The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today I have something further to add to what I began yesterday. I am reminding you of something that most of you have already heard from me. When the human being passes through death, the physical body remains behind within the earth-forces; the etheric body dissolves itself into the cosmic forces, and the human being finds his further life, his existence, throughout the realms that lie between death and a new birth. I said that within the human being himself we can follow the formative forces that reach from one life into the next. We know that man is essentially a threefold being, with three independent members; I am referring at first to the formative forces of the physical body, the physical organization. We have the nerve-sense organization, which extends over the whole body, of course, but is localized essentially in the head; we have the rhythmic organization, including the rhythm of the breath, of the circulation, and other rhythms; and we have the metabolic-limb organization, which we consider as one, because man's movements are intimately and organically connected with the metabolism.

You know that every human being has a differently formed head. If we now consider these forces that form the human head—of course you must not think here of the -physical substances but rather of the formative forces, of that which gives to the head its physiognomy, its whole character, its phrenological expression—if we consider these forces, we find them to be those of the metabolic-limb system from the previous incarnation that have now become form. We thus have in the head a metamorphic transformation of the metabolic-limb organization of the previous incarnation. If we consider again what we possess as our metabolic-limb system in this present incarnation, these formative forces are found to be undergoing a metamorphosis and shaping our head for the next incarnation. If we understand the human formation, therefore, we can look back directly, by means of an appropriate cultivation of the metamorphic thought, from the human head of today to the metabolic-limb system of the previous incarnation; and we can see from the present metabolic-limb system forward to the head organization of the next incarnation.

This conception—which in our spiritual science and throughout the spiritual science of all ages has played a particular role—of the truths concerning repeated earthly lives does not remain airy, without substantiation; rather, whoever understands the human organization can read these truths directly from the human organization. The present trend of natural science, however, is as far as possible from embarking upon the sort of investigation that would be necessary here. If one studies the human being through anatomy and physiology alone, it is naturally impossible not to arrive at the foolish conception that the liver can be investigated in the same way as the lungs. One places the liver next to the lungs on the dissecting table and regards them as organs of equal value, since both consist of cells, and so on. One can obtain no knowledge of these things in such a way, and two organ systems that are as different from one another as the lungs and liver cannot be studied merely outwardly by comparison of their cellular configuration, as will necessarily follow from present-day conceptions.

If we really wish to discover the pertinent relationships, methods must be employed by means of which a conception of these things may be gained. If the methods that I described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment are sufficiently developed, human cognition is greatly strengthened, reinforced. I am repeating here certain things that I already explained in lectures given last autumn in the Goetheanum. Our ordinary cognition is strengthened, that cognition through which we look out, by means of the senses, into our environment and through which we also look into our inner being, where we at first perceive our thinking, feeling, and willing. If we broaden this cognition, if we broaden it as is possible through the exercises that have often been described, our view in relation to the outer world changes, and in such a way that as a consequence one sees that it is absolute nonsense to speak of atoms as is done with the present world conception. What is behind sense beholding, behind sense qualities, behind yellow and red, behind C-sharp, G, and so forth, is not vibration but spiritual being-ness (Wesenhaftigheit). The world from without becomes ever more spiritual the further we press forward in cognition. One thereby really ceases to take seriously all those constructions derived from chemical or similar conceptions. All atomism is thoroughly driven from the mind when one broadens cognition from without. Behind the phenomena of the senses there is a spiritual world.

If, through such a broadened cognition, we look more deeply into the inner being, there arises—as I pointed out yesterday—not that confused mystical beholding, which does indeed form a transition that is quite justified, but there arises instead, when cognition of the inner being is developed, a psychic cognition of the organs. We learn really to recognize our inner being; while from without our cognition is more and more spiritualized, from within it is at first materialized. Working from this inner being, the real spiritual researcher—not the nebulous mystic—will become acquainted with each single organ. He learns to know the differentiated human organism. We reach into the spiritual world by no other path than by way of this observation of our inner materiality. Without learning to know lungs, liver, and so forth, one also does not learn to know, by way of this inner being, any kind of spiritual enthusiasm, which works away from the confusion of mysticism and works toward a concrete cognition of the inner organs of the human being.

At all events, one learns to know more precisely the configuration of the soul element. To begin with, one learns to give up the prejudice that our soul element is merely connected with the nerve-sense apparatus. Only the world of mental images is connected with the nerve-sense apparatus, while the world of feeling no longer is. The world of feeling is connected directly with the rhythmic organism, and the world of will is connected with the metabolic-limb organism. If I will something, something must take place in my metabolic-limb organism. The nervous system is there only in order that one can have mental images of what actually takes place in the will. There are no "nerves of will," as I have often stated; the division of nerves into sensory nerves and motor nerves is nonsense. The nerves are all of one kind, and the so-called nerves of will or motor nerves exist for no other purpose than to perceive inwardly the processes of will; they too are sensory nerves.

If we study this thoroughly, we come at last to consider the human organization in its entirety. Take the lung organization, the liver organization, and so forth. You reach a point, looking inward, at which you survey, as it were, the surface of the individual organs, of course by means of a spiritual gaze directed inward. What exactly is the surface of our organs? This surface is nothing other than a reflecting apparatus for the soul life. What we perceive and also what we work through in thought reflects itself upon the surface of all our inner organs, and this reflection signifies our recollections, our memory during life. Thus, after we have perceived and worked through something, it mirrors itself upon the outer surface of our heart, lungs, spleen, and so forth, and what is thus thrown back constitutes our recollections. With a not-very-intensive training you already notice how certain thoughts ray back over the whole organism in recollection. The most varied organs take part in this. If it is a question of remembering very abstract thoughts, let us say, then the lungs participate very strongly, the surface of the lungs. If it is a question of thoughts colored by feeling, of thoughts that have a nuance of feeling, then the surface of the liver is strongly involved. Thus we really can describe in detail very well how the individual organs of the human being take part in this raying back that appears as memory, as the power of recollection. When we focus on the soul element we must not say that in the nervous system alone lies the parallel organism for the soul life—rather, in the entire human organism lies the parallel organization for the human soul life.

In this connection much knowledge that once existed as instinct has simply been lost. It still exists in certain words, but people no longer sense how wisdom is preserved in these words. For example, if someone had a tendency to come to his recollections in a state of depression, it was called in ancient Greece hypochondria, meaning a process of cartilage-formation or ossification of the abdomen, where, as a result of this ossification, the reflection was brought about in such a way as to make memory a source of hypochondria. The entire organism is involved in these things. This is something that must be kept in mind.

When speaking of the power of recollection, I spoke of the surface of the organs. Everything we experienced strikes the surfaces, as it were, is reflected, and that leads to recollections. Something also enters the organism at the same time, however. In ordinary life this is transmuted, undergoes a metamorphosis, so that the organ produces a secretion. The organs having this function are mostly glandular organs. They have an inner secretion, and such forces as enter during life are transformed into secretions. Not everything is transformed in this way into organic metabolism and the like; rather certain organs instead absorb something that becomes latent within them and constitutes an inner force. For example, all thoughts that we absorb in this way are connected mainly with outer objects. The forces developed in these thoughts are stored, as it were, in the inner aspect of the lungs.

You know that the inner aspect of the lungs comes into activity through the metabolism, through the movement of the limbs, and these forces are transmuted in such a way that during life between birth and death our lungs are a reservoir, as it were, of forces that are continually influenced by the metabolic-limb organism. When we die, such forces have been stored up. The physical matter, of course, falls away, but these forces are not lost; they accompany us through death and through the entire life between death and a new birth. And when we enter a new incarnation, it is these forces that were in the lungs that form our head outwardly, that stamp upon our head outwardly the physiognomy. What the phrenologist wishes to study in the outer form of the head must be sought in an earlier form in the inner aspect of the lungs in the previous incarnation.

You see from life to life how concretely the transformation of forces may be traced. When this is done these things are no longer seen as merely abstract truths but will be beheld concretely, as one can also behold physical things concretely. Spiritual science becomes truly valuable only if one penetrates into individual concrete facts in this way. If one speaks about repeated earthly lives and so forth only in generalities, these are mere words. They acquire meaning only if one can enter into the individual concrete facts.

If what has been stored in the lungs is not controlled in the right way, it is pressed out, as I said yesterday, in the same way as water in a sponge is pressed out, and then, from what actually should only form the head in the next incarnation there arise abnormal phenomena that are usually designated as compulsive thoughts or illusions. It is an interesting chapter in a higher physiology to study in persons suffering from lung disease the strange notions that arise in the advanced stages of the disease. This is connected with what I have just explained to you, with the abnormal pressing-out of thoughts.

You see, the thoughts that thus are pressed out are compulsive thoughts, because they already contain the forming force. The thoughts that now we ought normally to have in consciousness must be only pictures; they must not have in themselves a forming force; they must not compel us. Through the long period between death and a new birth these thoughts do compel us; then they are causative, they work in a forming way. During earthly life they must not overwhelm us; they must use their force only during the transition from one life into another. This is the point to be considered.

If you now study the liver in the same way as I have just explained regarding the lungs, you will discover that within the liver are concentrated all the forces that in the next incarnation determine the inner disposition of the brain. Again by way of the metabolic organism of the present life, the inner forces of the liver pass over, this time not into the form of the head, as with the lungs, but into the inner disposition of the brain. Whether or not someone is to be an acute thinker in the next incarnation depends upon how he behaves in the present incarnation. Thus by way of the metabolism there may appear within the liver certain forces; if these forces are pressed out during the present incarnation, however, they lead to hallucinations or to powerful visions.

You therefore see concretely now what I pointed out yesterday in abstractions: that these things arise through being pressed out of the organs; then they push their way into consciousness, and, out of the general hallucinatory life that should extend from one incarnation into the next, they assert themselves within a single incarnation and make their abnormal appearance in this way.

If we study in the same way everything that is connected with the kidney-excretory organs, we will see that they concentrate within themselves the forces that in the next incarnation influence the head organization more from the emotional side. The kidney organs, the organs of excretion, bring forth in preparation for the next incarnation essentially that which has to do with the temperamental tendencies in the broadest sense, but by way of the head organization.

If these forces are pressed out during the present incarnation, they display all the nervous conditions, all the conditions connected with over-excitement of the human being, inner or soul over-excitement specifically, hypochondriacal conditions, depression, and so forth, in short all the conditions connected particularly with this side of the metabolism.

In fact, everything that is memorable more from the feeling or emotional side is also connected with what is reflected from the kidneys. If we consider lung or liver reflections, we find them to be more memory pictures, the actual memory pictures (Gedaechtnisvorstellungen). If we turn to the kidney system, we see there what we have as lasting habits in this incarnation, and within the kidney system are being prepared the temperamental tendencies in the broadest sense which, by way of the head organization, are intended for the next incarnation.

Let us study the heart in a similar way. For spiritual scientific research, the heart is also an extraordinarily interesting organ. You know that our trivial science is inclined to treat knowledge of the heart quite lightly. It looks upon the heart as a pump, a pump that pumps the blood through the body. Nothing more absurd than this can be believed, for the heart has nothing whatsoever to do with pumping the blood; rather the blood is set into activity by the entire mobility (Regsamkeit) of the astral body, of the I, and the heart is only a reflection of these movements. The movement of the blood is an autonomous movement, and the heart only brings to expression the movement of the blood caused by these forces. The heart is in fact only the organ that expresses the movement of the blood; the heart itself has no activity in relation to this movement of the blood. Contemporary natural scientists become very angry if you speak of this issue. Many years ago, I think in 1904 or 1905, on a journey to Stockholm, I explained this issue to a natural scientist, a medical man, and he was almost apoplectic about the idea that the heart should no longer be regarded as a pump but that the blood itself comes into movement through its own vitality, that the heart is simply inserted in the general movement of the blood, participating with its beat, and so on.

Something is reflected from the surface of the heart that is no longer merely a matter of habit or memory but is life that is already spiritualized when it reaches the outer surface of the heart. For what is thrown back from the heart are the pangs of conscience. This is to be considered, I would like to say, entirely from the physical aspect: the pangs of conscience that radiate into our consciousness are what is reflected by the heart from our experiences. Spiritual knowledge of the heart teaches us this.

If we look into the inner aspect of the heart, however, we see gathered there forces that also stem from the entire metabolic-limb organism, and because what is connected with the heart, with the heart forces, is spiritualized, within it is also spiritualized that which is connected with our outer life, with our deeds. However strange and paradoxical it may sound to a person who is clever in the modern sense, the fact remains that the forces thus prepared within the heart are the karmic tendencies, they are the tendencies of karma. It is revoltingly foolish to speak of the heart as a mere pumping mechanism, for the heart is the organ which, through mediation of the metabolic-limb system, carries what we understand as karma into the next incarnation.

You see, if one learns to know this organization, one learns to differentiate it, and it manifests then in its connection with the entire life, which extends beyond birth and death. One sees then into the entire structure of the human being. We have not been able to speak of the head, in speaking about transformations, for the head is simply cast off; its forces are fulfilled with this incarnation, having been transformed from the previous incarnation. What we have in these four main systems, however—in lung-, liver-, kidney-, and heart-systems—passes in a form-building way through the metabolic-limb system and forms our head with all its tendencies in the next incarnation. We must seek within the organs of the body for the forces that will carry over into the next incarnation what we are now experiencing.

The human metabolism is by no means the mere simmering and seething of chemicals in a test-tube that modern physiology describes. You need only take a single step, and a certain metabolism is produced. This metabolism that is produced is not merely a chemical process, which may be examined by means of physiology, of chemistry, but bears within it at the same time a moral coloring, a moral nuance. And this moral nuance is, in fact, stored in the heart and carried over as karmic force into the next incarnation. To study the entire human being means to find in him the forces that reach beyond earthly life. Our head itself is a sphere. Only because the rest of the organism is attached to it is this spherical shape modified. When we go through death we must, in the soul-spiritual organization that remains to us, adapt ourselves to the entire cosmos. The entire cosmos then receives us. Up to the middle point of the period between two incarnations—I have called this point, in one of my Mystery Dramas, the Midnight Hour of Existence—up to this moment, if I may express myself in this way, we continue to expand into the environment. We gradually become identical with the environment, and what thus proceeds from us into the environment gives the configuration for the astral and the etheric of the next incarnation.

This is determined essentially out of the cosmos within the mother. Through the father and fertilization comes that which is formed in the physical and what is in the ego. This ego, as it is then, after the Midnight Hour of Existence, actually passes over into an entirely different world. It passes over into that world through which it can then take this path through the paternal nature. This is an extremely significant process. The period up to the Midnight Hour of Existence and the period following it—both periods between death and a new birth—are actually very different from each other. In my lecture cycle in Vienna in 1914 (The Inner Nature of Man, Vienna, 1914, six lectures), I described these experiences from within. If we look at them more from the outside, we must say that the I is more cosmic in the first half, up to the Midnight Hour, and prepares in the cosmos that which then enters the next incarnation indirectly, by way of the mother. From the Midnight Hour of Existence until the next birth, the I passes over into what the ancient mysteries called the underworld. On the detour through this underworld it takes the path through fertilization. There the two poles of the human being basically meet, through the mother and the father: from the upper world and from the underworld.

At least as far as I know, what I am now saying was an essential content of the Egyptian mysteries, coming out of the instinctive ancient knowledge. The Egyptian mysteries led particularly to knowledge of what they called at that time the upper and lower gods, the upper world and underworld of the gods; and it may be said that in the act of fertilization a polar equilibrium of the upper world and underworld of the gods is brought about. The I between death and a new birth goes first through this upper world and then through the lower world. In ancient times there were not at all the strange connotations that many today connect with upper world and underworld. People of today nearly always look upon the upper world as the good and the underworld as the bad. These connotations were not originally connected with these worlds; they were simply the two polarities that had to participate in the general world formation. In directly experiencing the upper world, one perceived, beheld, it more,as the world of light, and the underworld more as the world of heaviness: heaviness and light as the two polarities, if one wishes to express it more outwardly. You thus see that things can be described concretely.

Regarding the other organs, I have told you that the out-flowing of organic forces can become hallucinatory life, especially what is pressed out of the liver system. If the heart presses out its contents, however, this is really a system of forces, pushed out and brought into consciousness, that call forth in the next incarnation that strange inclination to live out one's karma. If one observes how karma works itself out, it may be said from the human side that this living out of karma can only be described as a kind of hunger and its satisfaction.

This must be understood in the following way. Let us proceed first from the standpoint of ordinary life. Let us take a striking event: a woman meets a man and begins to love him. Now, as this is usually regarded, it is somewhat as if you were to cut a little piece from the Sistine Madonna—for example, a little finger from the Jesus boy—and were to gaze at it. You have, of course, a piece of the Sistine Madonna, but you do not see anything. Neither do you see anything if you merely consider the fact that a woman meets a man and begins to love him. The matter is not like that; one must trace it back. Before the woman met the man, she had been in other places in the world; before that she had been somewhere else, and still earlier somewhere else again. You can find all sorts of reasons that the woman went from one place to another. This conceals itself, of course, in the subconscious, but there is reason in it, there is an inner connection throughout, and by going back into childhood one can retrace the path.

The woman in question—and this is directed at no one in particular—follows the path from the beginning, which culminates in the event under discussion. The human being, when he is born, hungers to do what he does, and he does not give up until he satisfies this hunger. The pressing forward to a karmic event is a result of such a generalized spiritual feeling of hunger. One is driven to the event. It just so happens that the entire human being has such forces within him that lead to later events, in spite of the freedom that exists nevertheless but plays itself out in a different realm. The forces that manifest themselves as such a hunger, leading to karmic fulfillment, living themselves out in this way, are concentrated in the heart; and when they are pressed out and thereby come into consciousness in the present incarnation, they create pictures that form a stimulus, and then raving madness results. Raving madness is basically a premature living out in this incarnation of a force of karma intended for the following incarnation. Think how differently one must accustom oneself to look upon world events if these connections are understood. Of course, if a person suffered from raving madness in the present incarnation—or if one were that fellow who ruled Spain once—he would say that if God had permitted him to rule the world, he would have done it better! People thus ask questions such as, why did God create raving madness? Raving madness has plenty of good reasons for existing, but everything working in this world can appear at the wrong time, and the displaced manifestation, in this case brought about by Luciferic forces—everything that works prematurely in the world is brought about by the activity of Luciferic forces—the manifestation in this incarnation of karmic forces intended for the next incarnation creates raving madness.

You see, what is to be carried over and continued in another life can actually be studied in the abnormalities of a present life.

You can easily imagine what a strong distinction exists between what now rests in our heart through our entire incarnation and the condition in which this will be once it has gone through the long development between death and a new birth, then coming into appearance in the outer behavior of a human being in the new life.

However, if you look into the inner aspect of your hearts, you can perceive quite well—though of course only latently, not in a finished picture—what you will do in your next life. We need not confine ourselves to the general, abstract statement that what will work itself out karmically in the next life is prepared in this one, but we can point directly to the vessel in which resides the karma of the following incarnations. These are the things that must be penetrated concretely if one wishes to practice a real spiritual science.
You can imagine what enormous significance these things will gain when they are studied and made a part of the general education. What does modern medicine know of the possibility of a liver or heart disease when it does not know the most important fact of all, that is, the actual purpose of these organs? And this it does not know. It has not even discovered a correct connection between excitatory hallucinations and, let us say, the kidney system, nor does it understand that calm hallucinations, those that merely appear, are liver hallucinations, as it were. Hallucinations that appear as though crawling on a person so that the victim wants to brush them off come from the kidney system. These are excitatory hallucinations, which have to do with the emotional system, with the system of temperament. From such symptoms a much more sure diagnosis can be made than by the diagnostic means in ordinary use today. Diagnoses based upon purely outer evidence are very unsure in comparison with what they would be were these things studied.

Now all these things are connected with the outer world. The lungs, as inner organs or organ system, actually contain the compressed compulsive thoughts and everything that we take up in perceiving outer objects and concentrating these in the lungs. The liver relates to the outer world in an entirely different way. Precisely because the lungs preserve, as it were, the thought material, they are structured quite differently. They are more closely connected with the earthly element, with the earth element. The liver, which conceals hallucinations, particularly the calm hallucinations, the hallucinations that merely appear, is connected with the fluid system and therefore with water. The kidney system, paradoxical as it sounds, is connected with the air element. One naturally thinks that this ought to be the case with the lungs, but the lungs as organs are connected with the earth element, though not only with it. On the other hand, the kidney system—as an organ—is connected with the air element, and the heart system as an organ is connected with the warmth element; it is formed entirely out of the warmth element. This element, therefore, which is the most spiritual, is also the one that takes up the inclination for karma into these exceptionally fine warmth structures that we have in the warmth organism.

Since the entire human being stands in relationship to the outer world, you can say to yourself that the lungs have a particular relationship to the outer world in connection with the earthly element, and the liver in regard to the watery element. If you examine the earthly qualities of plants you will find in them the remedies for everything connected with diseases that have their origin in the lungs (this must be considered, of course, in its broadest implications). If you take what circulates in the plant, the circulation of the plant's juices, you will have therein the remedy for all disturbances connected with the liver organization. Thus a study of the reciprocal relationship of the organs to the environment offers, in fact, the foundation for a rational therapy.

Our present therapy is a jumble of empirical notes. One can come to a really rational therapy only by studying in this way the reciprocal relationships between the world of organs within the human being and the outer world. Of course the sensual longing for subjective mysticism must then be overcome. If the aim is to reach no further than the well-known "little divine flame" of Meister Eckhardt and so on, if the outpouring of a mere sensual delight in the inner world is the aim, having beautiful images without penetrating through this entire element to the concrete configuration of the inner organs, then one cannot really penetrate to significant therapeutic knowledge. For this knowledge yields itself upon the path of a true mysticism, which advances to the concrete reality of the inner element of the human being. Just as there we penetrate into the inner element of the human being and by way of this inner element learn to know the passage through the incarnations, just as we learn to know this inner life of the human being, so we reach, when we study the outer world, through the sense world, through the tapestry of the senses, into the spiritual. We ascend into the world of the spiritual hierarchies, which we did not find by way of inner mysticism. The hierarchies are found by way of a deeper view of the, outer world. Upon this path something yields itself that may first be expressed in analogies. They are not merely analogies, however, for there exist much deeper relationships.

We breathe, of course, and I recently calculated for you the number of breaths we take in twenty-four hours. If we count eighteen breaths to the minute, we have in an hour 60 x 18, and in twenty-four hours 25,920 breaths, in a day and a night.

Let us take another rhythm in the human being, the rhythm of day and night itself. When you awake in the morning, you draw into your physical and etheric bodies the astral body and I. This is also a breathing. In the morning you inhale the astral body and I, and when you fall asleep at night you exhale them again; thus one complete breath in twenty-four hours, in one day. There are 365 such breaths in a year. Take the average age of a human being, 72 years, and you arrive at approximately the same figure, 25,920. If I had not started with 72 but a figure somewhat lower, I would have reached the same figure. That is to say, if you take the entire earthly life of the human being and you see each single day, each falling asleep and awakening, as one breath, you have then in an entire life as many inhalations and exhalations of the astral body and I as you have breaths in twenty-four hours. You take in the course of your life just as many breaths of the astral body and I as you take daily in breathing the air. These rhythms are in absolute correspondence, and we see how the human being is fitted into the world. The life of one day, sunrise to sunset, therefore a single circuit, corresponds to an inner sunrise and sunset that lasts from birth to death.

You see, the human being incorporates himself into the entire world, and I would like to close these considerations by pointing out to you an idea, asking you to think it through, to make it a subject of meditation. Science today pictures a world process, and within this world process the earth is thought to have arisen. Natural science believes that in the end, when entropy is fulfilled, the earth will end in a warmth death, and so on. If today one forms for oneself a view such as the Copernican view, or any modification of Copernicanism, one takes into consideration only the forces that formed the earth out of the primeval mist, and human life basically becomes a sort of fifth wheel on the wagon, for the geologist, the astronomer, does not take the human being into consideration. It does not occur to him to seek at all within the human being for the primal cause of a future shaping of the world. For modern science, the human being is everywhere present in this world process, but he is the fifth wheel on the wagon—the world process takes its course, but he has nothing to do with it. Picture it in this way: this whole world process comes to an end, ceases, dissolves itself in space. It ceases, and the primal causes of what then happens lie within the human skin, within the human being; there they continue. The origin of what is now the world lies far back within the human being in primeval ages. This is a reality. Just as the books of ancient wisdom relate such things to us in their own language, so the word of Christ Jesus also point to these things: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” All that constitutes the material world passes away, but that which comes from the spirit and the soul and is expressed in words survives the destruction of the earth and lives on into the future. The primal causes of the future do not lie outside our skin, and the geologists need not look for them in the ground. Rather we must seek them within, in the inner forces of our organization, which at first pass over into our next earthly life but then continue in other metamorphoses. Hence when you search for the future of the world you must look into the human being. Everything that is outer perishes utterly.

The nineteenth century erected a barrier against this knowledge, and this barrier is called the law of the conservation of energy.

This law of the conservation of energy carries forward the forces residing in man's environment, but all these will dissolve and disappear. Only what arises within the human being builds the future. It is impossible to think of anything more false than the law of the conservation of energy. In reality its result is simply to make the human being a fifth wheel in the world process. It is not the statement of the law of the conservation of energy that is correct but rather that other saying: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” This is the correct statement. These two statements are diametrically opposed to one another, and it is simply a lack of thought when today certain adherents to this or that positive denomination wish to be believers in the Bible and at the same time adherents to the theories of modern physics. This is simply dishonesty, which appears today to be culturally creative. This dishonesty must be driven from the field of creative culture—which it actually opposes—if we are to emerge from these forces of decline into forces of ascent.

If we wish to develop an understanding of spiritual investigation we must first of all have a clear idea about the different states of consciousness which it is possible for the human soul to experience. In his normal life on Earth today man enjoys a well-defined state of consciousness which is characterized by the fact that he experiences a clear distinction between waking and sleeping, which, though not coincident in time, correspond approximately with the imaginary passage of the Sun round the Earth, that is to say, with the duration of a single revolution of the Earth on its axis. At the present time, however, this correspondence has been interrupted to some extent. If we look back into the not very distant past with its ordered system of life we find that men worked approximately from sunrise to sunset and slept from sunset to sunrise.

This ordered existence has partly broken down today. In fact, I have known men who have reversed their habits of life; they slept by day and were awake by night. I have often enquired into the reason for this. The people concerned who, for the most part, were poets and authors told me that it couldn't be helped; that sort of thing was inseparable from literary composition. Yet when I came across them at night I never found them writing poetry!

Now I wish to emphasize that for the consciousness of today it is most important that we are awake during the daytime or for a corresponding period and that we sleep for a period equivalent to the hours of darkness. Many things are bound up with this form of consciousness, amongst them that we attach special value to sense-perceptions; they become for us the prime reality. Yet when we turn from sense-perceptions to thoughts we regard them as a pale reflection without the reality of sense-perceptions.

Nowadays we regard a chair as a reality. You can set it down on the floor; you can hear the noise it makes. You know that you can sit on it. But the thought of the chair is not regarded as real. If you bash a thought on the head, believing it to be located there, you hear nothing. Nor do you believe—and rightly so, given the present constitution of man—that you could sit down on the thought of a chair. You would be far from pleased if only thoughts of chairs were provided in this hall!

And many other things are connected with this experience of consciousness, a consciousness that is related to the orbital period of the Sun. Circumstances were different for those whose life-pattern was ordered and directed by the Mysteries, by the Chaldean Mysteries, for example, of which I spoke yesterday. Those people lived at a level of consciousness quite different from that of today.

Let me illustrate this difference by a somewhat trivial example. According to our calendar we reckon 365 days to the year; this is not quite accurate however. If we continued to reckon 365 days to the year over the centuries we would eventually get out of step with the Sun. We should lag behind the positions of the Sun. We therefore intercalate a day every four years. Thus, over relatively long periods of time we return approximately to congruency.

How did the Chaldeans deal with this problem in the very early days? For long periods they used a reckoning similar to ours, but they arrived at it in a different way. Because they reckoned 360 days to the year they were obliged to intercalate a whole month every six years, whereas we reckon a leap year, with an additional day, every four years. So they had six years of twelve months each, followed by a year of 13 months.

Modern scholars have recorded and confirmed these facts. But they are unaware that this chronological difference is bound up with profound changes in human consciousness. These Chaldeans who intercalated a month every six years instead of an extra day every four years, had a completely different outlook on the world from ourselves. They did not experience the difference between day and night in the same way. As I mentioned yesterday, their daytime experience was not as clear and vivid as ours. If someone with our present-day consciousness comes into this hall and looks around, he will, of course, see the people in the audience here in sharply defined outlines, some closer together, others further apart and so on.

This was not so amongst those who received their inspiration from the Chaldean Mysteries. In those days they saw a person sitting, for example, not as we see him now, for that was rare at that time, but surrounded by an auric cloud which was part of him. And whilst we, in our mundane way, see each individual in sharply defined outlines sitting on his chair and the whole so clear-cut that we can easily count the number present, the old Chaldeans would have seen each block of chairs to the right and left of the gangway surrounded by a kind of auric cloud, drifting like patches of mist—here a cloud, there a cloud and then darker areas and these darker areas would have indicated the human beings.

This kind of visual experience would still have been known in the earliest Chaldean times, though not in later periods. By day the old Chaldeans would have seen only the dark areas of this nebulous image. At night they would have seen something very similar, even in a condition of sleep, for their sleep was not as deep as ours. It was more dreamlike. Today, if someone were asleep and you were all sitting here, he would not see anything of you at all. In olden times this deep sleep was unknown; men would have seen the visionary form of the auric cloud to the right and left with the individuals as points of light within it. Thus the difference in the perception of conditions by day and by night was not so marked in those times as it is today. For this reason they were unaware of the difference between the sunlight during the daytime and its absence at night. They saw the Sun by day as a luminous sphere surrounded by a magnificent aura.

They pictured to themselves the following:—below was the Earth; everywhere above the Earth, water, and higher still the snows considered to be the source of the Euphrates. Over all this, they thought, was the air and in the heights was the Sun, travelling from East to West and surrounded by a most beautiful aura. Then they imagined the existence of something like a funnel, as we should call it today; in the evening the Sun descended into this funnel and emerged again in the morning.

But they actually saw the Sun in this funnel. The evening Sun was seen approximately as follows: a luminous, greenish-blue centre, surrounded by a reddish-yellow halo. This was the image they had of the Sun—in the morning the Sun emerged from the funnel, luminous in the centre and surrounded by a halo. It travelled across the vault of heaven, slipped into the funnel on the Western horizon, took on a deeper hue, displayed a halo projecting beyond the funnel and then was lost to view. People spoke of a funnel or hollow space because to them the Sun was dark or black. They described things exactly as they saw them.

And again a deep impression was made upon them in those early times when they looked back to the first six or seven years of their childhood and perceived how, during those years, they were still unmistakably clothed in that divine element in which they had lived before incarnation, how, between the seventh and fourteenth year they began to emerge from the spiritual egg until the process was finally completed in their twentieth year. It was only at this age that they really felt themselves to be Earth beings. And then they realized the more keenly the difference between day and night.

They observed in themselves periodic changes in development every six or seven years. This was in accordance with the lunar phases. The Moon phases of twenty-eight days corresponded with the pattern of their own life experience of periods of six or seven years. And they felt that a Moon phase of one month was equivalent, in the life of man, to a period of twenty-eight years (4 X 7 years). This they expressed in the calendar by inserting an intercalary month every seventh year. In brief, their calculations were based on the Moon, not the Sun.

Furthermore, they did not see external nature as we do today, sharply defined and devoid of spirit. The nature they observed both by day and by night was permeated by a spiritual aura. Today we have a clear, daylight consciousness; we see nothing by night. This is shown by the importance we attribute to the Sun which causes the alternation of day and night.

In the Mystery-wisdom of the ancient Chaldeans the emphasis was placed not on the Sun, but on the Moon, because its phases were a faithful reflection of their own growth to maturity. They felt themselves to be differently constituted at each stage—as children, as youth and as adults—but we no longer experience this today. On looking back there seemed to be very little difference between the first and second seven years. Nowadays children are so very clever that we cannot hit it off with them at all! Special methods of education will have to be devised in order to cope with them. They are as clever as grown-ups and everyone seems equally clever, whatever his age.

It was not so with the ancient Chaldeans. At that time children were still linked with the spiritual world; when they grew up they had not forgotten this relationship and realized that only later had they become earthly beings, after having emerged from the auric egg. So their calculations were based not on the Sun but on the Moon, on the quarterly phases reckoned in periods of seven which they observed in the heavens. Therefore every seven years they inscribed an intercalary month, a period calculated according to the lunar phases.

This outward sign in the history of civilisations, the fact that we intercalate an additional day every 4 years, whilst the Chaldeans intercalated an additional month every 7 years, indicates that in reality, though their day consciousness was not sharply divided from their night consciousness, they experienced none the less wide differences in their states of consciousness during the successive life-periods.

Today, when we wake in the morning and rub the sleep out of our eyes, we say: “I have slept.” The ancient Chaldeans felt that they awoke in their twenty-first or twenty-second year; then they began to see the world clearly and said: “I have been asleep up to this moment.” They believed that they preserved a waking consciousness up to their fiftieth year and that in old age they did not revert to their former condition but developed a fuller, clearer vision. For this reason the old men were looked upon as the sages, who, with the consciousness acquired since the age of twenty, now entered the realm of sleep, but remained highly clairvoyant.

Thus the old Chaldeans knew three states of consciousness. We experience two, with the addition of a third which we characterize as a dream condition: waking, sleeping, dreaming. A Chaldean did not experience these three conditions from day to day; he experienced a diminished condition of consciousness up to his twentieth year, then a consciously waking condition up to his fiftieth year. And then a condition where it was said of him: he is taking his earthly consciousness into the spiritual world. He has arrived at the stage when he knows much more, is wiser than other people.

Those advanced in years were looked up to as sages; today they are considered to be in their dotage. This tremendous difference strikes at the very roots of human existence. We must be quite clear about this difference for it is enormously important for the being of man. We do not survey the world simply through a single state of consciousness. We learn to know the world only when we understand the form of consciousness which, for example, was common to the children of ancient Chaldea. It resembled our own dream state, though it was more active, capable of stimulating the individual to action. Today it would be considered to be a pathological condition. This condition of waking consciousness that we find so prosaic today and take for granted was unknown in those times. I use the term prosaic advisedly, for to concentrate on the physical aspects of man and depict them in this guise is prosaic. This would not be readily admitted, of course, but it is so. In ancient Chaldea man was perceived both as a physical entity and as endowed with an aura, as I have described. And the sages saw beyond the physical into the souls of men.

This was a third state of consciousness which is extinguished today. It may be compared to a state of dreamless sleep. If we look at the situation historically, we find that we encounter states of consciousness very different from our own, and the further back we go, the wider are the divergences. By comparison, our normal states of consciousness today are nothing much to boast of. We set no store on what a person may experience in dreamless sleep because, as a rule, he has little to relate. There are few, very few, today who can tell us anything of their experiences in dreamless sleep. Dream life, it is said, is fantasy, mere coinage of the brain; the only desirable, the only reliable state is the condition of waking consciousness.

The ancient Chaldeans did not share this attitude. The childlike condition of consciousness with its fresh and vigorous dream life that invited positive action, was held to be the condition when children still lived in a paradisal state, when their utterances proceeded from the Gods. People listened to them because they had brought a wealth of information from the spiritual world.

In the course of time they reached the state of consciousness when they were Earth beings, but in their auras they were still beings of soul, spiritual beings. This was the condition of consciousness enjoyed by the seers or sages. When people listened to them they were convinced that they were receiving communications from the spiritual world.

And of those who rose ever higher in the Mysteries it was said that in their fiftieth year they transcended the purely solar element and entered into the spiritual world; from Sun-heroes they became Fathers who were in communion with the spiritual home of mankind.

Thus, from a historical perspective, I wished to indicate to you how mankind came to share these various states of consciousness.

In exploring the states of consciousness let us set aside for a moment the dreamless sleep of present-day man and examine the ordinary waking state with which you are familiar when you say: I am fully conscious, I see objects around me, hear other people speak to me, converse with them and so on.

And then let us take the second condition, known to all of you when you imagine yourself to be asleep, when dreams arise which are often so terrifying or so marvellously liberating that you are constrained to say if you are in a normally healthy state: these things are not part of ordinary, everyday life; they are a kaleidoscopic effect created by the play of natural fantasy, and force their way into man's consciousness in the most varied ways. The prosaic type will pay little attention to dreams; the superstitious will interpret them in an external way, the poetically endowed who is neither matter of fact nor superstitious, is still aware of this kaleidoscopic life of dreams. For out of the depths of uncorrupted human nature emerges something which does not have the significance attributed to it by superstitious people but which indicates, none the less, that, in sleep, experiences rise up from the instinctual life like mists or clouds—just as mountains rise up and after long ages disappear again. Only the difference is that all this takes place rapidly in dream life, whilst in the Cosmos dream pictures are slowly built up and slowly disappear.

Dreams have another peculiarity. We may dream of snakes all around us, of snakes entwined round our bodies. Cocaine addicts, for example, will have this dream-experience of snakes in an exaggerated form. The victims of this vice feel snakes crawling out of every part of their body even when they are awake.

When we observe our own life we realize that such dreams indicate some internal disturbance. Dreams about snakes point to some digestive disorder. The peristaltic movements of the intestines are symbolized in the dream as the writhing of snakes.

Again, a man may dream he is going for a walk and comes to a place where a white post stands—a white post or stone pillar which is damaged at the top. In his dream he feels uneasy about this damaged top. He wakes up to find he has toothache! Unconsciously he feels the urge to finger one of his teeth. (I am referring to the present-day man; the man of ancient times was above such things). The typical man of today decides to go to the dentist and have the decayed tooth filled.

What is the explanation of this? This whole experience associated with a painful tooth, indicating some organic disturbance, is symbolized in a picture. The tooth becomes a ‘white post’ that shows signs of damage or decay. In the dream picture we become aware of something that is actually situated within our organism.

Or again, we have a vivid dream that we are in a room where we feel suffocated; we feel restless and uneasy. Then suddenly—we had not noticed it before—we catch sight of a stove in the corner which is very hot. The room was overheated. We now know in the dream why we could not breathe—the room was too hot. We wake up with palpitations and a racing pulse. The irregular pulse was symbolized externally in the dream. There is some malfunctioning of the organism; we become aware of it, but not immediately, as we would have done in the daytime. We become aware of it through a symbolic picture. Or we may dream that there is bright sunshine outside. The sunlight disturbs us and we become uneasy, though normally we would welcome the sunshine. We wake up and find a neighbour's house on fire. An external event is not depicted as such, but is clothed in symbolic form.

Thus we see that a natural creative imagination is at work in dreams; external events are reflected in dreams. But we need not insist upon this. The dream can, so to speak, come to life and take on its own inner meaning and essential reality. We may dream of something that cannot be related to anything in the external world. When that point is reached in gradual stages, we say that a totally different world is portrayed in our dreams; we encounter quite other beings, demoniacal or beautiful and elf-like. It is not only the phenomenal world that appears in dream pictures, but a wholly different world invades us. Human beings can dream of the super-sensible world in the form of images perceptible by the senses.

Thus the consciousness of man today has a dream life alongside his ordinary waking life. Indeed, a disposition to dreaming makes us poets. People who are unable to dream will always be inferior poets. For in order to be a poet or artist, one must be able to translate the natural stuff of dreams into the imaginative fantasy of waking life.

Anyone, for example, whose dreams draw their symbolism from external objects, as in the dream where sunshine pouring into a room symbolized a neighbour's house on fire, will feel next day an urge to compose. He is a potential musician. He who experiences the palpitation of the heart as an overheated stove will feel impelled next day to turn to modelling or architectural design. He is the potential architect, sculptor or painter.

There is a connection between these things; in ordinary consciousness they are associated in the way I have described. But we can go further. As I have described in my books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Occult Science—an Outline, this ordinary consciousness can be developed by undertaking certain spiritual exercises—we will speak of them later—so that by concentrating on certain precise concepts and linguistic relationships, our whole inner life of thinking, feeling and willing is given added life and vigour. Through these exercises thoughts become virtually tangible realities and feelings living entities.

Then begins the first stage of modern Initiation—we carry over our dreams into waking life. But at this point misunderstandings may easily arise. We set little store on the dreams of anyone who quite naturally indulges in daydreams. But he who, in spite of his day-dreaming, retains full awareness and yet can go on dreaming because he has made his feeling and thinking more lively and vigorous than others, such an individual has taken the first steps towards becoming an Initiate. When he has reached this stage, the following takes place. Because he is a sensible person, as sober and sensible as others in his waking life, he sees his fellow men, on the one hand, as they appear to normal consciousness, the shape of their nose, the colour of their eyes, their tidy or untidy hair and so on. On the other hand, he begins to dream of something else around them, something true, namely, he dreams their aura, the inner meaning of their relationships; he begins to see with the eye of the spirit. In full waking consciousness he begins to have dreams that are meaningful and in accordance with reality. His dreaming does not cease when he wakes up in the morning, continues through the day and is transformed in sleep. But it is fraught with meaning. He sees the true character of men's souls and the spiritual source of their actions. He lives in an activity that is otherwise associated with mere reminiscences or ordinary dreams. But these dreams are a spiritual reality.

A second state of consciousness is now added to the first. Waking dreams become a form of perception higher than the normal perception of everyday life. In full waking consciousness a higher reality has been added to the reality of everyday life. In ordinary dreaming something of reality is lost; it gives us only fragments of reality, born of fantasy. But in waking dreams, as I have described them, in which everything stands revealed—the individual human form, animals and plants, in which the deeds of men are seen to be full of meaning, thereby revealing their spiritual content—all this adds something to everyday reality and enriches it.

To the perception of ordinary consciousness is added a second consciousness. One begins to see the world in a different light and this is shown most strikingly when we look at the animal kingdom which now appears so utterly different that we wonder what we really saw before. Hitherto we had seen only a part of the animal kingdom, only its external aspect. Now a whole new world is added. In each animal species, in lions, tigers and all the various genera lies something that is akin to man. This is difficult to illustrate by comparison with a human being. Please try and follow me.

Let us suppose that you add to your body by tying a string to each finger of both hands and that to the end of each string at a fixed distance you attach a ball painted with various coloured patterns. You have now ten strings. Now manipulate the strings with your fingers so that the balls are agitated in all directions. Now do the same with your toes. Now practise leaping in the air and working your toes so skilfully that a wonderful pattern is created. Thus each finger will have become longer with a coloured ball at its tip, and every toe the same.

Imagine that you can see all this as part of your human form and the whole under the control of the soul. Each ball is a separate entity, but the moment you survey it all, you have the impression that it forms a composite whole. All these balls and strings are not a part of yourself like your fingers and toes. It all forms a single whole and you are in command. If you begin to manipulate the balls and strings in the way I have indicated, then you will see the lion-soul above and the individual lions attached to it like the balls, the whole forming a unity. Previously, if you had looked at the twenty balls lying there they would have represented a world unto themselves. Now add the human being as an activating agent and you create a new situation.

The same applies to your mode of perception. You see the individual lions moving about independently; they are the balls lying around as separate units. Then you see the lion-soul endowed with self-consciousness which, in the spiritual world, resembles a human being, and the individual lions seemingly suspended like the moving balls. These individual lions are manifestations of the self-conscious lion-soul.

Thus you perceive the higher forms of every creature in the animal kingdom. Animals have something akin to man in their make-up, a soul quality which belongs to a different sphere from that of the human soul. As you go through life you emphatically bear your psychic life with its self-consciousness wherever you go. You are at liberty to impose your ego on all and sundry. This the individual lion cannot do. But another realm exists, bordering on this realm of conflicting egos. In the spiritual world the lion-souls do precisely the same. To them the individual lions are so many balls dancing at the end of a string. Consequently, when we see the true nature of the animal kingdom with our newly acquired consciousness we get something of a shock.

We enter a new world and we say to ourselves: we too belong to this other world, but we drag it down to Earth. The animal leaves something of itself behind, its group-soul or species-soul; on Earth we see only the quadruped. We drag down to Earth what the animal leaves behind in the spiritual world and acquire in consequence a different bodily form. That which lives within us belongs also to this higher world, but as human beings we drag it down to Earth.

Thus we become acquainted with another world that we are first made aware of through the medium of animals. But we need an additional form of consciousness; we must bring our dream-consciousness into our waking life and then we can gain insight into the inner constitution of the animal kingdom.

This second world may be termed the soul-world, the soul-plane or astral plane, as distinct from the physical world. We become aware of this astral world through a different form of consciousness. We must familiarize ourselves with other states of consciousness so that we gain insight into other worlds which are not the world of our everyday existence.

It is possible to strengthen and vitalize the soul-life still further. We can not only practise concentration and meditation, as described in the books I have mentioned, we can also strive to expel again this reinforced soul-content. After the most strenuous endeavours to fortify the soul-life after strengthening the thinking and feeling, we reach the point when we are able to modify it again and finally to nullify it. We are then restored to the state called the state of “emptied consciousness.”

Now, normally, a state of emptied consciousness induces sleep. This can be demonstrated experimentally. First remove all visual impressions so that the subject is in darkness. Then remove all auditory impressions so that he is enveloped in silence. Then try to eliminate all other sense-impressions, and he will gradually fall asleep.

This cannot happen if we have first strengthened our thinking and feeling. It will then be possible to empty our consciousness by an act of will and still remain awake. Then the phenomenal world will no longer be present. Our ordinary thoughts and memories are forgotten—we are in a condition of emptied consciousness and a real spiritual world at once invades us. Just as our ordinary consciousness is filled with the colours, sounds and warmth of the sense-world, so a spiritual world fills this emptied consciousness. Only when we have consciously emptied our consciousness are we surrounded by a spiritual world.

Once again we owe to something in external nature a particularly vivid apprehension of the new consciousness and its relationship to a spiritual world. Just as we become aware of the next higher level of consciousness through our different perception of the animal kingdom, so we are now able to recognize this new level of consciousness in the plant kingdom which is entirely differently constituted.

How does the plant kingdom appear to normal consciousness? We see the verdant meadows pied with flowers growing out of the mineral Earth. We rejoice in the blue and gold, the red and white of the blossoms and in the living green. We delight in the beauty of the plant world spread out before us like a carpet. We are filled with joy and the heart leaps up as we behold the Earth clothed in this brilliant, multi-coloured garment of flowers and plants.

Then we lift our eyes to the dazzling Sun and the blue vault of heaven and see the familiar clear or cloudy daytime sky. We are not aware of any connection between the Earth and the heavens, between looking down upon the flower-decked fields and up at the sky. Let us assume we have felt intense joy at the sight of this carpet of flowers spread out before us in the daytime and that we wait through a summer's day until the fall of night. We now lift our eyes to the canopy of heaven and see the stars, arrayed in their manifold shining constellations, spread out across the sky. And now a new joyous exultation from on high invests our soul.

By day then, we can look down upon the growing plant-cover of the Earth as something that fills our heart with inward joy and exultation. We can then look up at night and see the canopy of heaven that appeared so blue by day now studded with shining sparkling stars. We rejoice inwardly at the celestial beauty that is revealed to our soul. This is the response of our ordinary consciousness.

If we have perfected the consciousness that is emptied of content and yet remains awake and that is permeated with the spiritual, we can then say to ourselves when by day we survey the plant-cover and by night look up at the glittering stars: Yes, in the daytime the rich hues of the flower-decked Earth delighted and enchanted me. But what did I really see?—Then we look up at the starry hosts of heaven. To the emptied, waking consciousness, the consciousness emptied of all earthly content, the stars do more than merely shine and sparkle, they assume the most varied forms, for there, in the higher spheres, is a wondrous world of quintessential being—everywhere movement and flux, grand, mighty, sublime. Before this spectacle we bow our heads in grateful reverence and reverent gratitude, acknowledging its sublimity. We have reached the mid-stage of Initiation. We know that the real origin of the plants lies in the higher spheres. That which, hitherto, we had taken to be nothing more than the sparkle and glitter of the separate stars, that is the true being of the plants. It seems as if now for the first time we have seen the real plant-beings; as if we were seeing only the dewdrops of the violet bathed in morning dew and not the violet as such. In looking at the single star we see the single sparkling dewdrop; in truth, however, a mighty world in flux and movement lies behind. We now know what the plant-world really is; it is not to be found on Earth, but out in the Cosmos, grand, mighty and sublime. And all that we saw by day in the multi-coloured carpet of flowers is the reflected image of the higher spheres.

And we now know that the Cosmos, with its flux and movement of real forms and beings is reflected on the surface of the Earth. When we look into a mirror, we see ourselves reflected and we know that the reflection is only of our outer form, not of our soul. The heavens are not reflected on Earth so definitely, but in such a way that they are mirrored in the yellow, green, blue, red and white of the plant colours. They are a reflected image, the faint, shadowy reflection of the heavens.

We have now come to know a new world. In the higher spheres are found the “plant-men,” beings endowed with self-consciousness. And so, to the phenomenal world and astral world, we can add a third, the real spiritual world. The stars are the dewdrops of this cosmic world and the plants are its reflected image. Their appearance is not their reality; in their manifestation here on Earth they are not even an entity, but, in relation to the endlessly manifold richness of that world of transcendence from whence shine forth the separate stars like dewdrops, simply a reflected Image.

And now we discover that, as human beings, we bear within us that which is the real being of the plants in the higher spheres. We bring down into this mirrored life what the plants leave behind in the world of spirit, for the plant-beings live in that world and send down to Earth their reflected images and the Earth fills them with earthly substance. We men bring our soul-nature, which also belongs to that higher world, into this world of images. We are not mere images, but we are also spiritual beings of soul here on Earth. On Earth we participate in three worlds. We live in the physical world, where the self-consciousness of animals is not to be found; at the same time we inhabit the astral world where their self-consciousness exists and this astral world we bring down into the physical world. We also inhabit a third world, the spiritual world where dwell the true plant-beings; but the plant-beings send only their reflected images down to Earth, whereas we bring down the realities of our soul-life.

And now we can say: a being who possesses body, soul and spirit here on Earth is a human being. A being with body and soul here on Earth, but whose spirit dwells in a second world bordering on the physical world and which for that reason has less reality, is an animal. A being with only a body in the physical world, the soul in the second world and the spirit in the third world, so that the body is only a reflected image of the spirit and is filled out with terrestrial matter, is a plant.

We now have an understanding of the three worlds in nature and we know that man bears these three worlds within himself. We feel to some extent the plants reaching up to the stars. As we look at the plants we say to ourselves: here is a being which manifests only its reflected image on Earth, an image detached from its true reality. The more we direct our gaze to the stars at night, the more do we see its true being in the higher worlds. When we look from Earth to Heaven and perceive the Cosmos to be one with the Earth, then we see the world of nature as a totality.

Then we look back at ourselves as human beings and say: we have insulated within our earthly being that element which, in the plants, reaches up to the heavens. We bear within ourselves the physical, astral and spiritual worlds.

To develop clear, objective perception, to follow nature through the different realms so that we come to know the spiritual world, to gain insight into man, so that we divine his spiritual essence—this is to undertake the first steps in spiritual investigation.

It is a little difficult to continue what has been given in the last lectures, because so many friends who have not taken part in these studies are here to-day. On the other hand it is hardly possible to make a new beginning, for many things contained in the previous lectures have still to be completed. Friends who have just arrived will have to realise that if some of our thoughts to-day prove somewhat difficult to understand, it is because they are connected—inwardly, though not outwardly—with preceding lectures. At Easter we shall have a self-contained course, but to-day I must continue what has gone before. We did not expect so many friends at this date, although needless to say we are extremely glad that they have come.

In recent lectures we have been speaking of definite karmic relationships—not with the object of finding anything sensational in the successive earthly lives we have studied, but in order to arrive step by step at a really concrete understanding of the connections of destiny in human life.

I have described successive earthly lives of certain historic figures, in order to call forth an idea of how one earthly life works on into the next—and that is not an easy matter.

Again and again it must be emphasised that a new trend has come into the Anthroposophical Movement since the Christmas Foundation Meeting at Dornach. Of this I should now like to say a few introductory words.—You know, my dear friends, that since the year 1918 there have been all manner of undertakings within the Anthroposophical Society. Their origin is clear. When the Anthroposophical Society was founded, this question was really being asked, out of a deep occult impulse: Would the Anthroposophical Society continue to evolve by virtue of the inner strength which (in its members) it had acquired until then? There was only one way to make the test. Until then, I, as General Secretary, had had the leadership of the German Section, which was the form in which the Anthroposophical Movement had existed within the Theosophical Society. The only way now was for me no longer to take in hand the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society but to watch and see how this Society would evolve through its own inherent strength.

You see, my dear friends, that is something quite different from what the position would have been if already at that time (as at our Christmas Foundation Meeting) I had said that I would undertake the leadership of the Society. For the Anthroposophical Society, if led by me, must naturally be an altogether different thing than if led by someone else. Moreover, for certain deep reasons, the Society might have been led all the better if I myself had not had the administrative leadership. Many things might have been done if human hearts had spoken—things which in fact remained undone, or which were even done from outside, often enough under resistance from the anthroposophists.

During the War, of course, we had little opportunity to unfold our forces in all directions. So it came about that after the year 1918, the prevailing state of affairs was taken advantage of by those from many quarters who wanted to do this or that. If I had said at the time, “No, these things shall not be done”, then of course we should hear it said to-day: “If this or that had only been allowed, we should now have numbers of flourishing undertakings.”

For this very reason it was the custom at all times for the leaders of occult movements to let those who wanted to do something try it out and see what became of it, so that convictions might be called forth by the facts themselves. For that is the only way to call forth conviction. And so it had to be in our case too.

The upshot of it all has been that since the year 1918, opposition to our Movement has grown rife, and has brought about the present state of affairs, when it is impossible for me, for instance, to give public lectures in Germany.

At the present moment these facts must in no way be concealed from the Anthroposophical Movement. We must face them with all clarity. As long as we work with unclear situations we shall make no progress.

As you know, all manner of experiments were made in the hope of being ‘truly scientific’—shall we say? Quite naturally so, in view of the characters of those concerned! Scientists who also partake in our Society naturally like to be scientific. But that is the very thing that annoys our opponents. When we say to them, “As scientists we can prove this or that truth”, they come forward with all their so-called scientific claims, and then of course they become furious. We should be under no illusions on this point. Nothing has annoyed our opponents more than the fact that our members have tried to speak on the same subjects as they themselves do, and in the same manner, only—as these our members often used to say—“letting a little Anthroposophy flow into it.” It was precisely this which called forth our opponents in such overwhelming numbers.

Again, we offend most strongly against the life-conditions of Anthroposophy if we give ourselves up to the illusion that we can win over the adherents of various religious communities by saying the same or similar things as they, only once more “letting Anthroposophy flow into it.”

But now, since the Christmas Foundation Meeting, an entirely new element must come into all that is being done in the field of Anthroposophy. Those of you who have observed the way Anthroposophy is now being presented here, or the way it was presented at Prague and again at Stuttgart, will have observed that impulses are now at work which call forth something altogether new, even where our opponents are concerned. If we try to be ‘scientific’ in the ordinary sense of the word—as, unfortunately, many of our members have tried to be—then we are presuming, so to speak, that it is possible to enter into discussion with them. But now take the lectures that have been given here, or the lectures at Prague, or the single lectures at Stuttgart—can you believe for a single moment that there can be any question of entering into discussion with our opponents on these matters? It goes without saying: we can enter into no discussion with our opponents when we speak of these things. How, for example, should we discuss with any representative of the civilisation of to-day the statement, for example, that the soul of Muavija appeared again in the soul of Woodrow Wilson?¹

Thus in the whole Anthroposophical Movement there is now a prevailing quality which can tend to nothing else than this.—We must take it at last in real earnest that there can be no question of entering into discussion or argument with our opponents. For if we do so, it will in any case lead nowhere. Thus we must realise that, with regard to our opponents, it can only be a question of refuting calumnies, untruths and lies. We must not give up ourselves to the illusion that these things can be discussed. They must expand by their own inherent power; they cannot be decided by any dialectic.

Through the whole tenor of the Anthroposophical Movement as it has been since Christmas last, this will perhaps be realised increasingly, even by our members. Henceforth the Anthroposophical Movement will take this attitude: It will no longer pay heed to anything other than what the spiritual world itself requires of it.

It is from this standpoint that I have placed before you various thoughts on karma. Those of you who were here, or who heard my last lecture at Stuttgart, will remember that I tried to show how the individualities who lived in the 8th and 9th centuries A.D. at the Court of Haroun al Raschid in Asia, having continued to evolve after death in different directions, played certain definite parts in their new incarnations. At the time of the Thirty Years' War (and a short time before) we have on the one hand the individuality of Haroun al Raschid, reincarnated in the Englishman, Bacon of Verulam. And a great organiser at the Court of Haroun al Raschid, who had lived at the Court—not indeed as an Initiate, but as the reincarnation of an Initiate—this individuality we found again as Amos Comenius, whose field of action was rather in Middle Europe. From these two streams, much in the spiritual part of modern civilisation flowed together. In the spiritual and intellectual aspect of modern civilisation, the Near East—as it was in the time immediately after Mohammed—lived again, on the one hand through the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid, Bacon of Verulam; and on the other hand through Amos Comenius, who had been his counsellor.

In the present lecture I wish to emphasise the following fact:—The evolution of man does not merely take place when he is here on earth, but also when he is between death and a new birth. Bacon as well as Amos Comenius, having fastened Arabism—so to speak from two different sides—on to the civilisation of Europe, died again and passed into the life between death and a new birth. And there they were together with many souls who came down to earth after their time. Bacon and Amos Comenius, having died in the 17th century, lived on in the spiritual world. Other souls, who came down to earth in the 19th century, were in the spiritual world together with the souls of Bacon and Amos Comenius from the 17th to the 19th. On the one hand there were souls who gathered mainly around the soul of Bacon—Bacon whose work became so dominant. Then there were the souls who gathered around Amos Comenius. And though this is rather a pictorial way of speaking, we must not forget that there are ‘leaders’ and ‘followers’—albeit under quite different conditions—even in the spiritual world which men pass through between death and a new birth. Such individualities as Bacon or Amos Comenius worked not only through what they brought about on earth—through their writings, for example, or through the traditions of them which lived on on earth. No, these leading spirits were also working through the souls whom they sent down, or the souls with whom they were together and who were then sent down; they worked by causing certain tendencies to germinate in these souls in the spiritual world. Thus among the men of the 19th century we find souls who had become dependent already in their evolution in the pre-earthly life on one or other of these two spirits—the discarnate Amos Comenius, and the discarnate Bacon.

As I said, I want to lead you more and more into the concrete way in which karma works. Therefore I will now draw your attention to two personalities of the 19th century whose names will be known to most of you. One of them was especially influenced in his pre-earthly life by Bacon, and the other by Amos Comenius.

If we observe Bacon as he stood in earthly civilisation—in his earthly life as Lord Chancellor in England—if we observe him there, we find that his working was such that an Initiate stood behind him. The whole Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, as it is outwardly pursued by the historians of literature, is appallingly barren. All manner of arguments are brought forward which are supposed to show that Shakespeare the actor did not really write his dramas, but that they were written by Bacon the philosopher and Lord Chancellor, and so on ...

All these things—working with external methods, seeking out similarities in the way of thought in Shakespeare's dramas and Bacon's philosophic works—all these are barren superficialities. They do not get at the real truth. For the truth is that at the time when Bacon, Shakespeare, Jacob Boehme, and a fourth were working on the earth, there was one Initiate who really spoke through all four. Hence their kinship, for in reality it all goes back to one and the same source. Of course, these people who dispute and argue do not argue about the Initiate who stood behind, especially as this Initiate—like many a modern Initiate—is described to us in history as a rather intolerable fellow. But he was not merely so. No doubt he was so sometimes in his external actions, but he was not merely so. He was an individuality from whom immense forces proceeded, and to whom were really due Bacon's philosophic works as well as Shakespeare's dramas and the works of Jacob Boehme, and also the works of the Jesuit, Jacob Balde.

If we bear this in mind, then we must see in Bacon, in the philosophic realm, the instigator of an immense and far-reaching stream of the time.

It is most interesting to observe what could become of a soul who lived throughout the two centuries, in the life beyond the earth, under the influence of the dead Bacon. We must turn our attention to the way in which Bacon himself lived after his death. For our studies of human history it will in fact be more and more important to observe the human beings who have lived on earth not only until the moment of their death but in their working beyond death, where they work on and on upon those souls who are afterwards to descend to earth. This applies especially to those who have themselves been responsible for great spiritual achievements.

No doubt these things may be somewhat shocking for men of the present time. So for instance I remember—if I may make this digression—I remember on one occasion I was standing at the entrance to the railway station in a small German University town with a well-known doctor who went in a great deal for occultism. Around us stood many other people. Presently he warmed up to his subject and out of his enthusiasm said to me in a loud voice, so that many of those who were around could hear him: “I will make you a present of the biography of Robert Blum; but that is a biography which begins only after his death.” Spoken loudly as it was, one could well observe the shock it gave to those who were standing around us! One cannot say without more ado to the people of to-day, “I will make you a present of the biography of a man, but it begins only after his death.”

For the rest—apart from this two-volumed biography of Robert Blum, which begins not with his birth but with his death—little has yet been done in the way of relating the biographies of men after their death. Biographies generally begin at birth and end at death; there are not yet many works that begin with a man's death.

Yet, for the real happenings of the world, what a man does after his death is immensely important, notably when he passes on the results of what he did on earth—translated into the spiritual—to the souls who come down after him. We cannot understand the age which succeeds a given age if we do not observe this side of life.

Now I was specially interested in observing those individualities who surrounded Bacon after his death. Among them were individualities who were subsequently born as natural scientists. But there were also others who were born as historians; and if we observe the influence of the dead Lord Bacon on these souls, we see how the materialism which he founded upon earth—the mere researching into the world of sense (for, as you know, everything else was for him an ‘idol’)—translated into the spiritual, reverts into a kind of radicalism. And so indeed, in the very midst of the spiritual world, these souls received impulses which worked on in such a way that after their birth, having descended to the earth, they would attach no value to anything that was not a concrete fact visible to the senses.

I will now speak in a somewhat popular form, but I beg you not to take my words too literally, for if you do so it will of course be only too easy to say: ‘How grotesque!’ Among these souls there were also some who, by their former tendencies—derived from former earthly lives—were destined to become historians. And among them was one who was the greatest. (I am still speaking of the pre-earthly lives of all these souls). One among them was the greatest. Under the influence of Lord Bacon's impulses, all these souls said to themselves, in effect: It is no longer permissible to write history as it was written in former times, to write it with Ideas, investigating the inner connections. Only the actual facts must now be the object of our research.

Now I ask you, what does this mean? Are not the intentions of men the most important thing in history?—and they are not outwardly real! These souls, however, no longer permitted themselves to think in this way; and least of all did the soul who afterwards appeared again as one of the greatest historians of the 19th century—Leopold von Ranke. Leopold von Ranke was a pre-earthly disciple of Lord Bacon.

Study the earthly career of Leopold von Ranke as a historian. What is his principle? Ranke's principle as a historian is this: nothing must be written in history save what is to be read of in the archives. We must compile all history from the archives—from the actual transactions of the diplomats.

If you read Ranke you will find it so. He is a German and a Protestant, but with his sense of reality this has no effect on him. He works objectively—that is to say, with the objectivity of the archives. So he writes his History of the Popes—the best that has ever been written from the pure standpoint of archives. When we read Ranke we are irritated, nay dreadfully so. It is a barren prospect to imagine the old gentleman—quick and alert as he was until a ripe old age—sitting forever in the archives and merely piecing together the diplomatic transactions. That is no real history. It is history which reckons only with the facts of the sense-world—that is to say, for the historian, with the archives.

And so indeed, precisely by taking into account the life beyond the earth we have the possibility to understand why Ranke became what he was.

But now we can also look across to Amos Comenius, and observe how he worked on the pre-earthly willing of souls who afterwards descended to the earth. For just as Leopold von Ranke became the greatest disciple of Bacon—of Bacon after his death—so did Schlosser become the greatest disciple of Comenius after his death.

Read Schlosser's History; observe the prevailing tone, the fundamental note he strikes. On every page there speaks the moralist—the moralist who would fain seize the human heart and soul—whose object is to speak right into the heart. Often he scarcely succeeds, for he is still rather a pedant. He speaks, in effect, like a pedant speaking to the heart. Nevertheless, being a pre-earthly disciple of Amos Comenius, he has absorbed something of the quality that was in Comenius himself, who was so characteristic by virtue of the peculiar quality of his spirit. For after all, Comenius too came over from Mohammedanism. Though he was very different from the spirits who gathered around Lord Bacon, nevertheless Comenius too, in his incarnation as Comenius, concentrated on the real, outer world. Everywhere he demanded visibility, objectivity, in education. There must always be an underlying picture. He demands vision—object lessons, as it were; he too lays stress on the sense-perceptible, though in quite another way. For Amos Comenius was also one of those who at the time of the Thirty Years' War believed most enthusiastically in the coming of the so-called Millennium. In his Pansophia he wrote down great and world-embracing ideas. He wanted to work for human education by a great impulsive power. This too worked on Schlosser. It is there in Schlosser.

I mention these two figures—Ranke and Schlosser—in order to show you how we can understand what appears as the spiritually productive power in man only if we also take into account his life beyond the earth. Only then do we understand it—just as we have also learnt to understand many things by taking into account repeated lives on earth. For in the thoughts which I have recently placed before you, we have observed this marvellous working across from one incarnation to another. As I said, I give these examples in order that we may then consider how a man can think about his own karma. Before we can dwell on the way in which good and evil—or illnesses or the like—work over from one incarnation to another, we must first learn to perceive how that which afterwards emerges in the spiritual and intellectual life of civilisation also works across from one incarnation to another.

Now my dear friends, I must admit that for me one of the most interesting personalities in modern spiritual life, with regard to his karma, was Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Anyone who observes him closely will see that his most beautiful works depend on a peculiar fact, namely this: Again and again, in his whole human constitution, there was a kind of tendency for the Ego and astral body to flee from the physical and the etheric bodies.

Morbid conditions appear in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, bordering very nearly on dementia. But these morbid conditions only express in a rather more extreme form what was always present in him in a nascent state. His soul-and-spirit tends to go out—holds to the physical and etheric only by a very loose thread. And in this condition—the soul-and-spirit holding to the physical and etheric by a very loose thread only—the most beautiful of his works originate; I mean the most beautiful of his longer works and of his shorter poems too. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's most beautiful poems may even be said to have originated half out of the body. There was a peculiar relationship between the four members of his nature. Truly there is a great difference between such a personality and an average man of the present time. With an average man of this materialistic age we generally find a very firm and robust connection of the soul-and-spirit with the physical and etheric. The soul-and-spirit is deeply immersed in the physical and etheric—‘sits tight’, as it were. But in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer it was not so. He had a very tender relation of the soul-and-spirit to the physical and etheric. To describe his psyche is really one of the most interesting tasks one can undertake when studying the developments of modern spiritual life. Many things that emerge in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer appear almost like a dim, cloudy recollection—a recollection which has however grown beautiful in growing dim. When Conrad Ferdinand Meyer writes we always have the feeling: He is remembering something, though not quite exactly. He changes it—but changes it into something beautiful and form-perfected. We can observe this wonderfully, piece by piece, in certain of his works.

Now it is characteristic of the inner karma of a human being when there is such a definite relationship of the four members of his nature—physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. And in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's case, when we trace back this peculiarly intimate connection, we are led, first of all, to the time of the Thirty Years' War. This was the first thing clear to me in his case: there is something of a former earthly life at the time of the Thirty Years' War. And then there is a still earlier life on earth going back into the pre-Carlovingian age, going back quite evidently into the early history of Italy.

When we endeavour to trace Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's karma, the peculiar, intangible fluidity of his being (which none the less expresses itself in such perfection of form)—the peculiar, intangible fluidity of his life somehow communicates itself to our investigation, until at length we feel: We are getting into confusion. I have no other alternative but to describe these things just as they happened in the investigation.

We go back into the time of the 6th century in Italy. There we have the feeling: We are getting into an extraordinarily insecure element. We are driven back again and again, and only gradually we observe that this is not due to ourselves but to the object of our research. There is really in the soul—in the individuality—of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer something that brings us into confusion as we try to investigate him. We are driven to return again and again into his present incarnation or into the one immediately before it. Again and again we must ‘pull ourselves up’ and go back again.

The following was the result.—You must remember, all that has lived in a human soul in former incarnations becomes manifest in the most varied forms—in likenesses which are often quite imperceptible to outer observation. This you will have seen from other instances of reincarnation given here.

So at length we come to an incarnation in Italy in the early Christian centuries—at the end of the first half of the first millennium A.D. Here we come to a halt. We find a soul living in Italy, to a large extent at Ravenna, at the Roman Court. But now we come into confusion. For we must ask ourselves: What was living in that soul? The moment we ask ourselves this question (in order to call forth the further occult investigation), the whole thing is extinguished once again.

We become aware of the experiences which this soul underwent while living at the Court at Ravenna—at the Roman Court. We enter into these experiences and we think we have them, and then again they are extinguished—blotted out from us; and we are driven back again to Conrad Ferdinand Meyer as he lived on earth in the immediate past. At length we perceive that in this later life he obliterates from our vision the content of his soul in the former life. Only after long trouble do we perceive at length how the matter really stands. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer—or rather the individuality who lived in him—was living at that time in a certain relationship to one of the Popes who sent him, among others, to England on a Roman Catholic, Christian Mission.

The individuality who afterwards became Conrad Ferdinand Meyer had first absorbed all that wonderful sense of form which it was possible to absorb in Italy at that time. The Mosaic art of Italy bears witness to it; also the old Italian painting, the greater part, nay practically the whole of which has been destroyed. This art did not continue.

And then he went on a Roman Catholic Christian Mission to the Anglo-Saxons. One of his companions founded the Bishopric of Canterbury. What afterwards took place at Canterbury began essentially with this foundation. The individuality, however, who after-wards appeared as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, was only there as a witness, so to speak. Nevertheless, he was a very active person, and he called forth the ill-will of an Anglo-Saxon chieftain, at whose investigation he was eventually murdered. That is what we find to begin with.

But while he lived in England there was something in the soul of this Conrad Ferdinand Meyer which robbed him of real joy in life. His soul was deeply rooted in the Italian art of his time—or, if we will call it so, in the Italian spiritual life. He gained no happiness in the execution of his missionary work in England. Yet he devoted himself to it with great intensity—so much so that his assassination was a reaction to it.

This constant unhappiness—being repelled from something which he was none the less doing with all force and devotion out of another impulse in his heart—worked on in such a way that when he passed through his next earthly life there ensued a cosmic clouding-over of his memory. The inner impulse was there but it no longer coincided with any clear concept.

And so it came about that in his subsequent incarnation as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, an undefined impulse was at work in him, to this effect: ‘I was once working in England. It is connected somehow with Canterbury. I was murdered owing to my connection with Canterbury.’

So indeed the outer life of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in this incarnation takes its course. He studies outer history, he studies Canterbury, studies what happened in Canterbury, in connection with the history of England. He comes across Thomas à Becket, Chancellor of King Henry II in the 12th century. He learns of the strange destiny of Thomas à Becket, who from being the all-powerful Chancellor of Henry II, was murdered virtually at his instigation. And so in this present incarnation as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, his own half-forgotten destiny appears to him in Thomas à Becket. It comes before him, half-forgotten in his subconsciousness, for I am speaking of course, of the subconscious life which comes to the surface in this way. So he describes his own fate in a far distant time. But he describes it in the story of what actually happened in the 12th century between King Henry II and Thomas à Becket of Canterbury, whose fate he recounts in his poetic work Der Heilige (The Saint). So indeed it is—only all this takes place in the subconscious life which embraces successive incarnations. It is as though within a single earthly life a man had experienced something in his early youth in connection with a certain place. He has forgotten it. He experienced it maybe in the second or third year of his life. It does not emerge, but some other similar destiny emerges. The very same place is named, and as a result he has a peculiar sympathy for this other person's destiny. He feels it differently from one who has no ‘association of ideas’ with the same place.

Just as this may happen within one earthly life, so it took place in the concrete instance I am now giving you. There was the work in Canterbury, the murder of a person connected with Canterbury (for Thomas à Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury), the murder of Thomas à Becket at the instigation of the King of England. All of these schemes work in together. In the descriptions in his poem he is describing his own destiny.

But now the thing goes on—and this is most interesting in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's case. He was born as a woman about the time of the Thirty Years' War—a lively woman, full of spiritual interest in life, a woman who witnessed many an adventure. She married a man who first took part in all the confused events of the Thirty Years' War, but then grew weary of them and emigrated to Switzerland, to Graubünden (Canton Grisons), where he lived a somewhat philistine existence. But his wife was deeply affected and impressed by all that took place in the Graubünden country under the prevailing conditions of the Thirty Years' War.

This too is eclipsed, as though with another layer. For it is so with this individuality: That which is living in him is easily forgotten in the cosmic sense, and yet he calls it forth again in a transmuted form, where it becomes more glorious and more intense. For out of what this woman observed and experienced in that incarnation there arises the wonderful characterisation of Jürg Jenatsch, the man of Graubünden, in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's historic novel. Observing Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in this incarnation, we have indeed no explanation of his peculiarity if we cannot enter into his karma. I must say—speaking with a grain of salt—that I envy the people who ‘understand’ him so light-heartedly. Before I knew his reincarnations, all that I understood was that I did not understand him. This wonderful inner perfection of form, this inner joy in form, this purity of form, all the strength and power that lives in Jürg Jenatsch, and the wonderful personal and living quality in The Saint,—a good deal of superficiality is needed to imagine that one understands all this. Observe his beautiful forms—there is something of clear line in them, almost severe; they are painted and yet not painted. Here live the mosaics of Ravenna. And in The Saint there lives a history which was undergone once upon a time by this individuality himself; but a mist of the soul has spread over it, and out of the mist it emerges in another form.

And again one needs to know: All that is living in his romance of Graubünden, Jürg Jenatsch, was absorbed by the heart and mind of a woman; while in the momentum, the driving power that lives in this romance there lives again the swashbuckler of the Thirty Years' War. The man was pretty much of a philistine, as I said, but he was a swashbuckler. And so, all that comes over from former experiences on earth comes to life again in a peculiar form in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Only now do we begin to understand him. Now we say to ourselves: In olden times of human evolution, men were not ashamed to speak of Spirits from beyond descending to the earth, or of earthly human beings finding their way upward and working on from spiritual worlds. All this must come again, otherwise man will not get beyond his present outlook of the earthworm. For all that the natural-scientific conception of the world contains, it is the world-outlook of the earth-worm. Men live on earth as though only the earth concerned them, as though it were not true that the whole Cosmos works upon all earthly things and lives again in man. As though it were not true that earlier epochs of history live on, inasmuch as we ourselves carry into later times what we absorbed in former times.

We do not understand karma by talking theoretic concepts about successive earthly incarnations. To understand karma is to feel in our hearts all that we can feel when we see what existed ages ago flowing into the later epochs in the souls of men themselves. When we begin to see how karma works, human life gains quite a new content. We feel ourselves quite differently in human life.

Such a spirit as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer feels his former earthly lives like an undertone—an undertone that sounds from far away. We understand what appears in him only when we develop an understanding for this undertone. The progress of mankind in spiritual life will depend on its ability to regard life in this way, to observe in all detail what flows across from former epochs of the world's evolution into later epochs through the human beings themselves. Then we shall cease, in the childish way of psycho-analysts, to explain the peculiarities of souls by speaking of ‘hidden underlying regions’ and the like. After all, one can ascribe anything one likes to what is ‘hidden’. We shall look for the real causes. In some respects, no doubt, the psycho-analysts do quite good work. But these pursuits remind us of the story of how someone heard that in the year 1749 a son was born to a certain patrician. Afterwards this son emerged as a very gifted man. To this day we can point to the actual birth-place in Frankfurt of the man who afterwards came forth as Wolfgang Goethe. ‘Let us make excavations in the earth and see by dint of what strange emanations his talents came about’. Sometimes the psycho-analysts seem to me just like that. They dig into the earth-realm of the soul, into the hidden regions which they themselves first invent by their hypotheses, whereas in reality one ought to look into the preceding lives on earth and lives between death and a new birth. Then if we do so, a true understanding of human souls is opened out to us. Truly the souls of men are far too rich in content to enable us to understand their content out of a single life alone.

• 1. See Vol. I, lecture X.

If we wish our human thought and action to be permeated once more by spiritual life, it will be necessary to receive again in full earnestness such conceptions of the spiritual world as have passed through our souls in these last lectures. For many centuries these conceptions have in reality been lacking to mankind and notably to civilised mankind.

Looking back into various epochs of human history we shall find how in earlier ages human action upon earth was everywhere connected with what was taking place in the super-sensible. It is not that a consciousness of the super-sensible—a certain abstract consciousness of it—has been lacking to the greater part of mankind in recent times. No—but the courage has been lacking to attach the concrete deeds and happenings in the earthly sphere to the equally real forms of life and movement in spiritual worlds.

With our recent studies we are coming to do this once more. And we do so especially when we bring the earthly life of men, as we have been doing here, into connection with the life between death and a new birth, when we connect what is taking place in one earthly life with that which is accomplished in the successive lives of man.

We have begun to consider that spiritual, super-sensible stream of which I was allowed to say that it is connected with our present stream of Michael in the service of which Anthroposophy has placed itself. We have thus entered upon the path which in a certain sense is to approach the karma of the Anthroposophical Movement itself, and at the same time, the karma of the individuals who unite the life of their soul and spirit sincerely, out of a straightforward inner impulse, with the Anthroposophical Movement.

I told you of a super-sensible event which took place under the aegis as it were of the Michael Power at the very time when the Council of 869 was taking place on earth. We know how deeply the whole life and civilisation of the Middle Ages was influenced by that Council. We need only watch the deep reserve with which enlightened spirits in the Middle Ages avoid speaking of the threefold human being, of body, soul and spirit. For the 8th Œcumenical Council at Constantinople had declared the doctrine of the threefold man heretical. Considering the power of such edicts in the Middle Ages it is quite clear that the whole of the spiritual life here on earth then had to take its course as it were under the shadow of this declaration which condemned Trichotomy as heretical.

But all the more intense was that spiritual life which has been working for a long time preparing the Michael stream for the 20th century, the Michael stream in which we stand since the last third of the 19th century and in which mankind will be for three or four centuries to come.

To-day we will speak of the course of this stream of Michael to which we have already begun to turn attention. Then, next Sunday, we shall approach more nearly matters connected on the one hand with the karma of the Anthroposophical Movement, and on the other hand karmically with the spiritual and intellectual life of the present time.

I told you of a kind of super-sensible Council which took place in spiritual regions over the earth at the same time as the 8th Œcumenical Council in Constantinople. In that spiritual council there met together the individualities of Haroun al Raschid and of his wise counsellor, and also the individualities of Alexander and Aristotle. Moreover there were also gathered there the individualities from the time of the spiritual service of King Arthur; and as I explained, all this took place under the aegis of Michael.

Then I told you how Haroun al Raschid appeared again, bringing with him into Europe an oriental spiritual life with an Aristotelian doctrine that had become unchristian. I told you how he appeared again as Bacon, Lord Bacon of Verulam, who had a great influence on the spiritual life of Europe, but an influence of an essentially materialistic tendency. Moreover I told you how the counsellor of Haroun al Raschid whom I had described, appeared again as Amos Comenius. Much is said, and justly, in praise of Amos Comenius. Nevertheless, in one aspect, in his striving to introduce clear pictorial representations into the methods of teaching, he worked powerfully for materialism. For in effect, he laid the greatest stress upon the immediate perception of things with the physical senses.

Thus we see bursting in upon this earthly life at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century, a stream which lies not in the straightforward line of Christian development, but which brings a foreign element, foreign to Christianity, into the spiritual and intellectual evolution of Europe. On the other hand the individualities of Aristotle and Alexander who remained united with the true stream of Michael worked on and on with all those who belonged to them. They went on working in the spiritual worlds.

Moreover other personalities were working within the same stream, partly in the spiritual worlds and partly on the earth itself. There were individualities connected with these spiritual streams and living between death and a new birth. There were others who appeared as personalities on earth in the course of the centuries. These were the individualities connected with Platonism rather than with Aristotelianism, connected also with all that the Platonic conception had since become.

Especially in the centuries following the 9th, we see Platonic spirits descending on to the earth, spirits of a Platonic trend and orientation. It was they who continued through the Middle Ages a Christian teaching regarded as heretical by official Christianity, official Catholicism, but which was nevertheless the truer Christian teaching. Meanwhile the individualities who continued the stream of Christian Aristotelianism remained, to begin with, in the spiritual worlds. For with the given conditions of evolution there was no real point of attachment for their stream down on the earth in the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries. On the other hand, those who were more Platonic in character could unfold their spiritual life with remarkable intensity in isolated places, in isolated provinces as it were of the spirit. Interspersed with the Roman Catholic kind of Christianity which asserted itself more and more officially, we find individuals gathered in schools here and there, carrying on traditions of the ancient Mysteries and illuminating Christianity from these ancient sources. And there was one place where all these streams of old tradition seemed to flow together. I mean, of course, the School of Chartres, to which I have so often referred in recent lectures, a school which was spiritual through and through and in which there worked such great spirits as Bernardus Sylvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and others. Now what kind of a spiritual life was it which having thus evolved, flowed at length into the wonderful School of Chartres, only the external aspects of which have really become known to mankind? It was a spiritual life which has been completely silted up in modern times, a spiritual life in which the ancient traditions of the Mysteries were handed down.

Above all within that spiritual life we find a deep and spiritually penetrated conception of Nature, altogether different from that abstract conception of Nature which was afterwards made so much of, which knows only natural laws expressed in abstract thought. The spiritual stream to which I now refer received something spiritual from Nature into the human soul. So that in all Nature, not only abstract, dead, conceptual natural laws were recognised, but living creative activity. Men did not look so much to our present day chemical elements which have since commanded so much admiration, but they looked all the more deeply at what were called the Elements in the ancient sense: Earth, Water, Air and Fire. It was not a question of knowing them in words by mere tradition. The tradition was impregnated still with the most ancient of the Mysteries. And when this is so, we see in the Elements what is indeed not present in our seventy to eighty chemical elements, the world of elemental spirituality the world of certain elemental beings into which we penetrate when we enter livingly into the four Elements.

Then we see how man himself in his outer bodily nature partakes in the life and movement of the Earth, Water, Air, Fire which become in him the organic form and figure. They who thus looked into the life and movement of the Elements, of Earth, Water, Air and Fire did not see mere natural laws, but behind all this life and movement they saw a great and living Being, the Goddess Natura. And from their vision they had an immediate feeling that this Goddess Natura shows only one side of her being to man to begin with, while the other side remains hidden in the world in which man spends the time of sleep between falling asleep and reawakening. For then the ego and astral body are in a spiritual environment which lies at the foundation of Nature. The ego and astral body are with the elemental beings who underlie the Elements. Everywhere in the scattered schools and spiritual centres to which I have referred we find the teachers speaking to larger or smaller groups of pupils, and telling them how in the outer phenomena of Nature as they appear to men in waking life, the Goddess Natura shows only one part of her living and creative being. While on the other hand, in all the working in the Elements in wind and weather, in all that surrounds the human being and constitutes him, there also works what the human being cannot see, what is hidden from him in the darkness of sleep.

These scholars of the Middle Ages felt the great Goddess Natura as the Goddess who ascends for half of the time, revealing herself in the outer movement and activity of physical sense Nature and who on the other hand descends nightly and yearly to live and work in fields of creation hidden from man by the dark consciousness of sleep.

Now this was the direct continuation of the old conception of Proserpina as it existed in the ancient Mysteries. We must consider what this signifies. We to-day have a conception of Nature woven out of abstract thought, consisting of natural laws, speaking and thinking in abstract terms, containing nothing that is alive. But in that old conception of nature they still contemplated Nature as men had once contemplated the very active Goddess Proserpina, the daughter of Demeter. And in the ideas in which the pupils of those schools were instructed, proceeding as they did from a still living tradition, there were many sayings and expressions which were in reality an exact continuation of what had been said of Proserpina in the ancient Mysteries.

Then the teachers would lead the human being from a conception of his bodily life to an understanding of his life of soul. They made it clear to him: With respect to your bodily nature you consist of the Elements in which the elemental beings are working with you. But you also bear the soul within you. This is not subject to the influence of the Elements alone. On the contrary it rules over the organisation of the Elements within you and this your soul stands under the influence of the planetary world, of Mercury, Jupiter and Venus, of Sun and Moon, Saturn and Mars. Thus if psychology were to be studied, man's vision was directed upward to the secrets of the planetary world. The reality of the human being was extended from the bodily into the soul nature in such a way as to perceive always the living connection with the universe. From the working and weaving of the Elements, Earth, Water, Air and Fire, it was expanded to all that the planets do in the soul-life of man—the planets in their circling, in their glory, in the actions of their light, in their mysterious occult influences. Thus from the Goddess Natura, the successor of Proserpina, they looked up to the Intelligences, to the Genii of the planets when they wished to understand the human life of soul.

Then when it was a question of understanding the spiritual life (for the teachers of these isolated schools had not let the dogma of the 8th Council of Constantinople deter them from studying the spirit in itself)—when it was a matter of considering the spiritual life, they turned their gaze upwards to the fixed stars, and their configurations. They looked up above all to what is represented in the Zodiac. And they regarded what man bears within him as the spirit in connection with the constellations, the glory of the fixed stars, the spiritual Powers whom they knew to be there in the stars.

Thus from the whole universe, from the cosmos, they understood the human being. Thus the macrocosm was there in reality, and the microcosm, man. Such was the doctrine of Nature in that time, taught with enthusiasm in isolated schools and also offered to mankind by isolated individuals who were scattered here and there. And at length as in a kind of culmination, all these things were wonderfully reproduced by such individualities as Bernardus Sylvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and others in the School of Chartres.

Wonderful indeed was this School of Chartres. If we look at its writings to-day they seem, as I already said, like catalogues of names. But in that time it was not customary to write in any other way of things which one wished to have before one in full living spirituality. One simply catalogued them as it were. He however who can read such things, he above all who can read the order in which they are placed, can very well perceive how permeated by ancient spirituality are the writings that come to us from the teachers of Chartres. But the deep spirituality of the school worked not only in the teaching that was given, nor in the fact that there were many pupils who carried out again into the world what they had learnt there. No, it also worked in a direct spiritual way. The living spirituality that was present in that School radiated out even in an occult way into the spiritual atmosphere of mankind. We see the spiritual rays of the School of Chartres passing through France even into Italy. And in many schools whose outer name has been handed down to history, a teaching about Nature was given such as I have here indicated. Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante, returning from his post as an Ambassador in Spain suffered at the same time a slight sunstroke and a great shock as he came near to Florence, the city of his fathers. At that moment he was really touched by the occult radiations of the School of Chartres and underwent an experience which he himself describes as follows.—He said that as he came near the city of Florence he entered a deep forest. There he first met three animals and then he met the Goddess Natura who built up the kingdoms of Nature in the very way in which this had been taught for centuries as I have indicated. He, however, beheld it directly. In the semi-pathological condition which soon passed, what had been taught in the School became immediate vision to him. Then, having seen the Goddess Natura, the successor of Proserpina, in her creative work, he beheld how man is built up out of the Elements and how the soul lives and moves in the forces of the planets. Then with his thought he was uplifted even into the heaven of the fixed stars. Thus in his own person he experienced the whole of this majestic, medieval science. And he was the teacher of Dante. Had he not been so, had he not given to his pupil Dante what he had received in this majestic vision, we should not have the Divina Commedia, for the Divina Commedia is the reflection of Brunetto Latini's teaching in the soul of Dante.

Now you must see that in that time there was no other possibility than to work with such things within the institutions of the Church, and these indeed were much freer than they afterwards became. In effect, all these teachers of Chartres belonged to Monastic Orders. We see them wearing the garment of Cistercians. We see them connected with the good tendencies within the life of the Christian Monastic Orders.

Then came a strange phase of development. During the whole of this period, when the Platonists had been active in the way just described, the Aristotelians could not work on earth. The conditions were not there. But instead, they were preparing for the Michael stream in the super-sensible world, maintaining a continuous connection with those who were working on earth in the same direction and who then found their way to Chartres. The School of Chartres was in full flower from the end of the 11th and throughout the 12th century, and then a kind of super-sensible exchange of ideas took place between the Platonic souls from the School of Chartres who were now coming up into the spiritual world through the gate of death and the Aristotelian souls who had remained above. It was an exchange of ideas which took place in the Middle Ages at the turn of the 12th and 13th century, as to the manner of working in the future. (Earthly terms have to be used for these things, although naturally they are not really in keeping and can easily make one appear ridiculous.)

The outcome of this exchange of ideas—since different conditions now prevailed in the spiritual life of European humanity—was that the Platonists who had been so active in Chartres and were now coming up into the super-sensible world, passed on their mission to the Aristotelians. And these Aristotelian souls now descended into the physical world in order to carry forward in the way that conditions allowed, what I will call the cosmic service of Michael.

Within the Dominican Order, where they were active in the most manifold ways, we find again those souls who worked more in the Aristotelian sense. For the work on earth, the Platonic souls were replaced, so to speak, by the Aristotelian souls. And now there developed that system of thought which in truth can be rightly appraised to-day only within the Anthroposophical Movement—I once gave lectures here on the true form and background of Scholasticism [ The Redemption of Thinking. A Study in the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Three lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in 1920. Translated and edited with an Introduction, Epilogue and Appendices, by A. P. Shepherd and Mildred Robertson Nicholl (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1956).]—there developed medieval Scholasticism, the teaching which in an age already hastening towards materialism strove to preserve as much spirituality in human concepts as it is possible to preserve.

Before Bacon of Verulam and Comenius appeared on earth, Scholasticism had been carrying forward the service of Michael. We see how Scholasticism, the so-called realistic school of philosophy, strove to rescue the source of spirituality which man bears in his thoughts. The Scholastics ascribe reality to that which man grasps through his thoughts. It is a thin, attenuated spirituality that could there be rescued, but it is spirituality.

Thus is the spiritual life carried forward in the evolution of the worlds. Seeing it in its reality, possessing the science of Initiation, we can do no other: we must always perceive the physical, or that which takes place in physical history upon earth, together with the spiritual that permeates it, coming from spiritual worlds. Thus we reach a united and harmonious conception. First, until the time of Chartres, the Platonic souls are working, and then the Aristotelian. We first behold the Aristotelian souls influencing with inspiration from the super-sensible worlds the teachers who, as Platonic souls, are dwelling upon earth, teaching and unfolding science upon earth in earthly forms of understanding. We gaze into this living interplay; we see the teacher of Chartres sitting there on this earthly ground, unfolding his studies that are permeated by spiritual vision, while there penetrates into this earthly scene the inspiring ray from the Aristotelian soul above, bringing the Platonically coloured teachings into the right channels. It is a very different conception of life from what is usual to-day. For in external life men are so fond of contrasting and dividing Platonists from Aristotelians. But in reality it is not so. The times and epochs of the earth require teachings to be given, now in Platonic, now in Aristotelian terms. But if our wisdom includes the super-sensible life in the background, we perceive the one fructifying the other, the one enclosed within the other.

Then again, when the Aristotelians were teaching in the Dominican Order, the Platonic souls, who were now once more in the spiritual world, were the inspiring genii. They had already come to an understanding in the spiritual worlds with these Aristotelian souls who afterwards descended to the earth. Life was altogether different in those times. One may believe it or not, but it was so. Looking back spiritually into those Middle Ages we find such a spirit as Alanus ab Insulis sitting in his lonely cell, given up to his studies, and receiving from the super-sensible world, like a spirit-visitor who comes to him as a companion, an Aristotelian soul. Nay, even afterwards, when the Aristotelians appear in the Dominican Order, there is still a powerful consciousness of belonging to the spiritual world. We can see it in such an instance as the following. One of the Dominican teachers descends into the physical earth-life earlier than another soul with whom he is united. The other soul remains behind in the spiritual world to begin with, in order to accomplish something there which he will afterwards carry down to his companion who went before him. And at length the two are working together again on the earth. All this takes place with consciousness. In their work and activity they know themselves to be in living connection with the spiritual world.

Subsequent history has left no trace of these things. But, my dear friends, to know the truth about historical life we must not seek to derive it alone from the documents of modern time. Moreover, we must see life with open-minded vision. It may be that it unfolds in circles with which perhaps we can have little sympathy. Yet we must see it as something which is placed by karma into these very circles, and the inner significance of which is altogether different.

The task and possibility of thus reading in the real events has come to me in many remarkable ways during my life. Only now do I perceive and penetrate many an experience that I have met with in the course of my life, clear and distinct like an occult writing. Indeed for the most significant of our experiences karma works and weaves in deep and mysterious ways. And if I may say so, there is a very strong karma underlying the fact that to-day and in recent times, at many places, I have been speaking of such things as the School of Chartres, and what preceded and what came after it. For the greatest of those who taught in the School of Chartres belonged to the Cistercian Order. Now the Cistercian Order, like the other Orders in the Catholic stream of development, has become decadent, but in this growing decadence there is also much illusion of appearance. For individualities occasionally find themselves in outer life-connections to which they do not properly belong, while in reality they are carrying forward old threads of spiritual life which are indeed of the greatest value for Anthroposophy itself. But life and karma brings them into these outer connections. Thus I have always been struck by the fact that from my earliest youth, until a certain period of life, something of the Cistercian Order again and again approached me. Having gone through the elementary school, I narrowly escaped—for reasons which I explained in my autobiography The Story of My Life—becoming a pupil in gymnasium or grammar school conducted by the Cistercian Order. Everything seemed to be leading in this direction; but my parents, as I have explained, eventually decided to send me to the modern school instead. Thus I did not become a pupil in the grammar school connected with the Cistercians, and, needless to say, this was also for very good karmic reasons.

But the modern school which I attended was only five steps away from the Cistercian grammar school. Thus we made the acquaintance of all those excellent Cistercian teachers whose work was indeed of a high quality at that time. I need not speak of the Order itself; it is the individuals to whom I refer. To this day I think with profound appreciation of one of those Cistercian priests who taught German literature at that grammar school with deep enthusiasm. And I see the Cistercian priest before me in many other individualities, in the Alleegasse in Wiener Neustadt, where the teachers used to walk up and down before the school hours began—Cistercian priests in civilian costume, eminently gifted men. At that time I was far more concerned to read the essays of the teachers in the school year-book at the end of the year, than the ordinary text-books during the year. I read with keen devotion what these Cistercians wrote of their own wisdom in the year-book of the grammar school in Wiener Neustadt.

In short, the Cistercian Order was near to me. And without a doubt (though these of course are hypotheses such as one uses only for purposes of illustration), if I had gone to the Cistercian school I should, as a matter of course, have become a Cistercian.

Then I came to Vienna. (All these things are described in The Story of My Life). After a time I came into the circle around Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, where many professors of the theological faculty in Vienna used to gather. I learned to know some of them intimately. All those professors were members of the Cistercian Order. Thus once again I came together with Cistercians, and through the currents which flow through the Cistercian Order to-day, I have been able to follow many things back into the past.

To show how karma works I will refer to one event. I had to give a lecture. Now through the afternoon teas at delle Grazie's I had grown well acquainted with the Cistercian professors of theology who frequented her house. I gave a lecture. A priest of the Cistercian Order was there—a remarkable and excellent man. When I had finished my lecture he made a very peculiar remark, the nature of which I will only indicate by saying: he uttered words in which was contained his memory of having been together with me in a

Such things do indeed educate us for life. It was in the year 1889. In Das Goetheanum, former life on earth.

Thus I have shown how the Platonic stream and the Aristotelian worked together. Then the Aristotelians too went once more through the gate of death. And as we know, with the age of the Spiritual Soul, materialism became more and more predominant on earth. But at the very time when materialism took its start on earth there was founded in the super-sensible worlds a kind of Michael School. As I said, we can refer to these things only with our everyday terminology. It was a far-spread School of Michael in which spirits like Bernardus Sylvestris and Alanus ab Insulis were united after death. And with them once more Alexander and Aristotle. These and other human souls who were not in earthly incarnation at that time, were united here with spiritual beings who, though they spend their lives without ever being incarnated on the earth, are yet connected with earthly souls. Michael himself was a Teacher, gazing back over all that had been the great teachings of the ancient Mysteries, comprehending in a marvellous sweep of vision the secrets of the ancient Mysteries, and opening out at the same time a mighty panorama of what was to come.

In one form or another we find certain souls who took part in that super-sensible school in the 14th/15th century. They had been connected together in many lives on earth. We find them among the hosts which strive towards the stream of Michael, receiving into the impulses of their will what we may call: The will to be united with the stream of Michael.

We gaze upon these souls. Very few of them were on earth. Most of them were in the life between death and a new birth, partaking in that super-sensible gathering, in that spiritual school. We find them there, these souls, we find them there, harkening to the teachings of Michael, and we find them again to-day in the souls who, connected on the earth, unfold a sincere and upright striving of their inner life towards the Anthroposophical Movement.

In the karma of those who tend with inner sincerity towards the Anthroposophical Movement, there lie the deep impulses, the karmic significance of which must again be studied in the spiritual worlds themselves. Of course the fact that those souls were driven by their karma to such a heavenly community at that time, is due again to the fact that in former earthly lives they had shaped their karma accordingly, so that it led them there. Nevertheless one cannot recognise the karma of human souls without looking, not only at what happens at any given time on earth, but also at what happens between death and a new birth.

Our outlook on the world is infinitely enriched by this. Contemplating the souls who labour in the world—and in the last resort this applies to all men—we no longer have to begin at the point where they enter earthly existence, or cease at the point where they die; for in effect they neither then begin to work, nor do they cease. And in all that takes place spiritually, not only the souls that are incarnated on the earth to-day are working, but other souls, who are now between death and a new birth, and who send their rays of influence in upon the earth. In our own actions their impulses are contained. For all these things work together, even as the deeds on earth penetrate into the heavenly regions, and continue working there, as I indicated pictorially, for instance, in the characters of Capesius and Strader in the first Mystery Play.

Brunetto Latini, Dante's teacher, he is there. He died. He went through the gate of death, but death itself is a transformation of life. He is still there. He works on, and we find him if we seek him spiritually.

The picture of the spiritual evolution of mankind is made complete if we are able to include the so-called dead. Nay, in reality, they are far more living than the so-called living. In very many things that happen on the earth we find Brunetto Latini living and working to-day, although he is not incarnate on the earth. Thus you will see how intimately united the earthly life is with the super-sensible. We cannot speak at all of a super-sensible world separated from the earthly world of sense. For everything that is of the senses is permeated at the same time supersensibly, and everything that is super-sensible is revealed somewhere and sometime in the world of sense. Moreover we can only truly receive and understand the earthly life if we recognise that these things are behind it.

This, my dear friends, is to be the future of the Anthroposophical Movement since the Christmas Foundation Meeting. We must treat of the super-sensible facts openly and without reserve, confessing them in fullness of knowledge. This should be the esoteric trait permeating the Anthroposophical Movement. Thus alone will it be possible to give it its real spiritual content.

For you see, all that I described to you as the stream of Michael has gone on into our time. But individualities appearing again on earth have to make use, in the first place, of the physical bodies that are possible in a given age. They must find their way into the impulses of education which a given age provides. In the materialistic age all these things become their external garment. And our materialistic age offers the greatest imaginable hindrances to souls who had a rich spirituality in former lives on earth. To pour this spirituality into the bodies of this age, especially when they have to be prepared by modern educational methods, is extraordinarily difficult. Thus you need not wonder when I say: The souls which strive earnestly towards Anthroposophy are to be found in this way in former epochs of evolution. We cannot lay the foundations of true knowledge unless we can perceive the real interplay of all that lives and works in the world. For spiritual research itself depends on the spiritual life and requires us to seek the spiritual along its own true path. The paths of the spirit are different in every age. In our age they are possible only if we have beneath our feet the firm ground of a spiritual knowledge of external Nature.

The former age which I described within the stream of Michael was followed by one which here on the earth shows an altogether materialistic aspect, an age in which all things are developed materialistically. In the super-sensible evolution of this age there is the most intensive work of preparation for the impulses of Michael, which have now been carried down, so to speak, from heaven to the earth. But this new age to-day cannot take its start from what has gone before in the last few centuries. We must indeed be familiar with the things that have unfolded upon earth in the last few centuries, but we cannot take our start from them. With the consciousness of this modern age we must take our start from what has taken place in the super-sensible during the last few centuries. In saying this we touch upon ground which must become the basis of anthroposophical life and work in this present time. Conceptions such as I have explained in the last few lectures must not merely be received with cold intellect and indifferent hearts. They must be received by the full human being, by the whole compass of the human heart and mind. Anthroposophy can mean something for mankind only if it is received with the whole compass of the human heart and soul.

Such is the foundation of the will of the Anthroposophical Movement, which is united since the Foundation Meeting with the Anthroposophical Society. We long that this should enter deeply into the souls of human beings who are united with this Movement, that they should grow conscious of what is truly connected with their karma in the depths of their own souls.

Thus we have laid a kind of foundation, and from this point we will proceed next Sunday when we will study the further course of the stream of Michael, so as to perceive its resulting tasks for Anthroposophy and for the whole spiritual life of the present time.

When we realize that everything of external nature is transformed inside the human organism, and this in so radical a way that the mineral must be brought to the warmth-etheric condition, we will also find that all that lives in man, in the human organization, flows out into the spiritual. If—according to the ideas so frequently deduced in current text-books on anatomy and physiology—we imagine man to be a firmly built form taking into itself the products of external nature and returning them almost unchanged, then we will always labour under the absence of the bridge which must be thrown from what man is as a natural being to what is present in him as his essential soul-nature.

At first we shall be unable to find any link to join the bony system and system of muscles, composing the solid body which man believes himself to be, with, let us say, the moral world-order. It will be said that the one is simply nature and that the other is something radically different from nature. But when we are clear about the fact that in man all types of substantiality are present and that they must all pass through a condition more volatile than that of muscles and bones, we shall find that this volatile etheric substance can enter into connection with the impulses of the moral world-order.

These are the modes of thought we must use if we are to develop our present considerations into something which will lead man upwards to the spiritual of the cosmos, to the beings whom we have called the beings of the higher hierarchies. Today, therefore, let us do what was not done in the foregoing lectures—for those were more occupied with the natural world—and take our start from the spiritual moral impulses active in man.

The spiritual-moral impulses—well, for modern civilization these have more or less become mere abstract concepts. To an ever greater degree the primal feeling for the moral-spiritual has receded in human nature. Through the whole manner of his education modern civilization leads man to ask: what is customary? what has convention ordained? what is the code? what is the law?—and so on. Less account is taken of what comes forth as impulses, rooted in that part of man which is often relegated in a vague way to conscience. This inner directing of oneself, this determining of one's own goal, is something which has retreated to an ever greater degree in modern civilization. Hence the spiritual-moral has finally become a more or less conventional tradition.

Earlier world-conceptions, particularly those which were sustained by instinctive clairvoyance, brought forth moral impulses from man's inner nature; they induced moral impulses. Moral impulses exist, but today they have become traditional. Of course nothing whatever is implied here against the traditional in morality—but only think of the ten commandments, how old they are. They are taught as commands recorded in ancient times. Is it to be expected today that something might spring forth from the primary, elementary sources of human nature which could be compared to what once arose as the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments? Now from what source does the moral-spiritual arise, which binds men together in a social way, which knits the threads uniting man to man? There exists only one true source of the moral-spiritual in mankind, and this is what we may call human understanding, mutual human understanding, and, based upon this human understanding, human love. Wheresoever we may look for the arising of moral-spiritual impulses in mankind, in so far as these play a role in social life, it will invariably prove to be the case that, whenever such impulses spring forth with elemental power, they arise from human understanding based upon human love. These are the actual driving force of the social moral-spiritual impulses in mankind. And fundamentally speaking, in so far as he is a spiritual being, man only lives with other men to the degree that he develops human understanding and human love.

Here one can put a deeply significant question, a question which is indeed not always voiced, but which, in regard to what has just been said, must be on the tip of every tongue: If human understanding and human love are the real impulses upon which communal life depends, how does it come about that the very reverse of human understanding and human love appears in our social order?

This is a question with which initiates more than anyone else have always concerned themselves. In every age in which initiation science was the primal impulse, this very question was regarded as one of their most vital concerns. When this initiation science was still a primary impulse, however, it possessed certain means whereby to get behind this problem. But if one looks at conventional science today, one is forced to ask: As the god-created soul is naturally predisposed to human understanding and human love, why are these qualities not active as a matter of course in the social order? Whence come human hatred and lack of human understanding? Now, if we are unable to look for this lack of human understanding, this human hatred, in the sphere of the spiritual, of the soul, it follows that we must look for them in the sphere of the physical.

Yes—but now modern conventional science gives us its answer as to what the physical-bodily nature of man is: blood, nerves, muscles, bones. No matter how long one studies a bone, if one only does so with the eye of present-day natural science, one will never be able to say: It is this bone which leads man astray into hatred. Nor yet, to whatever degree one is able to investigate the blood according to the principles by which it is investigated today, will one ever be able to establish the conviction: It is this blood which leads man astray into lack of human understanding.

In times when initiation science was a primal impulse matters were certainly quite otherwise. Then one turned one's gaze to the physical-bodily nature of man and perceived it to be the counter-image of what one possessed of the spiritual through instinctive clairvoyance.

When man speaks of the spiritual today he refers at most to abstract thoughts; this for him is the spiritual. If he finds these thoughts too tenuous, all that remains to him is words, and then, as Fritz Mauthner did, he writes a “Critique of Language”. Through such a “Critique of Language” he manages to dilute the spirit—already tenuous enough—until it becomes utterly devoid of substance. The initiation-science which was irradiated with instinctive clairvoyance did not see the spiritual in abstract thoughts. It saw the spiritual in forms, in what produced pictures, in what could speak and resound, in what could produce tones. For this initiation science the spiritual lived and moved. And because the spiritual was seen in its living activity, what is physical—the bones, the blood—could also be perceived in its spirituality. These thoughts, these notions, which we have today about the skeleton, did not exist in initiation science. Today the skeleton is really regarded as something constructed by the calculations of an architect for the purposes of physiology and anatomy. But it is not this. The skeleton, as you have seen, is formed by mineral substance which has been driven upwards to the state of warmth-ether, so that in the warmth-ether the forces of the higher hierarchies are laid hold of, and then the bone formations are built up.

To one who is able to behold it rightly, the skeleton reveals its spiritual origin. But one who looks at the skeleton in its present form—I mean in its form as present-day science regards it—is like a person who says: there I have a printed page with the forms of letters upon it. He describes the form of these letters, but does not read their meaning because he is unable to read. He does not relate what is expressed in the forms of the letters to what exists as their real basis; he only describes their shapes. In the same way the present-day anatomist, the present-day natural scientist, describes the bones as if they were entirely without meaning. What they really reveal, however, is their origin in the spiritual.

And so it is with everything that exists as physical natural laws, as etheric natural laws. They are written characters from the spiritual world. And we only understand these things rightly when we can comprehend them as written characters proceeding from spiritual worlds.

Now, when we are able to regard the human organism in this way, we become aware of something which belongs to the domain of which the true initiates of all epochs have said: When one crosses the threshold into the spiritual world, the first thing one becomes aware of is something terrible, something which at first it is by no means easy to sustain. Most people wish to be pleasantly affected by what seems to them worthy of attainment. But the fact remains that only by passing through the experience of horror can one learn to know spiritual reality, that is to say true reality. For in regard to the human form, as this is placed before us by anatomy and physiology, one can only perceive that it is built up out of two elements from the spiritual world: moral coldness and hatred.

In our souls we actually possess the predisposition to human love, and to that warmth which understands the other man. In the solid components of our organism, however, we bear moral cold. This is the force which, from the spiritual worlds, welds, as it were, our physical organism together. Thus we bear in ourselves the impulse of hatred. This it is which, from the spiritual world, brings about the circulation of the blood. And whereas we may perhaps go through the world with a very loving soul, with a soul which thirsts for human understanding, we must nevertheless be aware that below in the unconsciousness, there where the soul streams down, sends its impulses down into the bodily nature, for the very purpose that we may be clothed in a body—coldness has its seat. Though I shall always speak just of coldness, what I mean is moral coldness, though this can certainly pass over into physical coldness, traversing the warmth-ether on its way. There below, in the unconsciousness within us, moral coldness and hatred are entrenched, and it is easy for man to bring into his soul what is present in his body, so that his soul can, as it were, be infected with the lack of human understanding. This is, however, the result of moral coldness and human hatred. Because this is so, man must gradually cultivate in himself moral warmth, that is to say human understanding and love, for these must vanquish what comes from the bodily nature.

Now it cannot be denied—this presents itself in all clarity to spiritual vision—that in our age, which began with the fifteenth century and has developed in an intellectualistic way on the one hand and in a materialistic way on the other, much human misunderstanding and human hatred has become imbedded in men's souls. This is so to a greater degree than is supposed. For only when man passes through the gate of death does he become aware of how much failure to understand, how much hatred, is present in our unconsciousness. There man detaches his soul-spiritual from his physic bodily nature. He lays his physical-bodily nature aside. The impulses of coldness, the impulses of hatred, then reveal themselves simply as natural forces, as mere forces of nature.

Let us look at a corpse. Let us look with the spiritual eye at the actual etheric corpse. Here we are looking at something which no longer evokes moral judgment any more than does a plant or a stone. The moral forces which have previously been contained in what is now the corpse have been changed into natural forces. During his lifetime, however, the human being absorbed very much from them; this he takes with him through the gate of death. The ego and astral body withdraw, taking with them as they go what remained unnoticed during life because it was always entirely submerged in the physical and etheric bodies. The ego and astral body take with them into the spiritual world all the impulses connected with the human body, all the impulses of human hatred and coldness towards other men which had gained access to their souls. I mentioned that it is only when one sees the human being pass through the gate of death that one perceives how much failure to understand, how much human hatred have been implanted into mankind just in our civilization by various things about which I shall still have to speak. For the man of today carries much of these two impulses through the gate of death, immensely much.

But what man thus carries with him is in fact the spiritual residue of what should be in the physical, of what the physical and etheric bodies should deal with themselves. In the lack of human understanding and in human hatred which man carries into the spiritual world we have the residue of what really belongs in the physical world. He carries it thither in a spiritual way, but it would never profit him to carry it onward through the time between death and a new birth, for then he would be quite unable to progress. At every step in his further evolution between death and a new birth he would stumble if he were obliged to carry further this failure to understand the other man, this human hatred. Into the spiritual world, which is entered by the so-called dead, people today continually draw with them definite currents which would halt them in their development if they had to remain as they actually are. From whence do these currents proceed?

To discover this we need only look at present-day life. People pass one another by; they pay little heed to the individual characteristics of others. Are not people today mostly so constituted that each one regards himself as the standard of what is right and proper? And when someone differs from this standard we do not take kindly to him, but rather think: This man should be different. And this usually implies: He should be like me. This is not always brought into the consciousness, but it lies concealed in human social intercourse.

In the way things are put forward today—I mean in the whole manner and form of people's speech—there lies very little understanding of the other man. People bellow out their ideas about what man should be like, but this usually means: Everyone should be like me. If someone different comes along, then, even if this is not consciously realized, he is immediately regarded as an enemy, an object for antipathy. This is lack of human moral understanding, lack of love. And to the degree in which these qualities are lacking, moral coldness and human hatred go with man through the gate of death, obstructing his path. Now, however—because man's further development is not his own concern alone, but is the concern of the whole world-order, the wisdom-filled world-order—he finds the beings of the third hierarchy, Angels, Archangels, Archai. In the first period after man has passed through the gate of death into the world lying between death and a new birth these beings stoop downward and mercifully take from man the coldness which comes from lack of human understanding. And we see how the beings of the third hierarchy assume the burden of what man carries up to them into the spiritual world in the way I have described, in that he passes through the gate of death.

It is for a longer period that man must carry with him the remains of human hatred; for this can only be taken from him by grace of the spirits of the second hierarchy, Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. They take from him all that remains of human hatred.

Now, however, the human being has arrived about midway in the region between death and a new birth, to the abiding place of the first hierarchy, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, which I described in my Mystery Play as the midnight hour of existence. Man would be quite unable to pass through this region of the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones without being inwardly annihilated, utterly destroyed, had not the beings of the second and third hierarchies already taken from him in their mercy human misunderstanding, that is to say moral coldness, and human hatred. And so we see how man, in order that he may find access to those impulses which can contribute to his further development, must at first burden the beings of the higher hierarchies with what he carries up into the spiritual world from his physical and etheric bodies, where it really belongs.

When one has insight into all this, when one sees how this moral coldness holds sway in the spiritual world, one will also know how to judge the relation between this spiritual cold and the physical cold here below. The physical cold which we find in snow and ice is only the physical image of that moral-spiritual cold which is there above. If we have them both before us, we can compare them. While man is being relieved in this way from human misunderstanding and human hatred, one can follow with the spiritual eye how he begins to lose his form, how this form more or less melts away.

When someone first passes through the gate of death, for the spiritual vision of imagination his appearance is still somewhat similar to what it was here on earth. For what a man bears within him here on earth is in fact just substances in more or less granular form, let us say, in atomistic form; but the human figure itself—that is spiritual. We must really be clear about this. It is sheer nonsense to regard man's form as physical; we must represent it to ourselves as spiritual. The physical in it is everywhere present as minute particles. The form, which is only a force-body, holds together what would otherwise fall apart into a heap of atoms. If someone were to take any of you by the forelock and could draw out your form, the physical and also the etheric would collapse like a heap of sand. That these are not just a sand heap, that they are distributed and take on form, this stems from nothing physical; it stems from the spiritual. Here in the physical world man goes about as something spiritual. It is senseless to think that man is only a physical being; his form is purely spiritual. The physical in him may almost be likened to a heap of crumbs.

Man, however, still possesses his form when he goes through the gate of death. One sees it shimmering, glittering, radiant with colours. But now he loses first the form of his head; then the rest of his form gradually melts away. Man becomes completely metamorphosed, as though transformed into an image of the cosmos. This occurs during the time between death and a new birth in which he comes into the region of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

Thus, when one follows man between death and a new birth, one at first still sees him hovering, as it were, while he gradually loses his form from above downwards. But while the last vestige of him is vanishing away below, something else has taken shape, a wonderful spirit-form, which is in itself an image of the whole world-sphere and at the same time a model of the future head which man will bear on his shoulders. Here the human being is woven into an activity wherein not only the beings of the lower hierarchies participate, but also the beings of the highest hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

What actually takes place? It is the most wonderful thing which, as man, one can possibly conceive. For all that was lower man here in life now passes over into the formation of the future head. As we go about here on earth we only make use of our poverty-stricken head as the organ of our mental images and our thoughts. But thoughts also accompany our breast, thoughts also accompany our limb-system. And in the moment that we cease to think only with the head, but begin to think with our limb-system, in that moment the whole reality of Karma is opened up to us. We know nothing of our Karma because we always think only with that most superficial of organs, our brain. The moment we begin to think with our fingers—and just with our fingers and toes we can think much more clearly than with the nerves of the head—once we have soared up to the possibility of doing so—the moment we begin to think with what has not become entirely material, when we begin to think with the lower man, our thoughts are the thoughts of our Karma. When we do not merely grasp with our hand but think with it, then, thinking with our hand we follow our Karma. And even more so with the feet; when we do not only walk but think with our feet, we follow the course of our Karma with special clarity. That man is such a dullard on earth—excuse me, but no other word occurs to me—comes from the fact that all his thinking is enclosed in the region of his head. But man can think with his entire being. Whenever we think with our entire being, then for our middle region a whole cosmology, a marvelous cosmic wisdom, becomes our own. And for the lower region and the limb-system especially Karma becomes our own.

It already means a great deal when we look at the way a person walks, not in a dull way, but marking the beauty of his step, and what is characteristic in it; or when we allow his hands to make an impression upon us, so that we interpret these hands and find that in every movement of the fingers there lie wonderful revelations of man's inner nature. Yet that is only the smallest part of what moves in unison with t he walking man, the grasping man, man as he moves his fingers. For it is man's whole moral nature which moves; his destiny moves with him; everything that he is as a spiritual being. And if, after man has passed through the gate of death, we are able to follow how his form dissolves—the first to melt away being what is reminiscent of his physical form—there then appears what does indeed resemble his physical structure, but which is now produced by his inner nature, his inner being, thus announcing that this is his moral form. Thus does man appear when he approaches the midnight hour of existence, when he comes into the sphere of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Then we see how these wonderful metamorphoses proceed, how there his form melts away. But this is not really the essential point. It looks as though the form would dissolve away, but the truth is that the spiritual beings of the higher worlds are there working together with man. They work with those human beings who are working upon themselves, but also upon those with whom they are karmically linked. One man works upon the other. These spiritual beings, then, together with man himself, develop out of his previous bodily form in his previous earth-life, what, at first spiritually, will become the bodily form of his next earth-life.

This spirit-form first connects itself with physical life when it meets the given embryo. But in the spiritual world feet and legs are transformed into the jaw bones, while arms and hands are transformed into the cheek-bones. There the whole lower man is transformed into the spiritual prototype of what will later become the head. The way in which this metamorphosis is accomplished is, I do assure you, of everything that the world offers to conscious experience the most wonderful. We see at first how an image of the whole cosmos is created, and how this is then differentiated into the structure which is the seat of the whole moral element—but only after all that I have mentioned has been taken from it. We see how what was, transforms itself into what will be. Now one sees the human being as spirit-form journeying back once more to the region of the second hierarchy and then to that of the third hierarchy. Here this reversed spirit-form—it is in fact only the basis for the future head—must, as it were, be welded to what will become the future breast-organism, to what will become the future limb-organization and the metabolic system. These must be added. Whence come the spiritual impulses to add them?

It is by grace of the beings of the second and third hierarchies, who gathered these impulses together when the man was on the first half of his journey. These beings took them from his moral nature; now they bring them back again and form from them the basis of the rhythmic system and metabolic-limb-system. In this later period between death and a new birth man receives the ingredients, the spiritual ingredients, for his physical organism. This spiritual form finds its way into the embryonic life, and bears within it what will now become physical forces and etheric forces. These are, however, only the physical image of what we bear in us from our previous life as lack of human understanding and human hatred, from which our limb-organization is spiritually formed.

If we wish to have such conceptions as these, we must acquire a manner of feeling and perceiving quite other than that needed in the physical world. For we must be able to behold what arises out of the spiritual becoming physical in the way I have described; we must be able to sustain the knowledge that coldness, moral coldness, lives as physical image in the bones and that moral hatred lives as physical image in the blood. We must learn to look at these matters quite objectively. It is only when we look into things in this way that we become aware of the fundamental difference between man's inner being and external nature.

Just consider for a moment the fact I mentioned, namely that in the blossoms of the plant-kingdom we see, as it were, human conscience laid out before us. What we see outside us may be considered as the picture of our soul-being. The forces within ourselves may appear to have no relation to outer nature. But the truth is, bone can only be bone because it hates the carbonic acid and calcium phosphate in their mineral state, because it withdraws from them, contracting into itself, whereby it becomes something different from what these substances are in external nature. And one must face up to the conception that for man to have a physical form, hatred and coldness must be present in his physical nature.

Through this, you see, our words gain inner significance. If our bones have a certain hardness, it is to their advantage to possess this physical image of spiritual coldness. But if our soul has this hardness it is not a good thing for the social life. The physical nature of man must be different from his soul-nature. Man can be man precisely because his physical being differs from his being of soul and spirit. Man's physical nature also differs from physical nature around him. Upon this fact rests the necessity for that transformation about which I have spoken to you.

All this forms an important supplement to what I once said in the course on Cosmology, Philosophy and Religion [* Ten lectures at the Goetheanum, September, 1922. Translation in preparation by the Anthroposophic Press, New York.] about man's connection with the hierarchies. It could only be added, however, on such initial considerations as those in our present lectures. For spiritual vision gives insight alike into what the separate members of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms really are here on earth, and into the acts of the hierarchies—those acts, which continue from age to age, as do also the happenings of nature and the works of man.

When man's life between death and a new birth—his life in the spiritual world—is beheld in this way, one can describe his experiences in that world in just as much detail as his biography here on earth. So we may live in the hope that when we pass through the gate of death, everything of misunderstanding and hatred between man and man will be carried up into the spiritual world, so that it may be given anew to us, and that from its ennobled state human forms may be created.

In the course of long centuries something very strange has come to pass for earthly humanity. No longer is it possible for all the forces of human misunderstanding and human hatred to be used up in new human forms, in the structure of new human bodies. Something has become left over. During the course of the last centuries this residue has streamed down on to the earth, so that in the spiritual atmosphere of the earth, in what I may call the earth's astral light, there is to be found an infiltration of the impulses of human hatred and human misunderstanding which exist exterior to man. These impulses have not been incorporated into human forms; they stream around the earth in the astral light. They work into man, but not into what makes up the single person but into the relationships which people form with one another on the earth. They work into civilization. And within civilization they have brought about what compelled me to say, in the spring of 1914 in Vienna, [* The Inner Nature of Man and Life between Death and Rebirth (Rudolf Steiner Press).] that our present-day civilization is invaded by spiritual carcinoma, by a spiritual cancerous disease, by spiritual tumours. At that time the fact that this was spoken about in Vienna—in the lecture-course dealing with the phenomena between death and a new birth—was somewhat unwelcome. Since then, however, people have actually experienced something of the truth of what was said at that time. Then people had no thought of what streams through civilization. They did not perceive that actual cancerous formations of civilization were present, for it was only from 1914 onwards that they manifested openly. Today they are revealed as utterly diseased tissues of civilization. Yes, now it becomes evident to what a degree our modern civilization has been infiltrated by these currents of human hatred and human coldness which have not been used up in the forms of the human structure, to what a degree these infiltrations are active as the parasites of modern civilization.

Civilization today is deeply afflicted with parasites; it is like a part of an organism that is invaded by parasites, by bacilli. What people have amassed in the way of thoughts exists, but it has no living connection with man. Only consider how this shows itself in the most ordinary phenomena of daily life. How many people have to learn without bringing enthusiasm to the learning; they simply have to get down to it and learn in order to pass an examination, so as to qualify for some particular post, or the like—well, for them there is no vital connection between what they have to take in and what lives in their soul as an inborn craving for the spiritual. It is exactly as though a person who is not predisposed to hunger were to be continually stuffed with food! The digestive processes about which I have spoken cannot be carried through. What has been taken in remains as ballast in the organism, finally becoming something which definitely induces parasites.

Much in our modern civilization has no connection with man. Like the mistletoe—spiritually speaking—it sucks its life from what man brings forth from the original impulses of his mind, of his heart. Much of this manifests in our civilization as parasitic existence. To anyone who has the power of seeing our civilization with spiritual vision in the astral, the year 1914 already presented an advanced stage of cancer, a carcinoma formation; for him the whole of civilization was already invaded by parasites. But to this parasitic condition something further is now added.

I have described to you in what may be called a spiritual-physiological way how, out of the nature of the gnomes and undines who work from below upwards, the possibility arises of parasitic impulses in man. Then, however, as I explained, the opposite picture presents itself; for then poison is carried downwards by the sylphs and the elemental beings of warmth. And so in a civilization like ours, which bears a parasitic character, what comes down from above—spiritual truth, though not poison in itself, is transformed into poison in man, so that our civilization rejects it in fear and invents all kinds of reasons for this rejection. The two things belong together: a parasitic culture below, which does not proceed from elemental laws and which therefore contains parasites within itself, and a spirituality which sinks down from above and which—in that it enters into this civilization—is taken up by man in such a way that it becomes poison. When you bear this in mind you have the key to the most important symptoms of our present-day civilization. And when one has insight into these things, just out of itself the fact is revealed that a truly cultural education must make its appearance as the antidote or opposing remedy. Just as a rational therapy, is deduced from a true diagnosis of the individual, so a diagnosis of the sickness of a civilization reveals the remedy; the one calls forth the other.

It is very evident that mankind today again needs something from civilization which stands close to the human heart and the human soul, which springs directly from the human heart and the human soul. If a child, on entering primary school, is introduced to a highly sophisticated system of letter-forms which he has to learn as a ... b ... c etc., this has nothing whatever to do with his heart and soul. It has no relation to them at all. What the child develops in his head, in his soul, in that he has to learn a ... b ... c, is—speaking spiritually—a parasite in human nature.

During his years of education a great deal is brought to the child of this parasitic nature. We must, therefore, develop an art of education which works creatively from his soul. We must let the child bring colour into form; and the colour-forms, which have arisen out of joy, out of enthusiasm, out of sadness, out of every possible feeling, these he can paint on to the paper. When a child puts on to the paper what arises out of his soul, this develops his humanity. This produces nothing parasitic. This is something which grows out of man like his fingers or his nose!—whereas, when the child has forced on him the conventional forms of the letters, which are the result of a high degree of civilization, this does engender what is parasitic.

Immediately the art of education lies close to the human heart, to the human soul, the spiritual approaches man without becoming poison. First you have the diagnosis, which finds that our age is infested with carcinomas, and then you have the therapy—yes, it is Waldorf School education.

Waldorf School education is founded upon nothing other than this, my dear friends. Its way of thinking in the cultural sphere is the same as that in the field of therapy. Here you see, applied in a special case, what I spoke about a few days ago, namely that the being of man proceeds from below upwards, from nutrition, through healing, upwards to the development of the spiritual, and that one must regard education as medicine transposed into the spiritual. This strikes us with particular clarity when we wish to find a therapy for civilization, for we can only conceive this therapy as being Waldorf School education.

You will readily be able to imagine the feelings of one who not only has insight into this situation, but who is also trying to implant Waldorf School education into the world in a practical way, when he sees in the cumulative effect of this carcinoma of civilization something which may seriously endanger this Waldorf School education, or even make it altogether impossible. We should not reject such thoughts as these, but rather make them the impulse within ourselves to work together wherever we still can in the therapy of our civilization.

There are many things today such as the following. During my Helsingfors lecture-course in 1913, I indicated from a certain aspect of spiritual knowledge a view as to the inferior nature of Woodrow Wilson, who was at that time a veritable object of veneration for much of civilized mankind and in respect of whom people are only now—because to do otherwise is impossible—gaining some measure of perception. As things went then, so have things also gone in regard to the civilization-carcinoma about which I have been speaking. Well, at that time things went in a certain way; today those things which hold good for our time are proceeding in a similar manner. People are asleep. It devolves upon us to bring about the awakening. And Anthroposophy bears within it all the impulses for a right awakening of civilization, for a right awakening of human culture.

This is what I wished to say to you in the last of these lectures.

It has been some time since it has been possible to have a branch meeting here in Mannheim, and today we are once again able to fulfill such a task. In recent times, you, my dear friends, have attentively and eagerly acquired the knowledge that can be called the more important ideas and insights of our spiritual scientific worldview. Therefore, it is perhaps not inappropriate for us to speak today about something that, on the one hand, turns our gaze to the whole of our spiritual scientific movement and, on the other hand, also gives us the opportunity to utilize what we have acquired in spiritual knowledge, namely about the human being and his development , to utilize it, so to speak, in the service to which every human being should be devoted, and which, for anthroposophists in particular, should take on a special form through their insights, through the perceptions they can gain from the spiritual-scientific world view. You know, my dear friends, that the development of humanity is progressing, that epoch follows epoch, age follows age, and each age has its special task. We can distinguish between larger and smaller ages in the historical development of humanity, and in each age there are very special moments when it is necessary not to fail to penetrate the actual task, the actual mission of that age. We may note that in the successive periods of time, tasks are set for people from the spiritual worlds, tasks that are very special for this or that age, and for us humans it is then a matter of doing the right thing, of knowing something about these tasks, of absorbing into our soul a realization of these tasks. We really live in an age in which it is urgently necessary for a number of people to gain knowledge again of what is to be done today or in our presence, preferably in the spiritual realm. I would like to begin by bringing two periods of time that are very close to us to your mind's eye, two periods of time that are close to us because one of them belongs to the past and much of its spiritual wealth and products still extends into our present; but the second period has hardly begun. We are standing at the beginning of a new period, a smaller cycle or period of humanity, standing, so to speak, at the boundary. Therefore, it is of very special importance to understand these two periods a little. The one period covers approximately that epoch which began with Augustine and ended with the approach of the 16th century. In occult science it is said that this period covers the time from Augustine to Calvin. Then, following this, we have another period that covers the time from Calvin to the last third of the 19th century. And we are again at the starting point of a period with new tasks, the observance of which is extremely important for the immediate future of humanity. Let us now try to form a rough idea of what happens at the beginning of a new period. When one period ends and another begins, something is ending and something is beginning. Something is decaying and something is germinating, as if rooted, like a new dawn for a sunshine that is preparing as the sunshine of a new age. And the peculiarity of such a transitional age – you know that people speak of transitional ages in different senses, but we are really dealing with a transitional age today in a very meaningful sense – is that new forces of culture must be added to humanity.

To characterize this, I will consider a great task for all of humanity; that is the advent of Christianity. If we form an idea of the way in which Christianity arose, we have to say: Actually, it was rejected by precisely those who were at the forefront of culture. But at the same time, those who were at the forefront of culture had reached a state of decline. Try to imagine Roman culture in decline and try to imagine the communities to which Paul preached. These were people who, so to speak, naively but with fresh energies faced the culture, with a lively sense of what was to come, which one did not really count among the highest blossoms of the culture of the time. These were the new forces, but sometimes even born from the lowest layers of the people. Because the complicated social life of the upper leading circles, when it has developed for a time, must come down, but especially because science, with its concepts, ideas and so on, arrives at a point where it cannot develop further, something new, something popular, must intervene. We have put a major turnaround in front of us. In a sense, we are facing another turning point today. What has been achieved with great dedication as scientific thoughts and ideas has actually reached a point where everyone who is insightful must say: it really cannot go any further – the scientific concepts and ideas that are being pursued today in official currents are on the verge of decay. And the whole way in which spiritual life is approached, where the great currents of this spiritual life flow, is in full decline. I would like to describe with a few stark words how this decline could actually be observed with relatively rapid steps by those who observe such things at all.

If you took part in this life, as it was expressed in literature, through books and the like, in science, then you grew up with a seriousness, with a seriousness that is now regarded as old-fashioned, that is no longer understood. The tone of weekly magazines, for example, was quite different in the 1970s than it is today. It was, if we may use the expression, much, much more dignified. Back then, there were very specific views within this intellectual current regarding how to relate to drama, poetry, and so on. That has changed, as one thought back then. In those days there was also a certain way of writing poetry, in which one satisfied less strict demands, for example, writing plays for small festive occasions, more for fun, for a joke. Sometimes there was quite a bit of talent in it. In particular, the students at their assemblies performed plays in which there was quite a bit of talent. Now one got a little older and could look around at the literary currents, and one found among them esteemed products that were, however, exactly the same as what had previously been considered only good for the day. That became literary maturity for the intellectual movement. In order not to cause too much offence, I do not want to mention any names. Today we are already at the point that we have nothing but printed trivialities in the broadest sense – entire bookstores are filled with them. Just thirty to forty years ago, one would have been sorry for the ink to write them down. When a person is going through such a change, they do not judge things starkly enough, but this is how cultural history will have to characterize our late 19th century. Indeed, we are facing a decline of traditional intellectual life, and this could easily be demonstrated by the decline of scientific theories. Therefore, we should not be surprised if what is to emerge as a new spiritual movement, what is to bring something new to human development, finds little support among what is today called the official intellectual life; if the members of these circles say: There are such associations of half-wits who call themselves Theosophists, who are basically quite uneducated people mostly — and so on. These are necessities that are present in every transitional age. Fresh forces must come from below, and what springs up in this way will then become necessary for the later age in order to really create an ascending movement. Now I said: we have seen two ages go by. The age from Augustine to Calvin, for example, was an age that sought to internalize all the soul forces of man, all the forces of man. This tendency to introspection was to be seen in all fields during this time; external natural science was less practised, people's attention was less directed to the outer laws and phenomena of nature. In the starting point of Augustine himself, in which we see our spiritual-scientific structure of the human being prefigured in a certain way, we find the idea of the influence of supersensible powers that make use of the human being as an instrument. As this epoch continued, what strange phenomena we encounter: the mysticism of Meister Eckhart, Suso, Johannes Tauler and many others. Although outer science receded into the background during this epoch, we find in it another remarkable way of embracing nature with a genius-like intuitive gaze. We see how this is elevated in such people as Agrippa von Nettesheim, for example. Phenomena such as Paracelsus and Jakob Böhme present themselves to us as the fruits of this deepening of the human soul in those centuries. Such a current can only last for a certain length of time. It has an ascending direction, a culmination, a high point and a descending line. As a rule, such a direction is replaced by something that appears to be a counter-image in a certain way.

In fact, the following centuries are a counter-image to this trend. The internalized image of the human soul is gradually forgotten. Times are coming when natural science has achieved such infinite triumphs. The great phenomena of a Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei occur, right up to those of the 19th century such as Julius Robert Mayer, Darwin and so on. A vast amount of external facts is brought to light.

And yet, people at the beginning of the new epoch were different from those of later times. A man like Kepler, for example, who had such a significant impact on physical science, was a pious man, a man who felt deeply, deeply connected to Christianity in his innermost being. And Kepler, the discoverer of Kepler's three laws, which are basically nothing more than time and space laws clothed in mathematical formulas, something quite mechanical, oh, this Kepler - he spent much more time than on such explain how things were in the great world at that time, when the mystery of Palestine took place on earth; how Saturn, Jupiter and Mars were related to each other when Christ Jesus was born. Kepler's great thoughts were directed towards this. He was able to give mankind what he had to say about the science of the stars in purely mathematical terms. What he carried in his heart, in his deepest heart, remained his property in an age that only served the outer life.

Or take Newton. Where would you not refer to Newton as the discoverer of the laws of gravity? But where would it also be emphasized - when Haeckel, for example, talks about the epoch-making phenomenon of Newton - where would it be emphasized that Newton was so Christian that in his quietest and most sacred hours he wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse in his own way? But he could not give it to humanity. He was able to give humanity the purely mechanical law of gravity in the age dedicated to the external summarization of natural phenomena. And this age has just expired with the last third of the 19th century.

Now an age is beginning that must necessarily be a counter-image to the previous one. And the task of preparing this counter-image, which is to continue to work in such a way that everything we have often spoken of can come to pass, is the spiritual-scientific world view, which in turn must bring a deepening of the human soul. But each age must work differently than the one before. It would be wrong to simply study as it was done correctly from Augustine to Calvin. We may let such phenomena have their effect on us, but we must know that today, after such an age of natural science, we must seek the spiritual world differently than in the past. Is there anything else, apart from what man can think in the abstract, from which one can recognize that man is really compelled and forced to grasp the world anew in every age?

If you study Paracelsus today, for example, you will find that he is an unfathomable spirit for today's trivial external research, a spirit who has particularly looked deeply into the secrets of healing and medicine. And anyone who delves into what he had to say about healing this or that form of illness will be able to learn something quite tremendous and magnificent from Paracelsus. Let us assume that a physician who is at the level of the real level of the spiritual life of our time would delve so deeply that he would want to apply what would result from Paracelsus' instructions. For certain great things, quite correct things would arise, but the physician of the present day could no longer acquire some of them. For if he were to apply some of the remedies indicated there, it would not help, because human nature has changed since the 16th century, because everything in the world changes and everything progresses. Things outside do not obey our arbitrary knowledge, which moves in steps. They move forward, and we have the task of investigating with our knowledge, our insight. We must learn anew, as Paracelsus learned. And if we most faithfully do as he did, we will find something quite different in many respects. Thus, we have very special spiritual tasks in our time.

Now I would like to characterize in a few broad strokes how it is written in the stars that human culture must progress in the near future. It is not left to the hand of man alone to give this culture a direction. The old views would not fit the change in the real circumstances. Things take their course, and spiritual science has the task of saying what course things are taking, it gives us the guidance to understand our time.

We are standing at the dawn of a completely new human life and thinking. Three things are of particular importance and significance in human spiritual life: firstly, religion; secondly, science; and thirdly, the way people live together, the feelings and perceptions that people develop for each other, and what takes place in the social sphere. These three are the most important, so that it is of particular importance to follow in the successive epochs what forms these three must take, that which comes into consideration as religion, as science or social life. And there are certain demands that man simply must understand, that are beyond his control.

Why must religion, science and social life change from epoch to epoch? Simply because human nature changes. We do not learn that human nature consists of different parts for the sake of learning that. We do not learn that the human being consists of a physical body, a life body and an astral body with sentient, intellectual and conscious soul so that a few people can have something to do with it and can acquire these classifications. We learn these classifications because they have a far-reaching significance for human life. And you can sense this far-reaching significance if you think back to the culture that was Egyptian-Chaldean, for example, when it was the sentient soul that was primarily important. There, the higher beings primarily worked through this. And in the Greco-Latin period, in the time of the emergence of Christianity, everything that came from the divine-spiritual heights and worked into humanity worked on the mind soul. And today it works on the consciousness soul. We understand nothing at all about the relationship between the human being and the great forces of the world if we do not know how this human nature is structured. What are we preparing today by devoting ourselves to spiritual-scientific insight? In our time, it is especially the consciousness soul that is cultivated. All external thinking and knowledge, all useful thinking, this thinking according to the principle of usefulness, is based to a certain extent on the development of the consciousness soul. But something like the light of the spirit self is already pushing its way into this. Now the remarkable thing is that in our time we have two parallel currents, one that rushes down into decay and one that rises to future glory. The one that rushes down into decay has not yet arrived at that decay. At the same time, it is the source of great discoveries that still have a tremendous future. This too has its beneficial effects. Certainly, for a long time to come mankind will benefit from that which is, after all, heading towards decay. But the kind of thinking that invents balloons is the thinking of decay. And the thinking that deals with the structure of humanity is the thinking of the future of humanity.

But these two do show a common transition. We can see that in all fields. I would like to start by giving you a very practical example: the field of monetary transactions. This changed quite considerably in the 19th century. A tremendous turnaround has taken place. If you follow the period immediately preceding the last third of the 19th century, all monetary speculation was tied to the individuality, to the personality. It was the purely financial and speculative genius of the Rothschilds that introduced money everywhere and led it back again to and from the money centers. And if we follow the history of the great banking houses, we have examples everywhere of how monetary transactions took place entirely out of the nature of the human being, based on the consciousness soul, on the individual human being. This has changed. We just do not talk much about it yet because it is only just beginning. Today, the consciousness soul no longer exclusively rules in monetary transactions; today, something of a kind of grouping prevails: the share capital, the company, the association, that which is supra-personal.

Try to follow what is only just beginning to emerge today and what will come more and more. Today it is almost irrelevant who stands as a personality here or there. What human beings have worked into the circulation of money is already working without personality, is already working by itself. In a descending current, you have the spread of the consciousness soul to the spirit self.

Here we have it in the current of decay; and we have it in the current of ascending life, where we seek that which the individual capable personality has achieved, where we seek to gain the help of those powers through inspiration, which will give us the inspirations from the spiritual world again. There, too, we go from the personal to the superpersonal. Thus, there are common characteristics for the ages with regard to both the declining and the ascending currents. In particular, however, one must be careful not to take into account in any age what authority is present in that age. As long as one does not have spiritual insight, one can go very far astray.

This is particularly the case in one area of human culture, in the area of materialistic medicine, where we see how exactly that is decisive, which the authority has in its hands and more and more lays claim to, where that wants to lead to something much, much more terrible and dreadful than any rule of authority of the much-criticized Middle Ages. We are already living in it, and it will become ever stronger and stronger. When people mock so terribly at the ghosts of medieval superstition, one might well ask: Has anything changed in relation to that? Has the fear of ghosts gone away? Don't people fear many more ghosts today than they did back then? It is much more terrible than is generally believed what goes on in the human soul when it is presented with the fact that there are 60,000 germs on the palm of the hand. In America, it has been calculated how many such germs are in a single male mustache. Should we not, then, decide to say: These medieval ghosts were at least decent ghosts, but today's bacillus ghosts are too puny, too indecent ghosts, to justify the fear that is only just beginning and that makes people, especially here, in the field of health, fall into a terrible belief in authority. We must say that we see the character of the transition period everywhere. We must only look at the phenomena in the right way, and we see this character everywhere.

Now we ask ourselves: What do the stars, the teachings and revelations of theosophy tell us about further development in these three most important areas of life? What must it become in the future and how must we work so that the creative, fruitful spirit self can be guided over into the consciousness soul in the right way in the spiritual sense? The prophetic stars, that is, the teachings of spiritual science, tell us the following about this future form: According to the whole way in which people have tried to bring religion into the currents of humanity, in the past centuries, religion is an amalgamation of two things, one of which, in the strict sense of the word, cannot actually be called religion; the other is religion.

What then is religion in reality? It is something that we must characterize as an attitude of the human soul: an attitude towards the spiritual, towards the infinite. Basically, we can characterize it well if we start with the basics of these attitudes, which then only have to be developed to the highest degree. If we walk across a meadow and have an open soul for what is green and blooming there, we will feel something joyful for the glories that reveal themselves through the flowers and grasses, through that which is reflected in the landscape, which glistens in the dew. If we can muster such an attitude, if our heart opens up, then it is not yet religion. It can only become religion when this feeling intensifies for the infinite that is behind the finite, for the spiritual that is behind the sensual. When our soul feels in such a way that it senses communion with the spiritual, then this mood corresponds to what is alive in religion. The more we can intensify this mood for the eternal within us, the more we foster religion in ourselves or in other people.

But now the necessary development of the times has brought about a situation in which what should basically be impulses that direct human feeling and perception from the transitory to the non-transitory has been combined with certain ideas and views of what it is like in the realm of the supersensible. But through this religion has become connected in a certain sense with what is actually spiritual science, with what must actually be regarded as science. And today we see how religion in this or that form can only be maintained in this church belief if very specific dogmas are maintained at the same time. But this produces what can be called the rigid dogmatic adherence to certain ideas about the spiritual world. Such conceptions should naturally progress as the human mind progresses. And it is this progress that should give the truest religious feeling the greatest joy, for it shows the greater the glories of the divine spiritual world and the greater their significance.

True religious feeling would not have consigned Giordano Bruno to the stake, but would have said: Oh, it is great for God to send people of this kind down to earth and to reveal such things through them. - In this way, the field of scientific research would necessarily have been recognized alongside the religious field, a field that extends to both the external and the spiritual world. This must progress, it must be suited from epoch to epoch to the human spirit, which progresses. In regard to this scientific research, a great change occurred when the 16th century approached. Before the age of Copernicus, Kepler and Galilei, things looked very strange at the teaching institutions and universities. Aristotle is certainly a great sage, but what he did was the greatest thing for his time. What the Middle Ages did with him was a very strong misunderstanding of his spirit, and in the end they no longer understood it at all, had no more idea of what he meant. Nevertheless, they always taught according to him.

In order to show you how knowledge must change from epoch to epoch as the human spirit progresses, so that misunderstandings do not arise, I would like to go into more detail about an event connected with Aristotle. Aristotle worked from a time when there was still an awareness that a body of ether was present in human nature, not just blood, nerve cords and so on. If one were to draw the etheric body, for example, one would get a very different drawing from what today's anatomists find and draw of this human being. How one draws it today was not given much importance in the time in which Aristotle created, because the etheric human being was still known. If you wanted to draw that, you would have to see a center here where the heart is, and draw rays emanating from there, important rays, but then going to the brain and having to do with the whole way a person thinks. Thinking is regulated when we look at the etheric body, from a center near the physical heart. Aristotle described this to illustrate the peculiar nature of thought. Later, people no longer understood what Aristotle meant, and they began to confuse the word for 'nerve' with the material nerve. It was believed that Aristotle meant the physical nerve cords when he described the etheric currents. With the transition to the materialistic period, Aristotle was no longer understood. So you can see that something completely wrong was learned. It was said that the main nerves emanate from the heart. Now came the scientific materialistic research, as inaugurated by Copernicus and Galileo, and then people came to the conclusion that the nerves emanate from the brain, namely the physical cords. And then they began to say: Aristotle is wrong. Thus Copernicus, Galileo and Giordano Bruno were opponents of Aristotle. The medieval Aristotelians did not adhere to the teachings of Aristotle, but to what they dreamt up about Aristotle. Thus it could happen that when Galileo showed a friend of his, who was an Aristotelian, the nerves running to the brain on a corpse, this friend preferred to trust Aristotle rather than his own observations. He believed in what he had imagined from the teachings of Aristotle. We see, then, how the stream of spiritual science was diverted in Aristotle's time into material science, the merits of which are not to be denied, and which has worked and continues to work for the benefit and salvation of humanity. But now we are in a time when we have to come up into the spiritual.

We are on the threshold of a time when science will again have to learn to understand the spiritual reality, when science will have to become what is called pneumatology in occultism, that is, spiritual teaching. What was science in the past century? The teaching of abstract ideas and natural laws that no longer had any connection with real spiritual life. Science is on the verge of becoming pneumatology, of returning to the spirit. This is written in the stars of theosophy. And since religion must always create an atmosphere for the spiritual, only in those ages can science and religion work in harmony when science works the spirit into pneumatology. Then science can be the right interpreter of spiritual life and support the mood that should in turn live in religion.

What is beginning is in such stark contrast to what has passed. Take, for example, what has passed in the various Protestant religious denominations: how they have tried not to let any scientific thinking into the area that should be dedicated to faith. Think of Luther and Kant. Kant said that he had to suspend knowledge so that he could have free rein for faith in freedom, immortality and God.

At that time, science was directed towards the external, sensual physical, it knew no interpretation of the supersensible, the spiritual. Therefore, what had been handed down in sacred documents had to be preserved as unadulterated as possible. This had its good justification. Now we are facing a different age, where theosophy guides us into the spiritual world, and now we will see how, little by little, a time is approaching when what is emerging is to be achieved by science being supported and enlightened precisely by theosophy. Religion and science will work together again in the next age. Science will become something that must gradually apply to all people. It will become understandable for everyone. Therefore, what is emerging as a parallel course of religion and science will, in the broadest sense, produce what could be called individualism in religion: every single heart will find its way into the spiritual world in an individual religious way. It is preordained for our age that that which can be common science in the spiritual will serve as an interpreter and guide in the religious realm in the most individual and personal way.

Again, it is shown in a remarkable way how, even here in decline, the personal moment points to something super-personal. The signs of decline also show this. And how does this pointing to a super-personal reality show itself in certain church conditions? What was it, then, when in a certain church those who are its custodians appealed to inspiration? [...] The things must be seen in relation to their spiritual character. Much of what is evident today, particularly in the religious life of the various denominations, points to this shining of the spirit self into what we call the consciousness soul, in both the ascending and descending sense.

This is particularly evident in the third of the three areas of human spiritual life. There will be a spreading of knowledge, knowledge of which today's practice of life has no real idea. One principle of this realization will be that the happiness of an individual human being can never be bought at the expense of the lesser happiness of others. In the future, the personal moment will be transferred into the transpersonal, and the egotistical into the trans-egotistical, into that which connects people. Gradually, a person will not want to be happy without knowing that others are equally happy. This mood, which is the opposite of our current way of life, is being prepared. There is only one way to create this mood, and that is through the realization of the real human essence and its composition, as spiritual science gives it to us. One must know man if one wants to be man.

We see these three things at the starting point of their development. What is the purpose of spiritual science? It should teach us to understand everything that must come. Now I want to say radically how people can relate to this. I will hypothetically assume for a while that what is today Theosophy and still represents a very small current would be seen by those who come into contact with it as a fantasy and reverie, and that it would be suppressed. Those who hold the anti-theosophical point of view would simply make it impossible for theosophy to flourish, because anti-theosophy is heading towards science. Then it would be impossible to gain an understanding of what has been described to you as the necessary development of science, religion and human life practice, written in the stars. Then people would exclude themselves from understanding these things. In which case, what would people be like? People would then be on Earth like a herd of some kind of animal that had ended up in completely alien climatic conditions that it cannot adapt to. The consequence of this would be that the animals would wither away and gradually perish. In this way, people would all fall prey to decay, decadence, premature destruction. Not through extinction, for instance. They would become more beast-like, which would be much worse than extinction, so that only the base passions and instincts and desires would really still be alive; that people would only desire to eat this or that, and they would use all their thinking to be able to produce that food. They would build factories to produce the best flour and the best bread, ships and balloons to bring fruit from the most distant regions and to deliver the products they want to enjoy. They would use tremendous ingenuity for the “rise of culture” – that is what they would call it. They would use infinite intelligence and mental power for this, but only to set the table in the end. Just think about what the phrase “rising culture” means from this point of view! Isn't the essential thing that infinite mental power is applied to it? If we only use it to telegraph: I need so many sacks of flour - then great intellectual power is used to produce something that ultimately only serves what we might call the animal in man. Materialism has led to a peak of intelligence and intelligent culture. But that has nothing to do with spirituality. Let us assume that people would be eliminated. What would the gods have to do? They would say to themselves: Now we have had a generation that did not understand the mission on earth. So we have to send down another generation, a generation of souls that will accomplish the mission on earth.

But small circles will already find understanding for what spiritual life of the future must be, and therefore the earth mission will be completed by people, and that which our fifth post-Atlantic culture, dedicated to the consciousness soul, will replace as the sixth, will already be achieved by a small circle of people who will spread throughout the rest of humanity. But this can only be achieved if people's free will intervenes. For once the ego has taken hold in human nature, man must also develop free will for the development of the ego. So it depends on each individual whether he wants to show understanding for spiritual development, or whether he wants to steer the descent that humanity is taking today.

A way of life must be developed that is based on the principle that the happiness of the individual cannot be attained at the expense of the happiness of another. If man does not want to understand this, he promotes the downward, withering, brutalizing development of humanity. Today we as human beings stand before this decision in a certain respect: to want or not to want spiritual science, and that means to want either the ascent or the decline of humanity. We should feel this in everything we do, we should feel that through our karma we have been placed like a new material in the development of humanity, like those who are to give up their powers as elementary powers, who must work their way up.

When we feel this way, we already have a practical sense of theosophy, a practical feeling, and we are aware of what we are actually doing when we develop the seemingly insignificant activity that we develop in such anthroposophical branches. Not as a hobby, a quirk of individuals, but as an understanding of the deepest needs of a newly emerging age.

I wanted to show you how things are interrelated so that we can truly understand the progress of humanity. Think for a moment about the sentence that man is a self-conscious being, that he must therefore know what he is, and only by knowing himself in his essence can he fulfill his destiny in the world; that therefore all those who do not want to know anything about the essence of man do not have the will to place themselves in the world in the right way. Do you remember how a spirit spoke that had an inkling of much of what is emerging today as Theosophy? Johann Gottlieb Fichte once spoke of his lofty ideas in the lectures 'On the Destination of the Scholar'. When he wanted to write a preface to these lectures, it occurred to him that now this will reach people who will just say: Yes, very nice ideas, but impractical. How can one introduce into life what is being said here? Yet Fichte was well aware that life is constantly guided by ideas.

Let us point out one example here. Who built the Simplon Tunnel? No engineer today can work without differential and integral calculus. Leibniz, who invented differential and integral calculus, is basically building all the tunnels and bridges in our time. The spiritual is everywhere the guiding force in all of life, and we can learn from what Fichte wrote, learn to strengthen ourselves in our theosophical consciousness when people say, “Oh, those are such eccentric ideas, nothing practical.” Fichte says in response: We know that ideas cannot be directly translated into life, and so do those who hold this against us. Perhaps we know it even better. But the fact that others do not want to know anything about ideas at all merely proves that the wise world government, the divine world government, will not be able to count on them. May a benevolent Nature, in which they believe, give them, at the right time, rain and sunshine, good digestion and, if possible, some good thoughts. In a way, we can strengthen ourselves by saying: we do know that, as Theosophists, we must cultivate an understanding for what must come. May a kind nature give them what Fichte said, but also what they need in spirit, what they believe they do not need. May the spirit give them ever wiser and wiser thoughts, so that they too will see spiritual science not as a reverie, but as an important impulse for humanity!

On several Mondays here in the Besant-Zweige, an attempt was made to characterize the occult basis of Germanic myths, and on the last Monday an expansion of the entire mythical material was begun, as it extends in a broad spiritual belt from Persia through the East of Europe and through Europe itself. It might not be appropriate today to continue exactly there, because many of our friends who are present today were not present then. And so we will try to make today's lecture more independent; we will try to present some of the circle of European myths in general, without the prerequisites of the last two lectures. This means, of course, that today we have to treat some things very aphoristically in our consideration.

I would like to remind you that the number twelve of the higher gods, which is only the double number six, as we found it last time in the Amshaspands, also recurs in the Germanic number of gods, the number of gods whose meaning we learned eight days ago. Today we want to highlight only a few gods and only a few of their attributes to show the occult foundations of such gods and such divine qualities. We have recognized the relationship between Germanic mythology and Persian mythology. We have rediscovered how the same thing is presented in the mythology that originated in Asia as in the Central European myths. In the forces of the six Amshaspands, we recognized the twelve pairs of nerves that emanate from our head, and in the twenty-eight Izards, we recognized the forces that emanate from our spine.

You all know that Wotan-Odin belongs to this Germanic circle of gods as a kind of supreme god; furthermore, we have shown Thor and his daughter, the Truth, in their occult significance; and we have touched on Tyr, who was a kind of slaying deity, a god of war, but a strange god of war, and in some ways corresponds to the more southern Mars or Ares; it corresponds to him to the extent that Tuesday, as Tyrstag or Tiustag, is also dedicated to this god. But it is strange that we are told of other spiritual beings that play a certain role in the events that take place between the Germanic gods, and there a remarkable god, or let us say a family of gods, that of Loki, is brought into a certain relationship with Tyr. You know – and the occult basis has been explained to the members of the Besant Branch – that this Loki, who stands alongside the other Nordic gods, is descended from those fire powers whose southern origin we have characterized. While the Nordic gods are descended from the union of the fire element from the south and the cold, misty element from the north, in Loki we have an older god or at least an offshoot of an older deity, a kind of fire god. We may therefore say that Loki, who develops so much enmity towards the other gods, belongs to an older race of spiritual beings who had to cede their rule for a while to those to whom Wotan, Tyr and Thor belong. Therefore, he has declared war on them and lives in conflict with the Aesir, with those gods who only came to power when the Atlantean human race developed out of the earlier conditions and evolved into the post-Atlantean human race; that is when the Aesir became important. The spiritual beings to which Loki belongs come from much earlier times. Among others, this Loki has three offspring of a very strange kind from his wife Angrboda, who came from the race of giants: the Fenris wolf, the Midgard snake and Hel, the goddess of the underworld. These three beings, which can be traced back to earlier times, must first be tamed by the new gods, the Aesir, so that the new states of consciousness can develop in humanity. The Midgard Serpent is tamed by being forced down into the sea and wrapped around the continents, so that it bites its own tail and is powerless for the time during which the new gods, the Aesir, rule, having replaced the earlier gods. The Fenris wolf is tamed and bound by all sorts of means, but it is precisely this that gives rise to a certain relationship between the god Tyr, the imperious god of war or battle, and his family and Loki. The god Tyr has to stick his hand into the jaws of the Fenris wolf in order to be allowed to bind himself, and thereby loses his right hand. This is a very remarkable feature of Germanic mythology, which can only be understood from the occult point of view. We will visit this hand of Tyr later and see where it actually is. Hel, however, was banished to the underworld of Niflheim or Mistheim, where all those who did not fall on the battlefield had to come to her. Those who fell on the battlefield were reunited with the family of the gods; the Valkyrie appeared to them at death and took them up to the Aesir themselves. They died honorably. Those who have died the so-called death on the straw, who have fallen victim to an illness or old age, have a different fate; they must go down into the realm of Hel, where sorrow, deprivation, hunger and torment prevail. The dead who died on the straw were of no use to the realm of the Aesir, they were banished to Hel so that there would be peace during the reign of the Aesir. In this way, the children of Loki were shut out from the rule of the Aesir. Loki himself, however, was tricked and captured by the gods when he had transformed himself into a salmon. He was chained to three rock slabs and suffered great torment.

All these sagas take on a special coloration due to the fact that a remarkable tragic trait, which we have spoken about several times, is poured over all this divine existence of the Aesir. Those who have heard the lectures on Norse mythology know that this tragic trait was very much in evidence in the initiation sites of the Nordic mysteries. It was also transplanted into the myths of the gods. The Nordic gods, the Aesir, live in constant fear of their destruction, for they know that their realm will one day come to an end. We are confronted with a tragic element that tells us why this realm will come to an end. This tragic feature is that since the beginning of war and discord on earth, the seeds have been sown for what will one day be the great devastating world conflagration, when everything that the gods once bound will break free, when the Fenris wolf, the Midgard serpent and Loki himself will be freed and prepare the downfall of the Aesir. A particularly outstanding spirit from the realm of fire will come, Sutur, and the Aesir will have to yield to his power. The twilight of the gods will have come, and out of the world-fire of the old the new world will arise. Again, there is a strange feature which the saga tells us: when the Fenris wolf is released, it will open its jaws so wide that the upper jaw will reach up to the sky and the lower jaw will sink into the earth; its breath will burn up the whole world.

You all know this mythology. And now let us look at the occult basis of the traits we have just mentioned. In doing so, we will once again recall the fact that the Aesir, the gods to whom Wotan, Tyr and Thor belong, have taken up their rule, have become world-ruling powers, after man in the late Atlantean period made the transition from an earlier state of clairvoyant consciousness, where he could still see into the spiritual world, to the post-Atlantic state, where he was only in the sensory world, in the world of externally, physically visible facts. We know that the first little group of people formed at the exact point on the Earth where warmth and cold met. We know that the ancient Atlantis was a land where the air was still completely filled with masses of haze and fog, with widespread water vapors. If we were to research the early times of Atlantis, we would recognize two regions: dense, cooler water vapors in the north and hot water vapors rising from the south. The Atlanteans had a very special memory of this time. This is evident in the part of the saga that alludes to the clash between the cold Nordic and the hot southern. As I have shown, this equalization of forces made it possible for that atmosphere to arise from which emerged what became the post-Atlantean spirituality. What the ancient Atlanteans had, spiritual perception, has departed from human beings; it has come to the gods. The gods, of course, have preserved the old clairvoyance, but they can only speak to people from the outside and influence them because people themselves no longer had clairvoyance. What people used to have themselves, clairvoyance, they now only attributed to the gods, who live far from them, above them.

Let us now recall how the heavy masses of fog from ancient Atlantis gradually descended, how Atlantis was flooded by great masses of water, and how gradually the physical emerged from the purifying air. Let us remember how that came into being which had never existed before, which could only come into being when the downpours ceased and the air gradually cleared: the rainbow arose. The rainbow was a phenomenon that people saw for the first time with the sinking of Atlantis. As the old clairvoyance of men vanished, they saw the rainbow rising for the first time, which had to form the bridge between them and the gods. That is the bridge Bifröst. All this men really saw, and the sagas only relate what they saw.

What have people lost as a result of this discovery? They have lost what they used to receive from the surrounding waters of wisdom. When the waters still filled the air, they whispered wisdom to people. The trickling of the springs, the rustling of the wind, the lapping of the waves – all this whispered wisdom to them. All this was understood by men; all was a language of spiritual beings, and this was now sunk down into the sea, into the rivers. This had been a different spiritual world from the world of the Aesir; it was a world which still contained within itself the last remnants of man's origin from the spiritual. All that had filled the air had sunk down into the sea. Wisdom had sunk down with the waters. This is a real fact. In the waters that had wrapped themselves around the continents and touched each other, the ancient ancestors of the Central European population saw the Midgard Serpent. It preserved the old wisdom that had sunk down, that people had possessed in the past and that they could no longer possess now. The power of clairvoyance had to disappear from the human race. The gods could never have ruled from without as long as the humans themselves were still clairvoyant. The Midgard Serpent, a daughter of the fire powers, had to be cast down into the sea.

The last descendant of these fire powers was Loki. Loki was the enemy of the gods. He had given people what was left of their clairvoyance: the Midgard Serpent, which was now bound. But Loki had given people something else, something else came from the old original fire beginning of the human race in the land of the Lemurians, which, however, could only develop in the land of the Atlanteans. What had gradually developed there as people developed from clairvoyance to reason? Language! We have often spoken about this. While man gradually learned to walk upright - that was in the Atlantean time - language also developed, little by little it developed, so that it was only finished at the end of the Atlantean time. When the Atlanteans, with their well-developed minds, moved east, language was already developed. But as long as it was the language of the Atlanteans, it was a unified language that was based on the unified sounds of nature itself. It was an imitation of what the Atlanteans had heard during their periods of clairvoyance and clairaudience, from the trickling springs, the roaring winds, the rustling of the trees, the rolling of the thunder, the lapping of the waves. They translated these sounds into their language, and that was the common language of the Atlanteans. It was only in the post-Atlantean period that what one might call the difference between the individual languages and idioms, the elements of the different languages, developed and became structured. The old Atlantean language, which was taken from the elements of nature, from those forces with which Loki is so intimately interwoven, had to take on different forms when the Aesir became rulers and men divided into nations and tribes. The separation of men into nations and the struggle of the individual nations among themselves led to what is called war. What was this war waged for? Why did it come? Through speech, man was given something for his development, through which he can turn his innermost feelings outward. From the occult point of view, it is one of the most important advances in evolution when the soul comes to utter its own pains, joys and desires in sounds. Language, when articulated from within, when it makes the soul resound, is something that gives man a mighty power. This power had to be suppressed by the Aesir, otherwise they could not have ruled. How did the Aesir suppress the old unified language? They did so by splitting people into different tribes and thus into different tongues. The undivided nature of the language was a mighty power – the Fenris wolf. To prevent this power from asserting itself on the stage of the Aesir, the Aesir had to tame the Fenris wolf, that is, they had to dismember the language, they had to make the language different so that they could rule over men. In doing so, they created war. War is connected with this diversity of languages. But one thing was necessary for the Aesir to become rulers: the god of war had to stick his hand into the jaws of the Fenris wolf, and he had to leave his hand there. The hand of Tyr, the god of war, is stuck as a tongue in the jaws of the Fenris wolf. It is the human tongue that causes the different languages. The human tongue had to form in such a way that the old unity of language was lost. It is the individualization of language that is indicated in this profound myth of the Fenris wolf. In the myth, every organ is associated in some way with the influences of the gods from without. Here you have the organ of the tongue and the way in which the progressive organic development of man is expressed in images.

Something else occurred when the Atlanteans were gradually being prepared for the later post-Atlantean epoch. The individual states of consciousness of man were quite different at the time of ancient Atlantis than they are today. We have already mentioned that a certain degree of clairvoyance still existed; but this meant that the Atlanteans did not know the difference between the state of sleep and the state of waking as we know it today. The great difference between the state of sleep and the state of waking only arose in the post-Atlantean period. Of course, it was slowly preparing itself, but the preparation only gave the basis for what the change between waking and sleeping meant in the post-Atlantean period.

The old Atlantean dreamed during the day and dreamed at night. The dreams of the night corresponded more to reality than the dreams of today's man. And the dreams of the day were a real perception of the spiritual world that lived around the Atlantean people, especially in the early days of Atlantis. But it was only with the onset of this sharp change between the waking state of consciousness and the completely unconscious state of sleep that what is connected with the relationship of the astral body to the other bodies actually gained its full significance. Human illnesses in their present form only gained their significance in the post-Atlantic period. In the first Atlantic period, these illnesses did not yet exist; then, little by little, the illnesses that people got got worse and worse. You all know the healing influence of the astral body when it is outside the physical body during sleep. During the Atlantean period, the astral body was no longer completely outside the physical body, but it was still more outside than in the case of present-day man, and therefore it was still able to exert its healing influence. It was precisely through the penetration of the astral body into the etheric body and the physical body that completely new and different conditions arose between the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body, and this is how the diseases we know today were created. The diseases only gained their significance when the astral body could no longer work on the physical body even during the day.

This is also expressed in the myth. Only those who fall on the battlefield die in such a way that they do not fall prey to the powers of the underworld; they still belong to the higher powers, and may go up to the gods in Valhalla. But the others, who succumb to the forces of disease, must go down to Hel, which is black on one side and white on the other, clearly expressing the change between the states of consciousness of day and night. The Aesir save themselves by taking up only those who, through death on the battlefield, can unite with the astral world, while the others must go down to Hel, who leads them into her realms. This is a profound feature of Norse saga, and this feature, too, is thoroughly based on fact.

Now all legends that are based on occultism, and all really great legends have emerged from the secret schools, always contain prophecy. Here, too, we have a reference to a future state in the development of humanity and the earth. Man will only be afflicted with seeing only the external sense world for a time. But he will ascend again to the perception that he originally had. In the distant past he was clairvoyant, but he had to descend to physical perception in order to become self-aware, and he will ascend again to clairvoyant vision. This coincides remarkably with the entire constitution of the human being. You know, at least those of you who have followed the earlier lectures, that the legend ascribes the gift of the nervous system, the ability to perceive external things as they are perceived by today's human beings, to the influx of divine powers through the gates of the senses. But you now have a very remarkable difference in your senses, which is magnificently reflected in the legend. If you take the sense of hearing: its tool is a single organ, it is localized in the ear; if you take the sense of sight: its tool, its organ is localized in the eye; if you take the sense of smell: its tool is localized in the mucous membranes of the nose; taste is localized in the tongue and palate. But now let us take the sense of feeling, the sense of warmth; where is it localized? It extends over the whole body. It differs quite essentially from the other localized senses. The organ by which man perceives warmth is curiously distinct from the other sense organs.

Let us take this sense of the saying that the forces of the gods enter through the individual human sense organs. We must say to ourselves: the forces that live in the world of sound enter man through the ear; the forces that live in the world of light enter through the eye, and so on. But the forces that live in the all-animating and all-pervading warmth fill the whole human being; they have the whole human being as their organ of perception. When the human being emerged from the bosom of the deity at the beginning of his development, it was quite different. Then the human being had no senses for perceiving the environment. First, that peculiar organ of feeling developed in him, which one would wrongly call an eye; that organ developed from the radiations and inflows into the upper layers of his being. This organ was a continuation of the human being outwards; you can still feel the soft spot in the skull of a child today, where this organ protruded, like the hole that was open where these currents entered. This organ was then the localized sense of warmth, which is now spread throughout the entire body of the human being. Man had this organ in ancient Lemuria, the hot land of fire. He could use it to find out where he could go, he could use it to feel whether the temperature was agreeable to him or not. Today this organ has shrunk and become the pineal gland. In the future, what is now spread over the whole body will reappear in a transformed form at a higher level, localized in a certain other organ.

You see this expressed in the myth through the rule of Sutur in the southern region, in Lemuria. The power of fire is represented by Sutur. You see hinted at in the myth how Sutur comes under the rule of the other gods, the Ases, whose power flows into people through the localized senses. But Sutur will return and rule in the place of the Ases. Man will return to the elemental forces of fire, and the sense of warmth will no longer be spread over the whole body, but will again be localized in one organ. The saga wonderfully reflects what also corresponds to the facts that we know through spiritual science. What has man retained from that ancient world of fire, from that fire and warmth environment, which he perceived with his ancient organs, what is it? It is not the Sutur itself. For in order to enliven this area, in which the Sutur was, man needed his old organ, the organ of feeling, which protruded like a lantern from his head. It is that “descendant” of the old sense of feeling that must experience the destinies of the whole human body, that is completely interwoven with the destiny of man, and that is the son of Sutur, Loki. Loki is chained to the triple rock of the human head, the human torso and the human limbs, so that he cannot move and is therefore exposed to all human torments and sufferings.

This leads you even deeper into this world of Germanic myths, which are of an almost impenetrable depth. You really have to dig very deep to see what kind of enthusiasm, for example, seized an artist like Richard Wagner and drove him to his work. It should never be said that Richard Wagner could have specified the individual legends in the same way as it happens through occultism. But the spiritual powers that stood behind him and inspired him directed and guided his artistic inspirations so that his art became the most beautiful expression of what the myth is based on. That is the great thing, that one does not see in the work of art what is behind it, everything has flowed out in sound and word. A remarkable instinct - if one wants to call it trivial, otherwise one would have to call it artistic inspiration - prevails in Richard Wagner. It was like a spiritual hearing of those ancient modes of speech that arose in him. He sensed those most ancient modes of speech very well and [that caused him] not to remain in the end rhyme, for that belongs to a later stage, a stage of understanding, but to choose that stage of speech development that is an echo of the the rushing waves that splashed out of the mists of ancient Atlantis: that is alliteration, that is trochee, which, for those who can feel it, repeats in sound what can be called the music of the waves.

In Germanic mythology, it is prophesied that the twilight of the gods must come because the cause of the wars has arisen. Because Tyr lost a hand in the jaws of Woltfes, the seeds of the later downfall of the gods developed. The prophetic view of the Germanic saga of the twilight of the gods points to the state where people will understand each other again, where they will no longer be separated by languages. The saga tells us that after the Atlantean population had moved east, it split up and fragmented. Only those peoples who descended from the Mongolian race and who came under Etzel or Attila - Atli, the Atlantean - have retained something of the old Atlantis. They alone have preserved the life element of the Atlanteans, while the other peoples who had remained in Europe have developed out of the old blood community through splitting and have fallen apart into wars between the individual tribes. Thus these peoples in the West are always divided and at war. They are unable to withstand the impact of the Mongolian element, which has retained the old Atlantean foundations of life. Attila's or Etzel's march is not stopped by the Germanic tribes, because the individual tribes are something that cannot impress Attila, who has retained his old great spirit - a kind of monotheism. What opposed him as individual tribes could not stop him. A remarkable feature of the saga is that Attila was immediately persuaded to turn back when he was confronted by something that went beyond blood relationship, when he was confronted by Christianity, personified in the then Pope. Then Attila saw the spiritual powers that will unite men again, and that is what the Atlantean initiate bows down to. Christianity is to prepare the way for that state of humanity when Sutur will reappear and, regardless of the differentiation of people into individual tribes, will bring peace to the world. Thus, to the people of that time, Christianity seemed like a first announcement of the twilight of the gods and the return of the old days, when people were not yet divided, not yet divided and divided by wars. This is how Christianity was perceived, especially in the very first centuries of its spread, when it was not yet Christianity that was proclaimed from Rome, but when it came from the north and west through secret Christian societies that originated in England and Ireland, and later also in France, and which were completely independent of the external authority of Rome. It was Winfried, Boniface, who emerged from the ranks of those western secret students and made his peace with Rome, whereby Christianity could then gradually adopt the special coloration of the Roman-Christian Church.

Thus we see what forces were at work in the spread of Christianity out of the memory of an ancient time and as a prophetic indication of a later future. What first appeared in Christianity in Central Europe were the feelings that lived in those people at that time and filled the outlook of those people who belonged to the secret schools and who had been taught and inspired by the secret schools.

Let us pause for a moment at this phase of Central European spiritual development and visualize what Europe was like at that time, when the old world of the gods - as described in the Germanic sagas - was gradually dying away in the twilight brought about by the religious world of Christianity. The advent of Christianity was felt to be a harbinger of the great twilight of the gods, the twilight that would one day sweep away the powers of the old gods. Christianity brought about the fading of the old world of gods, the downfall of the old gods themselves will bring the great twilight of the gods, which will then bring as reality what Christianity only brought as faith. This is how it was felt.

Now let us put ourselves in this mood, which was there. The tribes of the Goths, the Franks and so on, were all under the impression of the approaching Mongol tribes, the Hun king Attila or Etzel, on the one hand, and the gradually spreading Christianity, on the other. As a result of the events we have characterized, they were divided into different tribes; they spoke in different tongues, they had fallen apart among themselves. In the end, of all these tribes, only one actually survived: the Franconian tribe; it remained, in name and in significance. What remains to remind us of all the tribes that once roamed here, if not history: the Lombards, the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths, the Cherusci, the Heruli, and so on? The Franconian tribe was actually the one that triumphed over the others. But how did those feel who belonged to the dying tribes? These feelings were most vividly felt by the secret schools and the knowledgeable of these dying tribes. Let us take a look at one such tribe, the Visigoths. They lived in northern Spain and southern France, although they had once migrated far to the east. As you know, the westward migration was only a retreat. The abilities they had were still an echo of the ancient Atlantic times. When these tribes had migrated from the east to the west, they had lost the old abilities during their wanderings, but a kind of clairvoyance still lived in people as an echo of those old abilities. These people were no longer completely clairvoyant, but at certain times they could still see into the spiritual worlds. However, they often experienced this as something unknown and oppressive, and that is where the name 'Alp' comes from. Alp – what kind of being is that? It is an astral being that people sensed but no longer really knew, that they had known in Atlantean times, in the days of old seeing and clairvoyance, and that now appeared like an intruder into the world, like the Truth that we got to know last time. Nevertheless, some people felt it as the looking in of a higher, astral world into the physical one. Especially with those tribes that could not adapt to the new conditions, one felt “when the nightmare came and oppressed” that one could look into the higher worlds. In all tribes, especially the Goths, but also the Burgundians and other Germanic tribes, there were always individuals who could withstand such states of emergency and interpret them as the astral world reaching into the physical world. One such man was the Goth King Alphard, who is mentioned in those times when the Goths inhabited southern France. He was King of Aquitaine and ruled there at the time when Attila was undertaking his march from east to west. Alphard's son was the legendary Walther of the Walthari Lay. It presents us with a true transition from that time when people still knew something from their fathers about the old abilities and the connections between the old tribes. How the tribe and tribes belonged together in ancient times - the fathers knew it; therefore, the father of Walther, Alphard, had long since discussed with the king of the Burgundians that his daughter Hildegund should become the wife of Walther, in order to bridge the threatening gap between the peoples. But the tribes were unable to withstand the onslaught of the Huns, who still possessed the old vitality that they themselves had lost. Therefore, Walther, the son of Alphard, Hildegund, the daughter of the Burgundian king, and Hagen of Tronje, a hostage from the Frankish court, were forced to go down to the court of Etzel, the king of the Huns. Because Gunther, the son of the King of the Franks, Gibich, could not yet be given as a hostage, Hagen, the descendant of the old Tronje line, had to be given as a hostage. We need not relate the content of the Song of Walthari further. At the court of King Etzel, they distinguish themselves as capable warriors, but there is one thing they cannot do: they may well be able to conquer what elevates man to the ego, but what brings the ego back to peace, they cannot acquire that, it is impossible for them. Each individual was efficient in his own place, and so they are efficient warriors even in the land of the enemy, at the court of Etzel or Attila. But when Gunther came to power in the Frankish Empire and no longer maintained a friendship with Etzel, they could no longer stand their ground and had to flee. Now something remarkable occurs. There is an older version of the Song of Walthari, in which Walther, after fleeing with Hildegund, fights against the pursuing Huns. This version comes from the Franconian region. We then have a later version, which was mentioned yesterday, that arises from purely Christian intentions; it was last brought into its present form in the 10th century by Ekkehard I, a monk at the monastery of St. Gallen. The two versions differ greatly from one another. The older version originated in the land of the Franks. It comes from those who were influenced by the current in which the original Christianity still lives as a secret Christian current, which wanted to teach: Turn to the new ideas, and you will overcome what is still in you of the old that confronts you physically in the Huns. This interest could only have been taken by someone who came from the land of the Franks. But the man who reinterpreted the saga in the monastery of St. Gall to teach Christians no longer had this interest. He had a different goal; he wanted to tell people: If you stick with the old conditions, you will consume yourselves. He showed them vividly how they were consuming themselves. And indeed, it was not the Huns who consumed them. When Walther and Hildegund return to their country, it is Gunther himself who confronts them with Hagen of Tronje. Now it is the three representatives of Germanic tribes themselves who tear each other apart in battle, leaving the leg of one, the eye of another and the hand of a third on the battlefield. Walther was cut off his hand, Gunther lost his leg, and Hagen lost an eye. The one who wrote down the saga knew why he had the hand cut off the one who descended from Alphard. He represents the discord between tribes and peoples. The cutting off of the hand is meant to remind them of what happened to Tyr, the god of war. Where tribes fall out, the individual loses his hand. This motif continues down to Götz von Berlichingen, who also loses his hand; it is the same motif that appears in Germanic mythology. Thus Ekkehard wanted to say to his people: If you cling to these old views, you will tear each other apart, for discord has been brought into your midst. What can bind you together is the spirit of Christianity. He presents to them in such a way as to evoke in their souls a feeling of repulsion. That was Ekkehard's Christian intention.

In the face of this Walthari-lay, one must be especially careful not to speculate or interpret anything into it. The individual traits: the striking out of the eye, the cutting off of the hand, the cutting off of the leg and similar traits are such that something of the type and form of the saga continues to work in them, and that returns when it seems necessary. It was rightly said yesterday that the person who wrote this Waltherilied is an initiate. But it must also be emphasized that it was a Christian initiate who wanted to present a very specific Christian teaching to people.

Thus we see how spiritual science can help to clarify these phenomena of human intellectual life, and how we can shed light on areas that are still little understood by today's philology. And if you have seen this morning the way in which spiritual science can intervene in everyday life, and add to what has been said now, then this will be proof to you of the inner truth of the spiritual facts brought down from the higher worlds. Our world needs such a deepening again. But you can also see from this the way in which we have to work, and that external agitation cannot be what can really bring the theosophical world movement into the right channel. If you just come with dogmas and want to explain them to people, then they have every right to tell us that this is all fantasy. Only he who penetrates deeply into what the theosophical stream can offer, and who penetrates into it from all sides, will gradually see the theosophical truths. We need not be surprised if followers of materialistic currents find what we say foolish. How should they understand it otherwise? And how can we succumb to the delusion that Theosophy could be something that can be spread by external propaganda, like popular monism? Only through positive work, by spreading the teachings as best we can, only in this way can Theosophy become established. No matter how many failures we have, we must not let them hinder or disconcert us in any way. Therefore, the Theosophical Society can be nothing more than a place within which theosophical work is carried out. The Society can never be the main thing; the main thing must be our spiritual science itself. Perhaps the Society will even be only - to use the Nietzschean word you have probably heard before - a “bridge” and a “transition to a higher” level, to a free theosophical current in the world. At present, however, we need this place from which we can work, and without which we cannot let spiritual science flow into the world. But we must adopt the liberal view that distinguishes the human being and the cause, and that puts the cause above any institution that comes from external organization.

This brings us to the end of our program for our time together.

Automated Translation

My dear friends! Yesterday during the afternoon meeting here, a number of things came up that oblige me to say a few words before I move on to the ritual of the consecration and the communion. It seems to me that it is necessary to achieve a very fundamental understanding about certain things, because it would be of no use if this understanding were to remain in the background, so to speak. Here, too, it must be spoken about very clearly. Above all, it is necessary to really understand the essence of a ritual, so that it is not possible to say that what emanates from a ritual can also have a suggestive effect. There is absolute uncertainty today about what has a suggestive effect, and perhaps only the representatives of a religious world view are suited to correct the thoroughly unhealthy conditions that have arisen in this field as a result of our science. Our science has no possibility, if it wants to come to clarity even about the most elementary things of the soul, that through it somehow a correct insight into the facts would arise. It does not have that possibility. One must also have experience in this, my dear friends; these experiences come to one when one participates in something like I did. I was able to observe, I would like to say, the development of psychoanalysis from its very beginning. It was a friend of mine who first wanted to make accessible to science that which is justified in psychoanalysis. Then it came into the hands of Freud. The man who originally had the idea withdrew, and that in itself was proof of how impossible it is to arrive at clarity about these things from the foundations of today's science. Unfortunately, one does indeed experience that these concepts of modern science, which has no discernment at all for what takes place in the soul, are penetrating more and more into religious and theological concepts as well.

Why, my dear friends, is so much care taken in the realization of the rituals from the supersensible? It is done for no other reason than to exclude even the last vestige of suggestion. That is the basic requirement, that even the last vestige of suggestion be excluded. And how is this achieved? You see, all the rituals I have given and will give you are conceived on the principle that they express in words what comes from the supersensible, the normal evolutionary forces, only in their development by man. When one speaks of suggestion here, one applies the term to something to which it is absolutely not applicable, because one would then also have to apply it [for example] to the forces that are involved in the growth of the child — I do not mean those those that come from the parents or the environment, but those forces that work inwardly, from the spiritual-mental, that shape the heart, kidneys, liver, spleen and so on – and one would also have to say of these that they have a suggestive effect on the person. Here it ceases to be possible to associate any meaning with the word 'suggestive'. One can only associate a meaning with this word when it is a matter of an influence being exerted on a person who is separated from the other people by his individuality, which falls outside the straight evolution of natural events, where something flows from one individuality to another. To exclude this is part of the path that must be taken when conceiving rituals. Here, then, we are not dealing with what passes from one person to another, but with a deepening into the divine-spiritual movement of development and the developmental forces of the human being himself, and these are to be brought into the word as they are. So here the possibility of speaking of suggestion ceases, just as in the case of a square the possibility ceases of speaking of the laws of the triangle.

But these are distinctions that can only be made by a more profound science. Today's science is dreadfully dilettantish and dreadfully powerless with regard to the soul, and the things that are said about the soul by psychoanalysts or even by experimental psychologists and other psychologists are maddeningly impotent. One can say that ordinary science somehow does not have the possibility to grasp suggestion.

That is what I have to say in principle first of all. The other thing is that our modern theory of development has led us to limit the content of consciousness so much to the human ego and to develop little interest in how the human ego is connected to the entire universe, so that such things, as I again spoke of yesterday, the necessity of the death of the moral in the downfall of the earth, are no longer felt with the necessary strength at all. It is easy for the modern consciousness to speak of superstition in such cases. But this superstition is based solely on the fact that one has become completely entangled in the selfish conception of the world. And so it happens that one actually does not attach any special importance, my dear friends, to what happens within man himself today. And he who attaches no importance to what happens within man himself will never be able to understand the ritual and never the sacrament in reality.

Look around you, you see the stars, you see the sun and the moon, you see the formations in the air, you see clouds, waves, rivers, you see the beings of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms – all of this will one day no longer be, all of this will one day have disappeared. Heaven and earth will come to an end. Everything you can see with your eyes, perceive with your senses, grasp with your reasoning mind, all that will perish. Only that which is grounded in the individual human being, which the individual human being has taken in, will not perish when the individual passes through death and will live beyond earthly existence. With Christ we say: My words will not pass away. Only that which is within the human skin will not perish. Today, everything else will perish. And as man passes through the gate of death, all mere intellectual effects and experiences perish with it. All that perishes, and only what is the wholly human comprehension can remain. But you cannot come to the wholly human comprehension without going beyond everything that takes place in your environment in earthly existence. If you only perform actions that are realized in earthly existence, no matter how important they may be, then you are only working for earthly existence, and that has only value for man between birth and death. In that case you do not fertilize man's soul, and man's soul gains nothing through you, however well meant everything may be.

The very thrust of modern development — and that is why the present moment is so infinitely serious — is that everything that is connected with the eternal in man is to be taken away from him. And a human soul to which you make the ritual, the sacrament, accessible, such a human soul simply penetrates more deeply into the eternal through what is experienced in the ritual. He who does not understand this in its full depth will not understand ritual and sacrament. One must look at what is done to the soul of man and to his eternal part. The soul would die with the end of the earth and the soul would sleep after death if nothing were done to this human soul in our time, which lies after the mystery of Golgotha. The idea of resurrection must be taken very seriously, and Paul's conclusion that if Christ had not been resurrected, we would simply have no eternity. This must not be immersed only in the sphere of the intellectual; it must be taken so seriously that we know in fact: we are working to make the soul more and more alive by continuing in ceremony that which took place at Calvary.

But, my dear friends, this is in turn intimately connected with making the word of the gospel come alive. The documentary is not the only thing in the words of the gospel; establish the gospel as you will, you have not yet done everything with it. You have then created the possibility of proclaiming the gospels as they had to be spoken to the contemporaries of the apostles, but you still have no way of making these gospel words as alive as they can and should be in today's living. In what I present to you here as a ritual, nothing lives but the living word of the Gospel. And anyone who believes that the living word of the Gospel does not live in it seems to me like someone who sees a 15-year-old boy and says that he does not know him, that he must first have a picture of him at the age of three and know what he looked like then. We must have the possibility today of having the gospel word within us and of handling it in full freedom, even though Christ lives in it. This must be allowed to flow into the ritual word; only then is the ritual word true in the modern sense. Only then do I truly understand the gospel. Therefore, what is to be achieved today cannot be achieved merely by repeating the gospel. On the contrary, anyone who knows how these things are constituted also knows that if you merely develop the gospel word of this or that soul in the dead, then unfortunately you can contribute to the opposite of what you are striving for. If you do not have a living relationship with the soul to whom you proclaim the gospel word, then the gospel word can be destructive, just as an otherwise healthy area can be destructive for someone who has a weak constitution, because he has not adapted to that area.

We only have to look at these mysteries of existence in the right way. And we must come to something else. We must come to understand, my dear friends, why for all earlier consciousness healing and knowledge were one and the same, or at least belonged to one and the same. In the times when knowledge and religion were one, knowledge was never taken as anything other than an instruction for man to find healing at the same time. Here we come to realize that original sin in reality represents an illness of man. When consciousness is seized with this illness, then healing does not occur, but rather a further illness. We must snatch consciousness, the soul with all its powers, from the sphere of the illness of sin.

We must therefore take into account the possibility that with the end of the earth, everything that is morally grounded could perish if we do not keep it alive through Jesus Christ and lead it beyond the end of the earth to future stages of existence. This awareness must permeate everything that flows into ritual and ceremony. And so you will see that precisely when we approach the mysteries of the sacrifice of the Mass, this beholding, this full human beholding of that which above all works and lives in man himself as the eternal, and of that which must be healed through its connection with Christ Jesus, becomes ever more and more apparent. If someone were to come today and say, “Why should we need the sacraments when we have the Word?” the answer from the anthroposophical standpoint would be, “True, you have the Word, but do you also have the power of the Word?” “Are you sure that your Word will not decay with the death of the earth?” This certainty must be established today! Therefore, he who knows this connection cannot speak about these things as another would who does not know it. It is from this point of view that I ask you to understand what I am now going to say about the continuation of the sacrifice of the Mass in the following. Here too, I must say in advance: some things may still be imperfect, but they are as good as they can be according to my ability today.

So the reading of the Gospel is over, the sacrifice is over. Accordingly, the host is on the altar, the chalice, in which wine and water are mixed, is on the altar, and the host has this form - I am now describing how I think I should describe it (it is drawn on the board) -; it can be broken here, here (see drawing) a piece can be broken off. It is consecrated. We shall have to speak about the consecration later.

During the consecration, it waits for what is to happen to it, so that the words can be true in the direct experience of the sacramental act, which I shall now communicate to you. First, we have to do with the preparation for the sacramental act. Then, at first, there is speaking without the ceremony being performed:

Our prayer penetrates to you, O foundation of the world
Through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord.
Your blessing shines over the pure sacrifice, the sacrifice done in love
The sacrifice accomplished with good will.
Receive it from our pure thinking, our loving
Heart, our willing devotion.
We unite in sacrifice, that we may be the community of Christ. Feel the blessing, O Christ, the confession of You and hear our prayers, we who are united in Your name;
Receive, O Father God, the Christ sacrifice as it may come to life in us, through us;
It is brought for the redemption of souls,
For the attainment of true salvation,
For walking with Christ.
Our prayers unite with all who have gone before us, living Christ in them; may their protective power shine upon us.

Christ in us.

Hear us, O Father God, as we pray to you for the acceptance of our sacrifice;
This sacrifice is sent to you
the Christian community,
which freely recognizes Christ as its helping leader.

Christ in us.

Father God, in this sacrifice of Christ,
let us have life, body and blood
of Thy loving Son.

Now, during these words, the ceremony is performed:

Before His sorrowful departure,
He took the bread for the revelation of salvation
and He looked up to You, His Father,

— the host is lifted up —

thanking You and thereby uniting His soul with Yours.
Then He gave it to the disciples as food.

The Host is broken, the small triangle taken out and mixed with the wine and water in the chalice.

And He said:
Take, eat, of the bread my body.
He took, after the journey's food of bread
the chalice to invigorate salvation
And He looked up to You, His Father,

— the chalice is raised —

thanking You and thereby uniting His soul with Yours.
Then He gave it to the disciples to drink.
And He spoke:
Take, then, with this wine My blood.

The ceremony is complete.

And He continued:
With these words the Divine is given back to
men, for on the cross the body will bear the new
creed; and from the cross will flow in the blood the new faith.
Take this up into your thinking.
And so let live in our thoughts:
The new confession
The new faith –
So think of us Christ's death of suffering; His resurrection;
His revelation through all the following times on earth.

To you, O Father God, be the sacrifice brought,
thinking in purity
hoping for salvation
acting from Christ,

Christ reigns:
in the bread that bears salvation
in the wine that gives strength.

You, O Father God, once received the sacrifices of those who had not yet
received Christ; so receive the sacrifice of those
who do it in Christ's name, essence, power.
Thy Spirit's grace-power work earthward, as this sacrifice, heavenward strives.
Let the bread be Christ's body
Let the wine be Christ's blood
We would sacrifice thus, that

Christ may be in us.

And we would join in prayer with those from whom
You received Your Son's sacrifice before us.
We cannot do works before You;
We would conquer sin before You
through Christ, through whom You, O Father God
create, heal and inspire
through Christ, through whom You, in union with the healing Spirit, perform the
revelation, the ordering of space, the course of time.
So be it.

The old canon, as it is used, already breathes something of this spirit, but it is focused on the Church, on the particular Catholic Church.

"You, most gracious Father, we humbly implore through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, that You may bless these gifts, these pure offerings, these presentations that we send to You , thanking You for giving us Your Holy Catholic Church, to whom You give: peace, protection and concord; which You ordain over the whole circle of the earth through Your servant, the Roman Pontiff.

— which is then deleted for the Old Catholics, [instead of which it says] -:

“together with our most reverend bishop N and all those who live in the true faith and profess the Catholic and Apostolic doctrine.”

Now, of course, masses are read [in the Catholic Church] for people who seek them, for the living or the dead. This is brought about by many externalizations, to which that which is actually the inner life is always exposed. We encounter something here that can hardly concern us, and that does not occur when the ritual is restored today.

"Look with blessing, O Lord, on your servants and servant N.N. and on all those present, whose faith and prayer reaches you, for whom we send you this sacrifice in joy, for the salvation of their souls, so that they may hope for health and well-being; they send their supplication to you, eternal, true, living God.

This plea unites with those of those we remember in clarity: Mary, ever virgin, our Lord's mother, divine; Your holy apostles and martyrs Peter and Paul, Andrew, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon , Thaddeus, Linus, Cletus, Clement, Xystus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John, Paul, Cosmas, Damian, and all the saints, through whose works and prayers you may grant us your protection forever; through Christ our Lord. Yes, so be it.

These things are then accompanied by the appropriate ceremonies, which I will discuss later.

"Hear us, O Lord, as we pray for the acceptance of this sacrifice, which Your entire community sends to You; may Your peace prevail over our days, so that we may not be rejected but may enter into the group that You choose as Your own.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Bless, receive, let be welcome, spiritualize, O Lord, this sacrifice, that it may become in us the body and blood of Thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who on the day before He suffered took the bread into His holy and revealing hands, , turning his eyes to You, O God, who art his almighty Father, and thanked You for it, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take, eat, all of you, for this is my body.

And so, after supper, He took the cup into His holy and revelatory hands, thanked You again for it, blessed it and gave it to the disciples, saying: Take and drink from it, for it is the cup of my blood, the newly-made and never-ending communion, the bearer of faith, which will be given for you and for many for the cleansing of sin. And as often as you do the same, take me into your thoughts.

The ceremony is complete.

"Therefore, we also want to include in our thoughts, we who profess ourselves as Your servants and want to count ourselves among Your holy disciples, Your suffering, O Son of the Father, our Lord, and also Your resurrection and the glorious glorious manifestation of Thy ascension; and we will bring to Thee, who art gloriously triumphant on high, a pure sacrifice, a holy sacrifice, a sinless sacrifice, with the holy bread of eternal life and the ever-saving chalice.

Let thine eye look with favor and mercy on our sacrifice, and receive it with goodwill, as thou once receivedst with goodwill the sacrifice of thy righteous servant Abel and that of our patriarch Abraham and that which the high priest Melchizedek brought thee, a sinless host.

In humble supplication we turn to You, Almighty God, send Your holy angel, that his hands may carry to You and lay down the sacrifice upon Your heavenly altar, before Your radiant eye, so that we, who eat the Holy Body and drink the Holy Blood of Your Son at the earthly altar, may be imbued with the breath and grace of heaven.

And this too through Christ our Lord.

And hear, O Lord, Thy servants and Thy handmaid N.N.,

— now the names are mentioned again for whom the Mass is being read, if it is for the dead —

"who have gone before us, bearing well thy cross of confession, and are at rest. To them all, Lord, mayest thou give deliverance, light, and peace.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Yes, so be it.

We implore You to accept us as servants who may be deemed worthy of Your gracious presence in the company of Your holy apostles and martyrs, John, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander , Marcellinus, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Cecilia, Anastasia and all the saints; in whose company you may admit us, not for merit's sake, but for repentance from sins. Through Christ our Lord, through whom you, Lord, create, sanctify, vivify, and give us everything.

Through him,

With him,

In him,

Almighty God the Father, in union with the Holy Spirit,

in all revelation,

in all world orders,

through all ages,

The altar server says:

“Yes, so be it.”

You see what the tradition is, and you see how it seems to me that the sacrament must be endowed with a ritual today. In the Catholic Church, there are some intermediate things that we will talk about, but then we move on to the fourth main part of the Mass, to Communion, which is taken in the two forms, in bread and wine. Before the taking of the bread and wine, the following is spoken:

Thou, O Christ, hast spoken to those who walk with you: Peacefully I stand by the world; this peace with the world can also be with you because I give it to you.

So, O Christ, the strength in me that frees itself from the burden of sin and unites with you in thought and will, so that it may stand peacefully in relation to the world and become one with its becoming, that can happen through you in all subsequent circles of time.

Yes, so be it.

O Christ, who went forth from the Father God without illness, and who, with the healing Spirit, gives human spirits the gift of continued life, quench the power of the disease of sin through Your body bearing the Holy Spirit; and strengthen me in my struggling soul through Your blood that bestows salvation, so that I may live forever with You. You who carry and order the life of the world, as You receive it from the Father and make it healthy through the Spirit in all subsequent periods of time.

Yes, so be it.

May I, who is ill, not receive your body, O Christ, unto death; but unto life of soul and of my formative powers as the healing medicine. This be through you, who bear and order the life of the world as you receive it from the Father and make it healthy through the Spirit in all subsequent circles of time.

Yes, so be it. I take the bread and do this in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christ, the dwelling in which you enter is sick; but my soul will be healed by your word. (Three times)

Now the bread is taken.

The body of our Lord shall heal my soul, so that it may live. Yes, so be it.

Take me for giving myself to you.

I take the cup and do this in the name of the Lord, calling, O Christ, to whom I confess, what has been revealed through You, and You take the power of man's adversary from me. (Three times)

The cup is drunk.

The blood of the Lord gives strength to my soul, so that it may not die in the future. Yes, so be it.

What my mouth has received, let it be in my soul, and what has been sacrificed in time, let it be transformed into eternal medicine. May your body, O Christ, which I have received, and your blood, which gives me life, penetrate me, so that the disease of sin may be healed by the healing medicine, the sacrament. May it be done through You, who bear and order the life of the world as You receive it from the Father and, through the Spirit, make it whole in all the ages to come.

Yes, so be it.

This is what the act of Communion amounts to and what it says in the Catholic Church:

"O Jesus Christ, our Lord, who spoke to Your Apostles: My peace be with you, I give you my peace: do not look at my sin-laden person, but at Your Church, which confesses You and give it, according to Your will: peace and unity, You who live in the world and order it as its divine Creator through all the following ages.

Yes, so be it.

That is the “per omnia saecula saeculorum”. You see, here it is clearly stated how the priest in Catholicism differs from the Church. He stands as a member of the Church before the altar, and according to the dogma, his person is not actually considered at all.

"O Jesus Christ, Son of the God who gives life to the world, who, according to His will, through the assistance of the Holy Spirit, hast given the world life through Thyself, take from me the power of the sins of the world through Thy body, which bears our sins, and through Thy blood, which redeems us, and unite me inseparably to Thyself. You who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit in all the ages to come.

Yes, so be it.

May the receiving of Your body, O Jesus Christ, our Lord, by me, an unworthy one, not be for my condemnation, but according to Your mercy for the salvation of soul and body as a healing remedy. You who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit in all the ages to come.

Yes, let it be so.

Taking the bread heavenward I call on the Lord's name. © Lord, I am unready for You to enter under my roof; but just say the word and my soul shall be healed. (Three times)

The body of the Lord brings my soul to life.

Yes, so be it. What shall I give to the Lord for all that He has given me? Taking the cup, I call on the name of the Lord. Confessing His revelation, I will call upon the name of the Lord with joy and my adversaries will flee from me. The blood of the Lord strengthen my soul in survival.

Yes, so be it.

What the mouth has received, may the pure soul absorb, and from the temporal sacrifice may come medicine for eternity. May your body, O Lord, that nourished me, and your blood, that strengthened me, penetrate my soul forever, and in me may the disease of sin be wiped out as the pure and healing sacraments. You who live and reign in all the ages to come.

Yes, it shall be so.

So you see, the Sacrifice of the Mass is indeed the sacramental fulfillment of the four main parts of which I have spoken to you. And it is important that the entire meaning of Christianity is fully alive in the ritual of the Sacrifice of the Mass. The Gospel must live in every single word of the ritual, the Gospel must be alive, and without this life of the living Gospel the ritual would be impossible. Of course, it must be assumed that the following is recognized in order to understand something like this: one is dealing with people who live according to the Mystery of Golgotha, with people, that is, for whom there could never be anything that would be a mere external act, that takes place in the world of the senses, or that is performed by the human being in the world of the senses , and with those, therefore, for whom there could also be nothing that could be spoken out of ordinary human consciousness in an intellectualistic way, that could strengthen the moral world in man so that that which must be conquered can be conquered.

For this, an action is needed that goes beyond everything that lies within the bounds of our present-day possibilities for action and speech, if we are not to move on to an awareness of the sacramental. I know, my dear friends, how much is said against the sacramental in the hearts of modern people, but anyone who has experience in these matters may also say something else. One could think that my annoyance at the ceremonial, which is so common among modern people, might even come from a Christian or Protestant consciousness. But I must confess to you – it is a personal comment, but in this case it is very factual – I have actually never seen a person in whom what was angry against the sacramental came from love and from goodness, but always from secret evil that is in human nature. Of course, this is a process that we see occurring in many cases today, but what is primarily angry is actually the resistance, the resistance to salvation, of human nature. It is the incitement by the same forces that say in the Gospel: we recognize you – and then begin to fight Christ Jesus because they recognize him. I would not say this at all if it were not a thoroughly observable fact. Whoever overcomes that which asserts itself as evil in his soul is given the strength to overcome. But whoever cannot overcome this evil is also deprived of what strength he had to overcome before. These things are quite serious, and in the human soul things are constantly happening that cannot be grasped by ordinary external consciousness. One might say that the human soul is actually constantly walking over an abyss. That is indeed the case, it is just not aware of it. But it must become aware of it, and how it is to become aware of it must be guided in the right way. As long as we merely have the belief that we are to moralize the human soul, and as long as we have the belief from our present consciousness that we could do this with the powers that are present in the outer world, so long we have no idea of what the human soul actually is in the whole context of the world.

Therefore, do not take something like an externality when certain sentences are spoken three times in Communion. Why are they spoken three times? The first time is spoken:

I take this bread and do this in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christ, the dwelling in which You enter is sick; but through Your word my soul shall be healed.

The first time the word is spoken so that it may be taken up into one's understanding. The second time the word is spoken:

I take the bread and do this in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christe, the dwelling into which You enter is sick; but through Your word my soul shall be healed.

so that we experience this in our feeling. And only the third time can the word be spoken in such a way that our volition is sufficiently kindled through our thinking and feeling, so that the word may also live in our volition:

I take this bread and do it in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christ, the dwelling in which you enter is sick; but through your word my soul will be healed.

Likewise with the words of the cup:

I take this cup, and do this in the Lord's name, calling: © Christe, to whom I profess myself, what through Thee is revealed, and the power of man's adversary Thou takest from me.

The second time:

I take this cup, and do this in the Lord's name, calling to mind that Thou takest away the power of Thine enemies.

The third time:

I take the cup and do this in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christe, to whom I profess my faith, what has been revealed through you, and you take away from me the power of man's adversary.

All details are important in such a ritual, and if they are incorrect, it is already roughly the same as if, let us say, any limb of the human body is wrongly formed due to a malformed development. We must have the feeling that these things are alive in truth. Of course, what lives in the succession of time changes its body in the succession of time, precisely because it is alive, but this change of body is precisely only a consequence of the living.

With the help of the point of view just mentioned, it is now quite easy to find the differences that exist between what is in the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass and what is in the ritual that I spoke of as possible today. But it is also clear to see how it is almost impossible to truly depict the full concrete experiences through a mere translation, even if it attempts to restore the old words' values. This is because, in fact, for the entire civilization of modern times, the actual meaning of the original words has been lost. We no longer live in the life that the words once had. We live in words, in that they have become mere signs for us. We no longer listen inwardly to the words either. The sensation of the sound of the words has become for us a sensation of a sign of memory. I have already spoken about these things from a different point of view. But such a ritual cannot be performed without coming back to the real listening to the words.

I have told you: When we read in the Gospel of John today, “In the beginning was the Word,” we have to say that according to a literal translation. But what we associate with the word “Word” today is not at all what was once associated with the word “Word.” And when we translate the old word logos as wisdom, then the two are even further apart, for wisdom is something much more abstract than logos was. And by translating logos as wisdom we actually enter the sphere, well, not of Christ, but of the spirit. And while we can still feel the word to some extent in the “verbum” [the Latin translation], if “logos” were translated as “wisdom”, we would actually have to feel spirit, “sapientia”. These things should actually be thoroughly brought to perception in today's theology classes. Many have an enormous fear of this. Because they have learned that one should be a theo-logian, and they fear that if something else comes over their outer perception of “logia,” it is “sophia,” and then they are terribly afraid that they might come to theosophia instead of theologia. This is a terrible fear that is present in theologians today. They consider it an insult to be called “theosophists”. Why? Because they have no belief that the Christ works through the spirit that lives in wisdom, because they would like to deny the spirit; and the denial of the spirit, in many respects, is what causes such a feeling.

We must see these things in their true light, only then can we also feel - and we will come back to this, my dear friends - how different our direct experience can be with regard to the Father-God and to the Christ Himself.

[ 1 ] My dear friends! I sincerely thank Licentiate Bock for his welcoming words, and I promise you that I want to apply everything in my power to contribute at least partly, towards all you are looking for during your stay here.

[ 2 ] Today I would like to discuss some orientation details so that we may understand one another in the right way. It will be our particular task—also during the various hours of discussion we are going to have—to express exactly what lies particularly close to your heart for your future work. I hope that what I have to say to you will be said in the correct way, when during the coming discussion hour your wishes and tasks you ask about, will be heard.

[ 3 ] Anthroposophy, my dear friends, must certainly remain on the foundation of which I've often spoken, when I say: Anthroposophy as such can't represent religious education; anthroposophy as such must limit its task as a spiritual science to fructify present culture and civilization and it is not its purpose to represent religious education. Actually, it is quite far from such direct involvement in any way, in the evolutionary process of religious life. Nevertheless, it appears to me to be certainly justified in relation to the tasks you have just set yourselves, that for religious activity something can be extracted out of Anthroposophy. Indirectly it can not only be obtained through Anthroposophy, but it must be extracted, and this must be said; your experience is quite correct that religious life as such needs deepening, which can come out of the source of anthroposophical science.

[ 4 ] I presume, my dear friends, that you want to actively position yourself in this religious life and that you have looked for this Anthroposophic course because you have felt that religious activity has lead you increasingly towards a dead end, and that through the religious work today—with our traditions, with the historic development and others, which we will still discuss—elements are missing which actually should be within it. We notice how just today even important personalities are searching for a new foundation for religious activity, because they believe this is needed in order to progress in a certain direction. I would like to indicate it as a start, how even the most conscientious personalities ask themselves how one can reach a certain foundation of religious awareness, and how then these personalities actually search more or less for a kind of—one can also call it something else—a kind of philosophy. I remind you only how a home is sought for a kind of philosophic foundation for religious awareness. Obviously, one has to, through the current awareness, recognise something absolutely necessary and one should not ignore that an extraordinarily amount has been accomplished this way. However, one can't comprehend, with unprejudiced observation, what is strived for, and come face to face with this: such an effort, instead of leading into the religious life, actually leads out of the religious life.

Religious life, you will sense, must be something direct, it must be something elementary, entirely connected to human nature, which lives out of the elementary, most inward foundation of human nature. All philosophic thinking is a reflection and is distanced from this direct, elementary experience. If I might express a personal impression, it would be this: When someone philosophises about the religious life and believes that a philosophical foundation is necessary for a religious life, then it always seems to me to be similar to when one wants to turn to the physiology of nutrition in order to attain nourishment oneself. Isn't it true, one can determine the exact foundations of nutritional science but that means nothing for nutrition itself. Nutritional science elucidates nutrition, but nutrition must surely have a sound foundation, it must grow roots in reality; only then can one philosophise about nutrition. So also, the religious life must have roots in reality. It must come to existence out of reality, only when it is there can one philosophise about it. It is certainly not possible at all to substantiate or justify the religious life with some or other philosophic consideration.

[ 5 ] That's the one thing. The other one is something which I can best indicate—I always like referring to realities—through a book which had already came into existed several decades ago in Basle, with the title: The Christian Nature of our Theology Today. It is a book by Overbeck. In it he refers to evidence that the current theology is a kind of theology but that it is actually not Christian any longer. Now, when one takes Harnack's book The Being of Christianity and in its arguments everywhere simply exchanges the word "God" in every instance where he has "Christ," then one will not really change anything in the inner content of Harnack's book. This is already expressed in what Adolf Harnack says, that in the Gospels actually only the proclamation of the Father is needed and not those of Christ Jesus, while naturally during the earlier centuries the Christian development of the Gospels was above all regarded according to the proclamations of Christ Jesus. However, if the Gospels are really considered as the actual proclamations of Christ Jesus, then one has to, beside the Father-experience, that means beside the experience of the world in general being permeated by the Godhead, have the Christ-experience as something extra special. One must be able to have both of these experiences. A theology like Adolf Harnack's no longer has both of these experiences, but only a God-experience, and as a result it is necessary for him that what he finds in his imagination of God, he baptises it with the name of Christ; purely out of a historical foundation, because as he is even a representative of Christianity, he calls his God-experience by the name of Christ.

[ 6 ] These incisive, important things exist already. Certainly, they are not made properly clear but they are felt, and I presume that currently, where nearly everything is shaken up in people's minds, a young theology in particular needs to show itself, in how these things can't really be completed, as is seen to some extent today with theologians, without being permeated by the actual being of Christ. Out of this experience such a book as von Overbeck's was created regarding the current Christianity of theology, where basically the answer is given to why modern theology is no longer Christian because it deals with a general philosophising about a world permeated by God, and not in the real sense of the Christ experience creating the foundation for the entire treatment of religious problems. Religious problems are dealt with based only as Father-problems and not actually the Christ experience.

[ 7 ] Today we basically all have an education inculcated in us, derived from modern science, this science which actually only started in the middle of the 15th century but which has entered into all forms of modern people's thinking. One basically can't be different because one has been educated this way from the lowest primary classes, by forming thoughts according to modern science. This has resulted in theology of the 19th century wanting to orientate itself according to the research of modern science. I'd like to say they feel themselves responsible for the judge's chair of modern science and as a result have become what they are today. One can only find a basis of true religiosity today by, at the same time, considering the entire authorisation and also the complete meaning of the scientific element of life.

[ 8 ] To some of you I have possibly already referred to a man who needs to be taken seriously in relation to religious life, Gideon Spicker, who for a long time studied philosophy at the Münster university. He proceeded from a strict Christian conception of the world, which he gradually developed into his philosophy which was never considered a philosophy but more an instrument for the understanding of religious problems. Modern thinking didn't offer him the possibility to find a sure foundation. So we find in his booklet, entitled At the Turning Point of the Christian World Period the hopelessness of modern man which characterised him so clearly, because he says: "Today we have metaphysics without transcendental conviction, we have a theory of knowledge without objective meaning, we have psychology without a soul, logic without content, ethics without liability and the result is that we can't find some or other foundation for religious consciousness."—Gideon Spicker stood very close to the actual crux which lies at the basis of all religious dichotomies in modern mankind. One can take it like a symptom, to indicate where the actual crux, I could call it, lies. If modern man is discerning, if he tries to create an image through his imagination of the world, then at the same time he clearly has the feeling that this discernment doesn't penetrate the depths. Gideon Spicker expressed it like this: "We have a theory of knowledge without objective meaning", which means we have our insights without being in the position to find the power within us to create something really objective out of our assembled insights. So, the modern discerning man sickens because he fails to find the possibility of a guarantee for his knowledge of objectivity in the world, for existence as such. He finds it in what he experiences subjectively in the knowledge, not really out of the thing itself.

[ 9 ] All of this of course, because it is philosophy, has nothing to do with religious experience. Still, one can say that religious life today is certainly under an influence which heads in a similar direction. The kind of humanity which is not in the position to say about knowledge: "in this realization there exists objective existence for me"—such a type of humanity feels this same insecurity rise up at another point, and that is religious life. The insecurity is situated at the same pivotal point where actual religious life exists today. We will see how other problems will huddle around this pivot point. This pivotal point lies in prayer, in the meaning of prayer. The religious person must feel that prayer has real meaning; some or other reality must be connected to prayer. However, in a time epoch when the discerning person fails to come out of his subjective knowledge and fails to find reality in knowledge, in the same time epoch religious people won't find the possibility, during prayer, of becoming aware that prayer is no mere subjective deed, but that within prayer an objective experience takes place. For a person who is unable to realise that prayer is an objective experience, for him or her it would be impossible to find a real religious hold. Particularly in the nature of current humanity prayer must focus on the religious life. Various other areas must focus on prayer. However, a prayer which only has subjective meaning would make people religiously insecure.

[ 10 ] It is the same root which grows out of us on the one side for the insecurity of knowledge, the Ignorabimus, and on the other side in fear; worry, which do not live in prayer in divine objectivity, but which is involved in subjectivity.

[ 11 ] You see, the problem of faith and the problem of knowledge, all problems, which involve people from the theological side, are connected to the same characteristics. Everything which depresses people from the side of direct religious experience, which needs confirmation, which must be maintained, this all comes from the same source. You can hardly answer this question if you don't orientate yourself historically where it will quite clearly show how far we have actually become distanced with our sciences from what we can call Christian today, while on the other hand today there is the constant attempt to proceed by pushing anything Christian out with science. Take everything in the Gospels which is Christian tradition. You can't but say: in this, there is another conception of the human being than what modern science claims. In modern science the human being is traced back to some or other primitive archetypal creature—I absolutely don't want to say that mankind had perhaps developed out of an animal origin—we are referred back to a primitive Ur-human, which gradually developed itself and, in whose development, existed a progression, an advance. Modern humanity is satisfied to look back according to scientific foundations, to the primitive archetypal beings, who through some inherent power, it is said, they created an ever greater and bigger cultural accomplishment, and to behold the unexpected future of this perfection.

If one now places within this evolution, the development of the Christ, the Mystery of Golgotha, then one can in an honest way hold on to the Gospels and say nothing other than: into this He doesn't fit, what fits here is a historic conception which goes around the Mystery of Golgotha and leaves it out, but the Christ of the Gospels don't fit into this conception. The Christ of the Gospels can't be considered in any other way than if one somehow believes what happened in the 18th century especially among the most enlightened, the most spiritual people as a matter of course. Take for instance Saint Martin—I now want to look further from religious development and want to point out someone who was in the most imminent sense a scientist of the 18th century—and that was Saint Martin. He had a completely clear awareness that the human being at the start of his earthly development came from a certain height downwards, that he had been in another world milieu earlier, in another environment and through a mighty event, through a crisis was thrown down to a sphere which lay below the level of his previous existence, so that the human being is no longer what he once had been.

[ 12 ] While our modern natural science points back to a primitive archetypal being out of which we have developed; this observation of Saint Martin must refer back to the fallen mankind, to those human beings which had once been more elevated. This was something, like I said, which to Saint Martin appeared as a matter of course. Saint Martin experienced this fall of mankind as a feeling of shame. You see, if the Christ is placed in such a conception of human evolution, where the human being, by starting his earth existence through a descent and is now more humble than he was before, then the Christ becomes that Being who would save humanity from its previous fall, then the Christ bears mankind again up into those conditions where it had existed before.

[ 13 ] We will see in what modification this imagination must appear to our souls. In any case this involves a disproportion between our modern understanding of mankind's evolution and the understanding of the Gospels; there is always dishonesty when one goes hither and thither and does not confess that one is simultaneously a supporter of modern scientific thinking and also the Christ. This must actually be clear for every honest, particularly religiously honest sensitive person. Here is something where a bridge must be formed if the religious life is to be healthy once again. Without this bridging, religious life will never ever be healthy again. Actually, there are people who come along like David Friedrich Strauss, and to the question "Are we still Christians?" reply with a No, indicating that they are still more honest than some of the modern theologians, whoever and again overlook the radical differences between what the modern human being regards as pure science and the Gospel concept of the Christ. This is the characteristic of modern theology. It is basically the impotent attempt to treat the Christ conception of the Gospels in such a way that it can be validated in front of modern science. Here nothing originates which somehow can be held.

[ 14 ] Yet, theology still exists. The modern pastor is given very little support for his line of work in the kind of theology presented at his schooling currently, from the foundation which has been indicated already and about which we will still come to in the course of our observations. The modern pastor must of course be a theologian even though theology is not religion. However, in order to work, a theological education is needed, and this educational background suffers from all the defects which I've briefly indicated in our introduction today.

[ 15 ] You see, the Catholic Church knows quite well what it is doing, because it doesn't allow modern science to come into theology. Not as if the Catholic Church doesn't care for modern science, it takes care of it. The greatest scholars can certainly be found within the Catholic ecclesiastics. I'm reminded of Father Secchi, a great astrophysicist, I remember people such as Wasmann, a significant zoologist, and many others, above all one can remind oneself of the extraordinarily important scientific accomplishments, worldly scientific accomplishments of the Benedictine order and so on. But what role did modern science play in the Catholic Church? The Catholic Church wants to care for modern science, that there are real luminaries in it. However, people want this modern scientific way to be applied in connection with the outer sensory world, it wants to distance itself strongly from the conceptions of anything pertaining to spirituality, no statements should be made about this spirituality. Hence it is therefore forbidden to express something about the spiritual, because scientists must not enter into this mix when something is being said about the legitimacy of the spiritual life. So, Catholicism relegates science to its boundaries, it rejects science from all that is theology. That it, for instance in modernism, gradually came into it, has caused Catholicism to experience it as dispensable; hence the war against modernism. The Catholic Church knows precisely that in that moment when science penetrates theology, extraordinary dangers lie ahead, and it is impossible to cope with scientific research in theology.

It is basically quite hopeless if it is expressed in abstract terms: theology we must have but it will be scorched, burnt by modern science.—Where does this come from? That is the next big burning question. Where does this come from?

[ 16 ] Yes, my dear friends, theology as we have it now, is rooted in quite different conditions than those of modern mankind. Ultimately the foundation of theology—if it wants to be correctly understood—is precisely the same foundations as that of the Gospels themselves. I have just expressed a sentence and naturally in its being said, it is not immediately understood, but it has extraordinary importance for our discussions here. Theology as inherited tradition doesn't appear in the form in which modern science appears. Theology is mostly in a form of something handed down, as such it goes back to the earlier ways of understanding. Certainly, logic was later applied to modern theology, which changed the form of theology somewhat; theology no longer appeared as it had been once upon a time. On the other hand, it is Catholicism which actually has something in this relationship which works in an extraordinarily enchanting manner on the more intelligent people and which is firmly adhered to in many Catholic clerics upon studying theology, through what has been handed down as knowledge of the so-called Primordial Revelation (Uroffenbahrung).

[ 17 ] Primordial Revelation! You have to be aware that Catholicism does not merely have the revelation which we usually call the revelation of the New Testament, nor this being only the revelation spoken about in the Old Testament, but that Catholicism—as far as it is theology—speaks about a Primordial Revelation. This Primordial Revelation is usually characterised by saying: that which was revealed by the Christ had been experienced once before by mankind, at that time humanity acquired the revelation through another, a cosmic world milieu. This revelation was lost through the Fall, but an inheritance of this great revelation was still available through the Old Testament and through pagan teachings.—That is Catholic thinking. Once upon a time, before people became sinners, a revelation was made to them; had mankind not fallen into sin, so the entire act of salvation of Christ Jesus would not have become necessary. However, the primordial revelation had been tarnished through humanity falling into the sinful world and in the course of time up to the Mystery of Golgotha the human being increasingly forgot what the primordial revelation had been. To a certain extent in the beginning there still remained glimpses of this primordial revelation, then however, as the generation went further and further away, this primordial revelation darkened, and it had become totally dark in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha which came as a new revelation.

This is what Christianity looks like today—under theological instruction—in Old Testament teaching and above all in the pagan teaching it is seen as a corrupted Primordial Revelation. Catholicism has an insight into what I've often spoken about in Anthroposophy, namely the old Mysteries. In my book Christianity as Mystical Fact I pointed these things out, but, not quite, but only as far as possible because these things are as much unknown as possible in today's world and most people are not prepared for these things. Only, here we can speak about it, and about one point.

[ 18 ] Everywhere in the pagan-religious mysteries there are certain experiences which allowed people to learn more than those communicated outwardly, exoterically, to a large crowd. These experiences didn't happen under supervision but through asceticism, through practice, they happened by the person going through certain experiences; a kind of drama was experienced leading to a culmination, with a catharsis, until the person came to sense the lightening of the divine laws of the world. This is simply a fact and within esoteric Catholicism it engendered an awareness of what existed in the Mysteries. It is even said that modern times are filled with worldly science and that this worldly science must not enter theology with arguments; as a result, we'd rather protect our knowledge of the Mysteries so that worldly science doesn't come in to explain it, because explaining the Mysteries would be a great danger under any circumstances. Catholicism was afraid that scientific involvement would reveal what one could possibly know about such things.

[ 19 ] Now we come to the question: what did the Mysteries actually impart during these olden times? The Mysteries didn't produce a mere theoretical knowledge, it produced an evolution of consciousness, a real transformation of consciousness. A person who had gone through the Mysteries learnt to experience life differently to those people who hadn't gone through them. A person who stands fully awake in the world, experiences outside the sleep state, the outer sense world; he experiences memories, he can through these memories relive his life within himself when after various interruptions he comes to a certain point in his life which lies a couple of years after his birth. With an individual who has gone through hard exercises in the Mysteries, something quite different rises up in his awareness than what he usually can find in his consciousness. In the old Mysteries one expressed this experience as a "rebirth." Why does one call it a rebirth? Because in fact a person goes through a kind of embryonic experience in his consciousness; an awareness comes to the fore in the manner and way the person had lived through during his time as an embryo. During the time of being an embryo, our inner experience is namely of the same kind as are the experiences during thinking, because what is experienced in our senses is only done so through our mother's body. An embryonic experience is woken up, that's why we call it a "rebirth." A person goes back in his embryonic life up to the time of his birth, and so, just like memories rise up, so that what is being experienced also rises up. In this way a person feels himself coming out of a spiritual world, being partially connected to a spiritual world. These were the mysteries of birth, under which time one understood the blossoming of the Mysteries as something which human beings could go through during such an initiation. What he went through during such an initiation was considered a shadowed knowledge of such a state he was in, before he descended into the world of the senses. Thus, through the "rebirth" the human being re-places himself again to a certain extend back into a human form of existence free of sin.

In earlier times, knowledge which was not of this world was called "theology," and this knowledge could be acquired through the return to the wisdom that human beings had had before entering into this world, a wisdom which had been corrupted because people had dragged it into this world.

[ 20 ] I'm sketching these things for you and later we will naturally bring today's considerations to our awareness. Theology in olden times was a gift from the gods, which could only be achieved through such exercises which could lift people out of their senses and bring them at least back to the experience of motherly love, enabling them to take up this wisdom again, this uncorrupted wisdom. This cannot be taken up in the form or modern logical concepts. Within the Mysteries people could not be given logical concepts in the modern sense, they received images. All knowledge which is gained in this way is gained in pictures, images. The more a person actually entered into the real world of existence—not only associated himself with existence—the more he lives into this existence, like when he lives within the existence of motherly love, so much more will consciousness stop living in abstract concepts, so much more will he live in images. Thus, what was designated as "theology" in olden times, in pre-Christian times, visual science, was science living in images. For this reason, I could say: this theology certainly had a similar form of expression as the one living in the Gospels, because in the Gospels we find images, and the further we go back, the more we find that the Gospels are still being expressed in the attitude of the old theology; there is certainly no differentiation between religion and theology. Here theology itself is something which has been received from God, here in theology one looks upon a God, and sees how the theology is given through a communication with God. Here is something which is alive, in theology. Then it came about that theology was experienced differently, somewhat like the conditions in which one lives when you grow older. At that time therefore, in olden times, theology was nourished through the religious life. This particular way of living though-oneself in the world of religious experience, this actually was getting lost to humanity at the same time as the Mystery of Golgotha was occurring.

[ 21 ] So you see, when we look towards the East as it is connected historically to the source of our religious life, we have, we can say, the Indian religious life. What nourishes the Indian religious life? It is nourished through the observation of nature, but the observation of nature was something quite different then to what it is for modern humanity. Nature observation was for all Indians such that one can say: an Indian observed spiritually when looking at nature, but he only observed the spirit which lay beneath the actual being of humanity. The Indian observed the mineral world spiritually, likewise the plant world, animal world; he was aware of the divine spiritual foundation of these worlds; but when he wanted to attain the human world as well, it didn't reveal itself to him. By wanting to access the actual being of the human being in the world, which he had himself, there he found nothing: Nirvana, the entry in nothingness towards what could be perceived in relation to the human being. Thus, the fervour of the Indian's religious life, which certainly was still present at that time, where theology, religion and science were one, was Nirvana. We have an escape from what is perceived from the natural basis of the image-rich consciousness, an escape into Nirvana, where everything that is given to the senses is obliterated. This self-abandonment to Nirvana must be experienced religiously in order to find a possible form for the religious stream of experience for individuals.

[ 22 ] Now, when we consider this religious observation of the world further, with the Persians and later with the Chaldeans, we see how they turn their gaze outward, they don't experience the world like us, they live through a world permeated with spirit, everywhere the spiritual foundation permeates everything, but immobilises it. There is a different disposition with these peoples compared to the Indians. The Indian strived towards mankind and found nothing. The other peoples who lived to the north and west of the Indians didn't strive towards mankind but towards the world, towards the spiritual in the world. They couldn't understand the spiritual world in any other way than to avoid with all their might, what later human evolution could no longer avoid.

[ 23 ] It is unbelievably meaningful, my dear friends, to observe how, on the one hand the old Indian striving came from what he saw, while he, when he strived towards human beings, I might call it, fell into unconsciousness, into Nirvana, while the Old Persian remained in what he was looking at. The divine which is the basis of the mineral, the plant and animal worlds, was understood by the Old Persian and from this came his religious striving; but now he was overcome by fear that he might be urged to seek man, and this turned into abstract thoughts which turned into imagery. This is actually the basic feeling of the near-Asian peoples all the way to Africa. They saw the foundation of nature as being a spiritual world; they didn't see people, but they were afraid to search in people because then they would enter an abstract region, a region into which later, the Romans entered with their religion. Before the Roman time, in the second, third Century there was the aspiration everywhere to avoid entering into abstractions, hence the aspiration to capture what is presented in images. There was even the endeavour to express in images, what one understood, in image form. There was an effort to, in relation to the divine, which one perceives, not to search for it through abstract concepts but in actions made visible; this is the origin of ritual, sacramental action. In this religious area which I'm referring to, is the origin of ritual in worship.

[ 24 ] Now place yourself into this entire development of the old Hebraic peoples; the Judaism which strongly feels the urge for its people's development to enter into what one possesses in one's consciousness. Today I only want to make indications in my presentation in order for us to orientate ourselves. The members of the Hebrew people wanted above all to feel the God on which human nature is based. The Old Indian only sensed God, or the gods, who lay at the basis of sub human nature, and as he tried to penetrate with his consciousness into the human being, there he wanted to rise up into Nirvana. The other, the Persian, Chaldean and Egyptian peoples searched for the connection to the Divine in images and applied these according to their character dispositions, to get up to the human being. So we can see how this urge, as in Judaism, to draw the divine and the human together, to bring the divine in a relationship with the human being, lead to the divine appearing at the same time the foundation of humanity. There was not predisposition to that in the Indian when they sailed into Nirvana; there was no longer a conception that the human consciousness wanted to be reached. For the Indian this personal route to the human soul was to be avoided. This personal route of the human soul had even lead to gradually slipping out of existence into nonexistence, so to speak. The other, the Prussian route, came to a standstill with imagery, remaining in ritual only.

[ 25 ] We see how the Jewish peoples developed, within these strivings, their own special character and this resulted in the impossibility to reach God out of one's own life. One had to wait and see what God himself gave, and it was there that the actual concept of revelation came into being. One had to wait and see what God would give and on the other hand one had to be careful not to search through the route of imagery or symbolism (Bilderweg), which was to be feared. If the route of symbolism was sought, then one arrived at a subhuman God, not at a God who carries humanity. In Judaism the symbolic route was not to be followed, it would not be through ritual an also not through the content of knowledge that one would speak to God. The olden time Jew wanted to meet their god by Him revealing himself, and human beings would communicate in a human way, while from their side, not make outwardly fulfilled sacrifices, but what arises subjectively: the promise—revelation, promise and the contract between both; a judicial relationship one could call it, between the people and their God.

[ 26 ] So the Jewish religion positioned itself and thus the Jewish religion stood in the entire evolution of humanity. therefore, one can say: here already a relationship is the example which is performed in our modern time, where science wants to be beside religion but where science has nothing to say about religion, just like the olden time Jew removed everything which appeared as imagery. This is already performed in Judaism, and precisely in the modern differentiation between knowledge and faith, lies unbelievably much Judaism. In Harnack's The Being of Christianity everything is again based on Judaism. You have to see through this that we get sick with these things.

[ 27 ] Human evolution is penetrated by more and more things. Something is continuously developing which belongs to the Jews in particular: the awareness of personality, which is urged by ego development. With the Greeks there developed a mighty inner world beside the outer world of observed nature but this inner world could raise doubts, because it was observed merely as a world of mythology. Sensing the religious element rising in Hellenism, which lives in Greek mythology, through mythological fantasy, which people are searching for—because it was not to be found in nature—is what rises up in man. The Greek however didn't grasp the actual important point within the human inner life, resulting from mythological fantasy, which the Romans evolved into abstract thinking, which certainly already started with Aristotle, but which was developed particularly in Rome. This abstract way of thinking which is so powerful as to being people to the point of their I, bringing them to self-consciousness, to I-consciousness, this is something which we today still carry in us today and we carry it heavily in us, in the form of modern agnosticism.

[ 28 ] My dear friends, basically there is no spiritual teaching other than modern materialism. This sounds like an extraordinary paradox and yet it is so. What the modern materialistic thinker carries in his head is quite spiritualized, so spiritualised that it is quite abstract and has no connection to reality any more. That's Romanism in full swing. We actually have become unbelievably spiritual in the course of the 19th century, but we deny this spirituality because we maintain that through this spirituality, we can understand matter. In reality our souls are in a spiritualised content, right into our ideas are we spiritualised, but we maintain that through all of this we can only understand a material world. Thus, human beings have grasped their ego through this spiritualisation, but as a result they have become separated from the world. Today humanity must again look for its connection to the world, the search need to be for inner knowledge, there needs to be the possibility to not only have "knowledge without objective meaning" but knowledge with objective meaning, in order for knowledge to reveal the being of the world, and on the other hand to authenticate what is hidden within the human being as objective.

[ 29 ] You see, the Greeks had a great advantage compared to the oriental world, they could to draw together their innermost nature so to speak. From within themselves they could draw a content, but this content could first only attach as filled with fantasy, imagination. However, there was something the Greeks didn't know. They had brought the development of humanity to internalisation but didn't attach it to the inner life. The internalisation and the hardening continued in the Roman times and beyond, and man had to learn—today still we need to learn to understand—how one can attach what is within, what permeates this inner being. The Greeks could think about their gods in grandiose fantasy images but what the Greek could not do, was to pray. The prayer only cam about later and for prayer the possibility had to be found of connecting the one praying, to reality. To this we must connect those times in which prayer was not merely spoken, not merely thought or not merely felt, but in which prayer became one with the sacramental ritual. Then again Catholicism knows quite well why they don't separate themselves from ritual, from the sacrificial act, from the central sacrifice of the mass.

We'll talk more about these things.