The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the preceding meditations I have spoken to you about three successive but interrelated supersensible modes of knowledge: imaginative knowledge, inspired knowledge and intuitive knowledge. And I have tried to explain to you the views of the world and life that can be arrived at by applying these modes of knowledge. Today I will only add to what I said yesterday the knowledge to be gained through such supersensible insight into the innermost nature of the human being himself, the knowledge about which the human being longs for an answer because not only does the satisfaction of a religious or theoretical need somehow depend on it, but the possibility that the human being may only become fully human at all. All human striving ultimately aims at this: Man wants to become fully human.

That which forms the actual center of our being and which we initially face with the ordinary consciousness that we, so to speak, summarize it in the only point that we then express with the word “I”, we actually face in ordinary life as something unknown. And it is precisely this mode of knowledge, as it is meant and characterized here, that gradually leads to the self-knowledge that is initially accessible to the human being. I would like to use a comparison to make it clear what I actually mean. When we look around us with our eyes, we see things through light, which itself is supersensible, but which, in its effects in the colors of objects, makes them perceptible to us for this one sense. But we can also say that we see that which is not illuminated by light. If we have a white surface somewhere with a dot in the middle, we see the white through the effect of light, as we can imagine. But we also perceive the black dot, that which confronts us as dark. We know something of this black point. If we reflect properly, it is something like this in our ordinary lives with our perception of the self. We perceive the things around us. We also bring thoughts, feelings and impulses of the will from our own soul life to our consciousness. That is, so to speak, the illuminated part. But what belongs to us in all of this, the I, that we actually perceive only as a black spot. In our ordinary consciousness, we only know about it through the fact that we perceive nothing. I would like to expand the comparison even further. I would like to remind you how you actually have to put together your entire life on earth so far in your memory from the parts that you can see because you have lived through them in an awake state. But when you look back, you connect these experiences, which you have spent while awake during the day, in a single continuous stream of reminiscence. But these experiences are everywhere interspersed with what happened while you were asleep, let's say, dreamless sleep. And dreams also mostly belong to what has been forgotten, so that we can say in general: while you were asleep. In fact, in remembering you would always have to imagine these intermediate pauses if you wanted to place the complete stream of your experiences before your soul. But yesterday we saw that the I with the astral body - that is the actual soul being with its center, the actual self - dwells outside the physical body from falling asleep to waking up. They only emerge from their unconsciousness, in which they are during sleep, when they are not left to their own devices, but when they can submerge into the etheric body, the time body, and into the spatial or physical body. With the help of these supports – we cannot call them tools in the proper sense, as we saw yesterday – they have thoughts, mental images and, through mental images, feelings and impulses of will, which are more dream-like and also asleep. In order for the I and the astral body to truly unfold the forces that they have within them, it is necessary for them to submerge into the etheric body and the physical body. Thus, when we look back on our life on earth in our ordinary consciousness, we never actually remember the true form of the I and the astral body, but only what arises when this I and this astral body have support in the physical and etheric bodies.

From this you will see that it is more than a mere comparison when I speak of the fact that the I and the astral body, that is, the actual soul being, is like a dark point within that which is actually perceived. We would have to see the true form and capacity of this ego and this astral body in retrospect if we saw them not only as dark inclusions, but as realities, as we otherwise perceive realities. But we lift these soul entities out of their indeterminacy, their imperceptibility, through imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. As I discussed yesterday, we first lift the thinking part of our soul out of the dark uncertainty by immersing it in the physical body. This thinking part initially only uses the physical body as a kind of thinking power, which is present in this physical body in the form of air-like substance. And then, when sensory perceptions, emotional experiences, will impulses or desires are added to thinking when fully awake, where the soul must fully submerge into the physical body, where everything in the physical body must be utilized by the soul, then what would otherwise would otherwise be mere fleeting thoughts, as long as the processes take place only in the airy substance of the body, can, as it were, condense into the ability to remember and into that which, as thoughts, as mental images, connects with sensory perception or emotional experiences or volitional impulses.

We can study the human organism in a much more detailed way with the means of knowledge I have mentioned than we can without them. Ask yourself what a person usually has as a mental image of their physical body when they do not think about it too much. Of course, if you think about it a little, something else immediately arises. He has the mental image that the physical body is limited by the skin, and that inside it is actually a closed mass, which one thinks of as more or less solid or semi-solid. But we must take into account that hardly ten percent of the human body is really solid, that for the most part we are a column of liquid, that we constantly carry air within us, that through the airy we are constantly not separate from the outside world, connected to the outside world. The air that was just outside is then inside me; the air that I have inhaled, that has been processed in the body, is then outside. So that man, if he is to be understood completely in terms of his physical body, must be seen as a solid, liquid, air-like substance. And all this is permeated by the warmth element, which works in these different substances.

When, upon awakening, the soul descends into the body, it is the case with the purely conceptual that it does not descend further than what is present in our body as air-like substance. The thought takes hold of the airy element. It is quite wrong to speak of the thought merely in terms of vibrational nerve processes and the like. All this is revealed to the imaginative view that the mere thought, which also lives in dreams, first takes hold of the airy element. Then, as this air-shaped element enters into certain processes, the thoughts are transferred to the watery element, and from there they imprint themselves on the solid, salt-like element. This makes it possible for the reflexes to arise later as memories, and this through processes that I unfortunately do not have time to describe, although they are very interesting.

In this way one can gain an intimate insight into the workings and weavings of the soul within the body, graduated according to the aggregate states of the human physical body. This physical body gradually becomes transparent. One sees the weaving and workings of the soul within it. One sees that which I had to say remains actually obscure to ordinary consciousness. I put it like this yesterday: When we have the simplest volitional impulse, we first have the mental image that something should be carried out, for example, that the arm should be raised. Then this mental image shoots into our organism to become will. This eludes ordinary consciousness, just as sleep states do. In relation to the will, ordinary consciousness also sleeps in the waking state of the human being. But then one sees the effect again, and that again as a mental image. But then, when one studies the matter with the means of knowledge characterized here, one sees that when the thought becomes an impulse of will in us, this thought first has an effect in the air element of the human physical body. Then it is transferred again to the solid and liquid elements, and it is through the impulse of will that matter is, as it were, burned. In the liquid part of the human physical organism, matter is reduced to nothingness, as I described it yesterday. But because this is taking place, because matter is being reduced to nothingness, empty spaces are created in our physical body, so to speak. These empty spaces create a completely different dynamic. We become immersed in them. So that when we see through something with these means of knowledge, which becomes an act of will, we first perceive the thought, then perceive how the thought shoots into the body, how it destroys matter there, how we witness the rearrangement of the material. This is how the other state of equilibrium comes about, namely that matter is returned to nothing. This witnessing of a different equilibrium leads to the physical body also following this evocation of a different equilibrium in its movements, so that action then occurs, the action that is directly bound to the human being's physical body. In this way, the human being's will also becomes transparent in the soul, transparent down to the last details.

Just to show you that anthroposophy is truly not something that just rambles and rambles in vagueness, but that it enters into the very concrete facts of the world, I would like to give you a small example where there is also a will impulse. This example is taken from language. We have - I will choose a characteristic word, I could also choose another word - we have the German word “hier”. I say: “The box lies here.” What actually happens in the human organism when it comes to pronouncing the word “hier”? The first thing that happens is that what lives in the breath is first grasped in the subconscious. And this, what lives in the breath, is now the thought. The thought lives in the breath. We only have a real mental image of the thought when we know, from anthroposophical knowledge, that the thought can really live in the inhaled air, that it is a force that can act on the inhaled air. Only when we cannot go into these details do we come up against all the difficulties of psychology, taken physically. If we believe that thought can directly move a bone, that is, can have such a robust effect on physical matter, we cannot get by. But if we know that thought is something that is transmitted in a roundabout way through the warmth element into the air element, then what is stimulated there is continued into the rest of the organism, and we begin to grasp what is there with an impulse of will. So we can say: First of all we have the experience of breathing. This experience remains unconscious. Only the insight characterized here can transcend it. Then the second element is added: we inwardly experience that which now continues out of the breathing process into the liquid element of the organism. We experience that which signifies a direction in the speech organism. In the arm, it would mean an outstretching of the arm. We perceive this in the i. So we perceive the continuation of the thought-air into the watery element, so to speak the stretching movement. We see through imagination the transition from the breathing movement into the stretching movement. And then this stretching movement is formed in the right. If I were to say only “here,” I would have to draw it: 1st breathing process 5, 2nd stretching movement ie (the horizontal is drawn). But if I now draw the stretching movement as it is experienced unconsciously when I pronounce “here,” I must draw it like this: I perceive the breathing process, perceive the direction of the stretching, which is not carried out, but rolls along in the r. And then I have really experienced inwardly what is present as a volitional impulse when I pronounce the word “here”. In this way, we can follow the impulses of will that express themselves in language when we use our imagination to look into the whole weaving and ruling of the soul that permeates the physical body and the etheric or formative body.

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With imagination, we can initially gain an overview of the kind of things I have described here. When inspiration comes into play, we see how the soul plays within; how the physical body and the etheric body are something that exists externally in space and time, and how, on this, yes, I cannot say it well: like on an instrument, because this is in turn constantly being created by the soul processes, but like on a support, a ground that is constantly being worked on, the soul plays. Through inspiration, we thus advance to the actual seeing of the work of the soul in a physical organism.

When we then ascend to intuition, we perceive something else. Then we perceive: there is a law in the world that has nothing to do with physical law, but a law that certainly takes hold of people. I can perhaps express myself best about this fact in the following way: When one looks back at a later age on the way in which one's life on earth has passed, then one finds that, if one is honest with oneself, one must admit that one is actually nothing other than what one has become here in one's physical existence on earth as a result of one's experiences. Consider only: solely from this life. Consider how you learned to think, how you learned to feel, how you may have been stimulated to do this or that by meeting a particular person at a particular point in your life, which in turn may have had an effect on your character. Put together all the individual experiences you have gone through and ask yourself whether you would have become something different in relation to what you are for the outside world if different experiences had entered into your existence. If you follow this train of thought properly, you will soon see how something has been living in you from the very beginning, unconsciously drawing you to that which has become so important in your life. It is interesting how sometimes people who have reached a certain age and who have not used their lives to dream, but to grasp the facts of life that have come to them in a deeper sense, how such people, when they look back on their lives, came to say - Goethe's friend Knebel, for example, was such a person - “When I look back on my life, everything is like a dream.” , when they look back on their lives, came to say to themselves: When I look back on my life, everything is so systematically ordered. Not even the smallest event could be missing if I were to be exactly the same in my earthly existence as I am today. If the smallest event were missing, there would be a slight change, but a change nonetheless. Just think what, say, the sixty-year-old Goethe would have been if he had not experienced Italy. With Goethe, it is almost tangible. He did not go to Italy on a whim, but because there was a deep yearning within him. But these deep longings are not just there, if we want to analyze them precisely, so that we can always explain them, the following from the earlier, but they are born with us. We really find something planned in life. Of course, one could be deceived about that at first. I have only mentioned this because, after all, one can approach through the most ordinary observation that which is now given by intuitive knowledge. Intuitive knowledge really does give a full insight not only into what is going on in our organism in terms of the soul, but it also gives an insight into what works in us as the center, the I, the actual self-being. And this self-being reveals itself to intuitive insight at the third stage of supersensible knowledge. It reveals itself in such a way that we really do not stand passively in relation to the facts of the external world, but that we are drawn to them through that which is in us, and not through heredity, but from the deepest central soul being, which has been drawn into us from a spiritual-soul world at birth and has taken on a physical earthly body. Through intuitive insight one comes to realize that this I does not actually enter into earthly life in such a way that it would have to be passively surrendered to the random facts that come its way, but that it is strongly attracted by one fact and strongly repelled by another. It positively seeks its way in the world. In short, it is born carrying within itself the predisposition to its destiny.

And if we then further develop this intuitive insight into the nature of the human self, we come to realize that this ego has undergone repeated earthly lives. These repeated lives on earth did, however, begin at a certain point in time, before the I was so little different from its surroundings in its ancient form of existence that there was no such thing as a change between life on earth and spiritual-soul life. The repeated lives on earth will continue to be experienced until a point in time when the ego will again be so similar in its entire inner makeup to the spiritual world that it will no longer need an earthly life.

Thus, when we fully recognize the ego, we look back on repeated earthly lives. In other words, we look at the entire life of a person as proceeding in such a way that we have parts of that life between birth and death or conception and death, other parts between death and a new birth; that is, in repeated earthly lives the person lives out his full existence.

The usual objection is that people do not remember these repeated lives. This only applies to the ordinary consciousness. The moment intuition sets in, what happens through the repeated lives on earth becomes just as much an inner view of the soul as memories within a single life on earth. So it is here that anthroposophy does not come to its results through abstract proofs, as is the case with ordinary philosophy, but by first preparing the soul for higher knowledge and then recognizing these things through intuition. But this means that anthroposophical knowledge proves to be a continuation of the knowledge we have today in science, but it is a continuation that must work in a completely different way from the mere scientific knowledge that is recognized today.

Often the question is asked: how does anthroposophy prove what it asserts? Those who ask this question and who, because the usual form of proof is not available in anthroposophy, deny that anthroposophy is scientific, do not consider the following – I can only explain these things approximately, but they are absolutely and precisely true. The person who proceeds to prove something shows, by the very fact of proceeding to prove, that what has to be proved is not present in his intuition. Actually, we prove everywhere where we have no intuition. If I have to prove that yesterday a human being was here in this room, I shall need proof only if I myself have not seen the person here. This is basically the case with all proofs, and this is also the case with the proofs in the historical development of mankind. When, in their older, more instinctive knowledge, men had a view of what they called the divine being, they needed no proofs. The proofs of the existence of God began their life in historical evolution only when the view was lost. Proofs begin everywhere when there is no view.

The anthroposophical method, however, consists in first preparing the human soul so that it can then be perceived. When this is described – and this is the peculiar thing about anthroposophy – it can be brought into the forms of common sense and understood in the same way that a non-artist can understand a work of art, even though he cannot make it. Therefore, it cannot be objected that Anthroposophy cannot be grasped with common sense. It can only be investigated by someone who is an anthroposophical researcher himself. It can be understood by anyone who wants to apply their common sense without prejudice.

Thus we see that it is first of all knowledge of man, self-knowledge, knowledge of what the I really is, whereas otherwise, with our ordinary consciousness of the I, we have only a void, a darkness, a gloom, so that a knowledge is imparted of the real I, but that this I can then be seen in its eternity, and in this eternity as continuous through repeated earthly lives. Just as I have shown you that the human organism becomes transparent to the soul right down to the will, so too – as I have already hinted at in the previous days – the outside world is also made transparent. The soul-spiritual of the outside world is recognized through imagination, inspiration and intuition.

Many people who get to know superficially what is presented through anthroposophy, perhaps even only from the writings of its opponents, very often say that anthroposophy is a rehash of old worldviews, for example, of Gnosticism, which, after all, still prevailed among very many people in the first Christian centuries. They therefore say that we are dealing with something that has basically been refuted by the evolution of humanity over time, or at least has been overcome. Anyone who really focuses only on what has been presented in these lectures will not be tempted, even if they are also familiar with Gnosticism and anthroposophy, which certainly appears with new means and methods of knowledge and takes into account the consciousness of present-day humanity, to somehow combine it with Gnosticism. This anthroposophy works in such a way that it presupposes the scientific development of the last centuries. Of course, Gnosticism did not take this into account, because its existence preceded the development of science. But there is something else that could lead one to the temptation to lump anthroposophy together with gnosticism. The only way to avoid doing so is to really delve into the essence of anthroposophy. The only thing that anthroposophy might have in common with gnosis is that it also takes into account, in a certain way, what is a prevailing worldview in our time, and that is agnosticism, which is in a certain respect the opposite of gnosis and is also the opposite of anthroposophy, but in a different respect.

This agnosticism can first be characterized in terms of its theoretical aspect. It is present when a person speaks in the way, for example, Herbert Spencer spoke. Many others have followed in his footsteps, but they are not fully aware that they are agnostics, although they are actually agnostic in their entire way of thinking. He said: We see the world of the senses around us. We have the intellect, which rises from observation and experiment to the contemplation of the laws in this world. - To this we add what we can survey from ordinary consciousness as phenomena of the soul. Here too, a makeshift search is made, for it is only makeshift, for some kind of law. But then those who do not simply reject every supersensible reality, contenting themselves with the intellectual comprehension of sense perceptions and inner soul experiences as they present themselves to ordinary consciousness, , said: Yes, but one cannot penetrate with human abilities to what now lies as some or many origins behind these appearances; one cannot achieve a real gnosis, a real gnosticism, no knowledge. One is an enlightened person precisely because one admits that the origins of things cannot be known or investigated. Agnosticism in this form has taken hold in wide circles. It also exists in different variations. This agnosticism, when it appears philosophically, is a kind of opposite to anthroposophy, and I could, if I felt like it, start from this point in time to turn polemically critical, abusive if you will, against contemporary agnosticism, depending on my mood. What can be said about it, insofar as it really brings corruption to the human forces of progress in civilization, can soon be read in the journal “Die Drei”. I explained it in a lecture I gave at a Stuttgart School of Spiritual Science course. As I said, one could also approach the matter from this side. But I do not wish to do that today. I should like to show that this agnosticism also has its origin in the evolution of the human spirit.

Of course, errors can arise in the individual spheres of life. Then we become critics of these errors. We must root out these errors and illusions. But when something arises with such widespread popularity as agnosticism, then we can indeed fight it, the fight can be justified, but we must also ask: Yes, how is it that within the spiritual development of humanity something like agnosticism has arisen?

Now, anyone who sees more deeply into these matters must ask themselves the following: We once had to advance to that in the development of humanity, which I strictly defended on one of the last lecture evenings for the external natural sciences, especially the inorganic natural sciences; we had to advance to pure phenomenalism, as Goethe also demanded. To that pure phenomenalism, which no longer uses thinking to construct all kinds of atomic worlds behind sense perceptions that can no longer be perceived; which uses thinking merely to read sense perceptions, to remain within the phenomenal world, to arrange the phenomena in such a way that they appear to us as archetypal phenomena in the Goethean sense. All this has been done in the most diverse variations here in recent days. I do not want to deny that something of the kind does not live in a great number of people of the present time. Nevertheless, on the one hand, there is a definite tendency to theorize, where we, so to speak, once we have entered into thinking, pierce through the sensory carpet and continue with thinking for a while beyond sensory perception, where there is no longer anything for thinking to create. There we then posit atoms and all sorts of other things. This corresponds to a kind of law of inertia. Thinking will, in accordance with our present position, our present relationship to the world, actually only be applicable in such a way that we can apply it in the service of grouping, of interpreting phenomena in relation to one another, thus remaining within the phenomenal world, so to speak, reading the phenomenon and not underlying things with all kinds of explanations.

When someone writes down the word “table”, they have details. They try to combine the individual letters into a word. They read. They would start the wrong activity if they said: T, and then had to assume that processes were taking place that combined the T. Then the i. Thus he who, in following an inner law of thought, penetrates the sensory tapestry with his thoughts, instead of reading in the sensory world, exempts himself from having to do so. One penetrates the sensory world and puts forward hypotheses, which is not to say anything against phenomenal atomism. Some people in the present are well aware that there must be a pure phenomenalism. That is simply the direction in which natural science is tending. The natural scientists themselves, after all, are more concerned with experimenting and observing than with reflecting on the methods. Therefore, one cannot really blame them when all kinds of constructs are added to the phenomena. Then they believe they have facts in these constructs. But certain philosophical minds feel that it must come to pure phenomenalism. In particular, among Western thinkers – in the East it is quite different – we often have such personalities who see clearly that the science of the external world must ultimately come to a pure grasp of phenomena and use thinking only to allow the phenomena to interpret themselves reciprocally. “All fact is already theory,” says Goethe. And in William James, the American who established pragmatism, a philosophical interpreter arose in response to pragmatism. In Europe, he has emerged somewhat more blatantly in the so-called “as-if philosophy,” where it is said that one should not interpret anything into the phenomenon. But one must still ascend to something that is no longer an appearance, so one does not say of what arises: it is there, but one acts as if it were there. Much clearer than this “as-if philosophy” is that of William James, who actually gives up any substantial effect of the power of thought. He is clear about the fact that with thinking one can only group external facts and come to a point where one can then control these external facts in practice in the service of human development, of civilization. So that he actually sees nothing in all the laws that man penetrates to but practical guidelines, so to speak, for getting along with the world.

In principle, this is something that phenomenology tends towards. If we study it in its purity in Goethe, where it appears in a wonderful way with its full justification, we recognize that it was bound to arise, it must be there. Only through pure phenomenality can man fully enlighten himself about what is actually in his environment. But then everything that goes beyond the phenomenon is initially something that man cannot cope with. If one knows nothing of methods of knowledge that ascend into the supersensible worlds, that is, that ascend from phenomena as facts to other, but now supersensible facts, then, by tending towards phenomenalism, one must ultimately say to oneself: Only phenomena exist at all. When I examine them with my thinking, I do not discover anything that lives on behind them, other than the phenomena themselves. For the archetypal phenomena are ultimately also only phenomena. So that I actually get nothing out of them but practical principles for using the phenomena in the service of human beings.

Assuming that this were already fully developed; that phenomenalism were there, and thinking were to consist only in regulative principles ordering phenomena, then we have something that we could no longer call knowledge in the sense of the older concepts of knowledge, for example, gnosis. For what did that consist of which, in the past, out of instinctive human worldview, was always called knowledge? In my book 'The Riddles of Philosophy' you can read more about this in Greek times: Cognition consisted in the fact that when one looked at the world, one did not merely perceive the sense perceptions - sounds, colors, qualities of warmth - but that one perceived the thought objectively outside, outside oneself, like a color. Goethe still claims for himself that he sees his ideas in the world as the Greeks saw the ideas in the world, namely as sense perceptions. But now imagine a person in this mental-sensual activity. He looks at something, not just the colors, but the thoughts. By looking at the thoughts, he feels within himself, he experiences within himself not something passive as today, where we have only the sensual before us, but he felt activity within himself. This is the reason for Plato's assertion that there is something active in seeing, something like grasping. He felt something like activity, something that connected him as a human being with what he saw as an object outside. And this was knowledge, this feeling, this experience of an activity, it was not merely the acceptance of a passive thing. This way of experiencing knowledge is today found only in some retarded individuals, in some people who live more by their instincts than by their intellects, or it can be newly acquired by those who, in the anthroposophical sense, work their way up again into higher knowledge, but now fully consciously and not instinctively, as was still the case with gnosticism. But today ordinary consciousness is increasingly approaching the point where it is passively surrendered to external phenomena, where thinking is no longer considered a phenomenon, where it lives only in it as a guiding principle for ordering phenomena more and more practically and putting them at the service of humanity.

What is accomplished there with the phenomenal world does not lead to knowledge in the old sense. Those who, for example, still have the religious content with the God impulse from old traditions, like Spencer, for example, and then see what is called knowledge today, but which is no longer knowledge, gnosis, they profess that they say: One does not actually come to the source in this phenomenal existence. Agnosticism! And basically this agnosticism has two sides. On the one hand, it takes away everything that makes us strong as whole human beings when we have an activity in cognition. On the other hand, however, we have to go through this phase of human development, to be purely passively devoted to the phenomena. It is part of the overall development of the human race to develop this phenomenalism in the Goethean sense, because it conveys to us a level of truth that is necessary for the overall development of humanity.

What follows from the fact that we come to the phenomena and are thus, if we know nothing but the external phenomena, drawn into agnosticism? It follows that if we want to remain human, we have to approach the spiritual world in a different way than by interpreting the external sense world. And for that part of the external world that underlies the sense world, we cannot find it within the sense world. There was a time in my life when I was acquainted with a number of so-called teleologists. These people would come and say that the mechanistic worldview, pure phenomenalism, was not enough for the external world. One of these people even wrote a book, which was admired by many, about “empirical teleology.” He tried to show that mere causality is not enough, that one can also determine a certain purpose in natural phenomena, purely empirically. People felt very exalted about the mere mechanism, which has a certain justification in external natural science, by introducing a kind of teleology in this way.

I said to people at the time, including this Nikolaus Cossmann: just look at a clock. This clock can be explained completely mechanistically when it is in front of you. There is nothing there that causes us to assume little demons inside that make the wheels turn or anything like that. Any nebulous mysticism is excluded if you just look at the thing. I strictly held the view that the world of phenomena must be explained from itself. All interpretation and carrying in of teleology and the like is harmful. But the clock was made by a clockmaker. I will not get to know the clockmaker from the clock, but I can get to know him as a person. I choose methods other than analyzing the clock to get to know the clockmaker. I seek him out, perhaps in a social context, somewhere other than his shop. - At the moment when one is clear about the fact that the external world is to be grasped phenomenally, at that moment one has not, so to speak, demystified it, but one has shown the necessity of seeking this spirit, this supersensible, on other paths, through other means and methods of knowledge. And these are precisely the ones I have described. They must be added to the phenomenalist methods of knowledge.

As you can see, anthroposophy is currently endeavoring to fully establish and accept phenomenalism because it is clear that what leads to spiritual worlds must be achieved with these other methods of knowledge. This also includes what underlies the external sense world as a spiritual being.

So you see, on the one hand I could have repeated what I said in Stuttgart, as I mentioned earlier. I could have said: mental images become weak within agnosticism, because they are only passively devoted to the external world. But because we have weak mental images, we also have weak feelings. Feelings live in man in such a way that he must stir them up himself. They become sentimental, or else they remain dull, so that they become untruthful. Feelings thus become nebulous, sentimental or dull. As a result, a naturalistic or untruthful tendency has entered into our art, because art particularly emanates from the world of feeling. But because mental images do not enter into the impulses of the will as strong forces, we lack the right kind of determination today. In particular, we lack determination when it comes to taking on something new. We let what seems unfamiliar to us pass us by as a sensation. This is basically how it has been with anthroposophy for twenty years. Many people have heard about it, but they cannot decide, out of their usual experiences of the soul, to let it be more than a sensation. Agnosticism weakens us in our will. It even weakens us in the face of religious experience today. As a result, many people who have long aspired to have an elementary religious experience end up immersing themselves in traditional religions. How many honest seekers have recently returned to Catholicism. Or one returns to oriental mysticism. Because agnosticism weakens our mental images, we do not feel strong enough for elementary religious experiences.

Anthroposophy adds to the passive processing of the world in phenomenalism the impetus of imagination, inspiration and intuition, and thus even comes to a real grasp of that which, as supersensible, enters into our historical existence. She comes to a real grasp of the Mystery of Golgotha. She comes to a grasp of the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that she can see how the pure, divine being, the Christ-being, has taken possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This in turn gives real meaning to the mental images of the resurrection, of the connection between the living Christ and our own human development on earth, while it is actually deeply significant that theologians, who are considered enlightened in recent times, have said: Yes, one must just look at the life of Jesus. The resurrection, they say, arose as a belief, but one can only speak of an arising faith. What actually happened in the Garden of Gethsemane cannot really be spoken of. Anthroposophy, on the other hand, will speak of these things, which can only be grasped as supersensible, which cannot be grasped if one wants to grasp them with the usual historical methods taken from the world of the senses. I could speak at length about the deadening of our religious life through the widespread agnosticism of today. But I will only hint at that. It has already been discussed elsewhere.

But there are two sides to every coin. One can also speak of agnosticism in such a way that it has emerged as a necessary phase of development in the more recent history of mankind; that it is, so to speak, the accompanying phenomenon of pure phenomenalism, which we have to work our way towards. But even if this pure phenomenalism is of extraordinary interest to us as we work our way into it, we cannot gain from it that which is most important to us for our innermost humanity. We must gain that in a different way.

Now let me add something personal, not out of vanity or silliness, but because it is relevant. I have already mentioned that I completed my “Philosophy of Freedom” in 1894. I am convinced that this “Philosophy of Freedom” could not have been written by someone who is not a pure phenomenalist in relation to natural science. For, although I am a pure phenomenalist in the field of natural science, what was I compelled to do in order to found the moral truth? I was compelled to introduce into this “Philosophy of Freedom” the moral intuition, which I have already characterized here as something thoroughly supersensible and spiritual. Especially resented was my ethical individualism. But it was necessary. I had to show that in the individual human being, the moral impulse can be intuitively experienced in an individualistic way through ordinary consciousness, whereas otherwise intuition can only be attained through higher exercises. This was how it had to be done in order to give the moral world a foundation, if one was a pure phenomenalist who already ascended into the spiritual world at that time. For in the face of pure phenomenalism, the moral impulse disappears when a person is only completely honest with himself. If he is dishonest, he succumbs to all kinds of illusions.

But anyone who has met people who have wrestled with worldviews not in theory but in every fiber of their emotional life knows what the tendency towards phenomenalism, which has agnosticism in its wake, can mean for today's people. I have met people who say to themselves: If we grasp the world with today's scientific means, we see only natural processes in it. We can hypothetically trace it back to a primeval nebula or something similar, which is the event of our earth. We can follow it to the end, to the heat death or something similar. But then we see how we can develop the moral world within us for a long time - it is only a haze and fog that rises above the only real thing, which begins with the primeval nebula and ends with the heat death. And after the heat death there will be the great field of corpses for all that not only lived on earth, but also what strove there for moral impulses, for religious inwardness. All this will be buried. Certainly, not many people feel this discrepancy for their own spiritual life, but there are people who feel it. I have met them, with all the inner tragedy that made them doubt not only the reality of what could be grasped in religious terms, but also the reality of a moral world order. They are haze and mist, rising from the merely externally phenomenal facts.

Now let me add something personal, not out of vanity or silliness, but because it is relevant. I have already mentioned that I completed my “Philosophy of Freedom” in 1894. I am convinced that this “Philosophy of Freedom” could not have been written by someone who is not a pure phenomenalist in relation to natural science. For, although I am a pure phenomenalist in the field of natural science, what was I compelled to do in order to found moral truth? I was compelled to introduce into this “Philosophy of Freedom” the moral intuition which I have already characterized here as something thoroughly supersensible and spiritual. My ethical individualism was particularly resented. But that was necessary. I had to show that in the individual human being the moral impulse can be intuitively experienced in an individualistic way through ordinary consciousness, whereas otherwise intuition can only be attained through higher exercises. This was how it had to be done in order to give the moral world a foundation if one was a pure phenomenalist who already ascended into the spiritual world in those days. For in the face of pure phenomenalism, the moral impulse is lost if a person is only completely honest with himself. If he is dishonest, he comes to all kinds of illusions. But anyone who has met people who have wrestled with worldviews not in theory but in every fiber of their soul knows what the tendency towards phenomenalism, which has agnosticism in its wake, can mean for today's human beings. I have met people who say to themselves: If we grasp the world with today's scientific means, we see only natural processes in it. We can hypothetically trace it back to a primeval nebula or something similar, which is the event of our earth. We can follow it to the end, to the heat death or something similar. But then we see how we can develop the moral world within us for a long time - it is only a haze and fog that rises above the only real thing, which begins with the primeval nebula and ends with the heat death. And after the heat death there will be the great field of corpses for all that not only lived on earth, but also what strove there for moral impulses, for religious inwardness. All this will be buried. Certainly, not many people feel this discrepancy for their own spiritual life, but there are people who feel it. I have met them, with all the inner tragedy that made them doubt not only the reality of something grasped in religious terms, but also the reality of a moral world order. They are haze and mist, rising from the merely outwardly phenomenal facts.

This is rooted in the way our society is organized. Millions and millions of people, especially those in proletarian circles, only see reality in external, economic phenomena. What is spiritual – law, morality, art – is nothing, as they say, but an ideological superstructure, something that arises merely as a sham, an ideology. And so we have progressed in the agnostic direction to the point where one speaks of ideology. I myself, having been very active in working-class circles, have experienced the sense in which ideology is spoken of there, which, after all, is basically only the fault of those who, today, also from the direction of science, speak of everything spiritual, not quite clearly, not quite honestly, but actually in the sense of an ideology. We have arrived at the opposite pole of human development compared to the one that was once the oriental worldview. It spoke of Maya and of the true essence. Everything that is only accessible and attainable to the senses was Maya to it, was illusion. And the real, the truly real, was that which is now graspable for man above the sensual. Today we live in a worldview that presents exactly the opposite. For those who are agnostic, the sensory world is the only reality. They could just as easily say maya as ideology about that which can be grasped beyond the sensory world. We should translate this word in this way. Our maya is the spiritual; once the maya was the sum of sensory phenomena.

But this forces us, precisely because we had to arrive at this point, to take our paths of knowledge to the other side. For if we now ascend through imagination, inspiration, and intuition into the spiritual world, then we recognize precisely that which leads us to the actual essence of humanity. And we find the strong impulse to ascend into these worlds when we become fully aware that the sense world may only be explained from within itself, with its own methods. This gives us the impetus. But then, if the sense world can only be explained from its own methods, then thinking serves only as a tool of explanation in it. Then thinking has significance for the sense world only as a servant, for the mutual interpretation of phenomena, in order to bring the phenomena together in such a way that they explain each other. Then thinking, as we have it in pure phenomenalism or agnosticism, is merely an image. Then it no longer contains any reality. The Gnostic felt the reality of thought by looking at it. Our thinking has a mere image existence.

What follows from this if we really ascend to this pure thinking and grasp our moral impulses in it? Now, if I have a mirror here, with images in it, the mirror images cannot force me to do anything through causality. If I want to be led by mirror images, my thinking in the world development of humanity has progressed so far that it really only has the character of an image, so it no longer contains causality for me. Then, when I have moral impulses, pure thinking is formed into impulses of human freedom. By arriving at phenomenalism, and thus at pure image-thinking, and by being able to grasp moral impulses through the power of pure image-thinking, we also pass through the stage of freedom. We educate freedom into our human nature by going through this phase of human development. This is what I wanted to present in my Philosophy of Freedom. But we only become free when we have a thinking that is image-thinking, that proceeds entirely within the physical body, as I have described. At the moment we look further back, we see not freedom but fate. You see, here we have the opportunity to recognize that which we call human destiny, because it rules in the unconscious, because we only come to its rule when we ascend to intuition. Because we find spiritual laws in this destiny that work through repeated lives on earth, we have a spiritual necessity in it. But by entering into life on earth, we free ourselves from necessity for certain actions, and only follow the image-containing thinking, and in the present epoch of humanity we are thereby educated to freedom. There is no contradiction, if one looks into the matter properly, between destiny and freedom. However, in order to be able to present the concept of fate to the world correctly later on, it was necessary that the concept of freedom be presented first in the “Philosophy of Freedom”.

You see, what needs to be done is not a blind railing against agnosticism, because in a certain respect it is only the other side of phenomenalism. We read in natural phenomena, but if we merely read them, we do not find in them what we have to seek on the higher paths of knowledge. But precisely for that reason we need them fully only when we no longer bring forth instinctively from our human nature that which is the impulse of our thinking. In ancient times, even in the times of Gnosticism, man brought forth not only hunger and thirst from within himself, but also active thinking. He was not yet a technician in the modern sense. One only becomes one when one embodies pure thought outwardly in matter. I am even convinced – please forgive me for bringing up something very personal – that if I had studied philosophy in the conventional sense, instead of being educated at a technical university and finding my way into this technical life of the present, I would not have written the Philosophy of Freedom, because it is precisely the opposite pole to the experience of pure fact. And the pure fact, which is experienced in the outwardly mechanistic, and which then also leads to phenomenalism, is absolutely what, on the other hand, first evokes the full opposite pole. Otherwise, we instinctively bring something from within us that dreams little demons into the clock. We first seek the truly spiritual through inner powers of knowledge, which we must first gain when we can no longer approach our physical environment through instinctive forces and bring into it what arises from instinctive observation. On the one hand, the age of technology, with its machines, is precisely the fertile soil for a spiritual, anthroposophical worldview. And in this sense, a clear knowledge of the spirit must be brought about through anthroposophy, precisely from a non-mystical view of the world. We must not arrive at a new gnosis, based on active thinking by instinct, but we must seek for true spirituality in the outer sense and the inner human being, on a path of knowledge to be attained by practice.

We must close this course at some point, and since I wanted to present to you today what anthroposophy is in contrast to the prevailing agnosticism, we who have participated in this course are obliged to part.

Anthroposophy, as I have already mentioned, arose entirely out of the scientific spirit of modern times. Anyone who compares my earliest writings with my later ones will recognize this. It then took on the form in which simple human minds found each other and tried to satisfy certain religious needs within this anthroposophy. It may be said that there have been quite a number of such simple human souls who have found what is most essential, what is absolutely necessary for the human being, already in this anthroposophy.

It has always been a strange relationship with the scientists themselves. I can still see some of them sitting in front of me – I like to be specific – I can see a botanist sitting in front of me, for example. He was a theosophist in the sense that you may also be familiar with, in the sense of orientalizing mysticism, as it prevails in theosophical societies, for example. I had one of the most learned botanists in front of me, so it was natural for me to talk to the gentleman about botany. For me it was something natural. But he did not want to hear about it. No, no, botany must remain what it is in the university cabinet, not only with him, but also with other botanists. It should remain precisely in the way one acquires practical knowledge through the botanizing drum and works with the microscope. He should not interfere with that! Immediately, when I started a botanical topic, he talked about the etheric body, the astral body and even higher bodies. It was the rule in this theosophical movement that one first talked about all possible bodies, until far up, where they became more and more misty. They did not characterize things as I have done here, by pointing out that the etheric body is a time organism, by trying to present the matter concretely, by characterizing the astral body as that which comes from the spiritual-soul realm and inwardly shapes the body. I have tried to give a characteristic of sleep, even if it is still incomplete. I have always tried to give a concrete description. But people like those I am talking about now were not interested in that. If only one had the words for it: physical body, etheric body, astral body, then further kama manas, and then one went into the highest regions, which became thinner and thinner, but always remained material. It was a strange theosophical materialism that confronted me particularly crudely once when I was at a theosophical congress in Paris. Various lectures were held there. I asked a personality, who was actually very advanced, how she had liked the lectures. She said: Yes, it left wonderful vibrations, wonderful resonances. I felt as if she had said: One smells something extraordinarily good in this room after these lectures. — It was all transferred into the material. One knew nothing of the real spirit. And the man of whom I have just spoken always started from what lay in this direction. I always started from something else, for example, the secrets of root formation, stem formation, flower formation, the spiral tendency of plants, their germination or the like. Nothing, nothing - anthroposophy must not come into it, away with it! The astral body and buddhi and atma kept coming up, as did the rounds and the globes and everything else that is doing the rounds in the world in this sense. In short, I am only giving these as specific examples, but it was actually quite futile to approach scientists in their own scientificness.

But then, with the exception of a few people who had been involved in philosophical work from the very beginning, such as Dr. Unger, more and more younger people were coming forward. And we would never have been able to found the Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart if a number of people had not been truly seized by the anthroposophical spirit in the individual subjects of science in the anthroposophical sense. For only in this way could it also be transferred into pedagogy and didactics. This has also made it possible to expand more and more what used to be available only to simple minds, and to really return to science in a certain way. Today we can already see a broader field. And you were to be given a sample of this broader field, in which we can already work today, thanks to a number of younger forces who are working with extraordinary dedication on the development of the anthroposophical spirit in the individual concrete sciences. One may say that much would also be desirable in another direction. Work in the therapeutic-medical field is still in its infancy. We have also made all kinds of attempts, for example in the economic field. However, it is precisely in the latter that it is clear – and this can perhaps also be seen from events in recent weeks – that it is still not possible to work fully in the practical economic sphere. Hopefully, the things we have begun will continue to progress, and it will eventually be possible to work in this field in the same way as work is being done today in some areas of science itself, and as work can be done in a thoroughly future-proof way in education and didactics through the Waldorf school.

Following on from this, I would now like to express my heartfelt thanks to those here in Holland who, as friends of the anthroposophical movement, have made these college courses possible. It is certainly no easy task to organize such an event, and above all, in order to muster the necessary work in such a case, a deeper understanding of the matter is needed. That this has come about here, fills us - and I am convinced that I also speak from the hearts and souls of all those who were allowed to speak here during this course week - with a deep feeling of gratitude, and I would like to express this to you; first of all to you, who are the organizers of this course. And I would like to combine this feeling of gratitude with the hope that those who have now turned their attention to what has been discussed here over the last few days will feel that some suggestions have been given to them with the little that could be achieved here in such a short time. We cannot do more than give such individual suggestions. If you have the opportunity to develop these suggestions by trying to penetrate further into what has already been worked out, but which is still little known to the world, what has been worked out through the anthroposophical movement, the anthroposophical work, then you will see that this anthroposophical movement is not only not what its enemies and opponents would like to present it as, who mostly, because they cannot be objective, become personal, but that the anthroposophical movement not only is it not what its enemies and opponents would have us be, but that the Anthroposophical Movement is at least sustained by a truly serious scientific spirit.

And on the other hand, I may perhaps indulge in the hope that the lectures I have tried to formulate here this evening may contribute something to showing how unconscious longings live in a large part of civilized humanity in our time, which, when brought to consciousness, represent nothing other than the desire for something like anthroposophy. But the fact that such a longing exists can also be seen from all kinds of negative instances.

There is a personality in our time, Oswald Spengler, who is also known here in Holland, who wrote the book about the necessary decline of the Occident. I have witnessed how, especially among the youth of Central Europe, this book about the “Decline of the Occident” has made a deep, devastating impression. In this book, however, we are dealing with the work of a man who is fully at home in twelve to fifteen sciences, who truly does not speak from lightly-basted knowledge, but who speaks only from the negative authorities that are effective in our time.

One such negative instance is, for example, agnosticism, when it represents the other side of phenomenalism and one only wants to stop at this phenomenalism. The other, the positive, is part of it. This positive seeks to reach anthroposophy on the spiritual path of knowledge. In this sense, I would like at least a little bit of anthroposophy to have spoken to your souls, given your sincerity. Often, when representing anthroposophy, one has the feeling that it has been around for decades, but we are always at the beginning. And now, after decades, we are talking about the very beginning again, despite having spoken to thousands upon thousands of people over the decades. One feels this — not because of anthroposophy, which can wait — one feels it because of the longings of the time as something tremendously oppressive. But that is also why there is such deep satisfaction when people do come together who want to know what anthroposophy is and who, through their studies and serious engagement with life, have a certain ability to judge. Anthroposophy does not have to fear judgment. I can assure you of that from the spirit of anthroposophy. Critics with the ability to judge will always be most welcome to anthroposophy. Up to now, they have mostly become its adherents after they have got to know it. The more objectively one engages with anthroposophy, even if it means criticizing it, the better for anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is not something that works on the basis of blind faith in authority or that counts on a lack of criticism. It prefers those listeners and readers and collaborators who bring their full, discerning soul nature to it, not the kind that often comes from the agnosticism of the present, but the kind that comes from the truly unbiased human soul.

If one can have the feeling that, even if it was a beginning, such beginnings must ultimately lead to something that is connected with the deepest longings and necessities of human development, then one can say that one leaves such a course with a certain satisfaction. And so I believe that those who have spoken here will leave with a certain satisfaction and, above all, with a grateful heart from what has taken place here. But they would like to hope that some stimulating things may also have taken place for the honored audience.

In this spirit, allow me to conclude this course by saying to you in the warmest possible way, out of this anthroposophical spirit: If we have perhaps connected with each other through some thoughts, then we seek the ways to continue to be together, to work together in spiritual work. In this spirit, I bid you farewell for today.

Question and Answer Session

The Hague, April 12, 1922

Question about multidimensional space.

Rudolf Steiner: If I have the usual coordinate system, I have characterized three-dimensional space. Now, let us just discuss it schematically, we proceed from certain algebraic assumptions by abstractly continuing the same process that leads from the plane into three-dimensional space, and we arrive at the fourth dimension, the fifth and so on, at an n-dimensional space. And then it is even possible, let's say, to construct bodies – Hinton did that – to construct the tessaract, but that is not a real body, but the projection of the real tessaract into three-dimensional space. Now the thing is this: in purely theoretical-abstract terms, of course, there is nothing to be said against such derivations. In theory, one can also pass from three-dimensional space to the fourth dimension of time, if one proceeds within the calculation formulas in such a way that one takes into account the leap that is actually made, because it is different after all, if one passes from the first to the second dimension and to the third dimension of space, than if one passes into time. But if you refine it, ... then you can pass over into time. In this way one arrives at an abstract four-dimensional space. If one remains abstract, one can go on doing this as long as one remains in the purely intellectualistic, as long as one is not compelled to follow the matter vividly. But then one is confronted with a problem which, while the purely abstract train of thought leads to a regressus ad infinitum, vividly becomes an elasticity problem. We could also think of the pendulum as continuing to swing forever. But in the dynamic, we will get a state of vibration. That is how it is in reality. If you can get into imaginative thought, you simply can no longer carry out the process in infinitum by assuming a fourth and so on dimension. Then, if I call the first dimension +a, the second +b, the third +c, if I take real space, I am obliged not to write the fourth +d, but by the nature of things I am obliged to write -c. So that the fourth dimension simply cancels out the third bit by bit and only two remain. So instead of four, I end up with two dimensions. And so I am also forced, if I assume the fifth, to set - b, and with the sixth - a. That is, I come back to the point. Elasticity has struck back to the starting point. And that is not something that exists only in the imagination, for example, that is, a subjective experiment, but it is realized in the way I described the day before yesterday. As long as we have, let us say, the earth here and look at the root of the plant, we are really dealing with a special formation of gravity. Here one is in the ordinary dimensionality of space. But if one wants to explain the form of the blossom, then one cannot get away with that. Then, instead of taking the point of origin of the co-ordinates, one must take infinite space, which is, after all, only the other form of the point. And then one comes to going in centrifugally instead of going out centrifugally. You come to this wave surface. Instead of the thing spreading out, it pushes in from the outside, and then you get those movements, which are sliding or scraping movements or pressure movements, where you would go wrong if you took coordinate axes from the center of coordinates, but you have to take the infinite sphere as the center of coordinates and then all the coordinates going towards the center. So, one also gets the qualitatively opposite coordinate axis system as soon as one enters the etheric. The fact that this is not taken into account is the mistake in the ordinary ether theory. Herein lies the difficulty in defining the ether. Sometimes it is seen as liquid, sometimes as gas. The mistake here is that one starts from the coordinate system seen from the center. But as soon as one enters the ether, one must take the sphere, and construct the entire system not from the inside outwards, but the other way around.

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Things become interesting when they are followed mathematically and cross over into the physical, and much could still be contributed to the solution of borderline problems if these theories, which begin to become very real here, were developed. But there is still a terrible lack of understanding for this. For example, I once gave a lecture at a mathematical university society where I tried to introduce these things. I explained that if you have the asymptotes of a hyperbola here and the branches of the hyperbola here, what you have to imagine on the right here, spreading out, you have to imagine on the left here, spreading together, so that a complete reversal takes place. These things gradually lead to a more concrete treatment of space. But today there is little understanding for this. Even pure analysts often show a certain dislike of synthetic geometry. And this newer synthetic geometry is the way to get out of the purely formal mathematical and to the problem where one has to grasp the empirical. As long as one calculates with mere analytical geometry, one does not approach the realms of reality. There one has only developed the end points of the coordinates, the geometric location of the coordinates and so on. If one remains with constructing with the linear and with circles, then one stands in lines within them, but is compelled to take a certain visualization to help. This is what makes synthetic geometry so beneficial for getting out of the formal and showing how to think the mathematical in nature.

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Question: What does Dr. Steiner mean when he says that the physical body is a spatial body and the body of formative forces is a temporal body? The physical body also lives in time, growing and decaying.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, that is only imprecisely thought, if I may say so. In order to trace this back to an exact thinking, you would first have to undertake an analysis of the concept of time. Just consider: as the usually meant reality stands before us, space and time are interwoven. One can only think such things when one distinguishes between space and time. In ordinary objective knowledge, you have not given time at all. You measure time with nothing but spatial quantities, and changes in spatial quantities are the means of recognizing what then counts as time. Just imagine a different way of measuring time. Otherwise, you always measure time according to space. This is not the case in the moment when you move on to the real experience of time. People usually do this unconsciously. Actually, thinking is elevated into consciousness through imaginative knowledge. But you have a truly temporal experience when, for example, let us say, on April 12, 1922 at 4:4 minutes and so many seconds, you take your soul life.

When you take your soul life in this moment, it has a temporal cross-section. You cannot say that there is any spatial cross-section within this temporal cross-section. But within this temporal cross-section lies your entire earthly past, and if you want to draw schematically, if that is the flow of your experience from a to b, you have to draw the cross-section A to B. You cannot avoid placing all of your experience in this cross-section, and yet there is a perspective in it. You can say that experiences that lie further back in time are represented with less intensity than those that are closer in time. But all of this is represented in the one cross-section. So that you get different relationships when you really analyze time. We can only form a mental image of time if we do not use the analysis that we are accustomed to in physics, according to space-cognition means, but only by reflecting on our soul life itself. But in your soul life, even if you only have abstract thoughts, you are in the time body. What is important is that we are now able to understand this time body as an organism. You see, when you experience any indisposition, let us say a digestive disorder, in the stomach, you may be able to see that it affects other areas of your spatial organism as well. The spatial organism is such that the individual areas are spatially dependent on each other. In the case of the temporal organism, although we have a later and an earlier, later and earlier are connected in an organic way. I sometimes express this by saying: Let us assume we have a very old person. We find that when such an old person speaks to younger people, for example to children, that his words bounce off the children, that his words are of no use to the children. And we find another person. When he speaks to children, it is something quite different. His words flow by themselves into the child's soul. If you now study — one only does not study these things because one very rarely considers the whole human being, one does not, so to speak, pause with one's attention long enough to observe, for example, the basis of the blessing of an older man or woman, one must sometimes go back to early childhood. Today, observation does not extend that far. Anthroposophy has to do that. Go back and you will find that those who can bless in old age, who have this peculiar spiritual power in them that their words flow into young people like a blessing, have learned to pray in their youth. I express it figuratively: folded hands in youth become blessing hands in old age.

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There you have a connection between what influences other people at a later age and what, let's say, pious feelings and the like were present in the life in early childhood. There is an organic connection between the earlier and the later. And only when you know the whole person do you see how he has an infinite number of such connections. Today we are stuck with our whole life outside of this reality. We imagine that we are full of reality, but we are abstract creatures in our culture of life. We do not pay attention to true reality. For example, we do not pay attention to such things. We also do not pay attention to the fact that when we teach a child, we must avoid, if possible, giving him sharply contoured concepts, especially in primary school. These are really for a later age, as if one were to constrict the limbs and prevent them from growing larger. What we pass on to the child must be an organism, must be mobile. Now you are gradually approaching what I mean by an organism. Of course, it is only possible within the imagination. But one can still arrive at a mental image of an organism, if one is clear about the fact that what takes place in time in the human being does not relate to the spatial organism, but to the temporal organism. Now you see that there is a reality in time. You can also see this in mathematics. There was once a very nice discussion about this. I believe it was Ostwald who pointed out - not a supporter of the humanities, but someone who is not exactly a materialist - that the organic processes that take place in time cannot be reversed with the mechanical process. But the fact is that you can't even get close to the time processes with the usual calculations. You actually always remain outside of the time processes with the usual calculations. They do not follow the processes as such. If, for example, you insert negative quantities into a formula for the lunar eclipse, you get the more distant things, but you do not move away with the things. You only move in the spatial sphere. And so you only get a correct concept of what the human physical body actually is if you can separate the spatial from the temporal. In the case of man it is of fundamental importance, because one does not arrive at any understanding at all if one does not know that with him everything temporal proceeds as an entity for itself, and the spatial is ruled by the temporal as by something dynamic, while with a machine the temporal is only a function of that which has a spatial effect. That is the difference. For humans, the temporal is real, while for a mechanism, the temporal is only a function of space. That is what it ultimately comes down to.

In a preceding lecture we went back in human evolution to the time when the division of the sexes occurred. This moment is in itself the climax of a long cosmic preparation. After the night which separated the phase of the ancient moon from the terrestrial phase, the earth to begin with appeared combined with the forces of the present sun and moon. They formed but one body which, little by little, became differentiated thus giving birth to the three bodies as we now know them. The present division of the sexes is the result of the separation between the moon forces and the earthly forces. The feminine forces of reproduction have remained under the influence of the moon. The moon still rules over the forces of propagation both in man and animal. Thus occult knowledge reveals the forces that are at play in the planetary system.

At the time when the sun was still united both with the earth and the moon, neither plants nor animals nor human beings existed as we know them today. In fact, only a plant kingdom existed then but under totally different conditions from our own. This kingdom preserved a particular connection with the forces of the sun similar to that of the animal with the moon and of man with the earth. As long as the sun was united with the earth-moon, the plants directed their blossoms toward the center of the globe; when the sun separated off they oriented themselves in accordance with it and directed their flowers heavenward. We have seen in an earlier lecture (XI) that the plants have thus adopted an inverted position in relation to man; both manifest themselves in the vertical whereas the animal is found to be half way between the human orientation and that of the plant world. The spinal column of the animal is in the horizontal. It is by means of the gradual separation of the three heavenly bodies that the different kingdoms on earth have become as we now know them: the plant kingdom at the time of the separation of the sun, the animal when the separation of the moon occurred. The pristine composition of these forces contained in germ what was later to take on physical manifestation. Let us imagine a substance which is heated to a high temperature and then cooled; one would then see the various elements which it contains taking on form.

At the time of the ancient moon we also find the solar forces which during a certain period are concentrated in a celestial body outside the moon. The moon was revolving around the ancient sun but in such a manner that it always turned the same side to the sun; the orbit of the moon around the earth is a continuation of the motion formerly described around the ancient sun. These bodies, both at the beginnings and at the end of this cosmic period, became one—just as the earth, the moon and the sun were united at the beginning of earth evolution and will again be united at the end. These two ancient cosmic bodies would never have been able to be active in evolution had they not recast their forces after their separation. The moon, during the time it was separated from the sun, developed in such a way that forces were engendered which later made it possible for a third body to appear. In fact, it was during this separation that man was able to develop within himself what later took on physical embodiment and gave him the possibility of developing objective, waking consciousness on earth.

The period which preceded the lunar one is referred to as the solar. At this time of evolution everything was pure solar life. Occultism sees the sun as a fixed star which had previously been a planet and similarly it recognizes the earth as a planet destined to become the sun of a future cosmic system. During the solar period, man was only endowed with a consciousness akin to that of dreamless sleep.

Yet another state preceded the solar period; at that time the sun was not even a planet. The human being was only endowed with a deep trance consciousness or deep sleep. He was not yet the being of light which he would become on the ancient sun; he simply vibrated like a tone in the pure harmony of this Saturn period, but it should be noted that our present Saturn has nothing to do with this condition.

After our earthly period of clear physical consciousness, a fifth condition will dawn of conscious astral imagination during a period known as Jupiter. This will be followed by a period of Venus where we shall become conscious of what today is the unconsciousness of sleep. Finally, a period of Vulcan will come into being which corresponds to the highest state of consciousness which can be attained by an initiate.

But this does not exhaust the relationships of the earth and the planets. We in fact can divide our present terrestrial stage into two parts. During the first it came about that our blood is red. What has given us our red blood? During the separation of the earth and the sun, this globe composed of fluid substance was shot through by other fluid forces emanating from the planet Mars. Before this passage of Mars not the slightest trace of iron existed on this earth. In fact, that is a result of this passage; all substances containing iron such as our blood have been subjected to the influence of Mars. Mars has colored the substance of the earth. And the appearance of red blood is the result of its influence. That is why the first half of earth evolution is referred to as the period of Mars.

At that time, iron was a fluid substance and the metals only hardened later on. Mercury is the only metal which has not solidified. When this will have happened the soul of man will have become totally independent of the physical body and astral imaginative vision will have become conscious. This fact is connected with the forces of Mercury which influence the second part of Earth evolution during which they will densify and finally become solid. The Earth is both Mars and Mercury. And it is this which Initiates have woven into our language by indicating that the days of the week belong to the planets of our evolution: Mars and Mercury are placed between the Moon and Jupiter.

The Interior of the Earth

Physical science as yet only knows of the terrestrial crust, a mineral layer which in fact is only like a thin skin at the surface of the earth. In reality the earth consists of a succession of concentric layers which we shall now describe:

1) The mineral layer contains all the metals which are found in the physical bodies of everything that lives at the surface. This crust is formed like a skin around the living being of the earth. It is only a few miles in depth.

2) The second layer can only be understood if we envisage a substance which is the very opposite of what we know. It is negative life, the opposite of life. All life is extinguished there. Were a plant or an animal plunged into it, it would be destroyed immediately. It would be totally dissolved. This second shell—half liquid—which envelopes the earth is truly a sphere of death.

3) The third layer is a circle of inverted consciousness. All sorrow appears there as joy. And all joy is experienced as sorrow. Its substance, composed of vapors, is related to our feelings in the same negative manner as the second layer is in regard to life. If we now abstract these three layers by means of our thinking, we would then find the earth in the condition in which it was before the separation of the moon. If one is able by means of concentration to attain a conscious astral vision, one would then see the activities in these two layers: the destruction of life in the second and the transformation of feelings in the third.

4) The fourth layer is known as water-earth, soul-earth, or form-earth, It is endowed with a remarkable property. Let us imagine a cube and now picture it reversed inasmuch as its substance is concerned. Where there was substance there is now nothing: the space occupied by the cube would now be empty while its substance, its substantial form, would now be spread around it; hence the term ‘earth of form.’ Here this whirlwind of forms, instead of being a negative emptiness, becomes a positive substance.

5) This layer is known as the earth of growth. It contains the archetypal source of all terrestrial life. Its substance consists of burgeoning, teeming energies.

6) This fire-earth is composed of pure will, of elemental vital forces—of constant movement—shot through by impulses and passions, truly a reservoir of will forces. If one were to exert pressure on this substance it would resist.

If now again in thought one were to abstract these last three layers just described, one would arrive at the condition in which our globe was when Sun, Moon and Earth were still interwoven.

The following layers are only accessible to a conscious observation which is not only that of dreamless sleep but a conscious condition in deep sleep.

7) This layer is the mirror of the earth. It is similar to a prism which decomposes everything that is reflected in it and brings to expression its complementary aspect; seen through an emerald it would appear red.

8) In this layer everything appears fragmented and reproduced to infinity. If one takes a plant or a crystal and one concentrates on this layer the plant or the crystal would appear multiplied indefinitely.

9) This last layer is composed of a substance endowed with moral action. But this morality is the opposite of the one that is to be elaborated on the earth. Its essence, its inherent force, is one of separation, of discord, and of hate. It is here in the hell of Dante that we find Cain the fratricide. This substance is the opposite of everything which among human beings is good and worthy. The activity of humanity in order to establish brotherhood on the earth diminishes the power of this sphere. It is the power of Love which will transform it inasmuch as it will spiritualize the very body of the Earth. This ninth layer represents the substantial origin of what appears on earth as black magic, that is, a magic founded on egoism. (See diagram)

These various layers are connected by means of rays which unite the center of the earth with its surface. Underneath the solid earth there are a large number of subterranean spaces which communicate to the sixth layer, that of fire. This element of the fire-earth is intimately connected with the human will. It is this element which has produced the tremendous eruptions that brought the Lemurian epoch to an end. At that time the forces which nourish the human will went through a trial which unleashed the fire catastrophe that destroyed the Lemurian continent. In the course of evolution this sixth layer receded more and more toward the center and as a result volcanic eruptions became less frequent. And yet they are still produced as a result of the human will which, when it is evil and chaotic, magnetically acts on this layer and disrupts it. Nevertheless, when the human will is devoid of egoism, it is able to appease this fire. Materialistic periods are mostly accompanied and followed by natural cataclysms, earthquakes, etc. Growing powers of evolution are the only alchemy capable of transforming, little by little, the organism and the soul of the earth.

The following is an example of the relationship that exists between the human will and telluric cataclysms: in human beings who perish as a result of earthquakes or volcanic eruptions one notices, during their next incarnation, inner qualities which are quite different. They bring from birth great spiritual pre-dispositions because, through their death, they were brought in touch with forces which showed them the true nature of reality and the illusion of material life.

One has also noticed a relationship between certain births and seismic and volcanic catastrophes.

During such catastrophes materialistic souls incarnate, drawn sympathetically by volcanic phenomena—by the convulsions of the evil soul of the earth. And these births can in their turn bring about new cataclysms because reciprocally the evil souls exert an exciting influence on the terrestrial fire. The evolution of our planet is intimately connected with the evolution of the forces of humanity and civilizations.

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The Interior of the Earth:

1. Mineral crust
2. Negative life
3. Inverted Consciousness
4. Circle of forms
5. Circle of growth
6. Circle of fire
7. Circle of decomposition
8. Circle of fragmentation
9. Ego-centric-egoism

There are two requirements that the creations of the human spirit must satisfy, like flowers, if they are to give us pleasure: they must be genuine and fresh. Fake truth, i.e. baseless assertion, and fake beauty, i.e. unnatural, elaborate art, are as repugnant to us as an artificial rose. But even if they are genuine, truth and beauty, they lose their appeal as soon as they have grown old and approval and recognition are only paid to them out of habit. The reasons for truth have the best effect on us when the psychological process by which they have found their way into our minds is still like a present experience in us. We not only want to have the truths in our consciousness, but our convictions should also have the after-effects of the difficulties through which they were acquired. A beautiful work of art that does not affect us with immediate, elemental power, but to which our sense has been directed for a long time, loses the gripping effect that a creation has when we first confront it with our eyes and open our ears.

Therefore, from time to time, our whole being needs refreshing. Our spiritual stock must be thrown back into chaos. What has been considered truth for centuries must be doubted and proven anew. What has been admired as beauty for ages must put up with blasé indifference. Nothing can be done about it; that is the fate of the human spirit. Radical destroyers of cultural achievements, spirits who want to start again in all things, will inevitably appear from time to time.

One of the most radical of these spirits is Friedrich Nietzsche. What he had printed makes the face of every logical and conscientious philistine soul red with shame. You can boldly take one of his books and write down the opposite of every sentence; then you will come up with roughly what most people besides Nietzsche call "true" and "right". The current followers of the daring doubter may not hold this assertion against me. After all, they would never have arrived at Nietzsche's views of their own accord; they speak and write after him; so they need not feel hurt in their deepest self. After all, many would be quite good philistines if they were not Nietzscheans.

Friedrich Nietzsche questions everything. He not only doubts whether this or that is true, but also asks whether truth is a goal worth striving for at all. He declares war not only on moral prejudices, but on morality as a whole. He not only wants to educate people to live out the purest, most absolute human personality; no, he wants to overcome the prejudice of "man" himself and lead them to the "superman", who has stripped away everything that limits and restricts "man". Nietzsche did not arrive at a vivid image of this "superman". In his "Zarathustra", he fantasized about the superman in sometimes poetically glorious images and aphorisms; he said a lot about what the "superman" would not be and what he would not have in himself: but the thinker-Icaros was not able to bring it to the positive establishment of this future ideal. Anyone who surveys the many variations in which Nietzsche elaborated his theme will find that the supreme law emerges from them all: man has only the single task of ruthlessly bringing the sum of his personality to bear as strongly as possible and as far as possible. Live as you can best and most fully assert yourself. That is Nietzsche's first basic rule. What you can do, do. The "will to power" is therefore the leitmotif of all life. Nietzsche calls slave morality anything that allows itself to be restricted by any moral principles in the development of its sovereign ego. Only the master morality that says "yes" in moral matters, not because it thinks it is "good", but because it wants to, because it can best assert its individual power in this way, is worthy of humanity. These "yes-men" are Nietzsche's ideal people. All the other slave souls, who have no purpose of their own, are there for their sake. They are the "good ones" and they have the right to call the actions of others "bad" because they want to and because they have the right master consciousness. But these others are too weak to say an equally forceful "yes". They withdraw from the scene of action to that of conscience; they judge men's actions not by the power they bring, but by their moral feelings. Nietzsche believes that this reverses all moral standards. Only weak, mentally crippled people accept such a point of view. They have to suffer a lot in life because they do not have enough strength to enjoy the pleasures of action. They therefore also feel for the suffering of their fellow human beings. Compassion enters their souls. The man with the master consciousness does not know compassion, he has only contempt for the weak and the sick. They are the "bad" to him, while he is the strong, the healthy, the good. Those who are weak, however, turn the tables. They call an action "good" if it causes as little suffering and as much good as possible for their fellow human beings. Where an action impairs the well-being of another person, where it is intended to bring its bearer to power at the expense of another, they call it "evil". "Good" and "evil" are the basic concepts of slave morality, just as "good" and "bad" are those of master morality. Selflessness wants the former, ruthless assertion of the latter. Nietzsche sees it as the basic characteristic and the main deficiency of Western culture that, through the spread of Christianity with its glorification of compassion and selflessness, all master consciousness has disappeared, that slave morality has become the general attitude. "Beyond good and evil" is therefore what Nietzsche wants to fix the moral standpoint of the future; the compassionate rabble with its poor man's odor and the selfless mob with its morally sour attitude are to be thoroughly put a stop to. A true Nietzschean does not like to go where there are many people, because it smells of conscience. That is why Zarathustra-Nietzsche flees from people and goes into solitude. Nietzsche recommends that people grow moral calluses so that they can confidently step on the suffering of their fellow brothers without being tormented by compassion. That those without such calluses are crushed underneath: what does it matter to the oppressors. After all, their master tells them: "Become hard".

Truly, one must not be slow of mind if one is to follow such trains of thought. Anyone who still feels a little discipline in his consciousness will soon fall behind Nietzsche. I felt it was a matter of theoretical honor to follow him everywhere. Sometimes I felt as if my brain were detaching itself from its ground, sometimes the finest fibers of it began to fidget; I thought I could feel them resisting having to leave the positions inherited from all the forefathers so suddenly. But perhaps the primordial ground of things is so difficult to reach that we cannot get to it at all if we do not want to put our brains at risk! Of course, Dr. Hermann Türck, who explains Nietzsche's "hyper-morality" simply in terms of moral madness, does not think this way. To presuppose perverse moral instincts in order to explain the erroneous nature of a moral standpoint objectively from its bearer is a little too Nietzschean for me. Nietzsche, however, explains the moral doctrines of the individual philosophers as merely a paraphrase, a cloaking and dressing up of the instincts that reign in their organic depths. But one should not pay this man with his own coins. He covers them with a very thin layer of an elusive precious metal. If we take them in our "poor man's" smelling hands, the magic layer immediately disappears. Türck is therefore not satisfied with this refutation; he shows the necessity of selfless action, the moral necessity of compassion. He proves how necessary both are for the foundation of a true state and the social coexistence of people. But why all this? Anyone who reads Nietzsche and seriously immerses themselves in him does not need a theoretical refutation to get back on track, but several weeks of healthy mountain air and many cold baths. Those who do not read it do not need to be refuted. But those who only half-read it and then repeat it cannot be refuted. It's not even necessary, they will remain healthy cultural giants and their environment will have something to laugh about.

However, Nietzsche should not be bottled. All flavor is lost on this occasion and stale stuff remains. Nietzsche's creations evaporate quickly. That is why we cannot like the book: "Die Weltanschauung Friedrich Nietzsches" by Dr. Hugo Kaatz. Who is to be served by such compilations of Nietzsche's sayings? At most the third category of people just mentioned. But one should not write books to promote Nietzschegigerltum. Enough of Nietzsche's own views and those of those whose heads he seriously twisted in order to turn up the intellectual pants of the interested parties seeps through. We have had enough of Nietzsche himself. So no more of excerpts from his works.

The Spirit Realm. The scene is set in floods of significant colour, reddish deepening into fiery red above, blue merging into dark blue and violet below. In the lower part there is a globe symbolising the earth. The figures that appear seem to blend into a complete whole with the colours. On the left of the stage the group of gnomes as in Scene 2, page 173, in front of them Hilary, and in the immediate foreground the soul-forces.

Felix Balde's Soul:

(Seated at the extreme right of stage, having the form of a penitent, but arrayed in a light violet robe girdled with gold.)

I thank thee, Spirit, wise to govern worlds,
My saviour from my gloomy loneliness;
Thy word awakens unto work and life.
I will make use of what thou giv'st to worlds
About which I can meditate, whilst thou
Dost let mine own become,, insensible.
For then thou bearest to them on thy rays
That which in pictures fashioneth powers for me.

Lucifer:

(Bluish-green glittering under-garment, reddish outer-garment, shaped like a mantle and gleaming brightly, which extends into wing-like outlines; his upper part is not an aura but he wears a mitre of deep red bordered with wings; on his right wing a blue shape having the appearance of a sword; a yellow shape, like the ball of a planet (Venus), is supported by his left wing. He stands somewhat behind and to the right, towering over Felix Balde's soul.)

My servant, such activity as thine
The sun-time needs, in which we find ourselves.
The earth-star now receives a faded light;
It is the time when souls like thine can work
Unto the best advantage on themselves.
On thee I ray forth from my fount of light
The germs that tend to raise self-consciousness.
Go, gather them to make thine ego strong.
In later earth-life they will come to flower.
There shall the blossoms by thy soul be sought;
In its own nature it will take delight
When it can joy in planning its desires.

Felix Balde's Soul:

(Gazing at the group of gnomes. From this moment, the gnomes becoming conscious, keep swaying up and down, slightly raising and lowering themselves, as if the group was breathing from above.)

There far away, bright being disappears;
It floats in shadow-pictures through the deeps;
And, floating, strives to gain some steadying weight.

Hilary's Soul:

(With the figure of a steel-blue-grey elemental spirit modified to resemble a man's; the head less bowed, and the limbs more human.)

The mist of wishes doth reflect the light
Thrown on the realm of spirit by earth's star,
The star for which in this world thou dost form
From soul-material a thinking self.
For thee 'tis but a fleeting web of mist,
But to themselves they seem like solid souls.
On earth they work, by cosmic reason led,
In old fire forces, thirsting after form.

Felix Balde's Soul:
I will that their weight shall not burden me,
Which grievously resists the soaring will.

(The gnomes cease their movement.)

Ahriman:
Thy speech is good. Swift will I seize thy words
That I may keep them for myself unharmed.
Thou canst not yet develop them thyself;
But on the earth they would fill thee with hate.

Strader's Soul:

(Toward the left of the stage; only his head is visible; it is in a yellowish-green aura with red and orange stars. At this moment on Strader's immediate left appears the soul of Capesius. Similarly only his head is to be seen. It is in a blue aura with red and yellow stars.)

I hear a word which sounds and sounds again.
It seems significant, and yet the sound
Doth vanish, and the lust for life doth seize
Its echoed answer. Which road would it take?

The Other Philia:

(Arrayed like a copy of Lucifer, though the radiance is lacking. Instead of the sword she has a kind of #8224, and in place of the planet a red ball like a fruit.) It travels onward in its search for weight

Unto the place where radiant being fades
And misty pictures surge into the deep.
If thou dost keep its meaning in thy realm
I'll bring its power to thee within the mist;
Then thou wilt re-discover it on earth.

Philia:

(Figure like an angel, yellow merging into white, with wings of a bright violet, a lighter shade than Maria has later.—All three soul figures and the Other Philia are near Strader's soul and stand in the centre of the stage.)

The mist-creations I will tend for thee
That they may not when conscious guide thy will;
That will I unto cosmic light entrust
Wherein they form the heat thy nature needs.

Astrid:

(Figure like an angel, robed in bright violet, with blue wings.)

I beam forth clear and wondrous life of stars
To beings, that they may make forms therefrom. They to thine earthly body shall give strength, From knowledge far, but near to heart's intent.

Luna:

(Figure like an angel, robe of blue and red, with orange wings.)

The weighty beings, who with toil create,
In thy sense-body will I later hide;
That thou mayst not in thought turn it to ill
And thus stir up a storm in earthly life.

Strader's Soul:
The three were speaking to me sunshine's words,
They work for me where I can see them work.
Full many figures are they fashioning;
I feel an impulse by soul-power to change
Them with design, and make them one with me.
Awake in me, O royal Solar power
That I may dim thy might by the resistance
Which my desire from the Moon sphere brings.
A golden glow now stirs, I feel its warmth,
And silver sheen, forth-spraying though yet cold;
Awake in me O Mercury again
And wed my severed cosmic self to me.

Well do I feel that once again a part
Is formed from out that picture, which I here
From cosmic spirit forces must create.

Capesius' Soul:
On that far shore of souls I see emerge
A picture that ne'er touched my being yet
Since I escaped the clutch of earthly life,
It rays out grace and soothes with soft appeal.
The warming glow of wisdom streams therefrom,
And clarifying light gives to my soul.
Could I but make this picture one with me
I should attain the end to which I strive.
Yet know I not the power which could avail
To make this picture active in my sphere.

Luna:
That which two earth-lives gave thee thou must feel.
One, many years ago, slid gently by
In earnest effort; later on thou hadst
One by ambition soiled; which must be fed
With strengthening grace descending from the first,
That Jupiter's fire-souls may be revealed
Within the circle of thy spirit-sight.
Then shalt thou feel that wisdom strengthens thee.
Then will the picture, which thou see'st afar
Upon the borders of thy soul's expanse,
Be set at liberty to come to thee.

Capesius' Soul:
I needs must be indebted to the soul
That now prepares for being, since it shows
A warning picture in my soul's expanse.

Astrid:
Thou art indeed but not as yet doth it
Demand a payment in, thy next earth-life.
This picture serves to give thee powers of thought
That thou as man mayst recognize the man
Who shows his earthly future to thee here.

The Other Philia:
The picture may indeed come closer yet
But cannot penetrate thy very self;
And so restrain its longing for thyself,
That thou mayst find thyself on earth again
Ere it can flow into thine inmost self.

Capesius' Soul:
I feel before what I shall owe to it
When I shall will to bring it near to me,
Yet can assert that I am free therefrom.
From Philia's domain I now behold
in picture-sequences the energy
Which I shall gather from its near approach.

Philia:
When Saturn soon his many-coloured light
Shall ray on thee, use well the favour'd hour.
Then through his power in thy soul's vehicle
That which in spirit is akin to thee
Will plant the roots of thought, which will disclose
The meaning of the cyclic life of earth
When thou dost tread again this star thyself.

Capesius' Soul:
Thy counsel shall become my monitor
As soon as Saturn pours his light on me.

Lucifer:
One thing more will I waken in these souls:
The view of worlds whose light will cause them pain,
Ere they can leave this sun-time fortified
With powers for later life upon the earth.
Pain must through doubt mature their fruit in them;
So will I summon up those spheres of soul
Which they have not the strength to look upon.

(The souls of Benedictus and Maria appear in the middle of the region. Benedictus, in dress and in figure, is a microcosmic counterpart of the entire scenic effect. Below, his robe, becoming broader, shades into blue-green; around his head is an aura of red, yellow and blue; the blue blends into the blue-green of the entire robe. Maria on his right is an angelic figure; yellow shading into gold, without feet and with bright violet wings.)

Benedictus' Soul:
Ye do weigh heavy on my cosmic task
With these opaque earth-laden spheres of yours.
If ye will still assert the sense of self
Then wilt ye find that in this spirit-life
Mine own sun-nature will not shine on you.

Maria's Soul:
He was unknown to you, when ye did last
The robes of earthly matter woven, wear;
Yet doth it still bear fruit in your soul-sheath—
The sunshine's word of power, with which he fed
You kindly in far distant times on earth.
Search out your nature's deepest impulses
And ye shall feel him near you then with power.

Felix Balde's Soul:
Words issue out of circles strange to me,
And yet their tones illuminate me not:
And so they are not fully real to me.

Strader's Soul:
On spirit-shores illumination works,
Yet howsoe'er I strive to understand
The sense of these light-forces, they are dumb.

Dame Balde's Soul:

(Figure of a penitent with white coif, like that of a nun; robe yellow-orange, with silver girdle; she appears quite close to Maria; on her right and near Felix Beide.)

Ye souls now summoned up by Lucifer!
The penitent doth hear your voices tone,
But only sunshine's voice doth give him light;
Its super-splendour doth destroy your voice.
The other can behold your starry light,
But starry writing is to him unknown.

Capesius' Soul:
The starry writing! this word wakens thoughts,
And bears them on the waves of soul to me.
Thoughts which in earth-lives in the distant past
Were to my being wondrously revealed.

They lighten still, yet—as they grow, they fade;
Oblivion sheds its gloomy shade around.

The Guardian:

(Enter the Guardian of the Threshold, like an angel, symbolically arrayed, to the side of the souls of Maria and Benedictus.)

Ye souls who now at Lucifer's demand
Have drawn near the bounds of other souls,
In this domain ye are within my power.
The souls whom ye are seeking seek you too.
Within this cosmic age 'tis not ordained
Their beings shall touch yours within their spheres,
Not e'en in thought;—and so do ye beware
Lest to their orbits ye should force your way.
Should ye do this, 'twould harm both them and you.
I should be bound to take away from you
The starry light, and banish you from them
For cosmic ages into other spheres.

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner's Riddles of Philosophy, Presented in an Outline of Its History is not a history of philosophy in the usual sense of the word. It does not give a history of the philosophical systems, nor does it present a number of philosophical problems historically. Its real concern touches on something deeper than this, on riddles rather than problems. Philosophical concepts, systems and problems are, to be sure, to be dealt with in this book. But it is not their history that is to be described here. Where they are discussed they become symptoms rather than the objects of the search. The search itself wants to reveal a process that is overlooked in the usual history of philosophy. It is the mysterious process in which philosophical thinking appears in human history. Philosophical thinking as it is here meant is known only in Western Civilisation. Oriental philosophy has its origin in a different kind of consciousness, and it is not to be considered in this book.

[ 1 ] What is new here is the treatment of the history of philosophic thinking as a manifestation of the evolution of human consciousness. Such a treatment requires a fine sense of observation. Not merely the thoughts must be observed, but behind them the thinking in which they appear.

[ 1 ] To follow Steiner in his subtle description of the process of the metamorphosis of this thinking in the history of philosophy we should remember he sees the human consciousness in an evolution. It has not always been what it is now, and what it is now it will not be in the future. This is a fundamental conception of anthroposophy. The metamorphosis of the consciousness is not only described in Steiner's anthroposophical books but in a number of them directions are given from which we can learn to participate in this transformation actively. This is explicitly done not only in his Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment but also in certain chapters of his Theosophy, An Outline of Occult Science and several other of his anthroposophical books.

[ 1 ] The objection may be raised at this point that the application of concepts derived from spiritual exercises is not admissible in a field of pure philosophical studies, where every concept used should be clearly comprehensible without any preconceived ideas. Steiner's earlier philosophical books did not seem to imply any such presuppositions and his anthroposophical works therefore appear to mark a definite departure from his earlier philosophical ones.

[ 1 ] It is indeed significant that the anthroposophical works appear only after a long period of philosophic studies. A glance at Rudolf Steiner's bibliography shows that it is only after twenty years of philosophical studies that his anthroposophy as a science of the spirit appears on the scene. The purely philosophical publications begin with his Introductions to Goethe's Natural Scientific Writings (1883 – 97) and with the Fundamental Outline of a Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception (1886). They are followed by his own theory of knowledge presented in Truth and Science in 1892 and his Philosophy of Freedom (also translated as Philosophy of Spiritual Activity) of 1894. This work presents clearly the climax of Steiner's philosophy and it should be studied carefully by anyone who intends to arrive at a valid judgment of his later anthroposophy. It is, however, still several years before the books appear that contain the result of his spiritual science. Not only his book on Nietzsche, a Fighter against his Time of 1895 and his Goethe's World Conception of 1897 but also his World-and Life-Conceptions in the Nineteenth Century of 1900 and even his Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age and Its Relation to Modern World Conception of 1901 could have been understood as merely historical descriptions.

[ 1 ] With Steiner's next work we seem to enter an entirely different world. Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity clearly begin the series of his distinctly anthroposophic works. Like his >Theosophy (1904), his >Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment (1905/08) and his >Occult Science (1910) it could only have been written by an occultist who spoke from a level of consciousness that one did not have to assume as the source of his earlier books.

[ 1 ] To the casual reader it could appear that there was a distinct break in Steiner's world conception at the beginning of the century, and this is also the conclusion drawn by some of his critics.

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner's own words, however, as well as a study of both phases of his work leave no doubt that there was no such break in his world conception. He clearly states that knowledge derived from a higher level of consciousness was always at his disposal, also at the time of his early philosophical publications. His deep concern was the question: How could one speak about worlds not immediately accessible to scarcely anybody else in an age in which materialism and agnosticism ruled without any serious opposition. He found both so deeply rooted in Western Civilisation that he had to ask himself at times: Will it always be necessary to keep entirely silent about this higher knowledge.

[ 1 ] In this time he turned to the study of representative thinkers of his time and of the more recent past in whose conceptions of world and life he now penetrated to experience their depth and their limitations. In Goethe's world he found the leverage to overcome the basic agnosticism and materialism to which the age had surrendered. In Nietzsche he saw the tragic figure who had been overpowered by it and whose life was broken by the fact that his spiritual sensitivity made it impossible for him to live in this world and his intellectual integrity forbade him to submit to what he had to consider as the dishonest double standard of his time.

[ 1 ] Neither Rudolf Steiner's Nietzsche book nor his writings on Goethe's conception of the world are meant to be merely descriptive accounts of philosophical systems or problems. They reveal an inner struggle of the spirit that is caused by the spiritual situation of their time and in which the reader must share to follow these books with a full understanding. When these studies are then extended to comprise longer periods of time as in the World and Life Conceptions of the Nineteenth Century and in Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age soul conditions under which the individual thinkers have to work become more and more visible.

[ 1 ] When Rudolf Steiner published the present work in 1914 as The Riddles of Philosophy he used the book on the World and Life Conception of the Nineteenth Century as the second part, which is now preceded by an outline of the entire history of philosophy in the Western world.

[ 1 ] At this time Steiner's anthroposophical books had appeared in which the evolution of human consciousness plays an important role. It could now be partly demonstrated in an outline of the philosophic thinking of the Western world.

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner's approach to history is symptomatological, and it is this method that he also applies to the history of philosophy. The thoughts developed in the course of this history are treated as symptomatic facts for the mode of thinking prevalent in a given time. He sees four distinct phases in the course of Western thought evolution. They are periods of seven to eight centuries each, beginning with the pre-Socratic thinkers in Greece.

[ 1 ] Here pure thought as such free of images develops out of an older form of consciousness that is expressed in myths and symbolic pictures. It reaches its climax in the classical philosophies of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and ends with the Hellenistic period.

[ 1 ] A second phase begins with Christianity and reaches as far as the ninth century A.D. This time Rudolf Steiner characterizes as the age of the awakening self-consciousness and he is convinced that an intense historical study of this period will more and more prove the adequacy of that term. The emergence of a greater self-awareness at this time diminishes the importance of the conceptional thinking as the religious concern of the soul with its own destiny grows. The emerging self-consciousness of this phase is intensely felt, but does not lead to an intellectual occupation with the concept of this “self.” In a third period a new concern becomes prevalent when the scholastic philosophers become more and more confronted with the tormenting question of the reality of thought itself. What is often regarded as an aberration into mere verbal quarrels, the medieval discussions of the significance of the universal concepts, is now seen as a soul struggle of a profound human concern. Thus the long war between Realism and Nominalism appears in a new light. As the nominalists seem to emerge more and more as the victors the thought climate for the fourth phase is gradually prepared.

[ 1 ] Since the Renaissance natural science proceeds to develop a world conception in which the self-conscious ego must experience itself as a foreign element. The emergence of this experience leads to a new inner struggle in which the fourth phase of the history of philosophy is from now on deeply engaged in its predominant thought currents: It is the phase of consciousness in which we still live. The various forms of idealistic[,] materialistic and agnostic philosophies are subject to the tension caused by the indicated situation. As Steiner characterizes them he points out that the different thinker personalities can be quite unconscious of the currents that manifest themselves in their thinking although their ideas and thought combinations receive direction and form from them.

[ 1 ] In the last chapter of the second part of the book Steiner describes his own philosophy as he had developed it in his earlier books Truth and Science and Philosophy of Freedom. In this description the relation between his philosophical works and his anthroposophical ones also becomes clear. As a philosophy of spiritual activity, the Philosophy of Freedom had not merely given an analysis of the factors involved in the process of knowledge, nor had the possibility of human freedom within a world apparently determined on all sides, merely been logically shown. What the study of this book meant to supply was at the same time a course of concentrated exercise of thinking that was to develop a new power through which man really becomes free. As Aristotle's statement (Metaph. XII, 7) that the actuality of thinking is life in this way becomes a real experience of the thinker, human freedom is born. Man becomes free in his actions in the external world, developing the moral imagination necessary for the situation in which he finds himself. At the same time his spirit frees itself from the bodily encasement in which thoughts had appeared as unreal shadows. The process of his real spiritual development has begun.

[ 1 ] In this way the Riddles of Philosophy may be considered as a bridge that can lead from Steiner's early philosophical works into the study of anthroposophy. The undercurrents characterized in the four main phases of the evolution of thought lead from potentiality to ever increasing actuality of the awakening spirit. And for the exercises described in the specific anthroposophic books there can be no better preparation than the concentrated study of Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.

[ 1 ] Fritz C. A. Koelln
Bowdoin College
Brunswick, Maine
April, 1973

Two souls, alas! reside within my breast,
And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.
One with tenacious organs holds in love
And clinging lust the world in its embraces;
The other strongly sweeps, this dust above,
Into the high ancestral spaces.

—Faust, I, Scene 2. (tr. Bayard Taylor)

[ 1 ] In these words Goethe expresses a trait which is deeply ingrained in human nature. Man is not a self-contained unity. He demands ever more than the world, of itself, offers him. Nature has endowed us with needs, but left their satisfaction to our own activity. However abundant the gifts which we have received, still more abundant are our desires. We seem born to dissatisfaction. And our desire for knowledge is but a special instance of this unsatisfied striving. Suppose we look twice at a tree. The first time we see its branches at rest, the second time in motion. We are not satisfied with this observation. Why, we ask, does the tree appear to us now at rest, then in motion? Every glance at nature evokes in us a multitude of questions. Every phenomenon we meet presents a new problem to be solved. Every experience is to us a riddle. We observe that from the egg there emerges a creature like the mother animal, and we ask for the reason of the likeness. We observe a living being grow and develop to a determinate degree of perfection, and we seek the conditions of this experience. Nowhere are we satisfied with the facts which nature spreads out before our senses. Everywhere we seek what we call the explanation of these facts.

[ 2 ] The something more which we seek in things, over and above what is immediately given to us in them, splits our whole being into two parts. We become conscious of our opposition to the world. We oppose ourselves to the world as independent beings. The universe has for us two opposite poles: Self and World.

[ 3 ] We erect this barrier between ourselves and the world as soon as consciousness is first kindled in us. But we never cease to feel that, in spite of all, we belong to the world, that there is a connecting link between it and us, and that we are beings within, and not without, the universe.

[ 4 ] This feeling makes us strive to bridge over this opposition, and ultimately the whole spiritual striving of mankind is nothing but the bridging of this opposition. The history of our spiritual life is a continuous seeking after union between ourselves and the world. Religion, Art, and Science follow, one and all, this goal. The religious man seeks in the revelation, which God grants him, the solution of the world problem, which his Self, dissatisfied with the world of mere phenomena, sets him as a task. The artist seeks to embody in his material the ideas which are his Self, that he may thus reconcile the spirit which lives within him and the outer world. He too, feels dissatisfied with the world of mere appearances, and seeks to mould into it that something more which his Self supplies and which transcends appearances. The thinker searches for the laws of phenomena. He strives to master by thought what he experiences by observation. Only when we have transformed the world-content into our thought-content do we recapture the connection which we had ourselves broken off. We shall see later that this goal can be reached only if we penetrate much more deeply than is often done into the nature of the scientist's problem. The whole situation, as I have here stated it, meets us, on the stage of history, in the conflict between the one-world theory, or Monism, and the two-world theory or Dualism. Dualism pays attention only to the separation between the Self and the World, which the consciousness of man has brought about. All its efforts consist in a vain struggle to reconcile these opposites, which it calls now Mind and Matter, now Subject and Object, now Thought and Appearance. The Dualist feels that there must be a bridge between the two worlds, but is not able to find it. Monism pays attention only to the unity and tries either to deny or to slur over the opposites, present though they are. Neither of these two points of view call satisfy us, for they do not do justice to the facts. The Dualist sees in Mind (Self) and Matter (World) two essentially different entities, and cannot therefore understand how they can interact with one another. How should Mind be aware of what goes on in Matter, seeing that the essential nature of Matter is quite alien to Mind? Or how in these circumstances should Mind act upon Matter, so as to translate its intentions into actions? The most absurd hypotheses have been propounded to answer these questions. However, up to the present the Monists are not in a much better position. They have tried three different ways of meeting the difficulty. Either they deny Mind and become Materialists; or they deny Matter in order to seek their salvation as Spiritualists; or they assert that, even in the simplest entities in the world, Mind and Matter are indissolubly bound together, so that there is no need to marvel at the appearance in man of these two modes of existence, seeing that they are never found apart.

[ 5 ] Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism, thus, begins with the thought of Matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is ipso facto confronted by two different sets of facts, viz., the material world and the thoughts about it. The Materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he ascribes mechanical, chemical, and organic processes to Nature, so he credits her in certain circumstances with the capacity to think. He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. Instead of to himself he ascribes the power of thought to Matter. And thus he is back again at his starting-point. How does Matter come to think of its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content to accept its own existence? The Materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own self, and occupies himself with an indefinite shadowy somewhat. And here the old problem meets him again. The materialistic theory cannot solve the problem, it can only shift it to another place.

[ 6 ] What of the Spiritualistic theory? The Spiritualist denies Matter (the World) and regards it merely as a product of Mind (the Self). He supposes the whole phenomenal word to be nothing more than a fabric woven by Mind out of itself. This conception of the world finds itself in difficulties as soon as it attempts to deduce from Mind any single concrete phenomenon. It cannot do so either in knowledge or in action. If one would really know the external world, one must turn one's eye outwards and draw on the fund of experience. Without experience Mind can have no content. Similarly, when it comes to acting, we have to translate our purposes into realities with the help of material things and forces. We are, therefore, dependent on the outer world. The most extreme Spiritualist or, if you prefer it, Idealist, is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He attempts to deduce the whole edifice of the world from the “Ego.” What he has actually accomplished is a magnificent thought-picture of the world, without any empirical content. As little as it is possible for the Materialist to argue the Mind away, just as little is it possible for the Idealist to do without the outer world of Matter.

[ 8 ] A curious variant of Idealism is to be found in the theory which F. A. Lange has put forward in his widely read History of Materialism. He holds that the Materialists are quite right in declaring all phenomena, including our thought, to be the product of purely material processes, but, in turn, Matter and its processes are for him themselves the product of our thinking. “The senses give us only the effects of things, not true copies, much less the things themselves. But among these mere effects we must include the senses themselves together with the brain and the molecular vibrations which we assume to go on there.” That is, our thinking is produced by the material processes, and these by our thinking. Lange's philosophy is thus nothing more than the philosophical analogon of the story of honest Baron Munchhausen, who holds himself up in the air by his own pigtail.

[ 9 ] The third form of Monism is that which finds even in the simplest real (the atom) the union of both Matter and Mind. But nothing is gained by this either, except that the question, the origin of which is really in our consciousness, is shifted to another place. How comes it that the simple real manifests itself in a twofold manner, if it is an indivisible unity?

[ 10 ] Against all these theories we must urge the fact that we meet with the basal and fundamental opposition first in our own consciousness. It is we ourselves who break away from the bosom of Nature and contrast ourselves as Self with the World. Goethe has given classic expression to this in his essay Nature. “Living in the midst of her (Nature) we are strangers to her. Ceaselessly she speaks to us, yet betrays none of her secrets.” But Goethe knows the reverse side too: “Mankind is all in her, and she in all mankind.”

[ 11 ] However true it may be that we have estranged ourselves from Nature, it is none the less true that we feel we are in her and belong to her. It can be only her own life which pulses also in us.

[ 12 ] We must find the way back to her again. A simple reflection may point this way out to us. We have, it is true, torn ourselves away from Nature, but we must none the less have carried away something of her in our own selves. This quality of Nature in us we must seek out, and then we shall discover our connection with her once more. Dualism neglects to do this. It considers the human mind as a spiritual entity utterly alien to Nature and attempts somehow to hitch it on to Nature. No wonder that it cannot find the coupling link. We can find Nature outside of us only if we have first learnt to know her within us. The Natural within us must be our guide to her. This marks out our path of inquiry. We shall attempt no speculations concerning the interaction of Mind and Matter. We shall rather probe into the depths of our own being, to find there those elements which we saved in our flight from Nature.

[ 13 ] The examination of our own being must bring the solution of the problem. We must reach a point where we can say, “This is no longer merely ‘I,' this is something which is more than ‘I.'”

[ 14 ] I am well aware that many who have read thus far will not consider my discussion in keeping with “the present state of science.” To such criticism I can reply only that I have so far not been concerned with any scientific results, but simply with the description of what every one of us experiences in his own consciousness. That a few phrases have slipped in about attempts to reconcile Mind and the World has been due solely to the desire to elucidate the actual facts. I have therefore made no attempt to give to the expressions “Self,” “Mind,” “World,” “Nature,” the precise meaning which they usually bear in Psychology and Philosophy. The ordinary consciousness ignores the sharp distinctions of the sciences, and so far my purpose has been solely to record the facts of everyday experience. To object that the above discussions have been unscientific would be like quarrelling with the reciter of a poem for failing to accompany every line at once with aesthetic criticism. I am concerned, not with the way in which science, so far, has interpreted consciousness, but with the way in which we experience it every moment of our lives.

[ 1 ] In explaining mental pictures, philosophers have found the chief difficulty in the fact that we ourselves are not the outer things, and yet our mental pictures must have a form corresponding to the things. But on closer inspection it turns out that this difficulty does not really exist. We certainly are not the external things, but we belong together with them to one and the same world. That section of the world which I perceive to be myself as subject is permeated by the stream of the universal cosmic process. To my perception I am, in the first instance, confined within the limits bounded by my skin. But all that is contained within this skin belongs to the cosmos as a whole. Hence, for a relation to subsist between my organism and an object external to me, it is by no means necessary that something of the object should slip into me, or make an impression on my mind, like a signet ring on wax. The question: “How do I get information about that tree ten feet away from me?” is utterly misleading. It springs from the view that the boundaries of my body are absolute barriers, through which information about things filters into me. The forces which are at work inside my body are the same as those which exist outside. Therefore I really am the things; not, however, “I” in so far as I am a percept of myself as subject, but “I” in so far as I am a part of the universal world process. The percept of the tree belongs to the same whole as my I. This universal world process produces equally the percept of the tree out there and the percept of my I in here. Were I not a world knower, but world creator, object and subject (percept and I) would originate in one act. For each implies the other. In so far as these are entities that belong together, I can as world knower discover the common element in both only through thinking, which relates one to the other by means of concepts.

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

[ 3 ] The physiological fact mentioned above cannot therefore throw any light on the relation of percept to mental picture. We must go about it rather differently.

[ 4 ] The moment a percept appears in my field of observation, thinking also becomes active through me. An element of my thought system, a definite intuition, a concept, connects itself with the percept. Then, when the percept disappears from my field of vision, what remains? My intuition, with the reference to the particular percept which it acquired in the moment of perceiving. The degree of vividness with which I can subsequently recall this reference depends on the manner in which my mental and bodily organism is working. A mental picture is nothing but an intuition related to a particular percept; it is a concept that was once connected with a certain percept, and which retains the reference to this percept. My concept of a lion is not formed out of my percepts of lions; but my mental picture of a lion is very definitely formed according to a percept. I can convey the concept of a lion to someone who has never seen a lion. I cannot convey to him a vivid mental picture without the help of his own perception.

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

[ 6 ] Thus the mental picture stands between percept and concept. It is the particularized concept which points to the percept.

[ 7 ] The sum of those things about which I can form mental pictures may be called my total experience. The man who has the greater number of individualized concepts will be the man of richer experience. A man who lacks all power of intuition is not capable of acquiring experience. He loses the objects again when they disappear from his field of vision, because he lacks the concepts which he should bring into relation with them. A man whose faculty of thinking is well developed, but whose perception functions badly owing to his clumsy sense organs, will just as little be able to gather experience. He can, it is true, acquire concepts by one means or another; but his intuitions lack the vivid reference to definite things. The unthinking traveler and the scholar living in abstract conceptual systems are alike incapable of acquiring a rich sum of experience.

[ 8 ] Reality shows itself to us as percept and concept; the subjective representative of this reality shows itself to us as mental picture.

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

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

[ 11 ] Thinking and feeling correspond to the two-fold nature of our being to which reference has already been made. Thinking is the element through which we take part in the universal cosmic process; feeling is that through which we can withdraw ourselves into the narrow confines of our own being.

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

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

[ 14 ] Our life is a continual oscillation between living with the universal world process and being our own individual selves. The farther we ascend into the universal nature of thinking where in the end what is individual interests us only as an example or specimen of the concept, the more the character of the separate being, of the quite definite single personality, becomes lost in us. The farther we descend into the depths of our own life and allow our feelings to resound with our experiences of the outer world, the more we cut ourselves off from universal being. A true individuality will be the one who reaches up with his feelings to the farthest possible extent into the region of the ideal. There are men in whom even the most general ideas that enter their heads still bear that peculiar personal tinge which shows unmistakably the connection with their author. There are others whose concepts come before us without the least trace of individual character as if they had not been produced by a man of flesh and blood at all.

[ 15 ] Making mental pictures gives our conceptual life at once an individual stamp. Each one of us has his own particular place from which he surveys the world. His concepts link themselves to his percepts. He thinks the general concepts in his own special way. This special determination results for each of us from the place where we stand in the world, from the range of percepts peculiar to our place in life.

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

[ 17 ] A life of feeling, wholly devoid of thinking, would gradually lose all connection with the world. But man is meant to be a whole, and for him knowledge of things will go hand in hand with the development and education of the life of feeling.

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

The basis for the further life of the soul is given in the sensory perceptions. Based on the sensations of the first three senses, as well as those of smells, tastes, colors, sounds, etc., the ideas arise from the interaction of the human being with the outside world, through which what is given from the outside is reflected in the soul. The judgments arise through which the human being orients himself within this outside world. Experiences of sympathy or antipathy arise, in which the emotional life is formed; desires, longings and will develop. If one wants to have a characteristic for this inner life of the human soul, one must focus one's attention on how it is held together and, as it were, permeated by what one calls one's own “I”. A sensory perception becomes a soul experience when it is taken up from the realm of the senses into the realm of the “I”. One can gain a justified idea of this fact by making the following simple consideration. For example, one perceives the warmth of a certain object. As long as one touches the object, there is an interrelationship between the “I” and the external world. In this interrelationship, the idea of the temperature of the object in question is formed in the “I”. When you remove your hand from the object, the idea remains in the “I”. This idea now forms something essential within the soul life. It should not be neglected to note that the idea is that which detaches itself from the sensory experience and lives on in the soul. Within certain limits, a person can now call the experiences that he has with the help of the senses, and which then continue in the soul, his world.

But anyone who now reflects on how this world enters his realm will be forced to assume a different existence for this world. For how can this world only be an experience of the soul; how can man know anything about it? Only through having senses. Before the world can present itself to man as a sensory perception, these senses themselves must first be born out of it. For man the world would be soundless if he had no sense of hearing, and cold if he had no sense of warmth. But just as this is true, so is the other: in a world in which there were no sounds, no sense of hearing could arise; in a cold world no sense of warmth could develop. One need only think of how eyes do not develop in beings that live in the dark; or how, in beings that have developed eyes under the influence of light, these eyes atrophy when their bearers exchange their stay in the light for one in the dark. One need only think this through with complete clarity to realize that the world given to man through his senses, and on which he builds his soul life, must be based on another world, which makes this sensory world possible only by allowing the senses to arise out of itself. And this world cannot fall within the realm of the sensory, since it must precede it entirely.

Thus, contemplation is opened up to a world that lies beyond the sensory world, which cannot itself be perceived by the senses, but from which the sensory world arises as if from an ocean of existence that lies beyond it. The sense of warmth perceives warmth; behind it lies something that has formed the sense of warmth. The eye perceives through light; behind it lies something that forms the eye. One must distinguish between a world as it is given to man through the senses and one that underlies it. Is it impossible to say anything about this latter world through mere reflection? We can say something if we consider the following. Through the interrelationship between man and the external world, as mediated by sense perception, the world of perception, feeling and desire arises within man. In the same way, one can think about the relationship between the assumed other world and man. Through them, the organs of sensory perception arise in him. In everything that can be experienced in the sensory world, the human being is there with his “I”, in which the soul world is built up on the basis of sensory experiences. The construction of the sensory organs, which necessarily precedes all sensory perception, must take place in a realm of reality into which no sensory perception can penetrate. (There is hardly any need to consider the objection that might briefly occur to someone that a person could observe the structure of the sense organs in another being. After all, what he can perceive there, he perceives through the senses. One can indeed observe how a hammer is made without using a hammer; but one cannot observe with the senses how a sense organ is formed without using one.)

It is entirely justified to speak of the sense organs as having to be built from a world that is itself supersensible. And the essence of sense perceptions as described here provides food for thought for saying more about this world. Since the sense organs ultimately appear to be the result of the activity of this world, it can be said that this activity is a manifold one. It acts on man from as many sides as there are sense organs. The currents of this world pour into the wells that lie in the sense organs, so that man can draw from these wells for his soul life. And because that which is drawn from these wells ultimately comes together in the 'I', it must, although it comes from different sides, originally flow from a single source. In the 'I', the various sensory perceptions come together in unity. In this unity, they present themselves as belonging together. What strikes the soul in sensory perception is such that the inner life of the ego can be detached from it. From this it can be seen that behind the sensory world, in a supersensible one, there are as many sources of activity as there are sensory organs. These sources of activity reveal themselves through their effect, which consists in the structure of the sensory organs.

The range of these sources of activity thus includes a number of these sources that is equal to the number of sense organs. And one can say that the outermost limits of this range may be assumed to be the “I” on the one hand and the “sense of touch” on the other, although the sense of touch, like the “I”, may not be counted as part of the actual sensory life. What once belonged to the “I” has detached itself from sensory perception, and so, because it is a completely inner experience, can no longer be counted among the latter. But it belongs to the essential nature of every sensory perception that it can become an “I” experience. To do so, every sense organ must be predisposed from the supersensible world to provide something that can become an “I” experience. And the sense of touch, in a sense, provides experiences of the opposite kind. What it reveals about an object presents itself as something that lies entirely outside of the human being. Thus, the human being as a whole must be constructed out of the supersensible world in such a way that, on the basis of tactile experiences, he confronts a world outside of himself.

If we survey the life of the human soul as it develops out of sense experiences, the sense organs appear as fixed points, as if in a circumference; and the “I” appears as the movable element, which, by passing through this circumference in various ways, gains the experiences of the soul. The whole structure of the human organism, insofar as it is expressed in the sense organs, points to its causes in the supersensible world. There are as many sense areas as there are such causes; and within the realm of these causes, there is a unified supersensible principle, which becomes apparent in the organization towards the unity of the I.

A further consideration shows that the supersensible activity revealed in the structure of the sense organs works in different ways. In the three spheres of the sense of life, the sense of self-movement and the sense of equilibrium, the activity starts from within the human body and manifests itself within the limits of the skin. This kind of activity is also present in the senses of smell, taste, sight, warmth and hearing; but it is joined by another, which must be said to proceed from the outside inward. The organ of hearing, for example, is a member of the human organism. Within this organism, the forces must be at work that shape this organ in accordance with the nature of the body as a whole. From the outside, however, the hidden supersensible forces in the world of sound must come together, forming this organ in such a way that it is receptive to sound. In the case of the five sense organs mentioned, an encounter of forces is thus indicated on the surface of the human body, as it were: forces act in the direction from the inside of the body outwards and shape the individual sense organs according to the nature of the whole organism; the forces that meet them come from the outside inwards and shape the organs in such a way that they adapt to the various manifestations of the external world. In the case of the senses of life, self-movement and equilibrium, only one of these two directions, the one striving from the inside outwards, is present. It further follows that in the case of the senses of speech and of concepts, the direction from the inside outwards does not apply, and that these senses are built into the human being from the outside in. For these senses, therefore, the supersensible activity as characterized reveals itself in such a way that it already approaches the inner life of the soul in terms of its formation. Insofar as we must also see the 'I' predisposed in the above-characterized way in the supersensible forces that build up the senses, we can say that in the 'I' these forces betray their own nature most of all. Only that this essential nature is, as it were, concentrated in a point in the 'I'. If we observe the 'I', we find in it a nature that is spread out in the most abundant profusion in a supersensible world and reveals itself out of this only in its effects, in the building of the senses. In this respect, too, the sense of touch presents itself as the opposite of the 'I'. In the sense of touch, that part of the supersensible world (or, if you will, the extra-sensible world) is revealed that cannot become an inner experience of the human being, but is accessed through corresponding inner experiences.

Anthropology describes the sense organs as sensory phenomena. It is consistent with the above findings that it does not yet designate special organs for the senses of life, self-movement and balance. The forces acting from the inside out shape the human being as a general sense organism that experiences and maintains itself. The organs of these three sense areas spread out, as it were, in the general physicality. It is only with the sense of balance that anthropology points to the three semicircular canals as a hint of a special sensory organ, because it is with this sense that the human being enters into an elementary relationship with the outside world, namely with the spatial directions. For the five intermediate senses there are separate organs, which readily show that the abilities characterized, from outside inward and from inside outward, interact in a variety of ways in their formation. (Even if there are still some doubts for anthropology regarding the external sense organ for warmth, these doubts will be resolved as science advances.) External organs for the sense of sound and the sense of conception cannot be described in the same way as for the other senses because these organs are already located where physical life internalizes itself in the soul. But the organ of touch will present itself to science more and more clearly as what it must be in the sense of the above considerations. It must work in such a way that the human being withdraws into himself in the touched objects, so to speak, shutting himself off from the areas of this sense in inner bodily experiences. We must therefore recognize in the structures spread over the entire surface of the body, which are regarded as organs of touch, something that essentially has to do with the body's surface withdrawing from the external world that is touched. The organs of touch are therefore actually formative for the interior of the human body; they give the body the form through which it withdraws from the external world that touches it from all sides. (In those places where the organs of touch show a greater sensitivity, the human being relates to the outside world differently than in those places of lesser sensitivity. He pushes himself more or less, as it were, against the outside world in one case or the other. From this it can be seen that the shape of the body is, in a certain respect, a result of the nature of the organs of touch at the various points on the surface of the body.)

All festivals have a living meaning in Theosophy, which is also recovered for the materialistic worldview. People today have become accustomed to the conventional. Yet we can recognize that ancient wisdom has called the Theosophical worldview.

Our ancestors were endowed with different gifts; there was still a living connection with the sources of existence from which we ourselves come and to which we return. Easter had taken on a new form through Christianity. It is the most venerable festival among all peoples. But Easter is not only a festival since the times of Christianity; it existed much earlier. The goal that was striven for could be attained in the mysteries; that which was to come to consciousness was composed in the resurrection of faith. Empedocles describes it with the words: “When you leave the body and swing yourself to the free ether - to the resurrection faith - you will be an immortal spirit, having escaped death.

[That which passes through all of humanity as a collective consciousness and is expressed in its greatest representatives is summarized in the Christian belief in resurrection.

This is most strikingly and mysteriously found in the Easter faith in the mysterious places [of the mysteries. Where the sun gains power, victory over all obstacles of nature, there I must lead you. We are led to the ancient pyramids of the Egyptians, to the places of the Rishis. There has not been a single great spirit who did not believe in resurrection. Plato, Pythagoras, Giordano Bruno, Nicholas of Cusa drew from this belief in resurrection, and it gave them strength. The victory of the spirit over matter in the lowlands of the body? That is the belief from the cult of sacrifice of ancient mysteries. The soul conquers the body. In spring, the sun gains new strength, then it achieves victory over all obstacles in nature. The ancient Indian Rishis did not instruct, but they made new people. Only those who, through outstanding qualities, testified to the spirit in the outside world, were admitted to Easter. Man had to practise virtue, develop his intellectual powers and clarity of mind. He had to become so pure, so virtuous that one could say he had spiritualized himself to such an extent. Those who were found good by the priests were admitted to Easter, which is the festival of the knowledge and transformation of man's nature. It was to be made clear to them what happened to mystics.

We look at the body of man, only a part of it can be perceived with eyes. But we still have the etheric body, which is not quite like the physical body. When we look at the physical body, the space is filled with the second body, the etheric body, and the third, the astral body, [which surrounds and penetrates the physical body like a swirl of mist]. They both surround the physical body, and within it dwells the fourth, the [the ego of the] human being.

Let us consider the human being. He has only to do with his self-knowledge and his astral body, but this can be purified. - When we look at an undeveloped person, his etheric and astral body expresses the lower suffering, it rages through him. In a person who is aware of their moral duty, compassion for people arises; in this case, the colors green, bluish, violet, and reddish appear. Green is the color of thinking activity. Bluish violet is a sign of devotion and all [similar] feelings. The red coloration indicates desire. Orange-yellow means ambition.

The clairvoyant can recognize the level that a person has reached. When the undeveloped person begins to purify his thoughts, red hues appear. Through many incarnations, a person becomes astral within himself, he cultivates and refines himself. When a person is the creator of his astral body, he has triumphed over death. If a person is not yet the master of his astral body, then the physical and astral bodies dissolve in the cosmic mist. At death, the soul is dissolved again into the universe. The etheric body also dissolves. Why do the bodies dissolve? Because man has not yet power over his bodies. What a person has worked on in his astral body is eternal. What he has experienced in terms of purification during his physical existence, he takes with him, and in the new embodiment he brings these experiences with him again. The etheric body is the carrier of life; during life in the physical, the physical body is the ruler. Man cannot easily become the ruler over the life principle. Man knows nothing about the laws that take place in the body - blood, kidneys. All these processes are contingent on life. All physical processes affect the etheric body. Only when a person is liberated from the bodies does he begin the path of life.

For the chela, it is different: when one has undergone a transformation through the mysteries, one's etheric body does not disappear. The chela learns to work on his etheric body. He who begins to work on his etheric body, who has experienced initiation, will gain mastery over his etheric body. Man must work on his etheric body just as he worked on his physical body and his astral body before. When the disciple experiences the “die and become” in the secret schools, he has gained control over his astral body. The chela will conquer death because he has submitted to the mysteries. The chela is made insensitive to his physical body - it no longer exercises control over the chela; the body has then become soft and pliable.

It is a symbol that the mystic receives a new name because he belongs to the higher worlds. Thus the mystic appeared before his fellow human beings as a messenger, and what now appeared to him was an image of what surged within him.

The chela heard the music of the spheres with the vibrations of the universe; it was his own perception. He had experienced immortality. For three days the chela had to work on himself, then he could step before men as a messenger, a prophet. Then he had experienced within himself the mysterious life, the great word of the Logos, the spiritual sounding, ringing and vibrating of the universe: “When you leave the body and swing yourself to the free ether, you will be an immortal spirit, having escaped death!” Empedocles.

During the three days, such mystics had lived in the coffin of the living spirit of immortality. They had conquered death because they had animated their etheric body. It is not for nothing that one speaks of solar heroes, they are those who control their etheric body. Solar heroes exist in all religions. The sun that we see is only a part of the whole sun. One speaks of the sun as the “sounding” one, which sends us life; it is the victory over darkness, the victory over matter. When the chela has become a solar hero, he says, “I have seen the sun shine at midnight.” He sees the sun through the solid matter of the earth. This is not just to be understood figuratively; the sun is a role model for the hero who has learned to control his etheric body.

Goethe's “Faust” I, Prologue in Heaven: “The sun resounds in the brother spheres in the old way of song contest.” And in “Faust” II: “Listen, listen to the storm of the hours, the new day is already being born for the ears of the spirit.” Everywhere where initiation has taken place, one speaks of “sounding.

The word that Christianity gives us: “Blessed are those who believe, even if they do not see,” is intended to emphasize the way in which man has experienced initiation. Aristides, after experiencing initiation, says, “I feel the approach of the Godhead, my hand has touched it.” - Sophocles: “The truth of immortality is recognized only by those who are initiated.” Those who had not yet been able to be initiated hoped for the future life. It would be unthinkable for a slave to endure the hardships of his lot if he could not say to himself: Today I am a slave, but in the next life I will be a king.

Initiation is granted to all people; a character is formed from this awareness. Such a person is also called a “poor person” because he no longer possesses life; the kingdom of God had been absorbed into his inner being. Blessed are those who believe, even if they do not see. This saying will become clear to us when we recognize in the Easter Mystery a point in time that had not yet arrived before the appearance of Christ. That is what happened in Damascus: Saul became Paul. Who would have experienced that before Christ-Jesus was there! No one could have experienced it – unless they had gone to the mystery schools. All the teachings taught the same thing. But that is not what is important, what matters is that Christ was on earth.

[Krishna,] Hermes, Moses, Zarathustra, Buddha and all the other [honorable teachers] could say of themselves, “I am the way and the truth.” But Christ could say, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Therefore, no teaching was left behind. What is significant is that Christ lived. He had truly appeared. What permeated the mystic when he had conquered death had become flesh. The Logos had become flesh and had lived among us. The word, which otherwise only sounded to the initiate, had become flesh. Until now, only the priests had experienced it in the mystery temples. What was to become clear to all people later. That Christ lives had to take place in the world.

Outside in the world, on the historical stage, something has happened that took place in the depths of the mysteries and cults; what the individual was only allowed to see became an event that took place before everyone's eyes. The initiate knew the word that was spoken.

What took place as a historical event had previously been prophetically indicated. The prophetic coincided with what had taken place; it was now a proof of immortality, it was not just faith. The cross, which earlier only the disciple had seen, was now erected before everyone's eyes. Faith arose in Saul without him entering the mystery schools. What the mystery school student had to gain through training arose in him.

The Simplon and St. Gotthard tunnels would not have been possible if a Leibniz and a Newton had not lived before.

All limit the belief of mystical facts – now the divinity incarnated itself. So the life of Christ Jesus had to take place as a fact if such an event, which was to convert Paul, could take place. – That is why I called my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”.

That is the vision of the Paschal Mystery – it is not just that one speaks of the “humble man of Nazareth”, but it comes down to the fact that Christ Jesus lived, that he appeared in the flesh. It is the same as what lay at the basis of all people before humanity descended into density. That was the Fall of Man at the time the world was founded. Then the Word underlies what was there before the world was, and what will be there when all outer wisdom has perished. Paul first utters the word . Fichte says, “Fall upon me, all of you, rocks, and destroy me... for I am stronger than you when I fulfill my destiny.”

That was the experience in the mystery schools: the initiate penetrated through sensuality, he experienced that the Logos was there before the world was founded. He beheld the sounding Logos, he beheld life, he had attained the free ether. What he absorbed in the mysteries, what penetrated him, was the Word, which was there before the world was founded. (The whole world is based on the Word, the divine Logos. This Word was there before the world was.) When the initiate was made holy through to immortality, then the Word lived in him.

“My Father has loved me before the foundation of the world...”, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Composition of the Sun and the Moon. Astral body – lunar body.

The Easter faith should give us the strength to live towards the great Easter festival, which is born out of the deepest wisdom. These are events that defeat the dark existence and have content for all who are imbued by them. When the human being is illuminated by the light of the Easter faith, the victory over the darkness becomes tangible. The Easter festival is the victory of the light over the darkness.

The sun gains new strength in spring, reviving in man, victory over the lunar body.

Next Friday, we will discuss the events that precede the birth of a human being. For occult research, the conditions that a human being has to undergo before his birth are also important. We will also address issues related to the unification of the human ego with its prepared physical body and various other issues related to the manifestations of the times.

Today I would like to elaborate on the relationship of our Theosophical Society [to other spiritual currents]. As a Theosophical Society, we differ quite significantly from all previous endeavors. Last time we saw how the esoteric teachings were treated in the Pythagorean school, and I pointed out that in this Pythagorean school we have something that the Secret Doctrine taught in secret. In terms of doctrine, we have something in common with this Pythagorean school.

And then we have something similar to what was present in the time of [early] Christianity. The Theosophical Society is concerned with the teachings we find in Gnosticism.

The Theosophical Society is essentially different from any kind of secret society. We also meet in larger groups in the Theosophical Society as in the time of Christ, and not in small hidden circles, as was the case with the Pythagorean School. But we can show even more similarities.

I have already mentioned the Rosicrucians and the Knights Templar. They were different because they were real secret societies with a hierarchical principle of order. The Rosicrucians only addressed a few individuals. They never gathered in larger contexts. Today I would like to give you an idea of how the Rosicrucians worked. They existed in their original form until the end of the 18th century, when the most remarkable spiritual endeavors arose and the form had to be changed as a result. Christian Rosenkreutz was incarnated in Count Saint Germain at that time. From the thirteenth century until the French Revolution, the Rosicrucians only knew each other. Only those who were themselves Rosicrucians could recognize each other. It was impossible for a Rosicrucian to be recognized from the outside. Rosicrucians could be in the most unnoticed worldly positions. Many heads of the education system were in a certain position so that they could work strongly without being recognized. But they also came from the outside into the legislative and administrative branches and were therefore highly effective.

In truth, the Rosicrucian relates only to his spiritual brothers. He works solely from the spiritual sphere from which humanity is governed. It should be borne in mind here that it is not only words that have an effect. Effects from the spiritual sphere flow into human life in a variety of ways. Only those who can go to the spiritual source really know what is involved. Today, it is generally assumed that history develops from external events, but there are countless other channels that are hidden and have a strong influence on human life.

How does the Theosophical Society differ from these earlier movements? Today, the facts come from outside, which makes it necessary to communicate theosophy and the theosophical truths to the world. Little by little, humanity's secret knowledge will be made accessible in the future. Today, there are also parts of the earlier secret knowledge that have already appeared or are appearing publicly. They were found either by external natural science or, as in the case of history, in connection with some essays that appeared in the Revue Bleu, for example.

The published historical facts are roughly the following: There are records of Queen Marie-Antoinette by the Countess d'Adh&mar. These are messages from the trusted friend of Queen Marie-Antoinette of France, who lived as a lady-in-waiting close to the queen. I will just outline what is in these records. On the eve of the Revolution, a gentleman presented himself to this lady-in-waiting. It was the Comte de Saint Germain, who requested an audience with the king and asked the lady-in-waiting to arrange one for him. Maurepas was a minister and was keen to prevent such an audience with Louis XVI. So the Count Saint Germain discussed the matters that related to the royal house and the whole French nation with the queen's lady-in-waiting and asked her to report the conversation to the queen. — This is the first act of the facts.

The confidante presented the matter to Queen Marie-Antoinette. The queen granted the lady-in-waiting an audience with Count Saint Germain. So it came about that in the presence of the Countess d'Adhemar, a conversation took place between the queen and Count Saint Germain, in which he pointed out the dangerous situation in which France then found herself. He then said: “If my warnings are not heard, then I will no longer be seen for three generations.”

However, the First Minister Maurepas then made any further contact with Count Saint Germain impossible. In July 1789, the same Count Saint Germain came to Paris again to speak to the Queen's confidante at a rendezvous in a church. During this conversation, he not only told the confidante things that would happen in the next few years, but also predicted things for decades to come. “He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind.” He had already expressed this long before the time when Christ walked on earth. This man, who at that time appeared as Count Saint Germain, was none other than the founder of Rosicrucianism, Christian Rosenkreutz himself. We are dealing here with a man who can live entirely in the mental world, entirely in the world of thought. Thoughts live not only in the present, but also in the past, and so thoughts will be deeds in the future.

In the last occult lesson, I described how the theurgist gains insight into the depths of world events. The theurge's expanded vision offers a much deeper insight, penetrating into the intentions of world governance. Count Saint Germain was able to see the deepest driving forces within the world movement. He clearly expressed this at the time, and it can be found in the notes of Countess d'Adhemar. What he showed her was that things had to happen as the great plan of the world intended, as the great intentions were.

In the case of Count Saint Germain, we are dealing with a human individuality that had become completely intertwined with another personality that was also connected to the French Revolution: the demon of Count Cagliostro. However, all the external facts that take place before our eyes are nothing more than what happens internally. But there is something else at the root of this matter as well. It was, so to speak, a symptom of a nonsensuous history.

If we recognize the facts of life today correctly, we will see that the causes that led to the French Revolution are still at work today. Today, no attention is paid to such facts [that Christian Rosenkreutz, in his then embodiment as Count Saint Germain, said in Paris in 1775: “A century will pass before I reappear” - and] “If I am not heeded, I will not reappear before three generations have passed.” This is what the Count Saint Germain had said in mid-1789.

What then took place in France [during the French Revolution], after the Count Saint Germain had not been listened to, had been long prepared [within the secret societies].

The Revolution arose out of the call for the rights of the personality. (The four lower principles). The urge for freedom belongs to the lower Manas. The course of events thus took place according to an inner plan. But that man wanted to bring the goods, which then had to be achieved in a bloody way, to humanity in a peaceful way. The conditions at court did not allow his advice to be heeded. The outer course of events had to take the other path, that is, the bloody path. The encyclopedists, the philosophers of the Enlightenment, had a part in the revolution. Those who consider only the sensual, as happens in the “Systeme de la Nature” [by Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach], have only Maja in their perspective. Goethe called it a hollow work, as if it had flowed out of purely physical, sensual interests. Thinking, feeling and acting have been completely materialized in this work.

We see, then, that contemporary science has already become completely materialistic in terms of natural and cultural science. It has become so out of necessity. Our feelings have also become so materialistic. When we look at materialistic historical thinking today, we see that people are so completely dependent on the prejudices of their own time. The historian is virtually compelled to project these prejudices of his own time back into earlier times. If one is able to see this in the right way, then it is downright outrageous to encounter ideas about the lives of past centuries. This being afflicted with the prejudices of one's own time makes it so that today no one can put themselves back into the feelings and desires of the thirteenth century. But in those days everything was quite different. The judgments one encounters today are made with the exclusion of all factual knowledge. They are based only on the very outermost historical basis. No consideration is given to the fact that everything changes in the course of human development.

What is regarded as “right” today will be recognized by later generations as “wrong”. This also applies to spiritual movements. What was right for the Rosicrucians of the Middle Ages would no longer be right today. People today not only demand more, they also demand something different. Today it is impossible to work in the way that the Rosicrucians worked in earlier centuries. However, those who want to help people today are the disciples of those who, in earlier centuries, demanded that the human mind should judge over everything.

If we go back even further in human development, when Christianity was founded, it was still possible to appeal to feeling. In those days, one could build on “faith”. But we could no longer appeal to such “faith” today.

Progressive history was brought to life by the Rosicrucian disciples of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We are only paying tribute to our age when we appeal to reason today. It is very important to always keep in mind: We give, but it is always our contemporaries who demand.

It is generally assumed that a truth is easy to grasp. But is that really so? The intellect can understand everything, but otherwise it is the most powerless to really intervene in inner events. The intellect can never grasp from within. The intellect only ever understands things on the outside. What happens in research today? Animals and plants are chemically examined. We have found out how the substances interact, how digestion works. What happens in this research? It is organized with thinking and combined with the intellect. This is done by the intellect. But by approaching the facts of life in this way, the intellect has at the same time, by organizing and combining, driven life out of everything. Intellectual science has “come a long way”. It has achieved amazing things. This is, of course, fully recognized by us.

In 1875 Haeckel's students [Hertwig] Strasburger researched the connection between cells and shed light on the fertilization process. Today, external science even understands how personality is formed. The birth of personality was glimpsed in 1875. But science had to pass by the higher individuality.

But if we now look further back into the past, we see that earlier centuries still saw the core of the human being. And they also spoke of this core. Today's science, however, has completely detached the human being from his original spiritual sources. Science will only say that material feelings and desires live in the human being. Material reasons are sought in everything, which are the basis of later generations.

But if one wants to grasp the truth, the spiritual must be added today. The doctrine of reincarnation and karma, of the interconnection of fate, is part of this. The mind, descending, is completely powerless. But only when it ascends will the mind be productive again. People in the past did not just have minds. From the thoughts that arise from the doctrine of reincarnation and karma, the higher soul powers will flow.

I will soon speak to the members about what was involved in the emergence of Christianity. It will be necessary for us to become clear about the founding of Christianity. I will try to make Christianity understandable in the form it took on at that time.