that lies hidden in the future. And every day we have to solve this riddle anew. For the child of seven is not the same child as he was at six, and he is not the same as the child of fourteen or sixteen. Only when we are in harmony with the deep forces that work in secret, only then can we approach the numerous questions in the field of education that are so burning for humanity today. Real orientation in all these questions will only be possible when the theosophical view dominates people's minds.

Today we want to take a closer look at the mission that Theosophy has in modern culture in relation to educational issues. To do this, it is necessary that we know the whole structure of human nature. We know that, in the sense of spiritual science, man is a complex being. For those who look more deeply, the material body is only part of the human being. This physical body combines the same substances that are present in the natural world. In the human body, they are combined in a highly complex interaction. Science tells us: When we look at a machine, we see the effect of the materials of which it is composed; but when we look at a living being, we see not a mere structure of dead materials, but a body that is permeated by life, which regulates the physical forces and brings them to life.

This life was described by an earlier science as “life force”. But today's materialistic science claims that there is no “life force”, that substances develop life within themselves. In recent times, however, people have been moving away from this point of view. It is seen that one does not get very far with this theory, that one must indeed reckon with some kind of life-force to explain the living. But even in this sense of the newer natural sciences, the theosophical view does not speak when it speaks of the second link in the human being, the etheric or life body. It is not concerned with mere theorizing, it does not speculate, but its way is to develop the higher vision in man himself. Just as other beings are only present in the world for man if he has the organs to perceive these beings, just as he perceives light and color only if he has the eye for it, just as he perceives sounds only perceives sounds only if he possesses the ear for them, so for man the higher beings are only present if he has developed organs within himself to perceive them through the training that has often been mentioned here.

If there were a man who had no eyes but organs to perceive electricity, for example, if such a man could see the forces at work that ignite the light here in the room, that play back and forth outside in the telegraphic lines, how very different the world would appear to such a person! With each new sense, new worlds arise for man, and slumbering within him lie the senses that make the higher worlds perceptible to him. They can be developed. No one can justifiably assert that such worlds cannot exist. It would be the same if he were to say that there are no higher worlds because he cannot see them. It would be the same as if a blind man were to say about color that it does not exist because he cannot perceive it.

But if a person has developed through schooling, then the etheric body is an experience for him; he can then see it. In its size, it is almost the same as the physical body. One often imagines the etheric body as consisting of a finer substance, a kind of mist, but that does not correspond to reality. Rather, it consists of forces and currents of a spiritual nature that interact.

The third link, the astral body, differs from the etheric body in that, while in the latter the forces of growth, reproduction and so on are at work, it is the essence of the astral body to feel and to be conscious. The astral body is the carrier of pleasure and suffering, of desires and passions.

Beyond these three members is what makes man the crown of earthly creation: the self-aware ego, the center of the human being, the innermost power in man. So when we have a fully developed human being before us, we have a structure of four members before us.

But you can only understand how to act as an educator if you understand this structure of the human being correctly, if you know that it does not play the same role in a newly born child as in a child of seven or fourteen years, if you know that the development of these links is different at each age level of the adolescent. Only when you know all this can you solve the puzzle that the child presents to us day after day. And we learn to understand all of this best when we start from the assumption that we see how the human being lives before birth.

Before the child is born, we have enclosed the child's physical body, enclosed in the mother's body. Nothing can reach the child without passing through the mother's body. No ray of light, no external influence reaches the child directly. It rests enclosed in another body; one physical body rests in another. Birth consists of the physical mother's shell being shed. But in this moment, from a spiritual point of view, not the whole human being is born, but only the physical body. The second birth takes place gradually, not in a single moment like the physical one. It essentially takes place when the child changes teeth. At this point, something similar happens in the spiritual realm to what happens in the physical birth.

Up to the age of seven, the child is surrounded by an etheric shell, just as it was surrounded by a physical shell before the physical birth, the womb. And so one could say: up to the age of seven, the child is surrounded by an etheric mother. Just as one cannot get to the child before the physical birth other than through the mother's body, one can no more get to the child's actual etheric body before the age of seven. And just as one must care for the mother before the physical birth if one wants to care for the child, so too, in order to care for and develop the child's etheric body, one must, until the seventh year, keep away everything that could harm it and give it everything that can promote its development. In the seventh year, the etheric covering is pushed back, the etheric body of the human being is born, very similar to the physical birth of the physical body.

And later on there is a third birth, the birth of the astral body. When the human being has shed his etheric cover in the seventh year, he has not yet fully developed his astral body; to the spiritual seer's eye he is still surrounded by an outer astral cover. He is wrapped in this until he reaches sexual maturity; then it is also shed: the actual astral body of the human being is born.

The educator must know all this. He must know about the physical, etheric and astral birth of the human being, because the individual educational epochs are based on this. He must know that just as it would be nonsensical to want to reach the physical child in the mother's body, it is also nonsensical to want to reach something that concerns the etheric body through education up to the age of seven, or something that concerns the astral body until sexual maturity. The limbs of the human being are the carriers of very special soul forces. The physical body is the carrier of the physical sense organs; the etheric body is initially the carrier of the growth and reproduction forces. But that is not all, because all these different bodies are worked on from within by the human ego. This works from the inside. And so the bodies of the human being are particularly related to the soul forces. The ether body is the carrier of memory, of all lasting habits and inclinations, of temperament.

We find concepts of the intellect, images of external objects and so on in the astral body. But when the image is also a symbol, a parable, when it rises to artistic imagination, when it becomes productive in the soul, then the etheric body is the carrier. What we call judgment, criticism, intellectual activity depends on the astral body.

If we know all this, then we will be able to apply it in relation to the emergence of these limbs in the course of the child's development. If we know that the etheric body is enclosed until the seventh year, we also know that until then we must not act on what the properties of this etheric body are. Only when it is released by the second birth may we educate it. There is a saying that can spread light and should be the basic principle for the education of a child up to the age of seven. Aristotle expresses this saying when he says: 'Man is the imitator of animals'. Imitation is what characterizes the child up to the age of seven. The child must see what it is supposed to learn, it must see and hear it. There must be something in its environment that is intended to have an effect on the child. It should not be taught overnight, but rather it should be shown and exemplified what it is supposed to imitate.

Exemplarity and imitation are the two magic words for a child up to seven years of age. What kind of teachings you give them, what principles you have, is not important, only what you do in the presence of the child. That alone is important. The example is what is actually effective. What the child is to acquire must be introduced into the physical world. One should avoid, as far as possible, allowing something into the child that the child should not imitate. A thousand good teachings are of no use to a child of this age; the child should imitate what it experiences with its physical body in the physical world. A little story will show you how far this imitation can go. A child of five years, who had been well-educated until then, suddenly took money from his parents' cash box. They were extremely upset. The child stole and gave the money to another child. The parents could not understand how their child came to steal. The explanation is simple. The child saw how the parents took money from the cash box and simply imitated them.

We can see from this how far we must go to avoid anything we do not want our children to imitate when it is also allowed to adults. Anyone who observes a little sees that children copy writing – like signs, without understanding the meaning. The meaning of what is written can only be conveyed to the child when the etheric body is born; but it can imitate the writing before that. Learning to write should begin by having the child first copy the shapes of the letters. Later, one can then explain to him what he can already do.

Today, far too much emphasis is placed on the fact that meaning should be involved in everything that is taught to the child. But it is far more important to ensure that the child's entire environment is set up in such a way that the external forces surrounding the child have an awakening and life-promoting effect on its etheric body. — In doing so, we recall Goethe's words: The eye is formed by light for light. The animal that is forced to live in dark caves gradually loses its eyesight and becomes blind. Light has a creative and formative effect on the eye. The forces of nature create organs and develop them. A human being is not yet complete when he is born. Every ray of light continues to have a formative effect on the eye. And so everything in the child's environment can have the effect of awakening life or stunting it.

Here spiritual science shines through to the smallest details. For example, it is not unimportant whether the child's surroundings are red or blue. The same color is by no means suitable for a lively, perhaps even nervous, child as for one that is quiet or even apathetic. Blue is the right color for the latter, red for the former. Thus, even clothing can have a beneficial or debilitating effect on the child. In this way, it is influenced right down to the brain and heart, these instruments of the soul. It depends on the child's environment whether these organs dry up or mature into liveliness, whether they develop slowly and sluggishly or whether they are awakened to active life.

Education has to ensure that what is an indicator of inner prosperity is taken into account: pleasure and joy. These are not there for nothing; they should not be suppressed, especially not in childhood. They should not be suppressed, but ennobled. Thus, for example, the body's need for a particular kind of nourishment is indicated by the fact that one has a desire for it. In this way the body indicates that it needs it in order to thrive. Everything that gives pleasure, that arouses interest, has the effect of creating organs. The organs are brought to life by this, and regulated.

But if a child becomes bored, then you kill something, you have a weakening effect on your organs; and that is very bad. Because what has not been developed by the age of seven is lost forever. The whole direction, the growth tendency is indeed given by then. One might try – or rather, one had better not try – to test the truth of these assertions of spiritual science by, for instance, giving one child a lot of eggs to eat and another very few. The latter child will show remarkably healthy instincts for what his body needs as nourishment; the former, on the other hand, will not. This is because an excessive amount of egg white extinguishes healthy nourishment instincts.

So it is in the seventh year that the child's etheric body is born. The body that is the carrier of habits, temperament, memory, is freed. All these qualities must be cultivated in the period up to sexual maturity. This is the epoch in which one approaches the child with the subject matter of learning. For this time, not only what is present in the physical world applies. Imitation is the magic word up to the age of seven; there is now also a guiding principle for the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity: imitation and authority. Just as the child imitated before, so now, to use a saying of Goethe's, it must choose its hero and follow him on his path up to Mount Olympus. If you expound the most beautiful moral principles or pass harsh judgments in front of the child, you will find that such teachings are of no use to the child. However, if you place a personality in the child's environment as an authority, then it has an effect. Not moral principles, but embodied morality should be given to the child. The soul and conscience of the child are not developed by mere teaching, but by the child saying to itself when it sees such a personality: What he does is right. And it learns to look up with reverence to such a personality.

Nothing is more beneficial for later life than reverence cultivated in childhood, nothing more fruitful for the whole of life. When a child hears about someone who is a person to whom everyone looks up with reverence, and then sees this person for the first time and feels a shiver of awe run through his heart, too, then that is a wonderful basis for education. Respect and authority, these words must gain resonance if one wants to have a firm basis for education.

The child can only properly follow principles if it has previously seen them embodied in a person. Only then do the principles become second nature, or rather part of the etheric body. They remain in the memory. Anything missed during this time remains missed for life. To exercise the memory, the child must also absorb a great deal of material; he can then later permeate it with his own judgment; now he must first practice the memory. Later he must have material in order to be able to judge it. It is bad for the developing human being to be called upon to criticize too early. First it must get to know the world, must learn from great historical examples, must feel reverence. One must paint for the child in words and pictures what great personalities have achieved. The pictorial imagination must be cultivated in this period.

In this respect, the current materialistic way of thinking is in a sorry state. One must compare two things. Up to the age of seven, only the physical organs are developed, then the character and temperament; and we have seen how education can have the effect of awakening or stifling life. A child that is healthy in body and soul will always prefer a toy that it has created itself to a finished, beautiful and complicated thing. His rag doll, which has been given eyes, nose and mouth by ink blots, will be a dearer toy to him than the most beautiful doll bought. Why? Because when the child looks at his beloved rag doll, he has to do something, because he has to complement what he has in front of him through his imagination and power of imagination. The imagination must work, otherwise it withers away.

There is a great difference between letting a child develop by putting together artificial structures from individual parts and having something alive in front of you. There will come a time when people will no longer worship the construction kit. Truly, the occultist should not become sentimental, but here is a point where he is tempted to become so. He sees the materialistic way of thinking developing in the tender, childlike growing human being and knows that it comes from having put together dead individual things into a dead whole in the nursery. Just as the building blocks produce a lifeless thing, so the materialistic point of view achieves a lifeless world development. The materialist's brain has atrophied; it cannot be led to the living, cannot be pointed to it.

Therefore, give the child something alive, so that his brain may be awakened to life. Give him the simple toys of the country fair, where, for example, two figures set the blacksmith's hammer in motion, or a picture book in which figures pulled on strings can move. That is much better, that is alive. That is much more beneficial for the child than if he puts together dead things from dead things. There the child sees life, there it seeks the reason for the movement. This is how the child's soul develops. — All the pain in the world is deposited on the soul of the spiritual researcher when he has to see how the wrong things are brought into the child's environment. The spiritual researcher sees the forces in the organs of the developing human being wither and know: they are permanently withered.

In the period after the child's second dentition, what the etheric body is the carrier of begins to develop: a lasting stock of habits. If you want to cultivate calmness, security, simplicity and straightforwardness in the child, a personality with these character traits must walk before him as a living human being until the age of fourteen to sixteen. He must learn to develop these qualities by observing them in others. But the etheric body is also the carrier of all artistic powers. We must realize what should be given to the child artistically during this period. If the child's taste is spoiled during this time by bad pictures and so on, then it remains spoiled. From the age of seven, the child is also receptive to comparison. In this respect, there is the greatest lack of understanding in our time. For example, research is being done into the meaning of children's songs. Meaning should underlie everything. But children's songs, such as “Fly, little beetle, fly!... Your mother is in Pommerland” — that is, in Kinderland — they don't want to have any meaning at all; they are partly symbols, partly they should just give euphony.

The point is that from the age of seven, sound and color are transformed from the sensual into the meaningful. Our materialistic age is not exactly suited to this. It is not inclined to make itself understood allegorically. If, for example, you want to show the emergence of the butterfly from the chrysalis as a symbol for the emergence of the soul from the body, you yourself must also believe in such a parable as reality. Who really does that today? You may say to yourself half pityingly, the child with his still undeveloped mind cannot yet grasp what I mean, so I will make it clear to him in a symbolic way. But if you delve into the spirit of things, then such a parable is a profound mysterious process; then what the doll and the butterfly show us in a subordinate sphere is the same process that is repeated at a higher level when the soul emerges from the body.

If we realize this, if we feel it vividly, if we take this process not just as a comparison but as a pictorial expression of a higher truth, then the power of this idea flows into the child's soul. Everywhere, in everything, the educator should see a parable for the eternal and pour the power of this parable into the child's soul. Only then will he be able to work fruitfully. And this is not just the affair of some specially gifted or chosen person, but every educator can work in this way, every educator can impart these things from soul to soul and thus awaken productive life in the etheric body of the child.

With the time of sexual maturity, the last cover is then removed. Only now has the time come for the child to awaken to criticism and discernment, only now can abstract teachings be given, not before. And it is wrong to lead a person to their own judgment earlier than this. It is essential for the period between the ages of seven and fourteen that religious ideas also be brought to life. Religious education is just as essential for this period as the right physical environment was for the previous period. The child should not just hear about what is in the worlds beyond, but faith should be implanted in him as a matter of course.

But nothing is worse than calling a person to judgment before the astral body has awakened. First he should learn to worship, then to judge. First he should possess a great deal of memory knowledge before penetrating it with his mind. But to call him to judgment and confession before he can distinguish is the greatest corruption. First he should be imbued with a sense of authority, only then can one appeal to his judgment. It is not there before; it has not yet developed. It only develops in the years before and after sexual maturity. It is therefore grotesque when young people of eighteen appear and give their judgments, and even write thick books in which they want to overturn what has been created over thousands of years. In this respect, much will be able to change through spiritual science. Through right education, judgment can be formed and guided in the right way.

On the whole and in particular, it should be shown how one can become the right educator through a deeper knowledge of the development of the individual members of the human being. If someone says that one cannot know about this, then it must be answered: Just try educating people in this way, in the sense of these three births, and you will find the proofs of the theosophical truths in life and in practice. It is not a matter of formulating theories or principles, but of putting them into practice. The principles are good that prove beneficial in life, that, when applied in life, bear witness to their influence on culture in a beneficial way. What promotes culture, what awakens life, that is true. When the teachings that relate to the supernatural are applied, one will receive the proof of their truth. It will be recognized that Theosophy is something eminently practical, that it is not foreign and far removed from life, but that it is full of life and awakens life, that it gives strength and security to the human being. And what is more important than this in the education of a child? Education should bring down into the visible, into the sensory, what lies hidden in the supersensible. Therein lies the key to what happens in the childhood of the human being. The full significance of the question of education arises when we realize that every human being is a mystery that we as educators must solve by truly delving into their inner being.

Answer to question

Question: A spirit of contradiction in children?

Answer: The best way to counteract and eradicate this is to let the child achieve what it wants to achieve through this spirit of contradiction, so that the child experiences that what has been achieved is wrong and that it is harming itself by doing so. By forbidding, instructing and so on, little is achieved, and in most cases even more contradiction is provoked. The child learns best through its own experience.

Question: How can we explain the influence of colors on children?

Answer: Take the following example: If you look at a white surface with red squares on it, and then after a while look at an empty white surface, you will find that the squares that you previously saw as red now appear green to your eye on the empty white surface. The red that one was looking at has turned into green in the person. Green is now a soothing, calming color. Even the overly lively, nervous child, who has a lot of red in his environment, transforms this red into soothing, calming green.

Question: A spirit of contradiction in children?

Answer: It is so harmful to young people because it leads to impoverishment in later years. People then have no understanding for certain things. One can only judge about what one has experienced oneself. The power of judgment, summoned up too early, puts a stop to the whole broad reality of life. Life becomes impoverished; because only those who know can judge. Hence the rapidly impoverishing writers of our time.

Question: The sexual question: Should we educate children?

Answer: The question that is now so often asked in discussions about whether to explain sexual processes to children is often answered: I do not want to and must not tell the child any untruths. Well, one should not tell the child an untruth, one should tell him the whole truth, but a truth that lies in a completely different area than in the banal description of the physical processes of conception and birth. Our ancestors did not tell their children untruths when they said to them: “Your mother is in Pommerland, fly, little beetle, fly!” Pommerland is the land of children, the land of the soul's home. There is also a spiritual aspect to “flying”. People knew more than people today, they knew about the spiritual processes that take place at the physical birth of a child, they knew that these processes are more important, that birth is not just a physical act. And in this sense, we should also speak to children today when the question of the origin of man arises for them. We should tell them in the most beautiful poetic images about the soul that descends to give birth, we should fill their soul with images full of spiritual beauty and purity, holiness and reverence. We cannot reach high enough, we cannot be poetic enough when we place these images in their souls. And when the time comes when, with sexual maturity, the physical processes of conception and birth also become clear to them, these will appear to children only as what they are, as the inessential. Their soul, filled with high, sacred, awe-inspiring images and ideas, will regard the birth of the body as a more trivial matter.

A few months ago, the Kosmos, Gesellschaft der Naturfreunde (Cosmos, Society of Nature Lovers), Stuttgart, published a collection of popular scientific writings that included a booklet on The Sensory Life of Plants (Franckhsche Verlagshandlung in Stuttgart). It was written by the brilliant Raoul H. Francé, who is also the author of the important work in installments “The Life of Plants” (Franckh'sche Buchhandlung, Stuttgart), and who, two years ago, in an excellent orientation tool for those who want to learn about the current state of research regarding the development of living beings. A work such as The Mental Life of Plants must fill occultists with satisfaction. They are bound to be pleased when as many people as possible take note of the facts presented here. For all those who have any sense at all for the “mysterious” sources of life, such a presentation can be a good preparation for understanding the points of view of occultism and theosophy. And when the narrator of these facts solves his task in such a subtle and at the same time generally understandable way, this must be particularly welcomed. A noble sense of nature, a delicate way of approaching the phenomena of life, prevails in the booklet. It is evident everywhere that the author approaches these phenomena not only with intellectual cleverness, but with the participation of the whole soul. He discusses the “wonderful” facts in the life of plants. They are only “wonderful”, however, for those who are inclined to see something lifeless and automatically functioning in plants. For such people, the facts listed can indeed arouse astonishment. For those who know something about occultism and see the expressions not only of life but also of the “spirit” in all natural kingdoms, “admiration” does not cease, it can even increase to “exaltation”, but the “wonder” does cease when they hear from the mouth of the natural scientist how the plant “perceives” light, smell, water, etc. From the story of R. France & s, something feels like a shy admiration for the strange things he has to tell. “... the plant moves... its whole body as freely and lightly and gracefully as the most skillful animal - only much slower. The roots search the soil, the buds and shoots move in measured circles, the leaves and flowers nod and shudder at changes, the tendrils circle in search and reach out with ghostly arms to their surroundings – but the superficial person walks by and mistakes the plant for rigid and lifeless because he does not take the time to spend an hour with it. But the plant has time. Therefore it does not hurry; for the giants in Flora's realm live through the centuries and see countless generations of people come to life and pass away at their feet.” Those who describe in this way are not only concerned with taking note of what they are depicting, but also with empathizing with how they depict it. Therefore, some characteristic passages from the booklet will be reproduced here. “One of the most vital organs of the plant body is the root, or more correctly, the fine, worm-like root ends, the tip of which Darwin compared to a brain for a reason. It is hard to believe what this white thread can do. Above all, it slowly but constantly turns its tip in a circle, literally screwing itself into the ground. Anyone who has observed this compares it to a search for food. The roots feel their way through every crumb of earth in their surroundings. And how strange; from where the soil is dry, the root turns to wetter places. It always grows towards the area with more moisture. In physiology, this is called hygrotropism, a sense of proximity to water. But the root also turns downwards. It also has a sense of gravity (geotropism). As if with tiny ropes, every plant is pulled deeper into the earth. If you examine a perennial meadow clover or a carrot, where it is particularly easy to see, you will find that every year it sinks about 5 cm deeper from the point where it originally germinated. It can only compensate for this descent into the depths by constantly growing the underground stem, but it is precisely this that ensures its firm footing. Living beings know how to turn everything to their advantage.

The story continues with the beautiful description of the tendrils of certain plants, which “search and grope” like the arms of a polyp, in order to embrace a support, thus enabling the plants to climb up trees and walls. The phenomenon of “plant sleep” is explained. “The leaflets press closely together and stand diagonally upwards; they have completed their night turn after sunset.” It is shown how leaves and other parts of certain plants join together in strange ways when they are touched. The reader also learns how other plants have devices that help them to catch small animals in an almost insidious way, which they then consume as food. “In the moors around Hamburg and Hannover, the sundew grows just as it does in the swamps of the Oderbruch and the Spreewald, the high moors of the German low mountain ranges and the mosses of the Bavarian-Swabian plateau. On the upper side of each of its small, key-shaped leaves, a sundew plant has red lashes, at the tip of which a dewdrop really does glisten in the sunshine. Rigid and immobile, they spread out like antennae. It is, of course, only our imagination, but we believe we can see that the plant is lurking. And truly, woe to the unsuspecting mosquito, the eager fly, that wants to nibble on the temptingly sparkling dewdrop. Its little head gets stuck in the viscous mucus; where its little feet come into contact with one of the deceptive glue spindles, it gets more and more smeared and sticks all the more firmly. Meanwhile, the feelers are seized with excitement. After just a few minutes, they reach for the victim, one after the other, slowly but with unerring certainty; within one to three hours, almost all of them have descended on the unfortunate mosquito, whose fate is thus decided.” The prey is now devoured. “On the outside, of course, nothing betrays it, but when the tentacles let go after a few days and the little frying pan straightens, only a scrawny skeleton remains, which the wind blows away. Flesh and blood have been sucked out – the tentacles are not only tongues, but also stomachs at the same time. .... They are creatures that stretch their stomachs on stems into the air."

Thus, in a thoroughly sympathetic way, France presents a long series of plant life phenomena. He then comes to the following consideration: “From this infinite wealth of experiences, however, new convictions necessarily emerged. Beings that react so surely, so diversely, so promptly to the outside world must, of necessity, also possess those connecting paths between their ego and the outside world that we call ‘sense’ and ‘sense organ’ in the case of ourselves.” And it is out of this conviction that researchers have sought the special “sense organs” of plants. France also gives a good overview of what more recent naturalists have discovered in this regard. There are simple organs in plants that can be compared to the sense organs of animals and humans. In certain leaves, for example, the uppermost layer of cells acts like a collecting lens, whereby the light is collected in the center of the cells and prepared for the corresponding effect on the plant nature. This can be compared to the compound eye of certain animals. Furthermore, there are cells at the so-called root hood and at other points on the plant in which freely moving starch grains are deposited. These move around when the plant makes certain turns, and the direction of the plant in line with the line of gravity can come about. Again, this organ can be compared to a sensory organ for gravity. It is not possible here to point out in detail all the “ingenious” devices of this kind that can be found in the plant body. In this connection, special mention should be made of the beautiful little work by Haberlandt entitled “The Sensory Organs of Plants” (Leipzig 1904). Haberlandt, together with Nĕmec, Noll and others, is among the most deserving researchers of recent times in this field. Certain organs that can be compared to nerves have even been identified in plants. It is easy to understand why Francé came to the conclusion: “What more magnificent doctrine can the dumb plant still grant us than the one it has already revealed to us: that its sensory life is a primitive form, the beginning of the human spirit.” Or: “That in its sensory life, the animal is nothing but a more highly developed plant.”

The occultist, however, may point out that his “science” leads to the knowledge of this field, admittedly in a different form, but all the more surely for that. Anyone who has heard lectures on “occultism” that touch on this field will know how absolutely clearly it is spoken of there as of the “root as the head of the plant,” of the plant's relationship to light and gravity and all the other things that Franc& touches on. For those who see through the circumstances, the present attempts of natural scientists appear as unclear groping ventures into a field that can receive clarity and certainty from occultism. Indeed, in many ways the modern natural scientist appears to the occultist as a fantasist. Even the talk of the “meaning” and “mental life” of plants seems fanciful compared to the clear ideas of occultism, which shed light on the relationship between the above-mentioned life phenomena and organs of the plant and those of animals and humans that can be compared with them. And so, in particular, one of Frances's statements would like to be corrected by occultism. France says: “I am not afraid to say it again: that we have hardly tackled the main task, which we have left unsolved, barely grasped in its essence, and must leave it to our children to solve.” This main task can be “grasped in its essence” if natural science does not proudly reject occultism, but instead allies itself with it and allows itself to be fertilized by it. One should not “wander into the distance” to “our children”; one should seek the “good” that “lies so close,” namely in occult wisdom. But for the time being, natural science does not want to learn about occultism. The word “learn” is used here consciously, because occultism is not condemned because it is known, but because it is not known. Essays that will appear in this journal in the future will shed light on the research that underlies the writing of Francés from the point of view of occultism. But the occultist can only repeat: delve into such works as those of the spirited France: you will find in them the best, the surest preparation for occult training. Our ancestors did not need this preparation; it is useful to the present-day mind, which is more directed towards the material. And the “children” will no doubt find the reconciliation between occultism and natural science. Until then, the occultist can wait patiently. With his sincere love for the natural scientist, he stands on the Goethean point of view: whether you are loved in return, what does it matter to you?

This article was written during 1919. In the Collected edition of Rudolf Steiner's works, the volume containing the German texts is entitled, Der Goetheanumgedanke Inmitten der Kulturkrisis der Gegenwart. Gesammelte Aufsaetze aus der Wochenschrift “Das Goetheanum” 1921 – 1925 (Vol. 36 in the Bibliographic Survey, 1961). Published in Anthroposophy: A Quarterly Review of Spiritual Scienceby kind permission of Frau Marie Steiner, from Das Goetheanum, July 23rd, 1922.

People talk of the ‘spirit of a language,’ but it could hardly be said that there are many at the present day for whom the conception, so expressed, presents any very clear picture to the mind's eye. What they mean when they use these words, are general characteristic peculiarities in the formation of words and sounds, in the turn of sentences and the handling of imagery. Whatever ‘spirituality’ there may be exists in their minds alone and never goes beyond abstractions. As for anything worthy of the name of ‘Spirit’—they never get so far as that.

There are, however, two ways we can take to find the ‘Spirit’ of language to-day in all its living force. One of these ways is discovered by the soul which pushes on beyond mere conceptual thinking to that seeing which reveals the life and being of things. This kind of sight is an inner experience, an inward realisation of a spiritual actuality which must not be confounded with any vague, mystic sensation of a general ‘something.’ It is an actuality that contains nothing sensibly perceptible, but is no less ‘substantial’ in the spiritual sense.

In this kind of sight the seer travels far away from anything that can be expressed in language. What he sees cannot directly find its way to the lips. He clutches at words and has at once the feeling that the substance of his vision is changed. And—if he is bent on telling others about it—now begins his battle with the language. There is no possible form of speech that he does not press into his service to make a picture of what he has seen. Chimes and reminiscences of sounds, turns and twists of phrasing—he leaves nothing unexplored within the realms of the sayable. It is a hard inner struggle. And finally he has to say to himself: ‘This language is obstinate and has a will of its own. It says every conceivable thing in its own fashion. You will have to “give in” to it and humour it if you want it to accept your observations and receive them into itself.’ When we come to mould in speech what we have seen in spirit, then we find that we are dealing, not with a mass of soft wax that allows itself to be modeled into any form, but that we have to do with a living Spirit—the Spirit of language, the ‘Speech-Spirit.’

And, if it is honestly fought out in this manner, the battle may end excellently, indeed quite delightfully. For there comes a moment when we feel: ‘The Spirit of the language has laid hold of what I saw, has taken it up!’ The very words and turns of phrase in themselves take on something of a spiritual nature. They cease to be mere signs of what they usually ‘signify’ and slip into the very form of the thing seen. And then begins something like living intercourse with the Spirit of the language. The language takes on a personal quality. We feel that we can, as it were, discuss things with it, come to terms with it, as we should with another human being.

That is one way by which we may begin to feel the Spirit of language as a living being. We come to the second way, as a rule, by going through the first. But this is not necessary and we can quite well take it independently. We are well on this second path when we realise the original, concrete significance of words and idioms that have come in the present day to have a merely abstract character, and feel them in all their first, fresh, visual meaning. We speak to-day, for instance, of an ‘inborn conviction,’ and say also that a conviction is ‘born in upon’ us. When we say in the present day, ‘I have an inborn conviction,’ we feel that the soul is already in the position of having laboured through to the inner verification of a thing. We have already learnt to feel ourselves detached from and ‘outside’ words.

But if we feel our way back into the word again, there rises up, as a similar process on different planes, the bringing-to-birth in the body and the bringing-to-birth in the soul. We have visibly before us what actually goes on in the soul when a conviction is ‘born in’ upon it. Take another instance. We say of a person who is affable and obliging, that he is ready to ‘fall in’ with others. Such expressions open up a wealth of inner life. A person who is prone to falling loses his balance, takes leave of his consciousness. And one who is ready to ‘fall in’ with others lets himself go for the time being, sinks his own consciousness in that of the other. He goes through inwardly, something not altogether remote from what is meant by ‘falling down in a faint.’

If we have a healthy sense for such things, if we feel them in a genuine, matter-of-fact way and are not merely playing a clever game with words or trying to find ingenious arguments for debatable theories, then we are driven finally to admit to ourselves that in the formation of language there does dwell Intelligence, Reason, Spirit. It is not a Spirit that has been put there first by man's consciousness, but a Spirit that works in the subconsciousness and that man finds already there before him in the language as he learns it. And by this road man can really come to understand how their own spirit is a creation of the Spirit of language, of the ‘Speech-Spirit.’

On this road, the necessary conditions for getting to the Speech-Spirit are all there. The results of modern research contain everything requisite. And a great deal indeed has already been done. What is needed now is the conscious construction of a psychological science of language.

It is, however, not so much our concern here to point out whatever may be needed in this direction, as to indicate things that have a practical bearing on life. Anyone who considers such facts as the above and looks at them all round, must come to recognise that deeply hidden in language there is something that leads out and beyond it to something higher, something that is over language—to the Spirit itself. And this Spirit is not such that in the manifold languages it too can be manifold. It lives within them all as a single unity.

This spiritual unity amongst the languages is lost when they shed their first native, elemental vitality and are seized by the spirit of abstraction. Then comes the time when a man in speaking no longer has within him the Spirit, but only the verbal clothing of the Spirit. It is quite a different matter for a man's soul whether, in using such expressions as the above, he feels within him the picture of what actually takes place between two people when one, let us say, ‘falls in’ with the other—or whether he only attaches to the phrase a conventional, abstract notion of the relation between them.

The more directly abstract men's sense of language becomes, the more their souls become cut off from one another. Whatever is abstract is peculiar to the individual. He elaborates it for himself and lives in it as in something identified with his own private ego. This element of abstractedness, it is true, is only perfectly to be achieved in the world of concepts; but to some degree a very near approach to it has been made in words and phrases as actually sensed and used, especially in the languages of civilised nations.

But in the age in which we are now living, in face of all that tends towards the disseverance of men and peoples, every bond that links them together must be consciously fostered. For even between men who speak different tongues, that which divides them falls away when each sees and feels the visible reality imaged in his own form of speech. To awaken the slumbering ‘Speech-Spirit’ in each language should be an important element in all social education.

Anyone who turns his mind to such matters must find how much the prosecution of any movement—of what people to-day call social movements—depends on watching the living process of men's souls, not on mere thinking and studying over external institutions and schemes. In face of the tendency towards the separation of peoples into languages it is one of the most urgent tasks of the times to create a counter-tide towards understanding each other.

There is much talk about ‘Humanism’ in these days, and of cultivating the genuine human principle common to all men. But, for any such tendency to become quite genuine, it needs to be applied seriously to the different concrete provinces of life. Think what it means for anyone who once has felt words and phrases invested with an absolutely distinct and visible reality. How much fuller and keener is the sense a man then has of his own human nature than when language is merely felt in its abstraction! We need not think, of course, when a person sees a picture and says, ‘How delicious!’ that, whilst looking at the picture, he must at the same time have a vision of his joints being loosened until he is in a state of such complete ‘delectation’ that he begins to feel as if his being were dissolved! Still, anyone who has once vividly felt the corresponding picture in his soul, will—when he speaks such words—have a quite different inner experience from one who has never known them as anything but an abstraction.

In the conventional and scientific language of the day, the overtone in the soul must of necessity be abstract, but the undertone should not be abstract too. In primitive stages of civilisation men had a visual sense of language. In its more advanced stages this visual sense of language must be provided by education in order that it may not be wholly lost.

[ 1 ] While anthroposophic knowledge was brought into the Society in the way that results in part from the privately printed matter, Marie von Sievers and I through our united efforts fostered the artistic element especially, which was indeed destined by fate to become a life-giving part of the Anthroposophical Movement.

[ 2 ] On one side there was the element of recitation, looking toward dramatic art, and constituting the objective of the work that must be done if the Anthroposophical Movement was to receive the right content.

[ 3 ] On the other hand, I had the opportunity, during the journeys that had to be made on behalf of anthroposophy, to go more deeply into the evolution of architecture, the plastic arts, and painting.

[ 4 ] In various passages of this life-story I have spoken of the importance of art to a person who enters in experience into the spiritual world.

[ 5 ] But up to the time of my anthroposophic work I had been able to study most of the works of human art only in copies. Of the originals only those in Vienna, Berlin, and a few other places in Germany had been accessible to me.

[ 6 ] When the journeys on behalf of anthroposophy were made, together with Marie von Sievers, I came face to face with the treasures of the museums throughout the whole of Europe. In this way I pursued an advanced course in the study of art from the beginning of the century and therefore during the fifth decade of my life, and together with this I had a perception of the spiritual evolution of humanity. Everywhere by my side was Marie von Sievers, who, while entering with her fine and full appreciation into all that I was privileged to experience of perception in art and culture, also shared and supplemented all this experience in a beautiful way. She understood how these experiences flowed into all that gave movement to the ideas of anthroposophy; for all the impressions of art which became an experience of my soul penetrated into what I had to make effective in lectures.

[ 7 ] In the actual seeing of the masterpieces of art there came before our minds the world out of which another configuration of soul speaks from the ancient times to the new age. We were able to submerge our souls in the spirituality of art which still speaks from Cimabue. But we could also plunge through the perception of art into the spiritual battle which Thomas Aquinas waged against Arabianism.

[ 8 ] Of special importance for me was the observation of the evolution of architecture. In the silent vision of the shaping of styles there grew in my soul that which I was able to stamp upon the forms of the Goetheanum.

[ 9 ] Standing before Leonardo's Last Supper in Milan and before the creations of Raphael and Michelangelo in Rome, and the subsequent conversations with Marie von Sievers, must, I think, be felt with gratitude to have been the dispensation of destiny just then when these came before my soul for the first time at a mature age.

[ 10 ] But I should have to write a volume of considerable size if I should wish to describe even briefly what I experienced in the manner indicated.

[ 11 ] Even when the spiritual perception remains in abeyance, one sees very far into the evolution of humanity through the gaze which loses itself in reflection in the School of Athens or the Disputa.

[ 12 ] And if one advances from the observation of Cimabue to Giotto and to Raphael, one is in the presence of the gradual dimming of an ancient spiritual perception of humanity down to the modern, more naturalistic. That which came to me through spiritual perception as the law of human evolution appeared in clear revelation before my mind in the process of art.

[ 13 ] I had always the deepest satisfaction when I could see how the anthroposophical movement received ever renewed life through this prolonged submergence in the artistic. In order to comprehend the elements of being in the spiritual world and to shape these as ideas, one requires mobility in ideal activity. Filling the mind with the artistic gives this mobility.

[ 14 ] And it was necessary constantly to guard the Society against the entrance of all those inner untruths associated with false sentimentality. A spiritual movement is always exposed to these perils. If one gives life to the informative lectures by means of those mobile ideas which one derives from living in the artistic, then the inner untruths derived from sentimentality which remain fixed in the hearers will be expelled. The artistic which is truly charged with experience and emotion, but which strives toward luminous clarity in shaping and in perception, can afford the most effective counterpoise against false sentimentality.

[ 15 ] And here I feel that it has been a peculiarly fortunate destiny for the Anthroposophical Society that I received in Marie von Sievers a fellow-worker assigned by destiny who understood fully how to nourish from the depths of her nature this artistic, emotionally charged, but unsentimental element.

[ 16 ] A lasting activity was needed against this inwardly untrue sentimental element; for it penetrates again and again into a spiritual movement. It can by no means be simply repulsed or ignored. For persons who at first yield themselves to this element are in many cases none the less seekers in the utmost depths of their souls. But it is at first hard for them to gain a firm relation to the information imparted from the spiritual world. They seek unconsciously in sentimentality a form of deafness. They wish to experience quite special truths, esoteric truths. They develop an impulse to separate themselves on the basis of these truths into sectarian groups.

[ 17 ] The important thing is to make the right the sole directive force of the Society, so that those erring on one side or the other may always see again and again how those work who may call themselves the central representatives of the Society because they are its founders. Positive work for the content of anthroposophy, not opposition against outgrowths which appeared – this was what Marie von Sievers and I accepted as the essential thing. Naturally there were exceptional cases when opposition was also necessary.

[ 18 ] At first the time up to my Paris cycle of lectures was to me something in the form of a closed evolutionary process within the soul. I delivered these lectures in 1906 during the theosophical congress. Individual participants in the congress had expressed the wish to hear these lectures in connection with the exercises of the congress. I had at that time in Paris made the personal acquaintance of Edouard Schuré, together with Marie von Sievers, who had already corresponded with him for a long time, and who had been engaged in translating his works. He was among my listeners. I had also the joy of having frequently in the audience Mereschkowski and Minsky and other Russian poets.

[ 19 ] In this cycle of lectures I gave what I felt to be ripe within me in regard to the leading forms of spiritual knowledge for the human being.

[ 20 ] This “feeling for the ripeness” of forms of knowledge is an essential thing in investigating the spiritual world. In order to have this feeling one must have experienced a perception as it rises at first in the mind. At first one feels it as something non-luminous, as lacking sharpness of contour. One must let it sink again into the depths of the soul to “ripen.” Consciousness has not yet gone far enough to grasp the spiritual content of the perception. The soul in its spiritual depths must remain together with this content, undisturbed by consciousness.

[ 21 ] In external natural science one does not assert knowledge until one has completed all necessary experiments and observations, and until the requisite calculations are free from bias. In spiritual science is needed no less methodical conscientiousness and disciplined knowledge. Only one goes by somewhat different roads. One must test one's consciousness in its relationship to the truth that is coming to be known. One must be able to “wait” in patience, endurance, and conscientiousness until the consciousness has undergone this testing. It must have grown to be strong enough in its capacity for ideas in a certain sphere for this capacity for concepts to take over the perception with which it has to deal.

[ 22 ] In the Paris cycle of lectures I brought forward a perception which had required a long process of “ripening” in my mind. After I had explained how the members of the human being – physical body; etheric body, as mediator of the phenomena of life; and the “bearer of the ego” – are in general related to one another, I imparted the fact that the etheric body of a man is female, and the etheric body of a woman is male. Through this a light was cast within the Anthroposophical Society upon one of the basic questions of existence which just at that time had been much discussed. One need only remember the book of the unfortunate Weininger, Geschlecht und Charakter¹ and the contemporary poetry.

But the question was carried into the depths of the being of man. In his physical body man is bound up with the cosmos quite otherwise than in his etheric body. Through his physical body man stands within the forces of the earth; through his etheric body within the forces of the outer cosmos. The male and female elements were carried into connection with the mysteries of the cosmos.

[ 23 ] This knowledge was something belonging to the most profoundly moving inner experiences of my soul; for I felt ever anew how one must approach a spiritual perception by patient waiting and how, when one has experienced the “ripeness of consciousness,” one must lay hold by means of ideas in order to place the perception within the sphere of human knowledge.

• 1. Sex and Character.

I was asked a very pertinent question: When and how does the union of the ego, the actual human self, with its various bodies take place?

In answering this question, I am obliged to go back a long way. This is because I want to give the answer in line with the latest ideas of today's science in order to show the harmony of science with the theosophical wisdom.

The moment in which the soul settles in the body, that is the moment after I was asked. Let us use a comparison when answering this question. The comparison between a house and its inhabitants, that is, between body and soul. It is quite clear that the inhabitant will adapt the house according to his occupation. But the house also depends on the foundation on which it is built. It can also be destroyed by laws that have nothing to do with the occupant. For example, by the weather. It is the same with our body in relation to its soul. Body and soul are each subject to their own laws. Body and soul are related to each other like house and occupant. They only go through each other for a time. Form and design are formed according to needs, for example, according to the occupation.

From a theosophical point of view, we cannot just consider external laws. We also have to ask ourselves: How is the house prepared? When does the body become capable of being a shell? How does the soul develop up to the point in time when it takes possession of the physical house?

If we look at the theosophical literature today, it does not give us any information about the state of the soul before birth. But the research of natural science about the way the house, how the bodies are built, is in an important stage. Physical science accommodates us more and more every day. But the results of science are uncertain in many ways, and they bring many new things.

My answer is given with regard to the present state of science. It is not dogma. For science must advance from day to day.

Now let us consider the stages of the soul between two incarnations. At first it is in the realm of Arupa in Devachan. At first, the soul's state can be compared to the state of the plant germ. The whole plant is contracted for a time in the point-shaped lily germ. In the germ, invisibly to our outer eye, the whole lily is already contained. In the small germ granule, the whole plant is already contained. This can be shaped in the germ in the most diverse ways. When we look at the germ in this way, it is quite different from what the soul was before and will be afterwards. But the soul is also in a state where it is completely freed from all shells. It is part of the plan of development, it must feel free and unhindered for a while. Then it can apply the strength it has gained in this freedom to the new embodiment.

Coming down from that highest level, the soul then surrounds itself with thought material, with the mental body. Then, in turn, it surrounds itself with astral material. In the time before birth, this is an extremely mobile process. The self becomes an extremely mobile organ. The self appears in the form of a funnel and also in a certain coloration. The middle part is like a star ray. The germ that comes from Devachan is in a radiant cylinder and is radiant with golden-yellow light; it then surrounds itself with astral matter, so that the self then takes on such a funnel-shaped form. This takes place with tremendous speed. What is in the golden-yellow radiant cylinder is the mental-astral shell of the self.

Aristotle has given us a term for this: “nous poeticos”, higher soul power, “nous pateticos”, soul perceptions, powers of perception, after the soul has incarnated in the flesh.

Such a funnel shape can never come into contact with a body that does not accommodate it with its shape. And yet one funnel can be very large and the other very small, corresponding to the human germ. Only recently have scientists been able to provide information about the development of the animal-human organism.

Such research was conducted in Corsica in 1875. The researchers had progressed to the point of being able to say: Here, at this point, the human personality begins. The materialistic scientist can say: We now know the processes that lead to existence in the material plane. But if we knew nothing of these preceding states, we would only be able to study our outer personality through today's natural science.

In the same year that this new starting point for research emerged, so did theosophical wisdom. The discovery that sheds light on the development of the animal-human organism coincides with the proclamation of wisdom about the human soul by the theosophical society. Today's natural science has reached a point of view not unlike that of Aristotle.

The question may be raised: Why did sexuality arise at all within the third round? Before that, reproduction took place in an asexual way. All religions lead back to the man who was neither male nor female, to Adam-Kadmon. Now one could ask: Why does reproduction now take place in a sexual way? Mystery researchers have always known an answer to this. I will give you the answer in the form of modern science. Until now, it was believed that the whole process of fertilization was different from what it has now been revealed to be. Now this question has become the subject of serious scientific investigation. But how do the scientific results relate to the question of sexual reproduction? The sexual way of reproduction would not be necessary at all. Nature could have helped itself in a different way. That is why science no longer says: both sexes are equally necessary for reproduction. And that is correct, because for mere reproduction, the female alone would suffice. Nevertheless, nature chose a different path, namely the path of mixing the sexes, after two sexes had been created. And why do this if it could also be done without mixing? Well, nature chose the creation of two sexes and then the mixing of the sexes because it foresaw that, when the third [root] race began, the human selves would want to incarnate, and for this incarnation sexual reproduction is necessary.

That is to say, nature has also prepared this point in time from which human intelligence should reincarnate again and again into shells, into bodies. From this point in time, since human selves wanted to incarnate, reproduction should take place through the mixing of the two sexes. And why should that happen? So that with each new incarnation a mixture of qualities, a mixture of characteristics, can occur at all that was not there before. Reproduction was therefore only possible because one personality with another personality was able to simply produce another. Before that, there was an enormous similarity to his ancestors. Without the two sexes, man would suffer a small change through contact with the outside world, but basically he would always have remained similar to his ancestors, like the similarity of the lily daughter and the lily mother.

As we can see, the child not only bears the characteristics of the mother, but also those of the father. A completely different kind of new being emerges in the mixed product, and thus the individual human being becomes the result of two completely different currents. The mother's body provides everything physical and material. And the male sex is only there to change the characteristics. The male sex therefore only provides the impetus for this. The male penetrates the female and now, contrary to what was believed, a unification does not occur, but a radiating body appears here - called centrosome. Without this centrosome, there can be no reproduction. In the case of lower animals, reproduction can even be brought about by combining them with an acid. Two nuclei then appear. Reappearance with two nuclei looks something like this: one nucleus attracts the male characteristics, the other the female ones.

However, this state is not yet capable of receiving a soul germ; only new cells can be built up by it. This structure takes place according to the following law: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 cells and so on, up to the state of the mulberry germ. As an occult researcher, you see, in addition to what I have just described, the power that is at work here. This has been passed down from our ancestors. What we call “physical prana” has a pinkish hue. It permeates the cells during their formation and multiplication. The physical prana can continue the process. The mulberry germ is then divided into two layers. With this process, a soul germ has united with the human germ. When we have these processes before us, we have arrived at the first days of the embryo's life. The cylinder of rays disappears into the funnel. It divides into two stars. These two stars form something that develops in the two layers here. Each of the stars takes hold of one of the two layers. They migrate into the embryo. These stars are what then form the basis for the two nervous systems: the sympathetic, unconscious nervous system, which takes care of vegetative activities, and the central nervous system. Then the 'astral prana' is added. The same thing happens with the germ of a higher animal. At the beginning, the germ of a higher animal cannot be distinguished from the human germ.

This thickening marks the actual appearance of the segmented spinal cord. On one side you can see five vesicles appear. One of these develops into the front one, the second into the middle one, the third into the back one, and then the hindbrain.

Now the cone of rays, which had disappeared, reappears (between the 20th and 30th day). The pranic current has already organized the brain and the spinal cord. From there it enters the prepared human brain as mental prana. So we have a “physical prana”, then a second prana under the direction of the astral, which is active in the sympathetic nervous system and builds up the brain so that the actual self can move into the prepared brain. It is not yet present, not yet externally perceptible. Every soul force forms the organs itself. From the brain, the slumbering self continues to form in order to adapt. Then the self moves into the organism as “mental prana”.

We are dealing with a threefold fertilization. Firstly on the physical plane, secondly with a double fertilization on the astral plane and thirdly with the impact of the self. There must be a single body for this. And this can only be achieved through the mixture of qualities of motherly-feminine and [fatherly-]masculine, through the dual sexuality.

Thus we have recognized the actual purpose of reproduction by the sexes. Sexual reproduction is not to be understood as a cause, but as an end.

The next question would now be about the conditions after death. Furthermore, the question: What about our ability to perceive after death, after shedding our covers.

I now want to expand my view to include all seven planets, our entire planetary chain.

A physical state must occur on each planet; all earlier ones are preparations for this, all later ones are discharges. They prepare the matter into which the physical can then flow. The etheric body belongs to the physical, is the refinement of it. We have, as is well known, to think of physical matter in seven aggregate states, of which the ether is in four; thus: solid, liquid, gas and the corresponding etheric states.

The physical state in the middle with its solid forms is enveloped and permeated by the astral aura. There is an essential difference between this aura before and after physical development. Before, it is dependent on the forces that act on it from the outside; it is cosmic. The physical development must organize it from within. It manifests itself – separate from the physical body – roughly in the shape of a ring, at least that is how it appears to the ordinary clairvoyant. But it is a ring that has been created by two vortices, two spirals, intertwining; seemingly disappearing into nothing, they are suspended, as it were, on the threads of the universe.

By mastering thoughts and feelings, the human being becomes independent, as it were, cutting himself off; the chakras develop at the center of the two vortices, as it were on the axis. So one can say that the essential purpose of physical life is to have one's center within oneself, instead of being pulled by strings in the universe. When the astral body descends after the physical state, it has the result of this within itself.

So each round works out the self. The first round works out the mineral, the second the vegetable, the third the kamic or animal, the fourth the real self.

Before that, the matters are prepared, afterwards they descend, and this process is repeated on each planet.

The foundation for the original planet was the result of an earlier planetary development. The beings had developed the deep trance consciousness. They are the human monads, the Pitris. They were originally there. These beings began to become objective to themselves. To understand this, imagine yourself one night transported to a completely different celestial sphere, with an erased memory. You would not be able to identify yourself in this new environment. This would only be possible if you had retained all your memory, but not if it was lost and the environment was different.

This gives you the difference between objective and subjective. For the first time, the very subjective beings must now come to an objectivity; they must mirror themselves, look at something. And that is the task of the first planet. As one stone bumps into the other, so to speak, the first dull consciousness comes. So that the essential thing is that the subjective Pitris have each lost themselves in another. In esoteric language, this moment is called 'descending into the abyss'. That is, they become objective, have a second self outside of themselves.

Figuratively speaking, they come to the stage of a ball or egg in the physical. The original point is an egg or a ball in the reflection.

The planet is then extremely thin and consists of spheres. You could say that it looks like a big blackberry. Everything is swirling around; man himself is a mineral in a spiritual material form; it is a rapid arising and passing away, like soap bubbles. Everything is mobile in itself.

What is experienced during the following six rounds is an inundation of these first impressions, a consolidation of this state.

The second planet already has a pralaya between itself and the first; and each of these beings already enters with a special experience. For example, there was already a difference in spatial orientation, there was a north pole and a south pole. These experiences are now coming out.

During the first stage, there is a brief repetition, and a higher state of consciousness has to find its way into the earlier experiences. During this second stage, ordering by number, measure, weight and harmony begins. Mental development begins. So the spheres, which previously did not differ, now begin to express their experiences through different proportions. This is the first rudimentary development of the plant kingdom; the beings arrange themselves in such a way that they face each other in threes and fours, in fours and fours, and so on. Everything in the world in terms of number, measure, weight and harmony originated at that time and only changed in the following stages. Man is a plant; the legends that allude to this origin have their source here. This is a beautiful world, in the chaste form of the plant kingdom. Esoterically, this planet is called the “Sun” or “Jupiter”. It is a paradisiacal state of real innocence; that is why the description of this state is one that always fills the initiate with sacred awe.

The following states or rounds are there to reinforce and to subside. All that we have in the way of crystal forms and plant species originated in the layout at that time.

On the moon planet, after a pralaya, we are again dealing with a brief repetition of the two conditions, and only with the third does the new emerge: the condition of beings that develop into desire, into the Kamischen, which not only arranges itself with others, but desires them. This is where unchastity begins; the number does not place itself next to the other in order to be beautiful, but desires it. The two desires the three. Chemical affinities arise, we stand in elective affinities.

Then the flooding follows: the astral states develop. Particularly strong ones give the impression – when you put yourself in them – of glowing, incubating. It is the feeling of being surrounded by the glow of passion; the air that surrounds you is passion, the wind is blowing passion.

Those who were not initiated to a higher level, who did not know that this is only a point of passage, rightly described this world as a demonic world, as hell. It makes sense, then, to speak of 'hellfire'. We find the same thing, albeit cooled, in the lower regions of the astral world, and it is therefore rightly said that people's strongest enemies are there. — The following rounds were intended to absorb this: the glowing passions were absorbed; what used to be atmosphere was absorbed into the beings. They became passion-beings – Kamawesen, Mondpitris – the entities that formed these things.

They naturally had the opportunity to remain at each of the following levels, so there are seven classes of Pitris, the highest of whom have reached the final phase of refined Kama development, of noble, purified Kama. Those of the fifth stage, for example, have already directed their passions towards higher things, towards something that resembles fanaticism, for example; or those of the sixth have the passion for beauty as their disposition; those of the seventh: the passion for good. - The calmly contemplative manas is missing.

Manas now enters the fourth planet, our Earth. The three previous states, the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal round are repeated, because man must now discard what he cannot use to advance in his development; in the fourth round, the new state of consciousness only emerges, the bright consciousness of day. Something completely new is emerging. The mineral, vegetable and animal nature has been cast off. Warm-bloodedness arises as a result of the passions, and the power that absorbs the new is retained.

The descent continues until the third race; the Atlantean race is right in the middle, the Aryan race is in the ascent. During the

During the Lemurian race, Manas was, as it were, placed in the seething mass of Kama and there tried to gain existence, in order to develop later in the Atlantean race as memory; this continuous thread of Manas attaches itself in the fifth race to intellectual combination; Manas is now working within itself.

During the sixth root race, which will replace our Aryan one, the working-in of Manas will continue to proceed. The chakras, the mental organs, and the human ego will develop during the following round.

How does such a development take place? What happens during an initiation? No body can develop beyond its environment; the physical body is dependent on physical powers; man, as a physical being, cannot develop beyond himself. But he can develop his astral body so that he becomes at home in the knowledge of what we call the astral life. He will get to know the origins of evil that lie there. In this way, he has become an artificial fifth rounder. But a certain discrepancy must occur in him, because in a normal further development his physical body would also have become different. He must either renounce what now constitutes life, or there will be a certain discord.

During the fifth round, they can then act as teachers and guides for the fifth round of humanity, just as they already do for the fourth round of humanity. Such fifth-rounders can reach far beyond the present development; but if they are still at the beginning and not at the highest level of fifth-roundership, they will seem like dreamers to others. These are the geniuses who, when they intervene in practical life, act as reformers. Cromwell could be cited as an example. If they are in the middle, they can give us such profound teachings as Goethe; or if they have reached the pinnacle and are already ripe for the sixth round, such as Heraclitus or Plato. Humanity can only progress if such artificial five-rounders take on a human form.

The artificial six-rounder consists of gaining complete clarity about the mental world. A complete insight into the interrelationships, the creative forces of the world, is provided by a leader like Buddha. All that remains for him to do is to complete his mental body; he is completely free in the astral and physical. A six-rounder like this can almost reach the point of attaining human godlikeness. However, this is not possible with the current average body. Such a body must be slowly prepared through chelaship so that the God of our Earth can take possession of this body in later life. Such a process occurred in the third race when the chela Sig made his body available to an artificial seven-rounder. This was even more the case when the chela Jesus of Nazareth, in his thirtieth year, placed his body at the disposal of the Christ principle, the God-Man. It is only in the sixth root race that humanity will be ready for a seven-rounder who has passed through all the stages of humanity to fill the human body with the Christ principle expressed in it. [...]

The subject we are to discuss this evening is a very broad one and requires a very extensive foundation. It is, of course, extremely difficult to start at just any point, so please allow me to at least suggest, in a few introductory words, how anthroposophy relates to the cognitive problems and the overall state of mind of contemporary people.

In the course of the nineteenth century, in particular, what had already been prepared in principle since the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries came to pass in the fullest measure, and that which, in relation to the development of the problems of knowledge problems and of that which then practically follows on from the cognitive problems: observation and experiment, carried up to the exact level, and on the other hand, intellect, the subsequent conclusion. Today, anyone who has undergone scientific training in any field has no doubt that in order to arrive at a scientific result, one must experiment and think. Indeed, they do not even entertain the idea that it could be otherwise. In particular, such views do not enter the specialized fields. In this respect, one shrinks from speaking to those who have been trained in any particular field about the consequences of anthroposophical research for those fields. Although on the one hand one would have to say: Only those who have mastered scientific methodology should engage in the kind of anthroposophical research I have in mind. On the other hand, however, some of the results for specialized fields are so paradoxical that it is better to remain silent about them than to speak about them. And if I speak of it, it is because I am convinced that you have all come here not to hear something that will convince you, but at least something that can be taken seriously scientifically.

Anthroposophy wants to be a scientific research, but it does not want to stop at that state of mind, which is fed by the outer experiment and the intellect, but it seeks to gain its insights by developing the human soul forces in the same way that a small child has undeveloped powers that develop into a fully-fledged human being, it is equally possible, once one has reached today's level of scientific education, to progress through a special development of the soul powers. The most important power is the power of memory.

The power of recollection is something that even a few unprejudiced philosophers of the present day say points to something spiritual in man. Now, in the development of the soul's powers, it is important to place before the soul a result that is no longer there. One thus evokes from the depths of the soul something that no longer refers to something directly present, but which, in its entire inner constitution, has not an indeterminate but a very definite relation to a reality. The question arises: Is it possible to further develop that which is active in memory, in the same way that the brain structure is developed in the first years of a person's life, so that it not only creates inner soul structures that point to something that has already been experienced through their own structure, but that point to something that not only represents human past, but also extra-human earthly past? Is it possible to shape the power of insight by means of an inner strengthening in such a way that what is created in a stronger way than the memory images points to something that otherwise does not fall within the field of consciousness of the human being?

If you start from this trust, you present it as a postulate, and if you set about the inner exercises in such a precise way that you follow each step with deliberation, like mathematics, you will have new experiences. Here, with these exercises, it is a matter of taking the steps in such a way that a development of one's own arises from them. It is not something mathematical or similar. If one has certain ideas in this regard, which must be easily comprehensible so that reminiscences do not come into play — it is easiest for mathematicians, who are accustomed from the outset to placing comprehensible contents of consciousness at the center of their mental life — and does not tire, but rather, starting from this point of view, strengthens those soul abilities that express themselves in memory in a more passive behavior of the soul, then one comes to realize that one can draw out of the depths of one's soul life a potentized power of remembrance that preserves the true, organically active forces of earthly life, so that one can actually survey in a time tableau — one can even speak of time perspectives, of an inner lawfulness and structure — that which has taken effect in one over time since one entered earthly life.

At first, there is an insight into one's own self. There is the insight that an etheric body rules in the physical body, which, in its inner lawfulness, has nothing physical but everything temporal. It can appear in pictorial form, so that this knowledge can be called imaginative. And one arrives at the point where, while one otherwise only lives in the present, one can transport oneself back to any moment, so that one experiences it as if it were immediately present. One actually comes into the possibility of speaking of time perspective, just as one can go from one place here to another, so one can inwardly make the journey to a place in time that one has lived through. So that this continuously in time unrolling finer bodily existence arises for the first stage of supersensible knowledge.

I need only briefly hint that there is a further stage in the development of the soul, which is attained by imagining the painting of one's own inner strength, so that not only an empty consciousness arises, which is equal to zero, but which corresponds to the negativity of the present degree of consciousness. This other consciousness results in a complete inner silence, inner peace. Now one can imagine: when all external impressions cease, then the rest is a zero; but the stillness one enters into bears a relationship to the former one as a negative bears to a positive. Then one comes to inspiration instead of imagination. Through this one comes to see the pre-earthly existence of man. This is not a realization gained through speculation, but an insight into the eternal in man. In this way one advances to explore the reality of the spiritual and soul just as one would otherwise explore in the physical life what the senses give. But in the end one sees the whole human being as a composite being. There is no need to get involved in all the quibbling between monistic and dualistic views; that is just as foolish as saying that the chemist is a dualist because he explains water as consisting of hydrogen and oxygen. One recognizes that the human being has a physical part and a spiritual-soul part. The formative activity of the brain, which is a reality, can be seen in the embryonic development. I will use a comparison: if there is soft ground here and footprints on it, a being that has never been on earth might come to explain these traces by some kind of force. But just as the footprints are real and were made by a person who walked over the ground, so too are the brain tracks the product of the soul and spirit.

In this way it is possible to recognize the human being: the human physical body, then the body of formative forces, which one recognizes through imaginative knowledge: the finer human being within the human being, who, despite all exchange of physical substances, is a unified, continuous entity in time, a self-contained reality from one point in time to another.

If we proceed from there to the specialized fields, then the matter becomes, so to speak, serious. The body of formative forces is not yet a soul existence, but could at most come to growth, but not to feeling. We come to the astral body, to the actual soul and to the ego organization. Over the last three to four hundred years, knowledge has developed in such a way that more and more has been left out of the spiritual, higher part of the human organization. As a result, we have had to limit ourselves more and more to what can be deduced from the physical structure of the human organism. I always shy away from explaining such things, because I can understand how it makes people angry.

First of all, we have the human organism. We follow the centripetal and the centrifugal, the so-called sensitive and motor nerves. Yes, this fact arises. I can fully appreciate these reasons, and I can also appreciate how the duality of the nervous system is supported by tabes dorsalis and so on.

But when one knows the higher aspects of the being, then the nerves become something unified; one sees the unity of the nervous system. The sensitive nerves are predisposed to convey sensory impressions; the motor nerves have nothing to do with the will, but rather they have the task of conveying the sensations that are in the periphery, the chemical-physiological processes in the legs and so on. The motor nerves are sensitive to the organism's inner processes, while, as paradoxical as it may sound to modern science, one can actually see the will directly in the soul and assume that the soul and spirit have a direct influence on the physical for the emergence of movement and the effects of the will.

I would like to point out to you the path that can lead to finding this view. For as a modern anatomist, the soul-spiritual is something that can lead to all kinds of hypotheses, but it is something that today is more imagined with an abstract content. Ziehen speaks only of an “emotive emphasis” of the ideas. What one imagines as soul is something so abstract and thin that one does not come to understand the intervention of this soulfulness in the physical.

In the moment when one realizes that the physical body goes from being solid to liquid, to air, and to warmth, then one comes closer to the spiritual. It is, of course, impossible to imagine the spiritual as the organism that modern science imagines. But as soon as one assumes a warmth organism, it is not so difficult to imagine that the inner forces of the body of formative forces intervene in the heat differentiations of the human organism. In one respect, we will have to go through a great deal before we can bring to life what has become frozen in knowledge today. We will find the transition from the physical, which has become more subtle, to the soul, which has become more powerful. And we will be able to say: what is a being of will intervenes directly in the warming processes, from there in the air organism, from there in the aqueous organism. And something is present that is quite different from what modern science believes in relation to the motor nerves; there is a spiritual-soul-physical activity that is brought to consciousness through the motor nerves.