The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Reflection of Cosmic Events in the Religious Views of Men

Yesterday we looked at certain connections in the spiritual relationships of the so-called post-Atlantean time. We saw how the first cultural epoch of this period will repeat itself in the last, the seventh; how the Persian culture will repeat itself in the sixth; and how the Egyptian culture, which will occupy us during the next few days, repeats itself in our own lives and destinies in the fifth period. Of the fourth culture, the Greco-Latin, we were able to say that it occupies an exceptional position in that it experiences no repetition. Thus we could point in a sketchy way to the mysterious connections in the cultures of the post-Atlantean time, which follows after the time of the Atlantis that perished through powerful water-catastrophes. This age that follows Atlantis will perish in turn. At the end of our fifth great epoch, the post-Atlantean, there will be catastrophes that will work in a way similar to those at the close of the Atlantean epoch. Through the War of All Against All, the seventh culture of the fifth epoch will find its conclusion. These are interesting connections that are indicated in certain repetitions, and when we follow them more closely they will throw light into the depths of our soul life.

In order to lay a proper foundation, we must today allow still other repetitions to pass before our mind's eye. We will let our glance rove far into the evolution of our earth, and we will see that these wide horizons must have an intimate interest for us.

But let us begin with an admonition, a warning against a mechanical approach to the repetitions. When in the realm of occultism we speak of such repetitions, saying that the first cultural epoch repeats itself in the seventh, the third in the fifth, etc., it is easy to let a certain gift for combinations get the upper hand, so that we try to apply such schemes or diagrams in other contexts also. It is easy to believe that we can do this, and many books on theosophy actually contain a good deal of rubbish of this sort. Hence there must be a strong warning that such combinations are not controlling, but only perception, spiritual vision, without which we go astray. Such combinations must be warned against. What we can read in the spiritual world may be understood, but not discovered, through logic. It can be discovered only through experience.

If we wish to understand the cultural epochs more clearly, we must achieve a general view of the evolution of the earth as it presents itself to the seer who can direct his spiritual gaze to the events of the most remote past. If we look far back into the evolution of the earth, we can say that our earth has not always appeared as it does today. It did not have the firm mineral base of today; the mineral kingdom was not as it is today; the earth did not bear the same plants and animals, and men were not in such a fleshly body as they have today; men had no bony system. All that was formed later. The farther we look back, the nearer we come to a condition which, if we could have observed it from cosmic distances, we would have seen as a mist, as a fine etheric cloud. This mist was much larger than our present earth, for it extended as far as the outermost planets of our solar system and even farther. It included a far-reaching nebular mass, wherein was contained all that went into the formation of the earth, and also of the planets and even of the sun.

If we could have examined this mass of mist closely, if an observer could have approached it, it would have seemed to be composed entirely of fine etheric points. When we see a swarm of gnats from a distance, it looks to us like a single cloud; close-up, however, we see the single insects. Thus, in the most remote past, the mass of our earth would have appeared, although then it was not material in our sense but was condensed only to an etheric condition. This earth-formation consisted of single ether-points, but something special was connected with these ether-points. Had the human eye been able to see these points, it would not have seen what the clairvoyant would have seen or what he actually sees now when he looks back. Let us make this clear by a comparison. Take the seed of a wild rose, a fully developed seed. What does one see who observes this? He sees a body that is very small, and if he did not know how a rose seed looked he would never imagine that a rose could grow from it. He would never derive this from the mere form of the seed. But a person who was endowed with a certain clairvoyant capacity would experience the following. The seed would gradually disappear from his sight, but to his clairvoyant eye would appear a flower-like form growing spiritually out of the seed. It would stand before his clairvoyant view, a real form, but one that could be seen only in the spirit. This form is the archetype of what later grows out of the seed. We would err if we believed that this form was exactly like the plant that grows from the seed. It is not at all like it. It is a wonderful light-form, containing streams and complicated formations. One could say that what later grows out of the seed is only a shadow of this wonderful spiritual light-form beheld by the clairvoyant.

Holding fast to this picture of how the clairvoyant sees the archetype of the plant, let us now return to the primeval earth and the single etheric points. If now, as in the previous example, the clairvoyant contemplated such an etheric point in the primeval substance, there would arise for him from the point (as from the seed in the previous example) a light-form, a beautiful form, which in reality is not there but rests slumbering in the point. What is this form that the seer perceives, looking back at the primal earth atom? What is it that arises? It is a form that is different from physical man, as different as is the archetype from the physical plant. It is the archetype of the present human form. At that time the human form slumbered spiritually in the etheric point, and the whole earth-evolution was necessary in order that what rested there might develop into present-day man. Many, many things were necessary for this, just as much is also necessary for the seed. This seed must be sunk in the earth, and the sun must send its warming rays, before it can develop itself into a plant. We will gradually understand how these points became men if we make clear to ourselves all that has happened in the meanwhile.

In the primeval past all the planets were connected with our earth. However, we will first consider the sun, moon, and earth because they are of special interest to us. At that time our sun, our moon, and our earth were not separate, but were all together. If we could stir these three bodies together like a broth in a great world-kettle, and if we thought of this as one cosmic body, we would have what the earth in its original condition was—sun plus earth plus moon. Naturally, man could live there only in a spiritual condition. He could live only in this condition because what is in the present sun was then united with the earth. For a long, long time the cosmic body contained our earth, sun, and moon within itself, as well as all the beings and forces connected with them. In those times man was still only present spiritually in the primal human atom. This changed only in a time when something important occurred in world-evolution, when the sun split off and became a separate body, leaving earth and moon behind. After this, what was formerly a unity appears as a duality, as two cosmic bodies, the sun and the earth-plus-moon. Why did this occur?

All that happens has, naturally, a deep meaning, and we understand this when, looking backward, we find that there dwelt on earth at that time not only men but also other beings of a spiritual nature who were connected with them. These were not perceptible to the physical eye but were nevertheless present, as truly present as men and the other physical beings. Thus, for example, there are connected with our earth, living in its environs, beings whom Christian esotericism calls angels, Angeloi. We can best conceive these beings if we reflect that they stand at the stage at which man will be when the earth completes its evolution. Today these beings are already as far along as man will be at the end of his evolution on earth. A still higher stage is occupied by the archangels, Archangeloi, or Spirits of Fire, beings whom we can perceive when we direct our glance to what concerns entire peoples. Such concerns are guided by the beings called archangels or Archangeloi. A still higher type of being is called the Primal Beginnings or Archai or Spirits of Personality. We find these when we look at whole epochs of time and at many peoples, with all their connections and contrasts, contemplating what is usually called the Zeitgeist or Spirit of the Time. When we examine our own time, for example, we find that it is guided by higher beings called Archai or Primal Beginnings. Then there are still higher beings called, in Christian esotericism, Powers or Exusiai or Spirits of Form. Thus there are innumerable beings connected with our earth who are related to man in a sort of ladder of successive stages.

If we begin with the mineral and rise from the mineral to the plant, from the plant to the animal, and then to man, man is the highest physical being, but the others are also there; they are among us and permeate us. In the beginning of things, when the earth emerged from the womb of eternity as a sort of primeval mist, all these beings were bound up with the earth, and the clairvoyant would have seen how other beings pervade this picture at the same time as the human form. These were the beings named above, and beings of still higher types such as the Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim, and finally the Seraphim. All of these beings were intimately connected with that powerful etheric dust, but they are at various stages of development. There are those whose sublimity man cannot fathom, but others are closer to him.

Since these beings were at different stages, they could not go through their evolution in the same way as man. A dwelling place had to be created for them. Among these high beings there were some who would have been greatly handicapped had they remained bound to lower beings. Therefore they split off. They took the finest substances out of the mist and built their dwelling in the sun. They created their heaven there, and there they found the proper tempo for their evolution. Had they remained in the inferior substances that they left behind in the earth, they would not have been able to continue their evolution. This would have hindered their development like a lead weight. This shows how material occurrences, such as the split in the cosmic substance, do not proceed from merely physical causes but rather from the forces of beings who need a site for their development. It happens because they must build their cosmic house. We must emphasize that spiritual causes lie at the foundation.

Man remained behind on the earth-plus-moon, and with him higher beings of the lowest hierarchy, such as angels and archangels, as well as beings who stood lower than man. But a single mighty being, who was already ripe enough to migrate to the sun, sacrificed himself and stayed with earth-plus-moon. This was the being who was later named Yahweh or Jehovah. He left the sun and became the leader of affairs on earth-plus-moon. Thus we have two dwelling-places: the sun and earth-plus-moon. On the sun were the most exalted beings, under the leadership of an especially high and sublime being whom the Gnostics attempted to conceive under the name Pleroma. We must picture this being as the regent of the sun. Yahweh is the leader of earth-plus-moon. We must make it especially clear that the noblest loftiest spirits went out with the sun, leaving the earth behind with the moon. The moon was not yet split off; it was still within the earth.

How should one conceive this cosmic event of the separation of the sun from the earth? Above all, one must feel the sun and its inhabitants to be the most august, pure, and sublime element that was formerly connected with the earth, whereas earth-plus-moon was the lower element. At that time its condition was still lower than that of our present earth. The latter stands higher because there came a later period during which the earth unburdened itself of the moon and its grosser substances, in the presence of which man could not have developed further. The earth had to expel the moon.

Just before this, however, was the darkest and most dreadful time for our earth. Everything with a noble evolutionary disposition came under the control of bad forces, so that man could progress further only by eliminating the worst conditions of existence along with the moon.

We must realize that a sublime light-principle, that of the sun, was opposed to the principle of darkness, that of the moon. Had one clairvoyantly observed the sun, which had already withdrawn, one would have seen the beings who wished to inhabit it, but also something else would have been perceived. What had withdrawn itself as the sun would have shown itself not only as a cluster of spiritual beings, nor would it have appeared as something etheric, for that belongs to a coarser realm; it would have appeared as something astral, as a mighty light-aura. What one would have sensed as a light-principle, one would have seen as a shining aura in cosmic space. The earth, through allowing this light to go forth, would suddenly have appeared densified, though not yet coming to a firm mineral consistency. A good and an evil, a bright and a dark principle, stood opposed to each other at that time.

Now let us see how the earth looked before it expelled the moon. It would be entirely wrong to think of it as resembling our present earth. The core of the earth was then a fiery seething mass. This core would have appeared as a nucleus of fire surrounded by powerful water-forces, although these would not have been like our water of today, for they contained the metals in fluid form. In the middle of all this was man, but in entirely different form.

Thus the earth appeared when it expelled the moon. Air was not to be found on the earth; it simply was not there. The beings then existing needed no air; they had an entirely different breathing system. Man had become a sort of fish-amphibian, but he consisted of soft fluid material. What he sucked into himself was not air but what was contained in the water. This is approximately the way the earth looked at that time. We must see that the earth at that time was in a lower condition than at present. It had to be so. Otherwise man could never have been able to find the right tempo and the means for his evolution, if the sun and moon had not separated themselves from the earth. Had the sun remained in the earth, everything would have gone too fast; whereas everything would have gone too slowly with the forces that now work on the moon. As the moon withdrew from the earth amid tremendous catastrophes, there prepared itself slowly what we may call the separation of an air-sheath from the water-element. Air was then entirely different from the air of today, for all kinds of vapors were still contained in it. But the being that was then gradually preparing itself was a sort of sketch of the man of today. We will describe all this more fully later.

We have learned to know man in three relationships. First, as he lived in earth-plus-sun-plus-moon with all the higher beings in a single cosmic body. Here he presented himself to the clairvoyant eye in the way described above. Next we see him under unfavorable conditions on earth-plus-moon. Had he remained in this condition, he would have become a malicious and savage being. When the sun had separated itself, there was the contrast of the sun on one side and moon-plus-earth on the other side. The sun, in all its streaming glory, glittered as a great sun-aura in space. On the other side remained earth-plus-moon with all the sinister forces that drag down the nobler elements in man. A twofoldness arises, which is followed by a threefoldness. The sun remains as it is, but the earth separates itself from the moon. The grosser substances withdraw and man remains behind upon the earth.

Looking at the third period, man feels the forces as a threefold principle. He asks: Whence come these forces? In the first period man was still connected with all the high forces of the sun. The forces that developed in the second period then went out with the moon. Man felt this as a redemption, but he had a memory of the first period in which he was still united with the sun-beings. He learned to know what longing was; he felt himself to be a cast-off son. With the forces that had gone out with sun and moon he could feel himself as a son of the sun and of the moon.

So, our earth evolved from a unity to a duality to a trinity: sun, earth, and moon.

The time when the moon split away, when man first received the possibility of developing himself, is designated as the Lemurian epoch. After great fire-catastrophes had terminated this Lemurian epoch, our earth gradually entered a condition that could produce the relationships prevailing in ancient Atlantis. The first beginnings of land emerged from the water-masses. This was long after the moon broke away, yet it was only because of that breaking-away that the earth was able to evolve as it did.

In Atlantis man was entirely different from today, but he had reached the point where he could move about within the air-sheath as a soft, swimming, floating mass. Only gradually did he develop a bony system. About the middle of Atlantis he had progressed so far as somewhat to resemble our present form.

But in Atlantis man had a clairvoyant consciousness. Our present consciousness developed only in much later times, and if we wish to understand the man of that time we must bear this clairvoyant consciousness in mind. We can understand this best through a comparison with the consciousness of today. Today man perceives the world from morning to evening by means of his senses. Through his sense-activity he continually receives impressions of sight, hearing, etc. But at night this sense-world sinks into an ocean of unconsciousness. For the occultist, this is really not so much a lack of consciousness as a lower grade of consciousness.

At this point we must make it clear that today man has a double consciousness, a bright day-consciousness and a sleep or dream consciousness. This was not at all the case in the first Atlantean times. Let us examine the alternation between waking and sleeping in those early times. During a certain period man dipped down into his physical body, but he did not perceive objects in the same sharp outlines as today. If we picture ourselves walking through a dense fog when the street lamps seem surrounded by a light-aura, we will have a rough idea of the Atlantean's object-consciousness. For the man of that time, everything was surrounded by such a fog; everything was as though enveloped in mist. That was the look of things by day. By night things looked entirely different, although still not the same as today. When the Atlantean went out of his body, he did not sink into unconsciousness but found himself in a world of divine spiritual beings, ego-beings, whom he perceived around him as his companions. As truly as man today does not see these beings at night, so truly did he in those times plunge into an ocean of spirituality, in which he actually perceived the divine beings. By day he was the companion of the lower kingdoms; by night he was the companion of the higher beings. Man lived in a spiritual consciousness, though this was dim; and, though he had no self-consciousness, he dwelt among these divine spiritual beings.

Now let us recapitulate the four epochs in the evolution of our earth. First, let us bring to mind the epoch in which sun and moon were still united with the earth. We must say that the beings of this earth are pure ideal beings, while man is present only as an etheric body, visible only to spiritual eyes. Then we come to the second epoch. We see the sun as a separate body, visible as an aura, and moon-plus-earth as a world of evil. Then we come to a third epoch, where the moon separates itself and on earth there work the forces that are the result of this threeness. Then we come to a fourth epoch. Here man is already a being in the physical world, which seems misty to him, and in sleep he is still the companion of divine beings. This is the epoch that closes with huge water-catastrophes, the time of Atlantis.

Now let us go one step further, to the man of the post-Atlantean time. As stated earlier, he has evolved through many thousands of years. We see him pass through the cultural epochs of the post-Atlantean time; the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian, the Greco-Latin culture, and our fifth culture. What, above all things, had man lost? He had lost something that we can conceive when we bear the description of Atlantis in mind.

Let us try to imagine the sleep-condition of the Atlantean. Man was then still the companion of the gods; he actually perceived a world of the spirit. This he had lost after the Atlantean catastrophe. The darkness of night surrounded him. In recompense there came a brightening of the day-consciousness and the development of the ego. All this man had achieved, but the old gods had vanished from his sight; they were now only memories. In fact, during the first post-Atlantean time all that his soul had experienced was merely a memory, a memory of his earlier inter-course with these divine beings.

We know that souls endure, that they reincarnate. Just as in ancient Atlantean times our souls were already present, were already living in bodies, so were they also present at the separation of moon and sun from the earth, and also in the earliest times of all. Man existed in the etheric dust or points, and the five cultural periods of the post-Atlantean time, in their views of the world, in their religions, are nothing else than memories of the ancient epochs of the earth.

The first period, the primeval Indian, developed a religion that seems like an inner lighting-up, an inner repetition, in ideas and feelings, of the very first period, when sun and moon were still bound up with the earth, when the lofty beings of the sun still dwelt on earth. We may imagine that this had to awaken a sublime view. The spirit who, in the first condition of the earth, in the primeval mist, connected himself with all angels, archangels, high gods, and spiritual beings, was for Indian consciousness summed up as a single high individuality under the name of Brahm or Brahma.¹ This first post-Atlantean culture recapitulated in the spirit what had happened earlier. It is a repetition of the first epoch of the earth, in its inner aspect.

Now let us look at the second cultural period. In the principles of light and darkness we have the religious consciousness of the primeval Persian period. The great initiate saw an opposition between two beings, one of which was personified in the sun and the other in the moon. Ahura Mazdao or Ormuzd, the Light-aura, is the being whom the Persians venerated as the highest god. Ahriman is the evil spirit, the representative of all the beings who belonged to earth-plus-moon. The religion of the Persians is a remembrance of the second epoch of the earth.

In the third cultural epoch, man had to say to himself, “In me are the forces of the sun and of the moon; I am a son of the sun and a son of the moon. All the forces of the sun and of the moon appear as my father and my mother.” Thus we have unity in the primeval past as the attitude of the Indian; while the duality that appeared with the separation of the sun is reflected in the religion of the Persians; and in the religious views of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Babylonians we find the trinity that appeared in the third epoch, after the separation of sun and moon. Trinity appears in all the religions of the third period, and in Egypt it is exemplified in Osiris, Isis, and Horus.

But what man had experienced in his consciousness in the fourth earth-epoch, the Atlantean, as a companion of the gods, emerges as a memory in the Greco-Latin period. The gods of the Greeks are nothing other than memories of the gods whose companion man was in Atlantis, the gods whom he saw clairvoyantly in etheric forms when he had risen out of his physical body at night. As truly as man today sees outer objects, so truly at that time did he see Zeus, Athena, etc. For him these were real figures. What the Atlantean felt and experienced in his clairvoyant condition reappeared, for the man of the fourth post-Atlantean period, in the pantheon. As the Egyptian time was a memory of the trinity that prevailed in the Lemurian epoch, the experience of Atlantis remained as a memory in the Hellenic hierarchy of gods. In Greece and elsewhere in Europe these were the same gods whom the Atlantean had seen, but under other names. These names were not invented; they are names for the same forms that walked beside man in the Atlantean time when he went out of his physical body.

So we see how the epochs of cosmic events find their symbolical expression in the religious views of the different post-Atlantean cultural periods. What took place during sleep in the Atlantean time lives again in the fourth period.

We are in the fifth post-Atlantean period. What can we remember? In the first period the ancient Indians could conceive the first earth-epoch; in the second period the Persians had the principles of good and evil; the ancient Egyptians could picture the third epoch in its trinity. The period of the Greeks, the old Germans, the Romans, had its Olympus. It remembered the godlike figures of Atlantis. Then came the modern time, the fifth period. What can it remember?

It can remember nothing. This is the reason why in this period, godlessness has been able to make headway in many respects. This is why the fifth period is driven to look toward the future rather than the past. It must look toward the future, when all the gods must arise again. This reunion with the gods was prepared in the time of the bursting-in of the Christ-force, which worked so powerfully that it could again endow man with a godly consciousness. The god-pictures of the fifth period cannot be memories. Only if man looks forward will life again become spiritual. In the fifth post-Atlantean period, consciousness must become apocalyptic.

Yesterday we examined the relations of the single cultures of the Post-Atlantean time. Today we have seen how cosmic events are reflected in the religious views of these cultures.

Our fifth period stands at a central point in the world, hence it must look forward. The Christ must for the first time be fully grasped in this period, for our souls are deeply interwoven in mysterious connections. We shall see how the repetition of the Egyptian time in our fifth period gives us a point of departure, and how we can actually pass over into the future.

• 1. It may occur to the reader that India, even in ancient times, was notable for the multiplicity of its gods rather than for their unity. In this connection the following passage from the Upanishads may be illuminating:
  
  Then Vidagda Sakayla questioned him: “How many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?”
  He answered: “As many as are mentioned in the Hymn to All the Gods, namely three hundred and three, and three thousand and three.”
  “Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?”
  “Thirty-three.”
  “Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?”
  “Six.”
  “Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?”
  “Two.”
  “Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?”
  “One and a half.”
  “Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?”
  “One.”
  (Brih. Upan., ii, 2, iv, 4.)

Until now,¹ he who sought a book on the literary development of Germany in the first half of this century, despite the many excellent achievements of others, had to resort to Georg Brandes' «Hauptströmungen der Literatur im neunzehnten Jahrhundert» (Main Currents of Literature in the 19th Century). For only here was the connection between literary phenomena and the whole of intellectual life presented by a strong personality who had a relationship to the ideas of the time, to the moving psychological and ethical forces. It is now safe to say that S. Lublinski's work “Literature and Society in the Nineteenth Century” changes this fact. We believe that this will become the book that satisfies all those who have previously only found what they were looking for in Brandes' work.

It was unfortunate in two respects that Brandes' work was decisive in the sense described. Even though the Danish literary historian has, in a rare way, placed himself in the [intellectual life] of Germany, he still takes his point of view from outside it. In the end, he describes as a Dane must. There is another, more important point. Brandes is a fine psychologist. But a psychologist who has been completely unaffected by the insights of modern scientific observation. For him, the mind is still a being in its own right. The soul has something ineffable about it. The piece of physiology that the new natural science has incorporated into psychology is missing from his work. He describes the leading figures as if they were purely spiritual beings. For example, he has given an incomparable account of the psychology of romanticism. But the Romantics have something shadowy, ethereal about them. Everything is motivated by the spiritual in itself. That is no longer possible today. Our psychological insight has gained consistency through natural science. Therefore, some things in Brandes' psychology seem to us like an arbitrary apergu. The view of the “eternal, iron laws” according to which the spirit of its existence must also complete circles is missing.

S. Lublinski is a modern, educated man. He relies on the insights provided by natural science and sociology. It is apparent everywhere that he represents the spirit of the departing century. One would certainly like to see more natural scientific knowledge. The educational element that has emerged from the solid German cultural development of the first half of the century is evident in the book, as is the approach that one gains from an insightful immersion in German philosophy. However, this was also present in the minds of such people as F. Th. Vischer, Carriere and Hettner. What was missing in their case was the influence that natural and social science can provide today. Lublinski has incorporated this influence into his approach. We would like to see this to an even greater extent. From some of the statements taken from the field of natural knowledge, it is clear that our author is not yet fully at home in the way of thinking of modern world view. But this is insignificant in view of the fact that he has a modern view of nature in his body.

In addition, the book is written by a man who has something to say about the things he writes about. We are interested in the author of the book, not just in the content of the work. This is what makes Lublinski's presentation a modern creation.

The special chapter “Literature and Society” grows out of the whole of cultural life. Nothing is missing that needs to be drawn upon to explain the activity of the leading minds on the one hand, the physiognomy of taste on the other. With fine tact, science, philosophy, politics, and social life are called upon to give the overall picture its external colors. Lublinski is a master at drawing upon illustrative examples. He seems particularly adept at citing facts that serve to substantiate the truths he expresses. For example, how vividly the German public is characterized by the position it took towards Kotzebue! How subtly Heine's idiosyncrasy is pointed out by a statement that this poet made to Adolf Stahr. And yet, as is the case with so many literary historians, the author's preliminary work does not intrude on us in an obtrusive manner. Lublinski has allowed the results of this preliminary work to mature and bear fruit before presenting them to us.

In contrast to the ingenious Brandes, we can apply the epithet ingenious to Lublinski. A sense of solidity runs through the work. The point of view is lofty, and yet it reads like a simple story. Such books are proof that we have once again reached the level of descriptive art that makes Gutzkow's literary-historical writings so delightful.

We have here a subtle observer and a courageous critic. It is by no means common to find these qualities united. One's own judgment is all too often clouded by devoted contemplation. Or contemplation suffers from the obstinacy of an often quite arbitrary aesthetic standpoint. The editors of literary history have achieved the most incredible things in these two directions, especially in our time. In Lublinski's work, the judgment arises from calm observation, and no prejudice can disturb his immersion in the facts.

Lublinski never allows the greatness of the personalities he portrays to overwhelm their individuality. He presents Kleist as the first great, perhaps the greatest, “poet that the nineteenth century produced in Germany”, but that does not prevent him from pointing out the poet's faults. A remark like this gives us a glimpse of how deeply Kleist's character was: “Kleist was undoubtedly the first pinnacle of Romanticism. He fulfilled almost all the requirements of the school: he unleashed the darkest, most mysterious forces of human nature, which he simultaneously subjected to the rigid constraints of a concise, chiseled art form with tremendous willpower. He was at the height of his age's education, he mastered Greek and Christian mythology, Hellenic and modern art forms, and in his greatest achievements he knew how to melt these fundamentally different elements into a new whole. However, there were certain limits to this path, and the cracks and chasms and contradictions that sometimes emerged could not be completely concealed, even by mysticism and the temporary destruction of the art form, because he, as a mystic and destroyer, kept himself completely away from the fog of clichés of a Zacharias Werner or the witty, scornful, playful high spirits of the other Romantics. He had not become a romantic out of weakness, out of a feminine desire for self-irony, but because terrible painful experiences had taught him to believe in the mysterious and in chaotic confusion.»

The author attempts to characterize the influence that the philosophical movement had on literary life at the beginning and in the first third of the century by providing, as it were, popular extracts from the philosophers' views. He undoubtedly also served the overall tendency of his book in this way. Nevertheless, the connoisseur of the history of world views cannot agree with these extracts. I believe that I have experience in these matters. I know that there is no philosophical truth that cannot be presented in a popular form, in a few short sentences, with a limited number of words. However, Lublinski's extracts hardly ever seem to me to correctly reflect the philosophers' train of thought. For example, in the case of Kant, he places the main emphasis on the fact that this thinker referred human knowledge to experience. The wise man from Königsberg is said to have taught the unknowability of the thing in itself only so that man would be satisfied with the investigation of this world and would not concern himself further with the hereafter. But it seems to me to be quite certain that Kant betrayed his main goal with the words: I sought to limit knowledge in order to make room for faith. He wanted to preserve people's belief in God and immortality; that is why he sought to prove that knowledge does not extend to the realm from which these otherworldly elements originate. Fichte's great way of thinking is also not characterized by Lublinski's sentences. I admit that the Romantics understood Fichte in the form reproduced here. But he himself would undoubtedly have objected to this interpretation. The Fichtean ego had to be misunderstood by the Romantics in order to form the basis of the so-called irony. I would make the same comment about Lublinski's presentation of Hegel. It is questionable to me whether it is permissible to present the views of a thinker in the form in which they are reflected by contemporaries with unclear vision. For it is precisely the way in which the genuine form can be transformed into a false image and function as such that is interesting and important in terms of cultural history. However, this way can only be understood if one is familiar with the genuine form.

I would also like to mention that Goethe is not given enough credit in the book. This makes Romanticism seem like a bolt from the blue. However, it is nothing more than the elaboration of an element of Goethe's view of the world. The distance from reality that Goethe experienced after his Italian journey fascinated some of his contemporaries. Goethe wanted to live in a higher world, above the everyday world. He sought the typical, because the common reality with its individualities did not seem to him to give the deeper truth of nature. What he sought, after he had passed through the full experience of reality, was what Romanticism wanted to achieve without such a prerequisite, through its irony based on mere arbitrariness. Goethe wanted to make himself at home in the higher lawfulness, because the everyday necessity was not enough for him. The Romantics confused lawlessness with the higher lawfulness. The whole of Romanticism is, at bottom, Schiller's misunderstood sentence, which he wrote to Goethe in connection with “Wilhelm Meister”: “Man is only completely human where he plays; and he only plays where he is human in the highest sense of the word.” The Romantics only adhered to the first part of this sentence. But first, man must rise through the highest culture to a level of education that makes his play appear as the highest seriousness. He must feel the necessity within himself, have realized it within himself, then he will playfully give birth to it again with freedom.

Goethe's position within literary life in the first third of the century is so outstanding that he must indeed take up more space than Lublinski allows him.

However, these exhibitions are not intended to minimize the value of the book. If the author succeeds in completing his task in the same way as he began it, that is, if he presents the last two-thirds of the century to us in as satisfying a manner as he has done with the first, then he will have created a work that can serve the widest circles in the best conceivable way.

Without doubt, however, the part that has been published so far can be seen as a significant addition to the history of literature, both in terms of the mastery of the material and the way it is treated.

• 1. «Am Ende des Jahrhunderts. A Review of 100 Years of Intellectual Development.» Vols. XII and XIII. S. Lublinski: «Literature and Society in the 19th Century». Berlin, Verlag Siegfried Cronbach

[ 1 ] We said that for the development of ‘inspired cognition’ one of the basic exercises is to banish from the consciousness pictures which have arisen in it in meditation or in the sequel to the process of meditation. But this exercise is really only a preliminary one to another. By the banishing we get to the point of visualizing the course of our life in the way our last survey demonstrated. We attain also to a view of the spiritual Cosmos in so far as this can express itself in etheric life. We receive a picture of the living etheric Cosmos projected on to the human being. We see how everything which we can call heredity passes on in a continuous process from the physical organisms of the ancestors to the physical organisms of posterity. But we see also how a repeatedly new effect of the etheric cosmos occurs for the facts of the etheric organism. This fresh effect from the etheric cosmos works in opposition to heredity. It is of a kind which affects only the individual man. It is specially important for the teacher to have an insight into these things.

[ 2 ] To progress in supernatural knowledge it is necessary to perfect the exercise of banishing the imaginative pictures more and more. Through it the energy of the soul for this banishing is continually strengthened. For at first we attain only to a review of the course of our life since birth. What we have there before us is indeed something psychic and spiritual, but at the same time it is not something which can be said to have an existence beyond the physical life of man.

[ 3 ] In continuing these exercises of inspiration it becomes clear that the power of obliterating the imaginative pictures grows ever greater, and later becomes so great that the whole picture of one's life's course can be banished from the consciousness. We then have a consciousness that is freed also from the content of our own physical and etheric human nature.

[ 4 ] Into this in a higher sense empty consciousness there then enters through a higher inspiration a picture of the psychic-spiritual nature as it was before man left the psychic-spiritual world for the physical, and there formed union with the body which exists through conception and the development of the embryo. We get a vision of how the astral and Ego-organization covers itself with an etheric organization which comes from the etheric Cosmos, and with a physical one which arises from the sequence of heredity.

[ 5 ] Only in this way do we acquire knowledge of the eternal inner being of man, which during his life on earth exists in the reflection of the soul's imagination, feeling, and Will. But we acquire also through it the idea of the true nature of this imaginative presentation; for in point of fact this is not present in its true shape within the limits of the earth-life.

[ 6 ] Look at a human corpse. It has the shape and the limbs of a man, but life has gone out of it. If we understand the nature of the corpse, we do not regard it as an end in itself, but as the remains of a living physical man. The external forces of Nature, to which the corpse is surrendered, can destroy it well enough; but they cannot construct it. In the same Way, from a higher stage of vision, one recognizes earthly human thought to be the dead remains of that living thought which belonged to man before he was transplanted from his existence in the spiritual, psychic world into his life on earth. The nature of earthly thought is as little comprehensible from itself as the form of the human organism is from the forces which work in the corpse. We must recognize earthly thought as dead thought, if we want to recognize it rightly.

[ 7 ] If we are on the way to such a recognition, we can then also completely see the nature of earthly will. This is recognized in a certain sense as a more recent part of the soul. That which is hidden behind the will stands to thought in the same relationship as, in the physical organism, the baby does to the old man on his deathbed. Only with the soul, babyhood and old age do not develop in sequence after one another, but exist side by side. [ 8 ] We see, however, from what has been explained, certain results for a Philosophy which intends to form its ideas only on the experience of life on earth. It receives as contents only dead, or at least, expiring ideas. Its duty therefore can be only to recognize the dead character of the thought-world and to draw conclusions from what is dead on the basis of something which was once living. Just so far as one keeps to the method of intelligible proof, one can have no other aim. This purely ‘intellectual’ Philosophy therefore, can lead to the true nature of the soul only indirectly. It can examine the nature of human thought and recognize its transitoriness, and so it can indirectly show that something dead points to something living, as the corpse points to a living man.

[ 9 ] Only ‘inspired cognition’ can arrive at a real vision of what is the true soul. The corpse of thought is again animated in a certain sense through exercises for this inspiration. We are not, it is true, transferred back completely into the condition that existed before life on earth began; but we bring to life in us a true picture of this condition, from the nature of which we can realize that it is projected out of a pre-terrestrial existence into a terrestrial one.

[ 10 ] By means of developing intuition by exercises of the Will it comes about that the pre-terrestrial existence which had in thought died out during the earth-life is brought to life again in the subconscious mind. Through these exercises man is brought into a condition by means of which he enters upon the world of the spiritual, apart from his physical and etheric organism. He experiences what existence is after the dissolution from the body; he is given a pre-vision of what really happens after death. He can speak of the continuity of the spiritual part of the soul after going through the gates of death.

[ 11 ] Again the purely intellectual conceptual Philosophy can attain to the recognition of the immortality of the soul only by an indirect way. As it recognizes in thought something that can be compared with a dead body, so in the will it can establish something comparable with a seed. Something that has life in itself, which points beyond the dissolution of the body, because its nature shows itself, even during life on earth, independent of it. So, since we do not stand still at thought, but use all soul-life as experience of self, we can reach an indirect realization of the everlasting nucleus of the human being. Further we must not limit our contemplation to thought, but subject the interchange of thought with the other forces of the soul to philosophical methods of proof. But still with all this we come only to experience the everlasting human nucleus as it is in the earth-life, and not to a vision of the condition of the human spirit and the human soul before and after it. This is the case, for instance, with Bergson's Philosophy, which rests on a comprehensive self-experience of what is evident in the earth-life, but which refuses to step into the region of real supersensible knowledge.

[ 12 ] Every Philosophy which remains within the sphere of the ordinary consciousness can reach only an indirect knowledge of the true nature of the human soul.

Cosmology if it is to be of a kind that the total human being is influenced through it, can be acquired only through the imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. Within ordinary consciousness it has only the testimony for the human soul-life that dies out and re-awakens like seed. From this fact it can formulate ideas based on unprejudiced observations which point to something Cosmic, and lay it open. Still, these ideas are only that which pours into the inner being of man from the spiritual Cosmos, and moreover reveals itself in a changed form within him. Philosophy indeed had in former times a branch called Cosmology. But the real subject matter of this Cosmology were ideas which had become very abstract, which had by tradition subsisted from old forms of Cosmology. Humanity had developed these ideas at a time when an old dream-like Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition still existed. They were taken out of their tradition and woven into the material of pure intellectual, logical or dialectic demonstration. Men were often quite unconscious of the fact that these ideas were borrowed; they were considered new and original. Gradually it was found that in the inner life of the spirit no real inner connection with these ideas existed. Therefore this ‘rational Cosmology’ fell almost completely into discredit. It had to give place to the physical Cosmology, built up on the nature-knowledge of the physical senses, which, however, to the unprejudiced eye, no longer embraced man in its scope.

A true Cosmology can arise again only when imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge are allowed their place, and their results applied to the knowledge of the universe.

[ 13 ] What has had to be said concerning Cosmology applies still more to knowledge of a religious kind. Here we have to build up knowledge which has its origins in the experience of the spiritual world. To draw conclusions concerning such experience from the subject-matter of ordinary consciousness is impossible. In intellectual concepts the religious content cannot be opened out but only clarified. When one began to seek for proofs of God's existence, the very search was a proof that one had already lost the living connection with the divine world. For this reason also no intellectualistic proof of God's existence can be given in any satisfactory way. Any theory formed from the ordinary consciousness alone is obliged to work into an individual system ideas borrowed from tradition. Formerly, philosophers tried to get also a ‘rational Theology’ from this ordinary consciousness. But this compared with the Theology based on traditional ideas suffered the same fate as ‘rational Cosmology’, only still more so. Whatever came to light as a direct ‘God-experience’ remains in the world of feeling or will, and in fact prevents the transition to any method of conceptual proof. Philosophy itself has fallen into the error of seeing in a purely historical religion religious forms which have existed and still exist. It does this from an incapacity to attain through the ordinary consciousness to ideas on a subject which can be experienced only outside the physical and etheric organism.

[ 14 ] A new basis for the knowledge of the religious life can be won only by a recognition of the imaginative, inspired and intuitive methods, and by the application of their results to this life.

[ 1 ] WE speak to-day of the ‘Unconscious’ of ‘Subconscious’, when we wish to signify that the soul-experiences of ordinary consciousness—observation, representation, realization, volition—are dependent on a state which is not included in this consciousness. That knowledge which would base itself only on these experiences can no doubt, by logical sequence of argument, point to such a ‘subconscious’; but that is all it can do. It can bring no contribution to a definition of the unconscious.

[ 2 ] The imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge which has been described in the foregoing considerations, can give such a definition. Now we shall try to do the same for the soul-experiences of man during sleep.

[ 3 ] The sleep-experiences of the soul do not enter upon ordinary consciousness, for this rests on the basis of the physical organization; and during sleep the experience of the soul is outside the body. When in waking the soul begins, with the help of the body, to imagine, to feel, and to will, it joins up in its memory with those experiences which took place before sleep on the basis of the physical organization. The experiences of sleep reveal themselves only to Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. They do not appear in the guise of memory, but as if in a psychic review of it.

[ 4 ] I shall now have to describe what is revealed in this review. Because it is hid from ordinary consciousness, such a description of this review must, when the consciousness is faced with it unprepared, naturally appear grotesque. But the foregoing explanations have shown that such a description is possible, and how it is to be taken. Although it may even be laughed at from some quarter or another, I shall give it as it emerges from the states of consciousness already described.

[ 5 ] At first, in falling asleep, a man finds himself in an inwardly vague, undifferentiated state of being. He sees there no difference between his own being and that of the universe; nor any between separate objects or people. His state of existence is universal and vague. Taken up into the imaginative consciousness, this experience becomes an ‘Ego-feeling’, in which the ‘universe-feeling’ is included. He has left the sphere of the senses, and has not yet clearly entered upon another world.

[ 6 ] We shall now have to use expressions such as ‘Feeling’, ‘longing’, etc., which also in ordinary life refer to something known; and yet we shall have to use them to denote processes which remain unknown to the ordinary soul-life. But the soul experiences them as facts during sleep. Think, for instance, how in daily life joy is experienced consciously. Physically an enlargement of the small blood vessels takes place, and other things, and this enlargement is a fact; when it takes place, joy is consciously felt. Similarly, the soul goes through real experiences in sleep; and this will be described in terms which refer to corresponding experience of the imaginative, inspired and intuitive consciousness. If, for example, we speak of ‘longing’ we shall mean an actual soul-process which is imaginatively revealed as longing. Thus the unconscious states and experiences of the soul will be described as if they were conscious.

[ 7 ] Simultaneously with the feeling of vagueness arid the absence of differentiation, there arises in the soul a longing for rest in what is spiritual and divine. The human soul evolves this longing as a counterbalance to the feeling of being lost in infinity. Having lost the sphere of the senses, it craves for a state out of the spiritual world that will support it.

[ 8 ] Dreams interweave themselves into the state of soul just described. They traverse the unconscious with half-conscious experiences. The real form of sleep experiences is not made clearer through ordinary dreams, but still less clear. This lack of clearness applies also to the imaginative consciousness if this latter is clouded by dreams arising spontaneously. One perceives the truth on the further side of life both awake and in dream by means of that conception of the soul which is attained by free will through the exercises previously explained.

[ 9 ] The next state through which the soul lives then is like a division or partition of itself into inner happenings which are differentiated from each other. During this period of sleep, the soul feels itself to be not a unity but an inner plurality, and this state is one suffused with anxiety. Were it felt consciously, it would be soul-fear. But the human soul experiences the real counterpart of this anxiety every night, though remaining unconscious of it.

[ 10 ] In the case of modern man there appears at this moment of sleep the soul-saving effect which corresponds in the waking condition to his self surrender to Christ. It was different, of course, before the events of Golgotha. Then men, when awake, received from their religious beliefs the antidote which carried over into the condition of sleep and was the medicine for this fear. For the man who lives after the events of Golgotha are substituted the religious experiences which he has in the contemplation of the life and death and being of Christ. He overcomes his fears through the working of this into his sleep. This fear prevents, as long as it is present, the inner vision of that which should be experienced by the soul in sleep, as the body prevents it in the waking state. The leadership of Christ overcomes the inner division and transforms the plurality into a unity. And the soul comes now to the point of having an inner life different from that of the waking condition. The physical and etheric organisms belong now to its outer world. On the other hand in its present inner self it experiences a reflection of the planetary movements. The soul experiences something cosmic in place of the individual, conditioned by the physical and etheric organisms. The soul lives outside the body; and its inner life is an inner reflection of the planetary motions. This being so, the inspired consciousness is aware of the corresponding inner processes in the manner which has been described in our previous studies. This consciousness perceives also how that which the soul receives through its contact with the planets continues to have an after-effect in the consciousness after waking. This planetary influence continues in awakeness as a stimulant in the rhythm of breathing and blood-circulation. During sleep the physical and etheric organisms are subjected to the effect of the planet-stimulation, which by day influence them, as described, as the after-effect of the previous night.

[ 11 ] There are other experiences side by side with these. In this phase of its sleep-existence, the soul experiences its relation to all human souls with which it had come into contact in earthly life. Considered intuitively this leads to certainty on the subject of repeated earth life; for these earth-lives reveal themselves in their relation to the soul. And the connection with other spirit-beings, which live in the world without ever assuming a human body, is also one of the soul's experiences. [ 12 ] But in this condition of sleep the soul experiences also what point to good and evil tendencies, and good and evil events in the predestined course of earthly life. In fact, what older philosophers have termed ‘Karma’ is now presented to the soul.

[ 13 ] In daily life all these happenings of the soul have so much effect that they help to cause the feelings, the general mood of the soul, of happiness or unhappiness.

[ 14 ] In the further course of sleep another state of the soul is added to the one just described. It goes through a copy or imitation of state of the Twin Stars. As the bodily organs are sensed in waking, so a reconstructing of the fixed constellations is now attempted. The cosmic experience of the soul is widening. It is now a spirit amongst spirits. ‘Intuition’ sees the sun and the other fixed stars as physical projections of spirits, in the manner just described. These adventures of the soul reverberate during daily life as its religious leanings, its religious feeling and willing. It can be said indeed that the religious longing, stirring in the depth of the soul, is in awake life the aftermath of the stellar experience during the state of sleep.

[ 15 ] But it is significant above all that in this state the soul is faced with the facts of life and death. It sees itself as a spirit-being, entering into a physical body through conception and the life of the cell, and unconsciously it sees the event of death as a passing over into a purely spiritual world. That the soul in its waking state cannot believe in the reality of what outwardly represents itself to the senses as the events of birth and death is therefore not only the imaginative picturing of a longing but a vaguely-felt reliving through things presented to the soul in sleep.

If man could recall to his consciousness everything he lives through unconsciously from falling asleep to waking up, he would have a consciousness-content giving the experiences of truth to his philosophical ideas in the first occurrence in which sense-phenomena merge Into a universal inner cosmic life, and in which a kind of pantheistic knowledge of God occurs. If he was conscious of this planet and fixed-star life of sleep he would indeed have a cosmology full of content. And the conclusion could be formed from the experience of star-life, that a human being has a life as spirit among spirits.

From falling asleep, through further states of sleep, man actually becomes an unconscious philosopher, cosmologist, and God-filled being. From the depths of experiences otherwise only possible in sleep, ‘Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition’ lift up that which shows what kind of being man himself really is; how he is part of the Cosmos and how he becomes one with God.

[ 16 ] This last happens to man in the deepest stage of sleep. From there the soul begins to return to the world of the senses. In the impulse leading to this return the intuitive consciousness recognizes the activity of those spirit beings which have their physical counterpart in the moon. The spiritual moon-activities are the ones recalling men in their sleep back to their presence on earth. Naturally these same lunar activities are also present in the New Moon. But the transformation of whatever changes visibly in the moon has its significance concerning the part lunar activities play in man's holding on to his earthly life from birth or conception to death.

[ 17 ] After the deepest state of sleep man returns to his waking state through the same intermediate states. Before awakening he goes once more through experiencing the universal world state, and the longing for God, in which dreams can play their part.

[ 1 ] It is especially difficult for the soul to recognise that there is something prevailing within its life which is environment to the soul in the same way as the so-called outer world is environment to the ordinary senses. The soul unconsciously resists this, because it imagines its independent existence imperilled by such a fact; and therefore instinctively turns away from it. For though more modern science theoretically admits the existence of the fact, this does not mean that it is as yet fully realised, with all the consequences of inwardly grasping it and becoming permeated with it. If, however, our consciousness can attain to realising it as a vital fact, we learn to discern in the soul's nature an inner nucleus, which exists independently of everything that may be developed in the sphere of the soul's conscious life between birth and death. We learn to know in our own depths a being of which we feel our own self to be the creation, and by which we also feel that our body, the vehicle of consciousness, has been created, with all its powers and attributes.

In the course of this experience the soul learns to feel that a spiritual entity within it is growing to maturity, and that this entity withdraws itself from the influence of conscious life. It begins to feel that this inner entity becomes more and more vigorous, and also more independent, in the course of the life between birth and death. It learns to realise that the entity bears the same relation to the rest of experience, between birth and death, as the developing germ in the being of a plant bears to the sum-total of the plant in which it is developing: with the difference that the germ of the plant is of a physical, whilst the germ of the soul is of a spiritual nature.

The course of such an experience leads one to admit the idea of repeated earthly lives. In the nucleus of the soul, which is to a certain degree independent of the soul, the latter is able to feel the germ of a new human life. Into that life the germ will carry over the results of the present one, when it has experienced in a spiritual world after death, in a purely spiritual way, those conditions of life in which it cannot share as long as it is enveloped in a physical earthly body between birth and death.

[ 2 ] From this thought there necessarily results another, namely, that the present physical life between birth and death is the product of other lives long past, in which the soul developed a germ which continued to live on in a purely spiritual world after death, till it was ripe for entering upon a new earthly life through a new birth; just as the germ of the plant becomes a new plant when, after having been detached from the old plant in which it was formed, it has been for a while in other conditions of life.

[ 3 ] When the soul has been adequately pre-pared, clairvoyant consciousness learns to immerse itself in the process of the development in one human life of a germ, in a certain way independent, which carries over the results of that life into later earthly lives. In the form of a picture, yet essentially real, as though it were about to reveal itself as an individual entity, there emerges from the waves of the life of the soul a second self, which appears independent of and set over the being which we have previously looked upon as ourself. It seems like an inspirer of that self. And we as this latter self, then flow into one with our inspiring, superior self.

[ 4] Now our ordinary consciousness lives in this state of things, which is thus beheld by clairvoyant consciousness, without being aware of the fact. Once again it is necessary for the soul to be strengthened, in order that one may hold one's own, not only as regards a spiritual outer world with which one blends, but even as regards a spiritual entity which in a higher sense is one's own self, and which nevertheless stands outside that which is necessarily felt to be the self in the physical world. The way in which the second self rises out of the waves of the soul's life, in the form of a picture, yet essentially real, is quite different in different human individualities. I have tried in the following plays picturing the soul's life, “The Portal of Initiation,” “The Soul's Probation,” “The Guardian of the Threshold,” and “The Awakening of the Soul,” to portray how various human individualities work their way through to the experience of this “other self.”

[ 5 ] Now even if the soul in ordinary consciousness knows nothing about its being inspired by its other self, yet that inspiration is nevertheless there, in the depths of the soul. It is, however, not expressed in thoughts or inner words; but takes effect through deeds, through events or through something that happens. It is the other self that guides the soul to the details of its life's destiny, and calls forth capacities, inclinations, aptitudes, and so forth within it. This other self lives in the sum-total or aggregate of the destiny of a human life. It moves alongside of the self which is conditioned by birth and death, and shapes human life, with all that it contains of joy and sorrow. When clairvoyant consciousness joins that other self, it learns to say “ I ” to the total aggregate of the life-destiny, just as physical man says “ I ” to his individual being. That which is called by an Eastern word Karma, grows together in the way that has been indicated, with the other self, or the spiritual ego. The life of a human being is seen to be inspired by his own permanent entity, which lives on from one life to another; and the inspiration operates in such a way that the life-destiny of one earthly existence is the direct consequence of previous ones.

[ 6 ] Thus man learns to know himself as another being, different from his physical personality, which indeed only comes to expression in physical existence through the working of this being. When the consciousness enters the world of that other being, it is in a region which, as compared with the elemental world, may be called the world of the spirit.

[ 7 ] As long as we feel ourselves to be in that world, we find ourselves completely outside the sphere in which all the experiences and events of the physical world are enacted. We look from another world back upon the one which we have in a certain sense left behind. But we also arrive at the knowledge that, as human beings, we belong to both worlds. We feel the physical world to be a kind of reflected image of the world of the spirit. Yet this image, although reflecting the events and beings of the spiritual world, does not merely do this, but also leads an independent life of its own, although it is only an image. It is as though a person were to look into a mirror, and as though his reflected image were to come to independent life whilst he was looking at it.

Moreover, we learn to know spiritual beings who bring about this independent life of the reflected image of the spiritual world. We feel them to be beings who belong to the world of the spirit with regard to their origin, but who have left the arena of that world, and sought their field of action in the physical world. We thus find ourselves confronting two worlds which act one upon the other. We will call the spiritual world the higher, and the physical world the lower.

[ 8 ] We learn to know these spiritual beings in the lower world through having to a certain extent transferred our point of view to the higher world. One class of these spiritual beings presents itself in such a way that through them we discover the reason why man experiences the physical world as substantial and material. We discover that everything material is in reality spiritual, and that the spiritual activity of these beings consolidates and hardens the spiritual element of the physical world into matter. However unpopular certain names are in the present day, they are needed for that which is seen as reality in the world of spirit. And so we will call the beings who bring about materialisation the Ahrimanic beings. It appears that their original sphere is the mineral kingdom. In that kingdom they reign in such a way that there they can bring fully into manifestation what is their real nature. In the vegetable kingdom and in the higher kingdoms of nature they accomplish something else, which only becomes intelligible when the sphere of the elemental world is taken into account. Seen from the world of the spirit, the elemental world also appears like a reflection of that world. But the reflected image in the elemental world has not so much independence as that in the physical world. In the former, the spiritual beings of the Ahrimanic class are less dominant than in the latter. From the elemental world, however, they do develop, amongst other things, the kind of activity which comes to expression in annihilation and death. We may even say that in the higher kingdoms of nature the part of the Ahrimanic beings is to introduce death. So far as death is part of the necessary order of existence, the mission of the Ahrimanic beings is legitimate.

[ 9 ] But when we view the activity of the Ahrimanic beings from the world of the spirit, we find that something else is connected with their work in the lower world. Inasmuch as their sphere of action is there, they do not feel bound to respect the limits which would restrain their activity if they were operating in the higher world from which they originate. In the lower world they struggle for an independence which they could never have in the higher sphere. This is especially evident in the influence of the Ahrimanic beings on man, inasmuch as man forms the highest kingdom of nature in the physical world. As far as the human life of the soul is bound up with physical existence, they strive to give that life independence, to wrench it free from the higher world, and to incorporate it entirely in the lower. Man as a thinking soul originates from the higher world. The thinking soul which has become clairvoyant also enters that higher world. But the thinking which is evolved in, and bound up with, the physical world, has in it that which must be called the influence of the Ahrimanic beings. These beings desire to give, as it were, a kind of permanent existence to a sense-bound thinking within the physical world. At the same time as their forces bring death, they desire to hold back the thinking soul from death, and only to allow the other principles of man to be carried away by the stream of annihilation. Their intention is that the human power of thought shall remain behind in the physical world and adopt a kind of existence approximating ever more and more to the Ahrimanic nature.

[ 10 ] In the lower world what has just been described is only expressed through its effects. Man may strive to saturate himself in his thinking soul with the forces which recognise the spiritual world, and know themselves to live and have their being within it. But he may also turn away with his thinking soul from those forces, and only make use of his thought for laying hold of the physical world. Temptations to the latter course of action come from the Ahrimanic powers.

Philosophers have found the chief difficulty in the explanation of ideas in the fact that we are not identical with the external objects, and yet our ideas must have a form corresponding to their objects. But on closer inspection it turns out that this difficulty does not really exist. We certainly are not identical with the external things, but we belong together with them to one and the same world. The stream of the universal cosmic process passes through that segment of the world which, to my perception, is myself as subject. So far as my perception goes, I am, in the first instance, confined within the limits bounded by my skin. But all that is contained within the skin belongs to the cosmos as a whole. Hence, for a relation to subsist between my organism and an object external to me, it is by no means necessary that something of the object should slip into me, or make an impression on my mind, like a signet ring on wax. The question, How do I gain knowledge of that tree ten feet away from me, is utterly misleading. It springs from the view that the boundaries of my body are absolute barriers, through which information about external things filters into me. The forces which are active within my body are the same as those which exist outside. I am, therefore, really identical with the objects; not, however, I in so far as I am subject of perception, but I in so far as I am a part within the universal cosmic process. The percept of the tree belongs to the same whole as my Self. The universal cosmic process produces alike, here the percept of the tree, and there the percept of my Self. Were I a world-creator instead of a world-knower, subject and object (percept and self) would originate in one act. For they condition one another reciprocally. As world-knower I can discover the common element in both, so far as they are complementary aspects of the world, only through thought which by means of concepts relates the one to the other.

The most difficult to drive from the field are the so-called physiological proofs of the subjectivity of our percepts. When I exert pressure on the skin of my body, I experience it as a pressure sensation. This same pressure can be sensed as light by the eye, as sound by the ear. I experience an electrical shock by the eye as light, by the ear as sound, by the nerves of the skin as touch, and by the nose as a smell of phosphorus. What follows from these facts? Only this: I experience an electrical shock, or, as the case may be, a pressure followed by a light, or a sound, or, it may be, a certain smell, etc. If there were no eye present, then no light quality would accompany the perception of the mechanical vibrations in my environment; without the presence of the ear, no sound, etc. But what right have we to say that in the absence of sense-organs the whole process would not exist at all? All those who, from the fact that an electrical process causes a sensation of light in the eye, conclude that what we sense as light is only a mechanical process of motion, forget that they are only arguing from one percept to another, and not at all to something altogether transcending percepts. Just as we can say that the eye perceives a mechanical process of motion in its surroundings as light, so we can affirm that every change in an object, determined by natural law, is perceived by us as a process of motion. If I draw twelve pictures of a horse on the circumference of a rotating disc, reproducing exactly the positions which the horse's body successively assumes in movement, I can, by rotating the disc, produce the illusion of movement. I need only look through an opening in such a way that, at regular intervals I perceive the successive positions of the horse. I perceive, not separate pictures of twelve horses, but one picture of a single galloping horse.

The above-mentioned physiological facts cannot, therefore, throw any light on the relation of percept to idea. Hence, we must seek a relation some other way.

The moment a percept appears in my field of consciousness, thought, too, becomes active in me. A member of my thought-system, a definite intuition, a concept, connects itself with the percept. When, next, the percept disappears from my field of vision, what remains? The intuition with the reference to the particular percept which it acquired in the moment of perception. The degree of vividness with which I can subsequently recall this reference depends on the manner in which my mental and bodily organism is working. An idea is nothing but an intuition related to a particular percept; it is a concept which was once connected with a certain percept, and which retains this reference to the percept. My concept of a lion is not constructed out of my percepts of a lion; but my idea of a lion is formed under the guidance of the percept. I can teach some one to form the concept of a lion without his ever having seen a lion, but I can never give him a living idea of it without the help of his own perception.

An idea is therefore nothing but an individualized concept. And now we can see how real objects can be represented to us by ideas. The full reality of a thing is present to us in the moment of observation through the combination of concept and percept. The concept acquires by means of the percept an individualized form, a relation to this particular percept. In this individualized form which carries with it, as an essential feature, the reference to the percept, it continues to exist in us and constitutes the idea of the thing in question. If we come across a second thing with which the same concept connects itself, we recognize the second as being of the same kind as the first; if we come across the same thing twice we find in our conceptual system, not merely a corresponding concept, but the individualized concept with its characteristic relation to this same object, and thus we recognize the object again.

The idea, then, stands between the percept and the concept. It is the determinate concept which points to the percept.

The sum of my ideas may be called my experience. The man who has the greater number of individualized concepts will be the man of richer experience. A man who lacks all power of intuition is not capable of acquiring experience. The objects simply disappear again from the field of his consciousness, because he lacks the concepts which he ought to bring into relation with them. On the other hand, a man whose faculty of thought is well developed, but whose perception functions badly owing to his clumsy sense-organs, will be no better able to gain experience. He can, it is true, by one means and another acquire concepts; but the living reference to particular objects is lacking to his intuitions. The unthinking traveller and the student absorbed in abstract conceptual systems are alike incapable of acquiring a rich experience.

Reality presents itself to us as the union of percept and concept; and the subjective representation of this reality presents itself to us as idea.

If our personality expressed itself only in cognition, the totality of all that is objective would be contained in percept, concept, and idea.

However, we are not satisfied merely to refer percepts, by means of thinking, to concepts, but we relate them also to our private subjectivity, our individual Ego. The expression of this relation to us as individuals is feeling, which manifests itself as pleasure and pain.

Thinking and feeling correspond to the twofold nature of our being to which reference has already been made. By means of thought we take an active part in the universal cosmic process. By means of feeling we withdraw ourselves into the narrow precincts of our own being.

Thought links us to the world; feeling leads us back into ourselves and thus makes us individuals. Were we merely thinking and perceiving beings our whole life would flow along in monotonous indifference. Could we only know ourselves as Selves, we should be totally indifferent to ourselves. It is only because with self-knowledge we experience self-feeling, and with the perception of objects pleasure and pain, that we live as individuals whose existence is not exhausted by the conceptual relations in which they stand to the rest of the world, but who have a special value in themselves.

One might be tempted to regard the life of feeling as something more richly saturated with reality than the apprehension of the world by thought. But the reply to this is that the life of feeling, after all, has this richer meaning only for my individual self. For the universe as a whole my feelings can be of value only if, as percepts of myself, they enter into connection with a concept, and in this roundabout way become links in the cosmos.

Our life is a continual oscillation between our share in the universal world-process and our own individual existence. The farther we ascend into the universal nature of thought where the individual, at last, interests us only as an example, an instance, of the concept, the more the character of something individual, of the quite determinate, unique personality, becomes lost in us. The farther we descend into the depths of our own private life and allow the vibrations of our feelings to accompany all our experiences of the outer world, the more we cut ourselves off from the universal life. True individuality belongs to him whose feelings reach up to the farthest possible extent into the region of the ideal. There are men in whom even the most general ideas still bear that peculiar personal tinge which shows unmistakably their connection with their author. There are others whose concepts come before us as devoid of any trace of individual colouring as if they had not been produced by a being of flesh and blood at all.

Even ideas give to our conceptual life an individual stamp. Each one of us has his special standpoint from which he looks out on the world. His concepts link themselves to his percepts. He has his own special way of forming general concepts. This special character results for each of us from his special standpoint in the world, from the way in which the range of his percepts is dependent on the place in the whole where he exists. The conditions of individuality, here indicated, we call the milieu.

This special character of our experience must be distinguished from another which depends on our peculiar organization. Each of us, as we know, is organized as a unique, fully determined individual. Each of us combines special feelings, and these in the most varying degrees of intensity, with his percepts. This is just the individual element in the personality of each of us. It is what remains over when we have allowed fully for all the determining factors in our milieu.

A life of feeling, wholly devoid of thought, would gradually lose all connection with the world. But man is meant to be a whole, and knowledge of objects will go hand-in-hand for him with the development and education of the feeling-side of his nature.

Feeling is the means whereby, in the first instance, concepts gain concrete life.

[ 1 ] Philosophers have found the chief difficulty in the explanation of representations in the fact that we are not the things themselves, and yet our representations must have a form corresponding to the things. But on closer inspection it turns out that this difficulty does not really exist. We certainly are not the external things, but we belong together with them to one and the same world. The stream of the universal cosmic process passes through that segment of the world which, to my perception, is myself as subject. So far as my perception goes, I am, in the first instance, confined within the limits bounded by my skin. But all that is contained within the skin belongs to the cosmos as a whole. Hence, for a relation to subsist between my organism and an object external to me, it is by no means necessary that something of the object should slip into me, or make an impression on my spirit, like a signet ring on wax. The question—How do I gain knowledge of that tree ten feet away from me—is utterly misleading. It springs from the view that the boundaries of my body are absolute barriers, through which information about things filters into me. The forces which are active within the limit of my body are the same as those which exist outside. I am, therefore, really the things, not, however, I in so far as I am subject of perception, but I in so far as I am a part within the universal world-process. The percept of the tree belongs to the same whole as my I. This universal world process produces alike, there the percept of the tree, and here the percept of my I. Were I a world-creator instead of a world-knower, object and subject (percept and I) would originate in one act. For they condition one another reciprocally. As world-knower I can discover the common element in both, so far as they are complementary aspects of the world, only through thinking which by means of concepts relates the one to the other.

[ 2 ] The most difficult to drive from the field are the so-called physiological proofs of the subjectivity of our percepts. When I exert pressure on the skin of my body I perceive it as a pressure sensation. This same pressure can be sensed as light by the eye, as sound by the ear. I perceive an electrical shock by the eye as light, by the ear as sound, by the nerves of the skin as shock, and by the nose as a phosphoric smell. What follows from these facts? Only this: I perceive an electric shock, or a pressure, followed by a light, or a sound, or, it may be a certain smell, etc. If there were no eye present, then no perception of a light quality would accompany the perception of the mechanical vibrations in my environment; without the presence of the ear, no sound, etc. But what right have we to say that in the absence of sense-organs the whole process would not exist at all? All those who, from the fact that an electrical process calls forth light in the eye, conclude that what we sense as light is, when outside our organism, only a mechanical process of motion, forget that they are only passing from one percept to another, and not at all to something altogether outside the range of percepts. Just as we can say that the eye perceives a mechanical process of motion in its surroundings as light, so we can affirm that every change in an object, determined by law, is perceived by us as a process of motion. If I draw twelve pictures of a horse on the circumference of a rotating disc, reproducing exactly the positions which the horse's body successively assumes in movement, I can, by rotating the disc, produce the illusion of movement. I need only look through an opening in such a way that, in the proper intervals, I see the successive positions of the horse. I see, not separate pictures of twelve horses, but the picture of a single galloping horse.

[ 3 ] The above-mentioned physiological fact cannot, therefore, throw any light on the relation of percept to representation. Hence, we must seek a relation in some other way.

[ 4 ] The moment a percept appears in my field of observation, thinking also becomes active through me. A member of my thought-system, a definite intuition, a concept, connects itself with the percept. When, next, the percept disappears from my field of vision, what remains? My intuition, with the reference to the particular percept which it acquired in the moment of perception. The degree of vividness with which I can subsequently recall this reference depends on the manner in which my spiritual and bodily organism is working. A representation is nothing but an intuition related to a particular percept; it is a concept which was once connected with a certain percept, and which retains the reference to this percept. My concept of a lion is not constructed out of my percepts of lions; but my representation of a lion is formed according to a percept. I can convey to someone the concept of a lion without his ever having seen a lion, but I can never give him a vivid representation of it without the help of his own perception.

[ 5 ] A representation is, therefore, an individualized concept. And now we can see how real objects can be represented to us by representations. The full reality of a thing is present to us in the moment of observation through the combination of concept and percept. The concept acquires by means of a percept an individualized form, a relation to this particular percept. In this individualized form which carries with it, as an essential feature, the reference to the percept, it lives on in us and constitutes the representation of the thing in question. If we come across a second thing with which the same concept connects itself, we recognize the second as belonging to the same kind as the first; if we come across the same thing twice, we find in our conceptual system, not merely a corresponding concept, but the individualized concept with its characteristic relation to the same object, and thus we recognize the object again.

[ 6 ] Thus, the representation stands between percept and concept. It is the determinate concept which points to the percept.

[ 7 ] The sum of those things about which I can form representations may be called my experience. The man who has the greater number of individualized concepts will be the man of richer experience. A man who lacks all power of intuition is not capable of acquiring experience. The objects simply disappear again from his field of vision, because he lacks the concepts which he ought to bring into relation with them. On the other hand, a man whose faculty of thinking is well developed, but whose perception functions badly owing to his clumsy sense-organs, will be no better able to gather experience. He can, it is true, by one means and another acquire concepts; but his intuitions lack the vivid reference to definite things. The unthinking traveler and the scholar living in abstract conceptual systems are alike incapable of acquiring a rich experience.

[ 8 ] Reality presents itself to us as percept and concept; and the subjective representative of this reality presents itself to us as representation.

[ 9 ] If our personality expressed itself only in cognition, the totality of all that is objective would be contained in percept, concept and representation.

[ 10 ] However, we are not satisfied merely to refer the percept, by means of thinking, to the concept, but we relate them also to our private subjectivity, our individual Ego. The expression of this relation to us as individuals is feeling, which manifests itself as pleasure or displeasure.

[ 11 ] Thinking and feeling correspond to the two-fold nature of our being to which reference has already been made. By means of thinking we take part in the universal cosmic process. By means of feeling we withdraw ourselves into the narrow precincts of our own being.

[ 12 ] Our thinking links us to the world; our feeling leads us back into ourselves and thus makes us individuals. Were we merely thinking and perceiving beings, our whole life would flow along in monotonous indifference. Could we only know ourselves as Selves, we should be totally indifferent to ourselves. It is only because with self-knowledge we experience self-feeling, and with the perception of objects pleasure and pain, that we live as individuals whose existence is not exhausted by the conceptual relations in which they stand to the rest of the world, but who have moreover a special value in themselves.

[ 13 ] One might be tempted to regard the life of feeling as something more richly saturated with reality than the consideration of the world through thinking. But the reply to this is that the life of feeling, after all, has this richer meaning only for my individual self. For the universe as a whole my life of feeling can be of value only if, as percept of my Self, the feeling enters into connection with a concept and in this roundabout way links itself to the cosmos.

[ 14 ] Our life is a continual oscillation between our living with the universal world-process and our own individual existence. The farther we ascend into the universal nature of thinking where the individual, at last, interests us only as an example, an instance, of the concept, the more the character of the particular Being, of the quite determinate, single personality, becomes lost in us. The farther we descend into the depths of our own life and allow our feelings to resound with our experiences of the outer world, the more we cut ourselves off from the universal life. True individuality belongs to him who reaches up with his feelings to the farthest possible extent into the region of the ideal. There are men in whom even the most general Ideas still bear that peculiar personal tinge which shows unmistakably their connection with their author. There are others whose concepts come before us as devoid of any trace of individual colouring as if they had not been produced by a being of flesh and blood at all.

[ 15 ] The act of representing gives our conceptual life at once an individual stamp. Each one of us has his special place from which he looks out on the world. His concepts link themselves to his percepts. He thinks the general concepts in his own special way. This special determination results for each of us from the place where he stands and is dependent on the range of percepts peculiar to his place in life.

[ 16 ] This determination is distinct from another which depends on our particular organization. Our organization is, indeed, a special, definite, individual thing. Each of us combines special feelings, and these in the most varying degrees of intensity, with his percepts. This is just the individual element in the personality of each of us. It is what remains over when we have allowed fully for all the determining factors in our milieu.

[ 17 ] A life of feeling, wholly devoid of thinking, would gradually lose all connection with the world. But man is meant to be a whole, and knowledge of objects will go hand-in-hand for him with the development and education of the life of feeling. [ 18 ] Feeling is the means whereby, in the first instance, concepts gain concrete life.

There is nothing in the study of myths that leads so deeply into theosophical thinking as the Nordic saga poetry. If the European can think his way into it, he can find his way from there and penetrate ever deeper into the esoteric realms. An understanding of these sagas of Nordic myth can only be attained in advanced stages of life. The Nordic myths were essentially the subject of the Nordic mysteries. A distinction is made between Western European and Northern European mysteries. In Scandinavia and Russia there were the Drottenmysterien, in England and the West the Druid mysteries. Both mysteries have disappeared. “Druid means ‘oak’. The priest or sage in the Nordic world was called ”the oak.”

The replacement of the Nordic belief in gods is communicated to us in a beautiful mystery. In the conquest of the oak by Boniface, we see Christianity's struggle with the Druid mystery. The basic tenor of the Nordic mysteries is tragic. There is something tragic about all the myths of Central Europe and the North. The Twilight of the Gods represents the downfall of the Nordic world of gods. After their downfall, a new sun god, a new Baldur, is to assert himself. In the other, non-Nordic mysteries, there is always a hopeful and confident element.

What was experienced in advance in the mysteries was to be fulfilled. The Apocalypse predicts a future in which Christianity is to be fulfilled. In the Nordic myth, something different had been predicted. There, the downfall of the Nordic gods was experienced through Christianity. It is from this point of view that the new mystery must be understood, through the four stages.

The first step is that of the first Nordic sub-race of the fifth root race. In Central Europe, Christianity was spread among the fifth sub-race of the fifth root race. Four sub-races preceded this. The secret of the four sub-races is that they show how Christianity was to replace what preceded it in the fifth sub-race.

We now go back into a dark past, to the first sub-race of the fifth root race on Nordic soil. There were the Drotten initiations in the north at that time. In primitive temples, half nature, half building, a sacred tent was erected, in which two deities were depicted as ruling the world: Hu and Ceridwen. Hu is Osiris, Ceridwen is Isis, the human being is Horus. There were three degrees of initiation: first, [Eubaten]; second, bards; third, druids. Those who were initiated into the three degrees underwent a transformation such that, by awakening their higher abilities, they became the god Baldur. The mystic had to say to himself: “You must become the resurrected Baldur, who was killed by the god Loki.” Then the initiation mead was handed to him and the initiation ring was given. The mead is analogous to the Indian Soma drink.

In the Nordic initiation, the initiate was first made aware of the development of the Earth and the conditions that preceded it on the earlier planets. On Earth, we should learn until we go beyond the possibility of error. Our life will then be transformed into a kind of rhythm, in relation to only very bright mental activity.

Logical thinking has only gradually emerged from a developmental process. Later, a general human sense of morality will develop as logical thinking is developing now.

What is error on one planet is disease on the next. What remains error on Earth today will be disease on the next planet, to the same extent that the beings capable of error have been left behind. We would not have the harmonious organism today if this harmony had not been developed out of the chaos of the moon. We owe the wonderful organization of our body to the development of the moon. The illnesses that still exist in our time are what remained behind from the error present on the moon. This is what did not reach perfection in the development of the moon. That was the view of the Druid mysteries. For what was left behind, a plant was taken as the descendant of the moon's development. Our plants grow out of the mineral earth. The whole moon was a living being. The plants developed on this living being. There was no actual mineral kingdom, but only a stone plant kingdom and an animal kingdom that lies somewhere between today's plant and animal kingdoms.

Mistletoe was the symbol of what was left of the moon. It draws its nourishment from the living. It is the symbol of all entities and products that hold back or harm the earth. Loki, who still ruled on earth from the moon, had brought to earth what should have found its actual phase of development on the moon.

Baldur is the god of the sun, the bringer of all life, the active powers of the sun. Loki is his necessary opponent. Baldur was frightened by heavy dreams that were to come true afterwards. All creatures take an oath not to harm Baldur, except the mistletoe; no one can kill him, only the harmful in the development of the earth. That is why mistletoe is thrown from Hödur to Baldur. Hödur is the blind, mechanical necessity which must make use of what has been left behind earlier in order to overcome Baldur. That was one part of the mystery. The other part was that blind, mechanical necessity was overcome by the introduction of harmony through the Christ experience. In Christ a new Baldur must arise.

There was a society of twelve great initiates. A thirteenth was their leader. He was not yet ahead of the twelve others at that time. These initiates were called Sige or Sig. When he reached a certain age, he was able to surrender his individuality to a higher individuality, to receive a higher individuality within himself. This is one of the highest mysteries - in the case of Christ Jesus, the descent of the dove. Sig's individuality was replaced by the individuality of Odin or Wotan. This is the same one who had already lived as a great initiate at the time of the Atlanteans. During the downfall of the Atlantean race, what was then tropical Europe gradually became a cold, foggy realm. The remains of the Atlanteans emerged from the ice land. The emergence of Wotan is presented in such a way that initially the ice masses are there. From this, what comes across from the Atlantean world saves itself. The cow Audhumbla licks the ice masses.

Wotan goes through two incarnations, through Buri and Bör. Then he becomes Wotan because of the chela individuality of the chela Sig. Everything that was in the chela Sig becomes what is associated with the name Sig. In the first sub-race, it is Wotan, who is confronted by Hönir or Wile and Loki or We.

Wotan had to undergo a difficult test after he had incarnated. For nine days after he had been wounded on the side where the heart is located, he had to hang on the gallows. Then Mimir came and taught him the runic writing - a model of the Christ fact. Then came his resurrection. This was the initiation of the first sub-race of the fifth root race.

Wotan now presented the origin of mankind in the mystery itself. First our earth was created, but without the minerals and plants. Everything was contained in a great individuality, the giant Ymir. He was overcome by Wotan, Wile and We. From him - the Adam Kadmon - the whole earth was created. From his skullcap they made the vault of heaven and so on. It was the macrocosmic man. From him the gods form the earthly structures. Dwarves also emerge from the giant's body and live inside the earth.

From the plant people the three gods find, from Ask and Embla - from ash and elm - they shaped the physical man. The three gods build the shells of the people:

Wotan or Odin - Sthula sharira
Wile or Hönir - Linga sharira
We or Loki - Kama/Karana sharira

Wotan-Odin gave the spirit, Hönir-Wile gave life and the lawfulness, Loki-We gave warmth and color, the Kama.

This is how the human shells of the gods were constructed. The dwarf is the little human being who is actually the spiritual being. This was the spark that came to fertilize the human being from the middle of the Lemurian period, which will develop into Manas, Buddhi and Atma. The human ego must first develop in the depths, otherwise it would be immediately transformed into a rigid mineral by the sunlight.

The initiation for the second sub-race was as follows: Wotan is said to have the potion of wisdom, and the second sub-race is said to develop slowly up to the same stage. The wisdom is formed by the giant Suttung. He guards the potion of wisdom. The giant's daughter is Gunnlöd. Wotan cannot get to the potion of wisdom. Therefore, he transforms himself into a snake and enters the sanctuary of Gunnlöd. There he remains for three days. The snake is the self, endowed with wisdom.

What happened in the Lemurian period is now repeating itself. The three gods find the dwarf Andwari as Hreidmar's son, Pike and Otter. Otter has the shape of an otter. He is slain by Loki. The father is to receive the hide of the Otter, decorated inside and out with gold. This signifies the permeation of man with the gold of wisdom. Before that, the sthula sharira, the linga sharira and the karana sharira have been formed. Loki kills what was on earth before, the otter, and brings in wisdom, the gold.

Besides the other gold, there was also a golden ring. Before he came into our present earthly development, man was in completely different circumstances. At that time he did not receive the impressions through the gates of the senses. The ring signifies being locked up in the sensations of the senses, which make the self into a special being – the Nibelungen ring.

In the third sub-race, Wotan and those who belonged to him were initiated once more. He had brought the Cup of Wisdom into the home of the gods. There the potion or cup of wisdom was guarded by Mimir. He had the wisdom that led us forward. At the transition from the Lemurian race, man had only one eye through which he was not yet closed off from the outside world. With it he could perceive what was useful or harmful to him. When man closed himself through the ring of sensuality, this eye receded. The gift he now received had to be bought by a sacrifice. Wotan had to buy the new gift by sacrificing the cyclopean eye - not one of the other two eyes.

The Wälsungs and their descendants from Wotan, Sigmund, Sigurd, Siegfried, that is the race of the initiates within the fourth sub-race. In Siegfried the last of the initiations takes place. He conquers the dragon, that is, the lower nature. He now becomes invulnerable to everything lower. He purifies himself through catharsis, through the consciousness of the higher. He must pass through the fire of passion. In this way he acquires Brunhilde. He remains vulnerable only at the point where one carries the cross. It was said that the next initiate would not be vulnerable there.

In the old Norse mythology, King Atli – Atlanti – emerges from the Atlantean era. He is the great Atlantean initiate. He only shies away from the representative of the Christian initiate, the Pope.

This occult lecture was inspired by the question: Do the souls of stillborn or deceased young children also reincarnate after 1500 to 1800 years? And does such a re-embodiment serve a purpose?

1500 to 1800 years is an average period. There are souls that only reincarnate after 4000 to 2000 years. However, the question asked is connected with much deeper questions. There are seven great mysteries of existence in the becoming of our earth. Of these seven great mysteries of existence, one of these secrets is handed over to people from time to time in the succession of human races. Our present race will receive the fourth. Our theosophical current is nothing more than the preparation for the communication of the fourth of the so-called unspeakable secrets. Only a small part of what the great masters learn from the fourth secret may we communicate in lectures. There are things that it is sinful to utter with words, says the Apostle Paul.

One of these things is the fourth secret. It is the secret of life and death. The theosophical current has the task of enabling us to learn about birth and death and how they are related in a lawful way. It is not yet time for the whole of the fourth secret to be revealed to us, but parts of it are being revealed little by little. We have spirits who have already anticipated the stages of development of future stages. Plato, for example, is a “fifth rounder”. Gautama Buddha anticipated what humanity will only achieve in the sixth round.

I will now try to say something about what reincarnation depends on. When a person dies, he does not discard a worthless garment. This physical incarnation really has a purpose. We bear the fruits of it into the other incarnation. Learning the art of writing may serve as an example here. You learn the steps, form letters and learn to put them together in a context. Just as you take one thing from the various individual activities, namely the ability to write, and you no longer remember your individual tasks at a later time, it is the same with rebirth. The ability to write has remained, the individual stages of learning have been forgotten.

It is the same with rebirth. The individual experiences have been forgotten, the abilities gained from them have remained. The voice of conscience, the ability to distinguish between good and evil, we have learned all this in previous incarnations. The savage who originally eats his fellow human beings gradually learns that he is not allowed to do so because it causes him to incur the hostility of his fellow human beings, because it causes enmity.

Our organs are the means of acquiring experience and skills. It is the organs that we receive in the new incarnation. If we are incarnated today and incarnate again in fifty years' time, or even immediately after our death, could we really learn something new that we could add to what we have already learned in the broader sense?

No, things on Earth don't change that quickly. What we learn up to the age of seventy is one lesson, and the following seventy years would not differ much from the previous ones. So we only incarnate again when the Earth has changed enough for us to learn something substantial again. This is related to the law that a person is reincarnated after an average of two thousand years. [...] Within two thousand four hundred or two thousand six hundred years, cosmic conditions change. So there is something new to learn again. Man must therefore wait until new constellations occur between the sun and the earth that can influence our being in a completely new way. But there are also deviations because what man has to do within the rounds is not the only thing.

At a certain stage of development, the human being will leave the earth. He will then continue to live on a new planet. However, he can only enter the scene of the new earth, or rather the new planet, when he has reached a certain level of development. The human being has to develop his ego to such an extent that he will be able to enter this new scene.

The thought that lives in you is not just what lives in your head. Every thought is a living force. Just as any air wave propagates and can still be perceived far away from its original location, so does my thought propagate. It continues to have an effect in the mental world. We have to see it as such a force. A thought is a force as strong as if you were splitting wood with an axe. You can cut and work with thoughts – and also with your drives – deep into the astral world. The changes you bring about there are much more significant than any physical events.

We have to become clear about these forces and we have to learn what changes we are causing. This is the first consecration, the experience and clarification of the inner drives, the terrible beings. We cannot think without affecting a whole host of beings. The adept is fundamentally different from other people because the adept does what others do unconsciously, consciously.

We affect the entire world around us. If it were only a matter of human development, we would regularly be reincarnated. However, a higher individuality may be needed for human development, in which case it must incarnate more quickly. The laws that cause an individual to reincarnate do not only apply to that person's development; the demands and laws for the entire environment also apply.

When such conditions arise, then such a personality may have died immediately beforehand or a few years before, and they incarnate again immediately. In the Theosophical Society, we have such personalities who were re-embodied almost immediately after death.

It depends on a great many circumstances after how many years an individuality has to reincarnate. A personality that has taken in a lot can take a long time to process the substances it has taken in. We know from a great personality in the development of German thought, Goethe, that he was previously incarnated in Greece at the time of Plato. And we know that he was reborn as Goethe in the eighteenth century. It was one of the most harmonious incarnations he experienced in Greece. He was a student of sculpture. The student of sculpture had absorbed so much that it took him so long to process it all. “Iphigenia in Tauris” could only be written with a great knowledge of Greek sculpture. Plato's lofty idealism flows towards us again in the profound passages of Goethe's “Faust”. The “fairytale” of the green snake and the beautiful lily contains the revelation of Goethe's harmonious development at the time of his Greek incarnation.

Bismarck could not work like Goethe.

Not all abilities need to be expressed in the embodiment. If someone who is in the devachan is able to carry out a necessary task on earth at a certain time, he will be re-embodied. He must then sacrifice himself for the sake of all humanity.

“Creare” is usually translated as “creating”. It has the same root as the Sanskrit word “kri”, which is the same as what we recognize in “karma”. It means “to will”. The body is willed by certain forces, by so-called “destiny directors”. The body is then brought into a suitable connection and mixture. Aristotle still used the word for human labor, but at that time it still meant “choosing,” “wanting.”

The physical body is an instrument for the soul, just as the piano is for a person who wants to make music. When we use the instrument, we take the fruits of our development with us. However, even the most highly developed individuals can still make mistakes when choosing a body. It may be that a person who would be capable of great achievements cannot find the body in which he can bring the forces within him to fruition. These are possibilities that must always be taken into account when doing research in this area. A student of Plato will be able to take quite different things with them into the next life.

But those who only have monotonous experiences in one incarnation will have few germinal forces to carry through. And therefore they will be able to reincarnate quickly. Savages who have little experience only spend a short time in Devachan. Chelas, on the other hand, those who have already acquired the right to the championship, can do without Devachan. They do not undergo Devachan. Therefore, they can re-incarnate immediately after death to continue serving humanity.

In childhood, the soul of the child has weak, soft powers that still need to be developed and refined. If you were unable to develop the astral body in one incarnation, it is possible that you will be reborn as a child for the sole purpose of developing the emotional body. A scholar who has a highly developed mind but no feelings will then only need a short period of tutoring as a child and will soon leave the body again.

An attempt to be born can also fail. Then a new attempt is made if the previous body was unable to express the forces. There are even examples in the Bible where re-embodiment occurs immediately after death. It is important to know that re-embodiment not only has a purpose, but that it is a necessity. (Here the example of the clock was given.) The [clock] is a product of development. It could only come into being when different sciences had reached the same level of development at the same time. It took the ability to work with metal and people who had mastered the laws of scientific mechanics. All these people combine at a certain level, and then you have the ability to make a clock in that age.

Those who look only in one direction make a mistake. Those who have developed in only one direction, like a Darwinist, for example, also make a mistake. Monism is not a unity because it has emerged from a unity, but the other way around: body and soul are one because they have connected at a certain level and thus form a unity. The wheel in the clock broke, and with it the unity. The clock is unusable. It is the same when an organism has a “bad wheel”.

The next question was whether the facts in the world are based on a plan or whether chance rules them. (The answer was:)

Development depends on temperature, on mountain air or sea air, on city or country. Let us assume that a brick fell on a person's head. Is that a coincidence or is it part of a plan? A person falls into the water, another jumps in after him, helps him, but he catches a cold and dies. Now let us take a counterpart to this: a person sees his enemy, pushes him into the water. But he also falls in and subsequently dies. These are two very different internal cases. But outwardly it seems as if they are the same cases. Both die as a result of falling into the water. The question of whether the world is governed by a plan full of wisdom or just by coincidence is something we will deal with in more detail in the near future.

[The beginning of the statement is missing.]

When the selfless stream returns to its starting point in two cyclical outpourings and matter dissolves again, nothing has happened but that it returns enriched to its origin. Only by absorbing and overcoming the selfish current will the unselfish current develop such a strongly vibrating power that it must go beyond itself, that is, beyond the cosmic circle that forms the first meeting of the two currents. A new region will be born out of the selflessness, called forth by it: Paranirvana, the negative matter, because in contrast to matter held within the cosmic circle by attraction, it spreads outwards. One can visualize the process by imagining the swinging of a pendulum. The pendulum swinging forward will immediately swing back and, if it is not stopped by obstacles in its path, will swing so strongly that it goes beyond its starting point – just as a cart rolling forward cannot suddenly stop, but must roll a little further.

With this preparation and gradual development of matter, the material components for a planetary formation would now have been created, but planetary life itself cannot yet arise. So the Logos could not remain in paranirvana; he had to return, and on this return journey he formed the maha-paranirvana region. From here, the Logos had to make the sacrifice and begin the cycle through matter again, so that other life, besides himself, but out of him, could arise.

All life in manifold forms has emerged from the unity, the one Logos. In him, all diversity still rests undivided, undifferentiated, hidden. As soon as he becomes recognizable, perceiving himself as self, he emerges from the absolute, from the undifferentiated, and creates the non-self, his mirror image, the second logos. He animates and invigorates this mirror image; it is his third aspect, the third logos.

Thus, the first Logos would be the undifferentiated, in which life and form rest undivided, to be regarded as the Father. Time begins with his existence; he separates his reflection from himself, the form, the feminine, which he fills with his life, the second Logos; and from this inspiration, the third Logos emerges as son, as animated form. Thus, all religions have conceived of their God in threefold form, as Father, Mother and Son. Thus Uranus and Gäa, the maternal Earth; and Kronos, Time, emerged from her womb as a son; Osiris, Isis and Horus and so on.

The sacrifice of the Logos is: the spirit descends into matter, animating its reflection, and thus the world of animated forms is also given its existence, all of which lead their special existence and go through the cycle of evolution in order to become one again with the Logos as the most highly developed individualities, who receive the wealth of experience through them. If He had not poured Himself out to animate all these forms, there would be no independent growth and development. All movement, all becoming would have no life of its own; it would only stir and move according to the direction of God.

Just as people are only interested in the unknown, the individual, about people, and are indifferent to anything they can calculate and understand, so too the Logos can only take joy in independently developing life that emerges from it, for which it sacrifices and devotes itself.

The process of development of matter begins, in which the qualities of the being are reflected and are effective until these reflections begin their activity as separate forms and thus spiritualize and animate matter more and more until it becomes one again with the being Atma, Budhi, Manas... [space]

First, the cosmic basis was created by the coming together of the two qualities of selfhood and selflessness of the first Logos. Through the second current of the same, guided by harmony, the atomic essence was formed. This enveloped itself with the already existing mother substance, and the atom was formed. These atoms, with their shells of varying degrees of density, gradually formed matter, which could serve as a medium for the second Logos, which is the mirror image of the first, to give up its mirror image of the same. The second Logos now flows into this matter, which, on its first, the nirvana level, is of such a fine texture that it can flow through it unhindered and unchanged. It now reaches the region of Budhi; here it is detained, and even if in this region selflessness is so strong that it does not want to retain the Logos for its realm, it still claims it for its entire cosmos. Here the sacrifice of the Logos begins, the voice, the sound emerges from it: it wants to animate matter with its spirit, so that its thoughts shall have their existence as independent forms. Here, where the divine thought becomes sound and voice, in the sphere of Budhi, is the divine realm for the Middle Ages. Enveloped in Budhi, the Logos now flows into the mental region, which is divided into the stages of Arupa and Rupa; the divine world of thought now pours into this region, the exemplary ideas surge through each other. What later becomes a special being and still rests enclosed in the Logos in the Budhi sphere is called into existence here as an exemplary idea. This Arupa level of the mental sphere is the world of ideas of Plato, the world of reason of the Middle Ages. On the Arupa level, these ideas take on their first forms. As divine geniuses, they begin their special existence and float around together, still penetrating each other as similar spiritual beings. This is the heavenly realm of the Middle Ages.

These spiritual beings now enter the astral sphere; here, enveloped in a denser substance, they awaken through touch; only now do they feel themselves as separate beings, they feel the separation. It is the elemental realm, the world of the elemental. Having descended into the etheric sphere, this sensation is pushed out from within, it swells up, expands and grows through the etheric vegetative power, only to be enclosed and crystallized by physical matter, because here the ego is still striving mightily for limitation. Thus is the sensation enclosed in the mineral kingdom and the divine ideas sleep in sublime calm in the chaste rock. The stone - a frozen thought of God: “The stones are mute. I have placed and hidden the eternal creator word in them; chaste and shameful, they hold it locked within themselves.” So reads an old Druid saying, a prayer formula. In the Middle Ages, the etheric and physical realms, or mineral kingdom, were called microcosm or the small realm.

As it flowed in, the Logos surrounded itself with ever denser shells until it had learned to define itself firmly in the rock. However, the stones are mute; they cannot reveal the eternal creative word. The rigid physical shell must be cast off again; it remains in its realm, while now the crystalline forms in their soft etheric shell expand, growing from within, that is, being able to live, because life is growth; the stone becomes a plant. And ascending further, the Logos also sheds this etheric shell and arrives at the astral sphere of sensation. Here, through the interaction of touch and perception, activity unfolds; the sentient animal existence is formed out of sensation and will. In this way, the animal gradually develops its organs of perception, with the stimulus from outside acting as a sensation within. The types are formed. Crossing over into the mental realm, this sensation perceives itself, and with the consciousness of self, the stage of humanity is reached.

From the cosmic point of view, the Logos' descent into the mineral kingdom marks its deepest descent into matter, and the casting off of the first shell marks the beginning of the Logos' ascent. Seen from the point of view of man, however, in the anthropocentric sense, as adopted, among others, by the ancient Druid priests, the resting of the spirit in the chaste rock would be an exalted stage of existence. Untouched by selfish will, the stone obeys only the law of causality. For the human being at the lower mental level, at which we now stand, the rock would be a symbol of higher development. Through lower, earthy passions and trials, we develop into an ethereal plant existence, living and growing from within in selfless self-evidence, in order to later live in our causal body, untouched by anything outside, as pure spirit resting within ourselves, like the crystallized spirit enclosed in stone.

The second Logos, as the mover and animator of the matter in which it is enclosed, has only reached as far as the lower mental sphere. Through self-awareness, the sentient animal has reached the human stage of existence. It is able to relate the external world to its personality; it perceives itself. Nature has led and guided him so far, but here she leaves him alone and in freedom. The further development of man now depends solely on his will. He must make himself the vessel, strip off the outer shell of the lower mental sphere, so that he can now receive the inflow of the first Logos, just as the seed opens and waits for fertilization, without which it cannot grow and bear fruit.

The first logos is the eternal in the universe, the immutable law according to which the stars move in their orbits, the basis of all things. The individual forms are subject to destruction and change. We perceive colors with our sensory vision that may appear different to another vision. The external, solid object, which is held together by its parts in a certain form, can disappear at a certain temperature, its parts can dissolve, but the law according to which it has become remains and is eternal. Thus the whole universe moves according to eternal laws, the first logos flows spread out in it. Man must raise himself up to him with his will. He must develop in himself the selfless lower soul knowledge (Antahkarana). He must perceive through pure contemplation this eternal immutable law in the transitory; he must learn to distinguish what is only a transitory phenomenon in a particular form and what is its essential core; he must absorb and preserve what he has seen as a thought. Thus he gradually becomes acquainted with the unreal in the world of phenomena; the thought becomes for him the real; he gradually ascends to the stage of Arupa, he lives in the pure world of thought. The many dissolves for him and merges in the One; he feels himself one with the All. Thus he has raised himself so high that he can receive the inflow from the first Logos directly as intuition. But not to every individual soul does a single soul flow in this way; no, it is the All-Soul, it is the soul of Plato and others, in which he shares, with whom he becomes one in thought. Gradually, the higher man develops from the lower.

At this turning point, where he is to rise up in freedom through his will, he needs a teacher, and that is why the Sons of Manas descended and incarnated in the third race of the fourth round, the Lemurian period, to serve as guides. With the simple act of counting, with the understanding of numbers, mental development began and distinguished the thinking human from the animal, which only senses through the senses.