The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Yesterday we tried to penetrate the relationship between what is called wisdom in the spiritual scientific sense, immediate, direct knowledge of the spiritual worlds, and that religious document that is the most important for our culture, the Bible. Today, let us take a look at some specific facts that can illustrate this relationship to us, that can show us how, if we understand this relationship in this way, we can indeed arrive at a new understanding of this religious document. You will understand that it is impossible to even touch on such a broad subject in summary, considering all the things that could be considered. It will therefore be best if we try to pick out individual things in particular to see how certain things that are also told in this biblical document can be understood through direct insight into the higher worlds and how one can then find that which one can grasp so immediately and directly in this religious document.

I would like to start with a very specific individual fact, a fact that has already been touched on here in a different context. I would like to show you how spiritual science introduces us to a certain law of human development. Today, this law is even already suspected by the more materialistically colored natural science. Spiritual science has known the law for long, long times and regards life from the point of view of this law. If we want to characterize this law in one word, we say: This law expresses the development of the spiritual life of humanity. You know that the idea of development is something that has had a truly fascinating effect on the external science of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. You know that external science has been completely moved into this perspective and that as a result the development of the simplest living beings up to the most complicated ones has become understandable.

Spiritual science has always had this idea of development, only much more comprehensive, much more universal than this natural science of the nineteenth century.

Spiritual science says: Everything is in the process of development. Everything develops from simple, very simple forms in the distant past to those forms that are so intricately interwoven that humans are still far from being able to comprehend them today. Spiritual science speaks above all of a development of human consciousness itself, and it is important that we follow the development of this human consciousness through its various stages. For this will cast a spotlight on certain chapters of the biblical records. What the vast majority of individuals today call consciousness is, for spiritual science, a state of consciousness that has developed from other forms of consciousness. We describe this present human state of consciousness as the so-called waking daytime consciousness, or also the object consciousness. Why? If we want to characterize this consciousness that a person has today from morning, when he wakes up, until evening, when he falls asleep, we have to say: This consciousness acquires its knowledge as follows: First, it acquires its perceptions of the objects through the external senses, of the objects in space and in the time around us, and our mind, which is limited to the sensory world, processes the perceptions that the human being receives through the external senses; and through such perceptions and such processing of perceptions in our conscious mind, we form the treasures of our knowledge, which are stored in our memory and guide and accompany us through life.

However, there are other forms of consciousness besides this state of consciousness; this state of consciousness is one that humanity has not always had in the past, and we have to look back to recognize the development of this state of consciousness, to times in the distant, distant past, to times that lie far, far behind our own.

In the past, people had a different form of consciousness, and at one point a different state of consciousness. How we perceive today, how we think today, has developed from other forms of consciousness, and the state of consciousness that once existed in humanity, but which today's state of consciousness has replaced, is called pictorial consciousness, the imaginative consciousness of the distant past.

The higher imaginative consciousness of which I spoke yesterday is not meant here. If we want to understand how this earlier pictorial consciousness relates to the consciousness that the initiate, who has undergone the inner spiritual development, already has today and that all of humanity will have at some future stage, if we want to recognize the two levels of consciousness If we want to recognize the two stages of imaginative consciousness, these two phases of the development of our consciousness in their relationship, we have to say: what we will speak of here precedes our own and is a dim, more dream-like clairvoyance. In that very distant past, people had a dream-like clairvoyance, and from this, today's object consciousness has only just developed; and a future state of consciousness stands before our soul, which the initiate already has today and which all of humanity will have in the distant future, in that man will have today's object consciousness and clairvoyance, both in bright, clear clarity. Early man, our ancient ancestor, had a consciousness that could not yet calculate in the same way that today's consciousness can. But instead he had a kind of dull, dream-like clairvoyance. He could see more into the spiritual and soul-life of his surroundings, either continually or in specially evoked states. He could receive images of what was spiritually and soul-wise in his environment. Today's object consciousness only sees spiritual entities when they are physically embodied externally.

I can best describe the former clairvoyance to you by means of an example. A person approaches another; the second harbors feelings of antipathy in his soul towards the approaching person. Modern man can only guess at what lives in the soul from external sensory perceptions. In the dim clairvoyance that man of ancient times had, however, a picture in color and form appeared freely floating before the clairvoyant gaze, indicating to him what the other felt towards him. The innermost attitude of a being was clothed in a color and form floating in space for the spiritual eye, just as certain ether vibrations express themselves today for the physical eye through color and form.

There are times in the distant past when this clairvoyance was developed to a certain extent. Today, however, we can only look back in history to a time when the last remnants of this somnambulistic clairvoyance, so to speak, were still present in people. These remnants were present in times not much more than a thousand years ago. We find such dim clairvoyance in every people in its initial stage, and it is from this dim clairvoyance that the myths and legends and fairy tales that originated among peoples in the early days were born. These myths and sagas did not come into being through that abstract thing we call the child's creative imagination, but out of the remnants of this former clairvoyance, as a reproduction of what an original, dim clairvoyance originally saw in all, all peoples from whom today's humans descended. This dim clairvoyance is connected with other conditions in the development of mankind, and if we want to characterize this development that has taken place in the transition to our present object consciousness, then we have to point to an external event that has taken place in our physical world and that is an expression of this transformation of that consciousness into our present one. This found expression in what we can call the transition from near-marriage to distant-marriage. In ancient times, among the most diverse peoples, there was an age in which what we call consanguineous marriage was common practice, a matter of course. People lived in small tribes and married within these small tribes, and it was considered somewhat immoral and incorrect to marry outside one's tribe; so in those times, related blood mixed with related blood, and those times these times of close marriage prevailed were also the times when the last remnants of a dim form of clairvoyance were present.

It is an extremely important moment in the development of all peoples: the transition from close marriage to distant marriage. One could point out how this is expressed in the most diverse myths and legends, how the whole cycle of the Siegfried saga is connected with that transition from close marriage to distant marriage, but that would be going too far today. What is important for us is the effect of foreign blood on foreign blood, which is that the original clairvoyance is killed; and this consciousness, which we know today, which is characterized by calculating, combining, logical thinking, this achievement emerged from that mixing of foreign blood with foreign blood!

Thus, we can trace in all ancient times how a different form of living together is linked to a different state of consciousness and vice versa. It has also been pointed out that even today, under certain circumstances, the last vestiges of this clairvoyance remain; I have already referred to the conversation between Rosegger and Anzengruber. I will take it up again here: Rosegger, the amiable and significant descriptor of what he sees around him in farm life and elsewhere, is a descriptor based on external sensory observation. Compare this with Anzengruber, and you will see that Anzengruber is able to present figures from folk life with wonderful plasticity, so that they stand on their own two feet with wonderful truth and naturalness. Now Anzengruber never saw the things he describes with his senses, he never lived among the farmers. Now Rosegger said to Anzengruber: You know, it seems to me that if you went out into the farming world and observed what happens there, you would be able to describe it even better. Anzengruber, on the other hand, replied: No, then I probably wouldn't be able to describe it at all. I have never seen farmers, but my ancestors were farmers, all my ancestors were farmers, and so the peasantry still lives and stirs in my blood, and I describe what my fathers saw, my ancestors, it runs down to me in my blood, and that is how I describe peasant life.

There you have the last remnants of what was once present in a much higher degree in all humanity. If you realize this, you will have to say: the way Anzengruber worked had the effect that a dark power of consciousness lives down in the blood through his ancestors to himself, and that lives itself out in him. Imagine this state of consciousness intensified, intensified to such an extent that the son can really remember what the father experienced, yes, what the grandfather experienced, then you have characterized that dim state of clairvoyance after a certain side, which once belonged to all our ancestors. There is a much higher, a real memory in the blood of what the ancestors had experienced, and as true as it is that today's man with his object consciousness can only store what he himself has experienced since childhood, it is just as true, incredible and grotesque as it may appear to today's materialistic way of thinking, it is true that there was a time when there was a dim awareness that the following generations remembered what their father, grandfather, ancestor and great-ancestor had experienced. Not just a vague feeling of it rumbled in the blood that had come from marriage between relatives, it was a real memory of it. Now let's see: what was the result of such a very different state of consciousness? The result of this was a very different naming than what takes place within humanity today. Today, man calls his ego that which holds together the experiences of his person since his youth. It was different then. Imagine those people who had a clear memory of what their ancestors had experienced; they also used the term “I” to describe what had been experienced in their ancestors over the generations. So someone was telling the experiences of his grandfather as those of his own “I” – if you want to express it radically. So he said: My “I” does not end with my birth, it extends up the generations, and that is why in such distant times, of which, however, no reports and documents report, what was remembered was given a uniform name, and so we must first learn to understand the meaning of the naming for those ancient times. Names were not only given to individual persons in those days; the whole context of all experiences in which one was present had a name in one's memory. When we know that there were names that designated many generations that went back centuries, then we understand an important chapter in which the patriarchs lived through the centuries.

Adam is not a person like those who live today as personal human beings on our physical earth. Adam was that which lived through generations and found expression in the collective memory. He did not denote a tribe or race, but that which passed through the generations as a common memory of consciousness in the old dim clairvoyance.

Thus it becomes clear that we need only understand the naming of ancient times, then it becomes bright within us in what the documents of the Bible tell us from this chapter of the history of creation. In those ancient times of dim clairvoyance, man did not attach much importance to his own personal experiences; they were only a small part of that great circle of experience to which he felt he belonged. He spoke of that which his consciousness overlooked as a unified entity. And so, just as when you talk to another person today, that person appears to you as something real, and the succession of generations as a whole appears more or less abstract, so to those people the individual person was insignificant, and what was important to him was what held his consciousness, reaching back over generations, together. Thus, in the patriarchal names, we do not have names for individual personalities, but rather a designation of a sum of beings. Thus, something in the Bible shines for us, which we recognize in its true sense when we face it equipped with higher spiritual-scientific knowledge. That is the way in which the person who recognizes it can look at the Bible. He first sees how it was in ancient times, and then, when he can understand correctly, he finds that the description of the Bible is just the same, wants to say the same thing. At that time, those who wrote down these records simply described what they were aware of.

Another example: in spiritual science, we follow the human being in his development far, much further back than to the point in time we have just discussed. Since I have often spoken about the idea of development here, I hope I will not be misunderstood today. Spiritual science traces the human being far, far back, and when it traces the human being back, it always comes across such human beings through long, long periods of time, where the physical body of the human being is the expression of the soul living in the physical body of the human being. But then, going further and further back, we come to a point in human development when this is no longer the case, when we can see how, so to speak, the paths of physical development and of soul-spiritual development separate further backwards. The spirit and the soul of man are rooted in the spiritual world, and when I use the expression of descending from the spiritual world, those who have already penetrated deeper into theosophy know that this expression is only figurative, an expression for something spiritual in a language that is only suitable for the external material. We are coming to times in the development of humanity when we see how the human soul and spirit is still united with other spiritual and soul-like entities. Out of spiritual entities, man's soul and spirit are born. There is a point in our earthly development when these human soul and spirit have only just entered this physical body, but we must not believe that this physical body, as it has taken in the soul and spirit, has not also undergone a long, long development.

At this point, two developmental currents meet. One of these currents is that of the physical world: We see how physical entities – headed by the physical human body – develop up to a certain level of perfection. Then there comes a point in time when this physical human body has become so perfect that it is now able to accommodate this spiritual-soul entity, which has developed to such an extent that it could find expression in the physical human body. since that spirit, that soul, has moved within the human body from the imperfect form that that body had, up to the present human form, the soul and spirit itself has worked in the human body through long, long periods of time. And through the forces through which they worked, the soul and spirit within the human body developed this body ever higher and higher, to its present form. Soul and spirit are, so to speak, the transformers and redevelopers of the human body. From that time on, we can also characterize the form of the physical human body, as it existed at that time, suitable for receiving the soul-spiritual, today, without any religious document, but only from the developed abilities of the seer.

These two human body in such a way that the human body as yet without a human soul was certain — I know how I shock all those who have only a materialistic way of thinking; but that does not matter; but if we want to know the truth, we have to tackle this great difference . The reasons why materialistic science may find this strange and grotesque are already known to the spiritual researcher himself, he has already dealt with them, otherwise he would not dare to tell such things – they are formed quite differently than he later became. But the earth was also shaped quite differently in those ancient times.

I will speak only of a single thing in the human body and its transformation at that time. Before that time, it was necessary for the human body to have an organ that still exists today in a last rudiment and remnant, in the swim bladder of fish. Since the physical human ancestor had to move by floating and swimming on the earth, he needed such a organ. The physical human ancestor had this organ in ancient times. This organ has transformed itself in the course of human physical development into the lungs. This has enabled man to breathe in and process the air as he does today. Connected with this is what we know about other processes in the body that have some kind of relationship to this lung breathing. We see the transition from the old gill breathing, which is still present in human embryonic development, to lung breathing, which is the preparation for red blood, which plays such an important role in human beings as well as in the life of nations. This moment of capturing the oxygen in the air through the lungs is also the moment of the human being being endowed with a human soul. Only then was he a suitable vessel for what we call a human soul.

These things took place over long, long periods of time: the transformation of the swim bladder into lungs that are able to process the oxygen in the external air. Now, if an observer wanted to describe this important moment of development in emotional and sensory terms, he could have said: “With the inhalation of the air, we breathed in the divine soul.” That is indeed how our ancestors felt, they gratefully felt the breath as the inspirer. You see, that is why the legends and myths of all peoples saw the body of the deity in the air, which had given man his individual consciousness. In the drifting air, the one who sees out of dull clairvoyance or out of the developed consciousness of the seer, sees the body of the animating deity, that deity of which his individual soul is a part. Imagine that all this extended over long, long periods of time, what was expressed pictorially in such legends and myths.

This image for all that I have described to you can be found again in the biblical record: “And God breathed into the man the breath of life, and he became a living soul.

Yes, why then clothe such a powerful fact, which goes through millions of years of development, in such an image? Yes, it is not unimportant in which image such a fact is presented to the consciousness at a particular stage of development. In the form in which it was expressed just now, it would not have been understood by anyone at that time. At that time it was necessary to speak in images, in imaginations. Everything, absolutely everything is in development! You will only understand what that means when I tell you how it all affects you.

Those who have already delved deeper into the theosophical teachings know that the human soul is not embodied only once, but passes through human bodies over and over again, going through many, many lives. They know that That which is in you today as soul has developed over and over again through life and life; that which is able to understand and comprehend this great law of becoming human in you today would understand nothing, absolutely nothing, would not have the ability to grasp such concepts if you had not also listened before or more often to how others have described this same process of becoming world in images and imaginations. Only this enabled this soul to understand the concept of it in today's incarnation.

Everything that only later appears in concepts must first be brought to humanity in imaginations, in images. The wisest of humanity, the leaders of the people, have known all that we describe today. But for the majority it had to be brought in images, because they had a dim clairvoyance and could not yet absorb these things in concepts, but only in images, and that was to be given in this form: “And God breathed into the man the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7)

Let us now ask ourselves: What does Jahve, Jehovah stand for? Jehovah is the expression for that which we perceive as the individual, the I-giving. At the same time, it has the secondary meaning “the blowing one,” “the one blowing in the air,” and there you have the Yahweh himself, that is, the deity who gave man the I: “I am who am” (Ex 3:14). And if you go from there up to the Central European old legends and myths, you will find that there you also have the Wotan, who rides in the air storm, the Wotan who blows. Thus, the blowing spirit, the spirit that blows in the air, was always felt to be the bringer of human consciousness.

This is only one of the concepts we can develop. Going further back into the distant past, we would arrive at the line of development of the spiritual core of the human being, and from there to spirit itself. Even in those ancient times, the old consciousness looked back to the time when the soul and spirit were still united with the original divine spirituality; our spiritual-soul human ancestor was within this. What you call your self today, your most intimate inner being, was at that time, when it had not yet united with your body, was at that time in that divine primordial being within it. Above all, it was in a state that we must describe as being without gender. Spirit and soul have no gender. They acquire gender when they take on a physically formed body, but their innermost being is not gender-related. This soul also underwent development, and every spiritual researcher looks back on this as well, and saw man and woman united in one before the two genders appeared to us in the outside world. The spirit of man, the spirit that was not yet sexual, united both sexes within itself.

Thus we have the one point of the incarnation of man in the sense of the soul, the spirit, entering the physical, appropriately prepared body, and an earlier, equally salient point: the incarnation of the soul, the spiritual man himself, and how from an even earlier spiritual state the asexual, spiritual-soul man emerged from the one original spirituality.

Thus we see the incarnation twice: once above in the spiritual world, once below on the physical plane. This twofold human becoming for our Earth appears to us in the mirror image in the description in the biblical document; we see it truly in that twofold human becoming in biblical history.

First, the human becoming in the spiritual-soul world: the biblical writer says of that time: man came into being as a male-female being. (Genesis 1:27) And then this male-female being, which was of a spiritual and soul nature, came down into the physical world, and there we are dealing with the physical body, which now simultaneously begins to breathe. Thus we see how a twofold form of human incarnation entered into the Bible. We now recognize that if one wanted to describe the truth, then this is how this twofold human incarnation would have to be described.

Now let us consider another case that comes closer to what touches us even more intimately, which introduces us introduces us to the New Testament and familiarizes us with the mystery of Golgotha, with Jesus Christ. You will easily be able to see that another element remains that is still present as a shared humanity that will not be destroyed if close marriage is destroyed. It is true that the love that attaches people to close marriage can only exist through shared blood, but there is a love that is more comprehensive and higher than that of blood. Thus there is something in humanity that is truly common, that exists as a common bond of humanity, even when that bond is severed, a bond that is more comprehensive than the love that is woven through blood relationship. When that human ancestor looked back at the time of the near marriage, it was a generational, tribal self that he designated as I. The boundaries of the tribes stretched further and further; tribes became nations, and the consciousness of the tribes was destroyed, and a common bond, which was no longer so strong, embraced the people, a national consciousness. It was most clearly and distinctly evident in that body of people who are called the Hebrew.

The tendency to expand the national consciousness to include that which holds all humanity together, the force that brings people together beyond the nation state, only came to Earth with the appearance of Christ Jesus. Even today man cannot clearly recognize what lives in all men as a common bond, but a future will come, still far distant from us, in which the consciousness will be so vividly present in a large number of people, the consciousness of brotherhood without blood. And to prepare this consciousness to act as a real power in preparation for this brotherhood, that is the mission of Christianity. If, therefore, the God who was felt in ancient times as the blowing one is also called the one who gave the I, then we must call the God who lives in that consciousness, which is not so dimly , but which will develop to feel and clearly recognize that which is common to all of humanity, we must describe this human consciousness and describe it, when we speak in the Christian sense, as the Christ consciousness. The Christ consciousness denotes, as it were, an I that embraces all of humanity in a common consciousness. There is a sentence: “If anyone does not leave wife and child and mother and brother, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26; Matthew 19:29) This must not be understood in a trivial, ascetic sense. It must be understood in such a way that Christianity paves the way for an all-encompassing human brotherhood, which is not based on blood ties, but on the fact that a person says brother to every human being, not in the everyday sense , but to gain an awareness that is not enclosed and limited within the blood ties, that gradually extends to more and more people in our later life, and is ultimately able to embrace all of humanity. Therefore, if one calls Jehovah the god of the people, then one comes to call Christ Jesus the god of humanity, the god of all humanity, the “Son of Man”. He, the Master, had to prepare the bond of love for all mankind.

If Jehovah is called a national god, then the Christ, who was embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, must be called the Son of Man, as He called Himself. Thus you see the truth of the word “Before Abraham was, I Am” or, better, “I AM” (John 8:58), who has brought the forces of humanity for the first time, which embrace all of humanity, who is able to bring about all of humanity's brotherhood.

How did this great event come about through external real facts, through real events? The Son of Man has been embodied in a human personality. Spiritual science points this out to us again. It points out to us, if we understand it correctly, what is called prophecy, that which underlies all of this. Only the initiate can and can clearly recognize this, but humanity can have a feeling for it, an awareness of it, since the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth.

What is prophecy? Do not believe that what the Christian can know since the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth has only just begun in those times. The one who is a true Christian and does not want to stop at what Christianity, for example, tells its believers today, knows that he is one with what Augustine said. That which is called Christianity today is the religion that has always been called the true religion in ancient times. But not all people have been able to understand this religion since ancient times; in ancient times there were always only a few who were chosen to be initiated into the great mysteries. They became the prophets of a certain time, able to see what must happen in the future. Initiation means: to develop those higher abilities in man that lie dormant in every human being!

And now a law that tells us: That which moves down into the physical world in the future is already present today in the spiritual world, and that which lives today in the spiritual world will one day descend into the physical regions. But because the one who becomes an initiate already ascends today into the spiritual regions, he can perceive in spirit today that which will descend into the physical world in the future. He can see it today from above and now say: This will happen in the future. Initiation is now attained in a certain sequence, only according to the methods prescribed in spiritual science and also in all great religions. There have been such methods of initiation in all times, just as there have been initiates in all times.

There is a tremendous difference in the initiation principle between those ancient pre-Christian times and the post-Christian times. In those pre-Christian times, much less of those methods was written down, but they were passed on through the tradition in those schools, which are called the mystery schools. Those who were recognized as being ready to be accepted into these schools were introduced to them in stages, undergoing severe tests, and were initiated into what what is called a mystery, a thing from which two things developed in the future: the school on the one hand and the church on the other – science and religion.

So you have a rough idea of those ancient wisdom schools where initiates were initiated, but it was prescribed step by step what the one who wanted to be initiated had to do first, and what he then had to go through as a second step, up to the highest step of the spiritual worlds.

You now have an idea of those wisdom schools, in which those entities work that underlie our physical world. There were ancient initiation rites, a canon of initiation in each school of initiation. Those who were deemed suitable to become students of the sacred mystery doctrine were accepted into this school of initiation and went through the stages that led them up into the spiritual worlds. The life of such a person was strictly prescribed. Imagine this life: Once he had been initiated into the mysteries, he had to lead a life in which everyday experiences were of no significance, while what he experienced in terms of the initiation methods was of great importance for the life of such a person.

Those who had reached a certain level of initiation was called a sun man, because his life had to be lived in such a regulated way that he could not stray from his path; just as the sun cannot deviate from its path, so the one who has made it to the level of a sun hero on his path of initiation is just as sure. He shares the truths of the spiritual world from his own experience; he is a leader of humanity.

The myths and legends contain this and tell us again and again about sun heroes, and when they speak of such people, when they agree with each other even among the most diverse peoples, what is described to us is what made him a sun hero. Then such a story seems to us like a repetition of the canon of initiation, and so in those ancient times a principle was formed in relation to the life of the initiate that is just the opposite of the principle of the biographers of today. For those who told something about the lives of the great leaders of humanity in ancient times, it was important to blur what made them appear as special beings, what made them become solar heroes, what they had to go through according to the initiation rite, and what all of them went through in the same way. The goal of this initiation was also to develop in those initiated a living vision of the all-human ego, of the unified consciousness, but the chosen ones only had it.

Only a few people could achieve this. Now, in the course of time, an event was to occur in development that what could be achieved individually in the old days, within the mysteries, could now be achieved by all of humanity in general. And this event was precisely the Mystery of Golgotha. How did that come about? We will understand this if we look into the mysteries: then, when he had experienced all these things at first hand, which one had to experience before that great final moment of initiation, then the time came when he was placed by the initiating priest-hierophant in such a state that he could experience in the clearest clarity of vision that which raised him above his tribe and people, and into what he has in common with all humanity.

You know from other lectures that the human being consists of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I and its higher members. During sleep, the physical and etheric bodies lie in bed, and during sleep the astral body with the higher limbs of human nature is out. Then, when the etheric body also separates from the physical body, death occurs. That is the spiritual difference between sleep and death. But then, when the person to be initiated had come so far that he could undergo the last stage of initiation, the hierophant, the initiating priest, led him to it, so that for a short time of three and a half days the etheric body could also leave, so that the physical body was in a kind of state of death. The result of this was that someone who had been prepared through the necessary stages could experience everything that was prepared for him in his own vision, and he could experience the higher worlds in real vision. Then, after three and a half days, the one to be initiated was called back to the ordinary physical, and now he was one who could proclaim, from his own experience, the secrets of the higher worlds to those who wanted to hear it. From his lips flowed the word of the spiritual world; he had become a witness that there is a spiritual world, that life in the spirit can conquer death. For he himself was in that world in which one gains the conviction that life will always conquer death. And again and again, the one who had thus traversed the spiritual worlds in three and a half days, again and again the initiate came back when he was awakened, with an exclamation that would be something like in German: “My God, my God, how You have glorified me.”

In ancient times, anyone who wanted to become such a proclaimer of spiritual wisdom from their own experiences had to enter into the mysteries and experience them outside of their physical body. Only in this way could it be done in the ancient, pre-Christian times. This is the world-historical moment of Christianity: that in the one event of Golgotha, everything that the one to be initiated experienced during the three and a half days was drawn into the physical world as a historical fact of physical reality. The Mystery of Initiation has become physically real in the Mystery of Golgotha. The sequence of initiations could be physically experienced in the physical world by the one who had the consciousness of the unity of humanity, the Son of Man. Physically, he could experience what was only possible for people to experience outside of their physical body before his appearance.

Thus, the mystery of initiation, having become physical, shines out to us from the event of Golgotha. So how will those who wanted to describe this mystery present the special events of the life of Christ Jesus? They knew that the one who, as the Son of Man, brought the secrets into the physical world, also had to experience these stages of initiation in the sense of the initiation canon here in the physical world, which the one to be initiated had always experienced outside of his physical body. Thus, the life of this unique being, who appeared only once in the development of humanity, had to be described in such a way that it was, of course, a reflection of the ancient initiation canon.

Now the various forms had been written down, fixed in different ways, in different forms of ritual, of rite, but all leading back to a unified mode of development. This mode of initiation, which also represents the life of Christ Jesus, was one that underlay all mystery schools, and it is only natural that it was applied to the external physical life of Christ Jesus, for this is truly how it happened. They describe to us something which they have taken from the old initiation canon, as they had received it in the mystery schools. Therefore, we find in the Gospels various outwardly seemingly divergent forms of the initiation canon, which appear as the biography of Christ Jesus.

Thus, we see in the Gospels the fixed initiation canon , and in Christ Jesus, whom they describe, we see the only Son of Man who presents that which others could only experience within the mysteries, outside of them in the physical life, in order to make their blessings accessible to all people. The sentence that life conquers death, which the initiate had experienced in the higher worlds, was outwardly manifested by Christ Jesus in the physical world, and is now accessible to all people in the same way.

Spiritual science knows that the gospel is history, extraordinary history, and at the same time a symbol. That is precisely the essential point, that here the symbol has become outer reality, that what had previously only taken place symbolically in the higher worlds, that it has become outer historical truth in the Mystery of Golgotha. Very few people want to understand that historical Christianity is so historical, and that it is also symbolic. Once this is understood, one can penetrate deeply into the spirit and meaning of the New Testament, and then one sees that the spirit and meaning of these documents is so infinitely deep that one can only gradually penetrate into its deepest depths. Let us look at a few more passages in this light. We recognize the three and a half days in the three and a half days, as it is reported (John 11), that Lazarus had already been dead when the Lord resurrected him, and we recognize again in another place those words – for that is how they should actually be translated – that Christ Jesus speaks on the cross at the moment when he arrives at the last act of his life in the physical body: “My God, my God, how hast thou glorified me”, for that is what these words should mean — and not “how hast Thou forsaken me” (Matt. 27,46, cf. Psalm 22,1; Mark 15,34), which is only an inaccurate rendering.

Thus we see that spiritual science, in its turn, becomes acquainted with initiation, experiences that life in the spirit conquers death, that this life, this wisdom, in its turn, makes understandable makes the deep meaning of the New Testament understandable, and so the wisdom-filled deepening of humanity within the theosophical movement will again lead to an appreciation, to a valuation of the biblical documents, of both parts of them.

Precisely because this wisdom will testify to the truth of this testament independently of it, it will have such a significant effect when you rediscover this truth in the Bible.

Thus will the man who penetrates it through theosophical study rediscover the value of this book, which could no longer be appreciated by someone who had lost touch with the spiritual world. And so no other biblical research, criticism, and so on, will be able to bridge the gap between scholars and believers than this spiritual science or and it will bridge this gulf and will bring a wisdom that will understand everything, everything that is expressed in the mighty words of the biblical documents. It will bring the solution to the great riddle of existence that is sought by the intellect and the mind in the Bible. And this will be recognized in the Bible, that it was and is the actual basis for the actual culture of humanity. Thus the Bible will again become a book that will be recognized in its full significance and value, and one will no longer be able to approach it indifferently, but with awe for the great, infinite sources of wisdom that bubble forth in it.

Thus, who is able to penetrate into the spiritual world independently will be filled with ever deeper and deeper awe in the face of this book, and it will become for him in turn a book of proclamation, which must be understood ever deeper and deeper, and a book in which the greatest riddles of man and of the development of humanity find their solution. Thus the Bible will rise higher and higher in value through wisdom, and if this movement succeeds in pointing people to the direct path to knowledge, then this reference will at the same time be something of immense value for the whole religious life of the broadest humanity.

The conquest of wisdom will at the same time be a reconquest of that charter which after all underlies our culture, that is to say, of that which lives as the spirit of our culture.

Then this penetration into wisdom, this conquest of the spiritual worlds through wisdom, will at the same time be the conquest of these valuable sources for wisdom, the conquest of the Biblical charters themselves.

If we bring to mind what we have gathered from our recent lectures, including yesterday's lecture, and not from their various details but from their whole trend and meaning, then we can say it is the following: It is demanded of the civilisation that must replace ours towards the future in an energetic way, that it should look deeper into true reality, that above all such high-sounding phrases, or rather, such high-sounding theories as those of Monism, Idealism, Realism, and so on, come to an end, and that men realise that the maya-reality, the reality of the surrounding external phenomena, is actually a confluence of two worlds, of two worlds, in fact, in conflict with one another. To look at reality means something very different from merely following up theoretically all that exists in the world of appearances around us, which is the way of modern natural science.

In order to discuss this theme practically, we will first go into a concrete example. Who would not suppose that the materialistic concept of the world which has spread among civilised nations since the 60's, 70's of last century, and the materialistic mode of living which indeed results from this concept, must necessarily have the effect of making men more materialistic? If one looks at the world merely from appearances one naturally supposes that there arises a sort of external manifestation of the ideas which men have had in their heads; but that is not the case. As soon as one turns one's mind to the conditions that in reality follow one another then that does not accord at all, it is not true that the world is somehow or other organised according to the ideas men set in their heads. One only understands that this cannot be the reality if one realises that the human being is of a double nature, as we have explained, that in him the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic forces are working through each other continually. Only because that is so is the following concrete phenomenon possible. Let us assume that an age would give itself up to materialistic ideas for a sufficiently long time, as our age has done. Misled by these ideas it would also in conscious will develop a kind of materialistic mode of life. The results will not enter the part of human nature that is the bearer of the conscious life. To begin with, the bearer of the conscious life has not that thoroughgoing influence on human life that a superficial observation is inclined to attribute to it; the results enter the unconscious. You can picture this schematically: in man's conscious head-nature lives materialism; in his subconscious nature, which goes through a metamorphosis after we have passed through the gate of death and live over into the next earth-incarnation, but which we carry in us now as an incomplete formation—this, let us say, lower nature of man is the bearer of the unconscious soul-life and in a remarkable way this unconscious soul-life becomes under the influence of materialism more and more spiritual. So that the actual result of materialistic ideas and of the materialistic way of life is that the lower nature of man becomes increasingly spiritual. You must therefore imagine the following. If you are completely immersed in concepts of matter and energy and believe solely in these, and order your life on the lines of “eat and drink and then the nothingness of death”—then, carrying out all your actions on this basis, materialism really enters your mode of living, and the lower nature gets increasingly spiritual.

The lower nature, however, which is becoming more and more spiritual, needs something to work on it; it cannot make its necessary way through evolution alone. Now since in the head, in man's upper nature, there are only materialistic ideas and sympathies, this upper nature is unable to work on man's lower nature, and in consequence of this deprivation, the lower nature is exposed to the working of the Luciferic principle. The Luciferic principle, as I said in the last lecture, does not manifest in sense-perceptible reality: the Luciferic beings are spiritual beings. They enter man's lower nature when it becomes so spiritual under the influence of materialism, and when this very materialism prevents anything from man himself flowing into the lower nature. The paradoxical truth appears before our soul that a materialistic age actually prepares a spiritual culture, but a Luciferic one.

Conversely, taking the reverse case, let us suppose that an ecclesiastical truth, not imbued with spirituality, but supported purely by tradition, takes hold of man, or works towards taking hold of him. And related to such an ecclesiastical truth is abstract idealism which believes only in abstract ideals, in morality and has no knowledge of how these abstract ideals arise—however fine and beautiful they may be, they are of no use if one has no feeling for the way in which such forces can come about. Purely religious and purely idealistic ideas have again the consequence that the lower nature of man becomes more material. Whereas materialistic ideas promote spirituality in man's lower nature, purely clerical concepts built on tradition without spiritual influence, as well as abstract idealism, promote an increasing growth of materialism in man's lower nature. Speaking crudely, one might say that the type of this increasing materialism of the lower nature through the traditional abstract churchy element is the corpulent parson; he devotes himself to traditional church conceptions and in this way fattens up his little stomach. This is only a comparison, it is no fact and no law—I merely want to make things clear, yet it corresponds to a fundamental reality. But now again the increasing materialism of mans lower nature has no nourishment if the head harbours none but traditional and abstract traditional ideas. Hence a humanity which founds such a culture is pre-eminently exposed not to their own head-nature but to Ahrimanic influences. And so we must say that the abstractly religious the abstractly idealistic, promotes in fact an Ahrimanic materialism, while, conversely, materialistic thinking promotes a Luciferic spiritualism.

All these things rest fundamentally on the fact that true reality is of a totally different nature from external apparent reality. But it is now required of man that he should get to know true reality according to its law and being. Social science, the science of human community-life and man's historical life must in particular always be permeated by a spiritual science that, as these lectures have shown, can really build the bridge between the nature-order and the spirit-order, real bridges, not those abstract ones built by monism. It will be necessary, however, for certain laws which are held back from the general consciousness of mankind by certain initiation quarters whose thinking is incorrect for the present time—for certain laws concerning true reality to become increasingly known.

One such law can be set before the soul in the following way, If you give real study to my Outline of Occult Science you know the point of time in the earthly sense when present-day humanity actually appeared on earth. We showed in the last lecture how this humanity has also a cosmic pre-history, a Saturn, Sun, Moon history, but Earth history was, to begin with, a recapitulation, and earthly humanity appeared at quite a definite time. And if you consult my Occult Science you will find that this human state appeared at the same time as clearly and distinctly there arose on earth the origin of the mineral kingdom. For we know that what we now call the mineral kingdom did not exist in the same way in the Saturn, Sun, Moon evolutions, There existed then the three elementary kingdoms which preceded the mineral kingdom. The mineral kingdom entered earthly evolution and simultaneously with this macrocosmic fact of the entry of the mineral kingdom into earthly evolution, man entered earthly evolution in his present form, in the form of his present bodily formation. Although this bodily formation has only later in the course of time come to its full completion, yet the rudiments of the present human body appeared in earthly evolution at the same time as the entry of the mineral kingdom. In a certain sense therefore man, has formed a link as earth-man between the fourth member of his being, which then developed to the ego, and the mineral kingdom. One could also say that in the human microcosm the ego corresponds to the macrocosmic mineral kingdom;

Now we know—and even a simple superficial knowledge of nature tells us—that the cosmic mineral kingdom has a crystal-formation. In school our children must learn the different forms in which the various minerals crystalise. They must first learn them according to the laws of geometry, how they can be represented through these laws, and then how they appear in reality, in the mineral kingdom—octahedron, cube, and so on. When we see these forms of the mineral kingdom which may be expressed in geometry we have before us the original form proper to the minerals. These crystalisations, or rather, these crystal-forms, are in a certain sense the inborn, archetypal characteristic of the mineral kingdom. And the earth, when this kingdom was incorporated into its cosmic evolution, received at the same time the tendency to crystalise its mineral substances in the forms in which the mineral kingdom crystalises.

Now there is a counterpole, a polar opposite, to the form of the mineral kingdom, and I ask you to come to an understanding through the following picture. We will approach an important fact in life through a picture. The dissolving of any kind of substance is a very well-known phenomenon, You know that if you throw a certain amount of salt into a certain amount of water, the water is able to dissolve the salt completely, so that it is no longer there in its solid form. You also know that for certain purposes of practical life the solid salt will not do and it has to be dissolved. Now the tendency in earthly evolution to the crystalisation form of the minerals must not be allowed to remain united with the earth any more than for certain practical purposes the salt may retain its solid form. The cook must be able to change the solid form by dissolving it—she must use methods of dissolving, otherwise the salt will be of no use. So too in the cosmos the earth's tendency to crystalise the mineral must be dissolved. This means that a polar counter-tendency must exist which will bring, it about that when the Earth has reached the goal of its evolution and is ready to pass over to the next form, the Jupiter-form, this crystalising tendency is no longer there—has been dissolved, has disappeared. Jupiter must not possess the inclination to crystalise mineral substances. This particular tendency must be reserved solely for the Earth, and it must cease when the Earth has reached the goal of its earthly evolution.

Now the polar opposite to the tendency of crystalising is that other tendency which is imprinted into the human form—not the animal form. Every corpse which we give over to the earth-planet, whether by burial, fire, or in any other way, every corpse deserted by its spirit and soul and in which still works the human form as purely mineralogical form, works in opposition to the crystalising tendency, precisely as negative electricity, works in opposition to positive electricity, or as darkness to light, And at the end of earthly evolution the totality of human forms given over to the earth in the course of this evolution—I repeat: human forms, for in the form of man lies the force-tendency and it is matter of force not substance—these human forms will have cosmically dissolved the mineralising tendency, the crystalisation-tendency in mineralising.

You see how here again we have a point where a bridge is built between two world-currents which natural science cannot build. For natural science investigates what happens to the human form after death solely on the lines of mineralogy and its laws, it looks out for what lies in the earth's tendency to crystalise and deals with the corpse in that way. It can never arrive therefore at what a significant role in the household of the whole being of the earth is played by men, by the dead bodies, the form, of men. The earth has essentially altered since the middle of the Lemurian alter since mineralisation entered and with it the tendency to crystalise. What is less mineral today in the earth less inclined to the crystalisation-tendency than in the middle of the Lemurian age is due to the dissolving forms of human bodies. And when the Earth has reached its goal there will no longer remain any tendency at all to crystalisation. The totality of human forms given over to the earth will have worked as the solar opposite and dissolved crystalisation.

Here we have the event of human death placed into the whole household of world-order as a purely physical phenomenon. Here we have a bridge thrown between two phenomena which otherwise, as the phenomenon of death, remain quite incomprehensible in the household of the world and the phenomena which modern natural science describes. It is important to develop increasingly such concepts as alone give to the natural science world-conception its true, genuine character. What I have described to you here is just as much a fact of natural science as other facts are that are discovered by the natural science of today. But it is a fact which natural science with its present methods cannot discover. It therefore remains of necessity incomplete and cannot grasp the whole of life's phenomena: it must find its completion through spiritual science. And when such laws as this are known—that through the human forms given to the earth-planet the crystalising tendency of the earth is dissolved, then such laws will also make the human spirit ready to enter more deeply into the reality of spiritual evolution.

Those who think and make research only along the lines of modern natural science cannot build the bridge from natural science to social and political science. Those alone who know the great laws resulting from spiritual science which relate to the greatness of nature in the way I have just explained, are able then to lead across the bridge from natural science to the science of man, above all to the historical and political life of mankind. The natural scientist does not hesitate in the least to speak of polarity in nature. He will distinguish two magnetisms, the North and the South, he will distinguish two electricities, the positive and the negative. And if some day natural science is guided more into the right path of Goethe's world-conception, then natural science too will be still more Goetheanism than it can be today, when it is hardly so at all. Then the law of polarity in the whole of nature will be recognised as the fundamental law, as it has indeed already figured in the ancient Mysteries from atavistic clairvoyance. In the ancient Mysteries everything was founded on the knowledge of polarity in the world. In natural science itself, that is, in the knowledge of natural order the scientist of today is not disturbed by recognising polarity, but he will not approach polarity in the human order and spiritual order. Nevertheless, what we call the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic fully correspond as regards the spirit and its ordering, in which man too is placed, with what is recognised in natural science, for instance, as North and South magnetism or as positive and negative electricity. The creation of real harmony between spirit and nature will never be reached unless men find the reality of the concrete polarity of the Ahrimanic and the luciferic in the spirit-ordering. For true reality cannot be found in the abstract ideas which are simply transferred from nature to the spirit, but solely through being able to deepen oneself in the spirit itself and there find the polarities corresponding to the spirit.

And so it must be too with the other natural facts. One cannot simply study natural facts and then say that one should found a spiritual order, a spiritual world-conception on these natural science facts. That leads nowhere. If the spiritual life is to be studied in its reality, if the phenomena of life into which the spirit plays are also to be grasped, then one must decide to study the spirit-orderings themselves. Moreover what has taken place at some period of time or other through human souls or human organisations cannot be explained by natural science, it can only be understood in reality if it is explained through spiritual science.

If, for instance, we look at certain phenomena of present-day culture we must consider to what degree the Luciferic influence is there and to what degree the Ahrimanic. I made this attempt in 1914 before the outbreak of our present catastrophic war, in the lectures I held in Vienna: The Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth. And I should therefore like to refer you to the decisive passage in which is set forth the whole essence of what is taking place today. I said then: The reason why spiritual science is now here in the world is because the evolution of humanity requires that this realisation of the spiritual worlds and the conditions of existence in them shall become more and more alive in human souls, instinctively at first, then consciously. Let me draw your attention to a purely external phenomenon, but one of immense significance, showing that a grasp of the laws of spiritual existence will become increasingly essential for any true judgment of life on the physical plane.

When we contemplate nature we observe the remarkable fact that in every case a small number only of seeds, of germinating entities, are used in the production of the same species of life, while myriads of seeds come to nothing. Of the myriads of fish-spawn in the sea, only a few become fish; the rest perish. Looking out over the fields we see vast multitudes of grains of corn, only a few of which become plants; as grains of corn the rest perish, being used as food-stuffs and for other purposes. In nature a great deal more has to be produced than actually comes to fruit and again seed in the on-flowing stream of existence. This is a wise provision; for in nature the rule is that what thus deviates from its own inherent stream of existence and fruiting is used in such a way as to serve the other stream of existence. Beings would not be able to live if all seeds actually became fruit and achieved the development possible to them. Seeds must be there to form the soil, as it were, out of which beings can grow. It is only apparently, only in maya, that anything is lost; in reality nothing is lost in nature's creative work. Spirit holds sway in nature, and the fact that something is apparently lost from the on-flowing stream of evolution is founded in the wisdom of the spirit; it is a spiritual law, and these things must be viewed from the standpoint of the spirit. Then we soon perceive that what seems to be diverted from the straightforward stream of world-processes has its well-justified place in existence. This provision is founded in the spirit; hence it can also take effect on the physical plane, to the extent that we had a spiritual life there.

My dear friends, take a concrete case which concerns us very closely. Public lectures have to be given on spiritual science. They are given to audiences brought together simply through the announcements. There is a similarity here to what happens with the grains of corn, only a part of which are used in the direct stream of existence One must not be put off by the fact that the streams of spiritual life have to be brought, apparently without choice, to many, many people, and that then only a few separate out and really enter into this spiritual life, become anthroposophists and join in the on-flowing stream. In this domain it still happens that these scattered seeds find their way to many who, after a public lecture, for example, go away saying: What crazy nonsense the fellow talked! Seen in direct relation to external life, this is life—shall we say—the spawn of fish that come to nothing in the sea. But from the standpoint of deeper investigation it is not so. The souls who through their karma came to a lecture and who then went away saying: What crazy nonsense the fellow talked!—these souls were not yet ready to receive the truth of the spirit, but it is necessary for their souls in the present incarnation to feel the approach of the force inherent in spiritual science. However much they may protest; this force remains in their souls for their next incarnation, and then the seeds have not been lost; they find their ways. With respect to the spiritual, existence is subject to the same laws, no matter whether we are following the working of the spirit in nature or in the case we could quote as our own.

But let us suppose that we wanted to refer this principle also to external, material life, and were to say: Well, people are doing the same thing in external life. Yes, my dear friends, that is just it. What I am now going to describe is happening, and we are living towards a future when it will happen to an ever-increasing extent. Production steadily increases, factories are built without asking: How much is needed?—as used to be the case when the village tailor made a suit only when it was ordered. There it was consumption which indicated how much should be produced, but now production is for the market; the goods are piled up in as large quantities as possible. Production goes on entirely in line with nature's principle. Nature is carried over into the social order. This tendency will, to begin with, more and more gain the upper hand. But here we are in the realm of the material. The spiritual law has no application to external life, precisely because it is valid for the spiritual world;—and something very remarkable results from this. As we are speaking among ourselves, these things can be said; the world today would certainly not understand us.

Goods are now produced for the market without regard to consumption, not according to the principle indicated in my essays on anthroposophy and the Social Questions. What is produced is piled up in warehouses, priced according to the money market, and then the producers wait to see how much is bought. This tendency will steadily increase until—and you will discover why I say the following—until its own nature it destroys itself.

(In this sentence is contained the most important of the present so-called causes of the War; but it is to be derived from spiritual life.)

One who observes social life with spiritual vision sees terrible tendencies to social ulcers springing up everywhere. That is the great anxiety for civilisation which arises in those who see to the roots of existence; that is the terrible fact which weighs so heavily and which—even if one could suppress all other enthusiasm for spiritual science and the impulse which makes one long to proclaim it—makes one long to cry out to the world the remedy for what is already so strongly under way and will gain increasing momentum. In the spreading of spiritual truths there is an element which of its own ground must work as nature works, but this way of working becomes a cancer when it enters into civilisation in the way described.

It was put before you previously in that lecture all that throws light on the Ahrimanic and Luciferic tendencies. But you can clearly see from it that one only arrives at real knowledge of the social cancer or carcinoma-formation if one can find the Ahrimanic and Luciferic tendencies at work in the modern social order, find on the path of reality, not by simply comparing the social life with natural facts. What occurs in the social order must be sought on the spiritual path. And if it is sought on the materialistic path it can amount to no more than at most a comparison, an analogy of social occurrences with abstract facts of nature.

My dear friends, the fact that a number of cancerous tumours exist in modern society was expressed at that time in those lectures of 9th to 14th April 1914 But the expression was in fact a gathering together of what I had stated in various forms throughout our whole anthroposophical development, in order to prepare men for the point of time when the social cancer would reach its special crisis—1914!

There now appears a book which in itself is fairly worthless and stupid. It is by a C. H. Meray, entitled World Mutation, and published by Max Rasoher in Zurich in 1918. I will read you a few paragraphs of this book, the author of which has a merely intellectual grasp of industrial facts. And so just as the lectures on the inner nature of man are able to further reality the author by means of this book furthers the deviation from true reality, the misleading to false thinking. But I will let you hear a few of the sentences. There is an attempt to grasp the development of European and American civilisation merely through analogies, comparisons with facts in nature. Whereas in my lectures of 1914 you have reality, here you have abstract monistic comparisons, analogies which actually say nothing, because when one merely talks of natural facts and then points out that something similar exists in the social order these mere analogies rather darken understanding than shed light But what does this amount to? It is shown how seeds of disintegration have gradually entered western civilisation ever since ancient times aid how civilisation has been eaten into inwardly. Such an apercu is then summarised in words like:

“These unhealthy changes began in the fresh and flourishing early Renaissance cities, in the still purely production City-Republics of the striving citizens, as they had to nourish their giant cancer cells, prepared themselves for it and had to change themselves into an instrument for nourishing a cancerous growth.”

“The formation of this organisation out of which the structure of the modern State emerged, advanced side by side with the metamorphosis of the productive tissue which is definitely not to be regarded as belonging to its own life.”

(He calls regulated civilisation a productive tissue, that is, he picks up only a tissue of natural facts, not the real facts of the spirit.)

“For foreign elements in the body cannot normally come in contact with each other without producing inflammation—as in fact in the beginning such inflammations were produced when the soldiers of the Count of the city came in contact with the citizens (let us remember the bell, signalling the latter to form into bands!). Normally only the complete excision of the poisonous growth would have happened, such an effort was made to begin with and was also followed up later. The moment however the two elements, the cancerous growth and the working tissue, could carry on without inflammation, there arose an abnormality which could only preserve itself under pathological conditions

“Such abnormalities are everywhere to be found in organisms where tumours, ulcers, discharges, in short, foreign elements, are surrounded with a web that no more inflammation arises. The web or tissue which is formed there is a deformity and after the cure can be used for nothing further for the organism. Yet during the illness it serves as a protection for the organism; it forms a structure that renders the poison of the disease harmless to the body, although this formation meanwhile develops immeasurably and can itself become a serious phenomenon of disease.

“Thus the modern State also arose as a deformity of the completely uprooted working life; as it arose , however, the whole tissue had to co-operate for its own protection in order to paralyse the evil in it and remove the disintegrating poison-effects. Accordingly the State arose as a separate structure, interwoven it is true by the productive life, though it never became itself an apparatus of productivity. The whole system of modern political economy developed separately side by side with the State.”

“The wealthiest have the most direct connections with the poisonous growths, as they need an extensive protection for the sale of their goods. Hence they are more eager, and as being rich, also more capable of giving to the Governor a higher nourishment; he needs money, they as the ones who procure it for him; if he wants to accomplish something within the city he turns to the patricians. It lies in the interest of these patricians to strengthen the City-Prince, whereas those whose material business-circle does not extend beyond the walls feel a perpetual natural grudge against the Governor. (Physiologically: a negative chemico-tactic effect). They put up with him really only on account of the protecting of the wall-ring. The toxic effect, however, no longer changes the individuality of the patricians—or only seldom, they seldom become themselves warlike nobles—they belong already far too much to the antitoxic, working tissue. Their wealth has arisen from it and is bound up with it; a toxic effect is certainly shown – not on the individual but on the protoplasm, in the wealth.” (And protoplasm is now the wealth!)

“Whereas formerly wealth was not employed as yet to function as capital, but merely formed the reserves of life and well-being, its rôle now alters: wealth begins to annex to itself processes of work."

In connection with this passage I beg you to remember how in my lectures at Nuremberg in 1908 (on The Apocalypse) I pointed out that direct personal influence had withdrawn from modern industry and that money, that is, capital as such was beginning to work. I spoke of how the modern social order uses such exertion under Ahrimanic influence that someone is now below, now above. Personality no longer counts; it is a matter of the money itself doing business, now throwing someone up, now down again. Funds, accumulation of capital, and its counterpole, credit, this a-personal and anti-personal element is what is to evolve as the Ahrimanic counter-image of Spirit-Self for the future of the social order.

All of this is expressed here in this book in a purely Ahrimanic manner. But, my dear friends, there is a danger that something of this sort gains immense respect, since on every page it makes extensive quotations from natural science. Years after the reality has been pointed out through the researches of spiritual science, this Ahrimanic caricature of spiritual science appears, even with the same words for the same phenomena. This will impress people in spite of misleading and alluring them, because they will never understand reality unless they build the bridge between the purely external facts of natural science which are employed in this book and the purely spiritual-scientific processes which indeed can only be discovered through spiritual science. But it will certainly be accepted as genuine science—just as other similar things which have appeared and which I have spoken about in the course of our lectures—whereas in the near future the scientific nature of spiritual science will most certainly be attacked in a terrible way, in a way which you are not at all willing today to picture in its intensity!

These things, my dear friends, must be thoroughly realised, They must be seen through all the more as they touch upon facts which lie under the semblance of external reality. To possess insight into these facts requires the goodwill to pursue seriously and intelligently with sound human understanding the researches of spiritual science.

Opposite currents, polarities, must be held in balance, That can only be done if continually new influxes come directly from the spiritual world into what happens on earth, that is, if new facts which concern the world are continually revealed out of the spirit.

When once in Rome someone brought a Jesuit up to me, I had a conversation with him about just such things, I knew that it availed nothing and was actually a labour of love quite lost, but there were other reasons for it: there too it is necessary to lock at the true reality and not the outer semblance, I sought to make it clear to the Jesuit that, first, he must himself admit a revelation out of the supersensible in the course of the Mystery of Golgotha and what is written about it through the inspired Evangelists; that, moreover, the Catholic Church in which as a Jesuit he would believe accepts a continued evolution of the spiritual life through its saints. He replied, as was only to be expected: “Yes, that is all true, but that's done with; one must not bring that about of oneself. To work oneself through to spiritual life today is to begin to deal with the devil. One may study the Mystery of Golgotha, study the Gospels, the life of the saints, but unless one wants to fall a prey to demonic powers. one may not try in any way to come into direct relation with the spiritual world.” It is obvious that that would be said from such a quarter, and I could give you many similar examples.

There is the strongest opposition from certain quarters to the flowing in of new and ever newer spiritual truths. The Roman Catholic Church, for instance, is even terribly afraid of spiritism, which of course is not sympathetic to us, because they live in the dread of something coming through a medium from the spiritual world which the Church, living solely in its old traditions, cannot accept. And it fears spiritism because it has materialist foundations and because—so it has believed for decades—it can easily gain followers through the fact that one could find something trickling in on a bypath out of the spiritual world into the world which the Roman Catholic Church wishes to rule.

Now you know, my dear friends, in the 1870s, in 1879, the possibility arose of a powerful, deeply-penetrating flowing-in from the spiritual world. I have often spoken of it, how a conflict that had taken place earlier in the spiritual worlds flowed into the earthly order, in the Michael-order. Since that time special opportunities have been given for men who so wish it to receive spiritual knowledge. Please do not imagine that the initiates of the Roman Catholic Church are not aware of such things! They are of course aware of them, but they construct their protective dams. And precisely in connection with the fact that spiritual life was particularly furthered by the spiritual worlds from the year 1879 on the Roman Catholic Church in a far-seeing way established the Infallibility-dogma in order through this to build a dam against any influx of any sort of new spiritual truths. It is obvious that if people are only allowed to frame their views in accordance with what is announced ex cathedra from Rome in the light of the dogma of Infallibility, then a powerful dam is erected against the inflow of spiritual truths from the spiritual world itself. That is the one thing, the Romish element, which had its natural stipulations in earlier times and brought over from these the rigidity in tradition, the rigidity in excluding the spiritual substance which could flow into the human soul out of the spiritual worlds.

Another stream is to be sought in that Centre which in a high degree—approximately at the time when Rome prepared the Infallibility-dogma—must be assigned to the English and American, the English-speaking peoples. We have already referred here to this occult Centre, in many connections. Just as the traditional element and false idealism in the head brings about the Ahrimanic element in the lower man, so, as you have seen, does materialism bring about the development of the spiritual in the lower man. And when this is not nourished from the head by new spiritual truths which are revealed to the world from time to time it will naturally be seized upon by Luciferic forces, the Luciferic principle. The Centre that has great influence on the English-American peoples (that is the best expression) prefers to reckon with the other pole. The occult Masonry which is anchored in that Centre and from there strongly influences the course of the outer culture of the whole civilised world, just as much promotes materialism—realising things of course—as Rome has promoted it through the papal Infallibility. Through the Infallibility-dogma Rome has intended to erect a dam against the influx of spiritual truths from the spiritual worlds; this Centre consciously promotes the spread of materialism in the modern civilised world, the spread of materialistic ideas in a more or less materialistic mode of life. And the strange thing is that when the Anglo-American initiates speak about Rome as a rule what they say is correct, and however much they inveigh against Rome they say what is right. They too, however, know that there is a spiritual life and that a continuous influx is possible, but they keep that secret and let it flow into civilisation only through unknown channels. And the non-English-speaking peoples in the civilised world have in the last decades, or last half-century, accepted an immense amount of what has flowed in there through this Centre; For these other civilisations in their present structure are in no way individualised, they are largely nourished by the materialistic tendency originating in his Centre.

And again, when Rome speaks about that occult Freemasonry, the Orders, it speaks correctly. One can therefore say that what Rome says is right, what the Freemasons of the West say is also right. That in fact is just the difficulty; these things in the most outstanding sense can be thrusting human nature towards the Luciferic or the Ahrimanic, and yet in what they say they cannot possibly be seized upon because what they say is right; when they speak of each other it is correct.

That is a factor that must be borne in mind very fundamentally in the present cultural tendencies. People nowadays are not inclined to consider what grows out of some affair or other, but merely look at what is expressed verbally in propaganda. But it is not at all a matter of the sounds and words of a propaganda, it is really a matter of making thane lower nature materialistic through materialism in the world of ideas—it becomes, however, spiritualised. And it is supposed to be a matter of making man more moral through an abstract idealism and discussion of every kind of fine ideal—yet one makes him—I speak figuratively of course—obese, materialistic in his lower nature, one makes him heavy and sleepy. And whereas on the one hand a strong tendency exists to scleroticise man Ahrimanically, which is particularly a Jesuit-tendency, there exists on the other hand a definite tendency to place the Luciferic beings in the service of the materialistic world-order, whereby precisely through materialism a spirituality may arise which is however a Luciferic spirituality. It is indeed not enough merely to look in its literal sense at what plays on the surface; one must go into the actual reality, which as is shown precisely by our instances today—however paradoxical they appear, often have an exactly opposite purpose to what one is led to believe through a superficial maya-observation. Things are being done in the world today from many different quarters on the principles of the occult Orders, though they are kept secret. Rome works just as much in accord with occult precepts as that other Centre does. Power lies just in the fact that men are kept in the dark and are not told what is actually going on. Hence arise the hatred and enmity against those who make their appearance and say what is taking place.—Naiveté moreover is especially harmful, the sort of naiveté which men show when they persist in believing that one attains something with these two streams if one tells them that spiritual science can give a beautiful understanding of Christ-Jesus, or something like that, or tells them how the deeper truths of spiritual science are to be found in true Christianity. It is a naiveté to suppose one can win over certain circles by showing them one has a truth which they really must recognise according to their whole hypotheses. That simply calls out hostility. The more we show in certain circles that we have the truth, the greater the hostility, and the more this truth proves effective all the more intense will the enmity appear. In recent times one has only waited to see if the moment would come when anthroposophical books would need larger editions, when thousands and thousands would listen to anthroposophy, in order from certain quarters not because they think anthroposophy says untruth, but because they fear it will say the true—in order to lay hold of this anthroposophy. That is what should be borne in mind. No naiveté should prevail among us, but penetrating knowledge, unbiased, unprejudiced observation of what happens.

It would please me much if you took away a feeling of this from this lecture; for once again let it be recapitulated what I said at the beginning of today's lecture: It is not so much a matter of the details, but of our receiving a firm impression of what lies in the whole spirit of these lectures. And then we must make ourselves more and more capable of taking such a place in the cultural life of today as befits a man of the present who is thoroughly awake and not sleeping.

As I have already remarked, we shall consider certain matters during these lectures which will then culminate, tomorrow or the next day, in an exposition of Historical Necessity and Free Will, will culminate by my having to show in what sense an historical event is necessary, and in what sense such an event—as something which, generally speaking, interferes in the soul-sphere of human life—could also be otherwise than it is. Indeed, at the present time—when such important occurrences are interfering in human life—this is a problem which is of very special, deeply penetrating significance; for, in face of the sad, catastrophic events of the present day (the war) every human being must indeed ask himself the question:—in how far are such happenings—and directly this present one—dependent on a certain necessity and in how far could the present occurrence have turned out differently, had it been able to assume a different aspect.

As we indicated, it will be our aim during these lectures to reply to this large, inclusive question with means that we can have at our disposal now in the occult basis that is to be explained in public lectures. But we must proceed from a more inclusive consideration of human life. We must deepen ourselves somewhat, from a certain aspect, in human nature itself For, as you are perhaps able to gather directly from the public lectures held recently, in human life the forces of that world are playing in which the human being finds himself between death and a new birth. Into this life—much more intensely than one imagines—are the forces playing, in which the human being is embedded, as the so-called dead. We are, as human beings, so fashioned—in the last lecture I drew attention more to the physical aspect—that in reality, the threshold between the everyday physical world and the spiritual world, cuts right through our midst. If we hold in mind our everyday life, and what we have considered the last time more from the physical side, today more from the side of the soul, then we may say: While we are incarnated here in the physical body, our human life runs its course in such a way that we have active in us, first, everything that can be experienced through the senses during our life, everything that is outspread around us, so to say, as a tapestry of the sense impressions, and from which we receive knowledge through our senses. Upon this world, then, everything is built which we elaborate out of this sense world, but which we also, independently of it, are able to interpenetrate in our thought life. When, however, we unite sense life and thought life, we have in reality everything in which we live with our usual waking consciousness.

From the moment we awaken in the morning until the moment we fall asleep, we are awake in reality only in our sense impressions and in our thought life. We are not awake at all, in the full sense of the word, in our feelings, in our feeling life. And there, between the thought life and the feeling life, practically unnoticed for the everyday consciousness, lies the threshold. For what interpenetrates our feeling life as a deeper reality does not actually come to consciousness at all in the human being. The feelings themselves do [not?] come to consciousness in him. They surge up and down out of a subconscious world. But the consciousness has really nothing more to do with feeling that we in sleep have to do with our dreams. Therefore it was possible recently to say here in Switzerland in public lectures:—While the human being lives in his feeling life, he is actually asleep and dreaming. The dream life extends itself over into our waking life. We are really continuously in a dream state from the moment of going to sleep to that of awakening, but only those dreams are remembered or enter our consciousness that are most strongly connected with our physical existence; dreaming continues on throughout the entire sleep life. Only in the deeper layers of our consciousness do we sleep, so to say, dreamlessly. But this dreaming and dreamless sleep life goes over into our feeling life, into the life of our affections. And we know no more of the reality, of the actual content of the ordinary consciousness in the non-clairvoyant consciousness of our feeling life, than we know what actually occurs when the images of the dream life run their course before us. Therefore it was also stated in these lectures that the human being does not inwardly experience the content of what is termed “History” with waking consciousness, but dreams it through, goes through it in a dream. History is what may be termed a cosmic dream of the human being. For the impulses that live in history live actually in feeling and emotional impulses. He dreams, while he inwardly experiences, history. Thus the life of feeling lies quite underneath the threshold of the real, waking consciousness. In this soul relationship also the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious life cuts right across the middle of the human being. In his will life the human being sleeps completely. For with his everyday consciousness he knows nothing about what actually lives in the will. His ordinary consciousness lives in the reality that expresses itself in the will in exactly the same way in which he lives in deep sleep. He follows consciously only that which, proceeding out of the will, has gone over into action. In this he awakens; in the execution of the will he cannot awaken. Therefore the philosophers continually quarrel about the freedom and the non-freedom of the will, because they are unable to penetrate into the region that can only be seen into with clairvoyant consciousness, the region out of which the will really draws its impulses.

Thus—I accentuate it once more—in the soul relationship also, the threshold lies between the actual physical world of waking life and the world which remains subconscious for him, lies in the midst of the human being himself, for this human being.

Now everything which the human being experiences and lives with between death and a new birth plays right into his life, insofar as it is the life of the feeling and the will—that is, insofar as it has been dreamt and slept through. What the dead live through is actually in the world in which we are living, in as far as we feel and will. Only we do not know with ordinary consciousness the realities that live in feeling and willing. If we could live through the reality which gives the basis of the feeling life, if we would live through especially the reality giving the basis of the willing life, just as in waking we live through the reality of the sense perceptions and the thought conceptions—the conceptions indeed to a minor degree, nevertheless to a certain degree—then would the departed, the man who has passed through the portals of death, be just as much beside us, in continual association with us, as someone who still walks about with us here on the physical plane, so that we are able to receive impressions from him in our waking consciousness by means of our senses and thought life. What is living in the impulses of the departed dead ascends continually within our feeling life, into the life of our will impulses. And only because we dream and sleep this away do we feel separated from the dead with whom we were associated.

In reality, however, the world in which the so-called dead live is quite different from the world in which we live while we are incarnated in the physical body. For observe, when you ask quite seriously: what then exists for the waking non-clairvoyant consciousness from the time of waking until going to sleep? The answer is: Only that which can be lived through in the world which is spread out as a tapestry of the sense impressions and also in the world we fashion out of it for ourselves by means of our thought conceptions. From this world, in the first place, everything belonging to the so-called mineral kingdom, for which the sense organs are used in perceiving, is not directly existent for the dead. To this mineral world belong, for example, also the stars, the sun and moon; in general everything belongs to it that is perceptible to the senses, and to it belongs also a large region of the plant world. These are regions that primarily do not lie open to the spiritual- and soul-eyes of the dead.

On the other hand there begins to open up already for the soul-eyes of the dead the world of which we are more or less unconscious when we direct our glance toward it—the glance which is of course veiled by the sense world—that is to say the world of impulses, of forces which live in the animals. This is for the dead the lowest world, in exactly the same way that the mineral world is the lowest world for us here in the physical body. Just as for us the plant world, which sprouts forth out of the mineral kingdom, builds itself up, so, for the dead, the human world, as soul world, erects itself upon the foundation that lives in the animal world. And just as the animal world forms the third category, which erects itself upon the mineral and plant world, so the kingdom of the Angels, Archangels, etc., forms a higher kingdom in the world of the dead.

The entire environment into which the departed one is transposed is thereby different from the environment in which we ourselves live in the physical body. For just conceive for a moment how it would be, were everything you perceive with the senses taken out of the world which you perceive with your physical body, about which you, in your physical body, form concepts. There would be something remaining over and above for the non-clairvoyant perception which can only have the appearance of a dream world, a world which can only be dreamed, which cannot live any more strongly in the consciousness than a dream. But the distinction becomes clearer if we hold the difference in mind in yet another way. Just notice that as long as we are incarnated in the physical body, the essential thing that lends character to our lives (the chief characteristic) is that we (although inwardly the matter is difficult as you know from other lectures) are able to have the consciousness that whatever we do with the beings of the mineral and plant kingdoms—as a result of our intercourse with them—remains relatively a matter of indifference to them. We act indeed under the influence of this thought just expressed. We break the stone calmly and have the idea that we do not cause the stone pain, nor also give it any joy. You know that inwardly the matter is somewhat different: but in as far as we human beings are in touch with the surrounding mineral world, we think with a certain justification that joy and pain is not at once aroused when we break a stone to pieces or do something similar.

In a like manner do we relate ourselves to the plant world. The human beings are now very rare who, for example, feel a sort of pain, have a somewhat similar feeling when a flower is plucked. The individuals, who in a certain sense still prefer to have the rose on the rosebush than to have the rose bouquet in the room, are not at all so numerous. It is only with the animal world that we begin to bring our human nature directly into relationship with the surrounding world. And yet let it be said once more:—the human beings are just now quite rare among present day people who have a feeling—only distantly similar to be sure—when plucking roses similar to the one they would have were the heads of animals being torn off in order to bind them together in a nosegay:—even among anthroposophists I have found that not everyone always prefers to have roses on the rose-bush—although indeed the feeling has already progressed so far that there has never been, let us say, a bouquet of nightingale heads presented in a hall! Now we are beginning to feel how the life that extends itself out of us continues on into our surrounding world.

The departed has no such condition. For him nothing exists at all in the environment for which he could not have the feeling that if he were only to stretch out a finger—this is now expressed quite symbolically, in imagery—then what is accomplished—through the sticking out of his finger, indeed, through any action whatever, yes, through everything done by the dead—would not bring about, would not release joy and pain in the environment. He does not enter at all into relationship with his surroundings unless he awakens joy and pain, unless there exists an echo of joy and pain. If you do something after you have passed through the portals of death, then through your action, wherever it may be, pain or joy, tension or relaxation of something is continually occurring which is similar to the feeling life. If we knock on a table we feel that it does not pain the table. The one who is dead can never carry out an action without knowing that he lives and weaves, not only into the living element, but into the living element filled with feeling. The feeling-filled incitement is spread out over his entire environment.

From another aspect you will find that described in the corresponding chapter of my book Theosophy. This world of incitement filled with feeling lives thus upon the lowest level there above in the animal kingdom. And just as we are acquainted with a certain external side of the mineral kingdom by means of our sense perceptions, so is the departed dead familiar, over the extent of his whole world, with the inner side, not with the outer form, but with the inner aspect of animal life. This animal life is the lowest basis upon which he lives, upon which he fashions himself, upon which he erects his existence. And a large amount of work of the dead consists in their placing themselves in direct relationship to the world of living animal creatures. Just as we here on earth, from childhood on, place ourselves in connection with the dead mineral world, so do we after death establish ourselves continually on a broad and expanding, growing relationship to the world of the living animal. This world the dead person learns to know on all sides. This world the departed learns to know through having to penetrate step by step all the secrets which here on earth are concealed from him, just as that is concealed from his soul which slumbers underneath his feeling life, for it is the same thing.

Granted, such a question as the one I now intend to interject cannot be allowed as a proper scientific one. But it can nevertheless point toward something behind which real relationships exist. It can be asked: why then is there so much really concealed from the human being here in the physical world by the governing power of the all-penetrating world wisdom? We can ask, why is that concealed into which the dead must be initiated, the mysteries of the construction of the whole animal world?

Directly when we attempt to answer such a question, we plunge into the deepest of all mysteries of existence. And in these considerations we shall have to try to understand this question also. In the first place, however, we must perceive how this comprehension of the inner side of the animal life really takes place.

Here I might proceed, in order not to become theoretical, from a fact of recent history. You know that in a certain external way human historical consciousness has experienced a change in modern times through so-called Darwinism. There has been an endeavor to find the forces by means of which the organisms evolve from the so-called imperfect condition. The Darwinists have named several kinds:—primarily the principle of special selection, survival of the fittest, the adjustment to environment, etc., I do not intend to come to you with these things which you indeed can read in every handbook on Darwinism, even in every encyclopedia. But I wish to point out that those are external, abstract principles: that for those who look deeper, nothing at all is said thereby. What actually happens is not shown when it is said: the perfection occurs through the selection of the fittest, the others gradually dying out and the fittest surviving. Here nothing is actually said about the forces, about the impulses that actually live in the animal kingdom—in order that these creatures may be able not only first to perfect themselves but also to be able to frame their life correspondingly in the ordinary present-day world. What really acts in the forces of selection, in forces that are put forward by Darwinism as forces of selection, as forces that are of a purely mechanically purposeful character. It is the dead working there. It belongs to the most astonishing and impressive experiences which can be made in the circle of the dead, to discover that just as here there are smiths and joiners and others who work in the world of mechanics, in the handicrafts, and thereby create the physical sensible basis of life here, so in the spirit realm, beginning with the animal kingdom and upwards, do the dead work. While the animal kingdom here in many respects is such that we feel it to be an inferior one—however, the mineral world lies indeed still lower—yet the very basis of the work of the dead is the furthering of the animal kingdom. Therefore, the departed become accustomed to living in all the skillfulness that is concealed from him, through the fact of his world of feeling being plunged down into the life of animal existence, during the life between birth and death.

You see, we come here to the point of view that until our age was held more or less secret by the brotherhoods that believed, partly justly, partly unjustly, that other men were not ripe enough for such things. If you gain the knowledge of what is related to the animal nature in the world of the dead, if you look about, you then see that all this belongs to the living element filled with feeling. The human being has also this living element filled with feeling in his soul. But in what way? Between birth and death he possesses it in such a way that were it not locked up in his subconsciousness he could at every moment employ this living element filled with feeling, which exists in the period between birth and death, for the destruction of the remainder of this element in the world. So just imagine what that really means. You yourself, in your personal life, live as a living-element-filled-with-feeling, which, however, is enclosed in the boundaries that are drawn into the physical human being. If human beings were to have this element generally, freely at their disposal—anthroposophists will already be more cultivated in this regard—then they could, in every instance, employ these concealed forces to destroy the living element filled with feeling that is lying in their environment.

The animal nature in the human being is primarily, even in the most exact meaning of the word, a destructive one. And it is even endowed with the capacity to destroy. And when the individual has passed through death's door, then it is his task above everything to tear out of his soul all the impulses that have then become free in such a way that there is really a very great deal remaining of the desire to destroy the living, to kill the living. And it can be said, that to have respect and reverence for all living things is something that the departed must learn above everything else. This reverence for everything living is something that can be looked upon as the self-evident evolution of the departed. So just as we here with inner participation follow a child which as a matter of course evolves from a small infant onward, gradually from day to day, from week to week, just as we follow up with this child the way the soul takes hold of the fleshly bodily nature, having great joy in what happens without the cooperation of the so-called free will, in what occurs there through the pure organic forces of the soul; so in a similar manner, when we follow up the course taken by the departed from the day of his death onward through his life after death, we again behold the development of the deepest reverence for all living beings in the environment, a development from which free will has been withdrawn.

This is something which, as it were, happens like an external side in the departed, just as with the child this occurs as an external side through its growing up, by its traits becoming more expressive. What increases externally in the child to our joy, in like manner increases in the departed by our discovering something radiating from him, more and more through his holding every living thing sacred in such an exalted way. But in this connection an important difference occurs between the life after death and the life here on earth. The life here has concealed by a veil just that in which the departed must deepen himself. We perceive the world through our senses and form for ourselves certain laws which we call the laws of nature, according to which we then form round about us our mechanical instruments, our tools. What we erect round about us according to the laws of nature is indeed essentially a world of the dead. We must even kill the plant, even the tree, when we wish to place its wood at the service of our mechanical arts. And again it belongs to the most staggering knowledge, that in reality everything which our senses teach us, when we apply it by means of our will, is something destructive and cannot be anything else but something destructive.

Even when we create a work of art we must take part in the world of destruction. What we thus create first arises out of destruction. A beneficent world wisdom has only caused us at first to shrink back, as human beings, from placing what lives (generally speaking, from the animal-world upward) at the service of mechanical art. In a certain higher sense, however, everything lives in the world. You will already realize this from the various accounts given during the course of the year. But what do we do in reality when we place at the service of mechanical art that which we perceive through our senses and combine through our understanding? We continually carry death into life. Even a Raphael painting cannot come into being unless death is carried into life. Before a Raphael painting arises it contains more life than afterwards. In the universe this is compensated only through the fact that souls appear who enjoy the Raphael painting and receive from it an impulse, a strong impression. The impulse, the impression which the creating or enjoying soul receives, this alone can help to overcome the forces of death, even when the highest treasure, the so-called highest spiritual possessions of mankind are created here on the physical plane. Essentially, the earth will be destroyed because through their mechanical acts human beings carry death into the earth in such a strong measure. The earth will no longer be able to live, because the forces of death prevail over that which can be saved and carried over into the world of Jupiter, beyond the decay of the physical earth. But out of what human beings have created by weaving together death and life—out of what they have thus created—they will have regained a soul content which they will then carry over into the world of Jupiter.

Death or the destruction of what is living, continually weaves into life, more than words can say; it weaves in human activity itself, through the fact that between birth and death [unreadable] human activity is intimately interwoven with the sense of [unreadable]. Indeed, consciousness arises because death weaves itself into life. Man would not accomplish his task on earth, as far as consciousness is concerned, were he not called upon to weave death into life. Even within ourselves we kill the life of the nerves the very moment in which we form a thought; for a really living nerve cannot form thoughts. In recent public lectures I have said that—“We enter into the life of our nerves through a constant death-process.”

In this respect the life between death and a new birth is the exact opposite. There it is essential for the human soul to acquire the habit of holding holy all that is living, of permeating the living with ever more and more life.

In this manner the life between birth and death is connected with death; the life between death and a new birth, with the life of the whole. An animal kingdom lives upon the earth only through the fact that man dies and sends his impulses from the spiritual world into the life of the animals.

The second thing which man learns to know after death is the kingdom of the human soul itself, regardless of whether these human souls are embodied here in physical bodies or have already passed through the gate of death. After death, man faces the animal world with the feeling that when he carries out an action, something experiences joy, or another being, at least something possessing being, suffers pain. He knows that he strikes against living reality when his spiritual force alone hits against this. Here it is more a universal living and weaving within living reality. In regard to the familiarity with what exists in our own human sphere after we are dead, it is so, that when another soul enters into a relationship with us, after we ourselves have passed through the gate of death, we become aware that our own life-feeling is either strengthened or diminished, according to the way in which we face this soul. Through our relation to a certain soul, regardless of whether it dwells here upon the earth or in the spiritual world, we feel that we become inwardly strengthened. Our companionship with this soul strengthens us in a certain way; our inner forces become stronger and at the same time more alive. We meet this soul and feel that it makes us more awake than we would have been otherwise. An intimate sense of life streams toward us with a certain intensity, through our companionship with this soul. Instead, the relationship with another soul may weaken us in the direction of certain forces and dim down our life, as it were.

Our companionship with souls consists therein that we feel our own life surging livingly in this relationship with the others. We live out our life of feeling and will as human beings between birth and death without knowing that the souls of the dead live in the waves of this life of feeling and will, which we sleep and dream away. They are always there; they live in the waves of our own feeling and will, and they live there in such a way that they experience this life with us. While we experience the surrounding world through our senses as something external, the dead live in the impulses of our feelings and will; they are far more intimately bound together with us than we, insofar as we are physically embodied, are bound together with our surroundings.

It is so that this life—or better, this experiencing, this inner presence in life—of the dead, develops gradually in accordance with the conditions that have been spun out during our life here. Assuredly we live together with all souls after death; this is true, but we know nothing about it. Relationships set in slowly and gradually; namely, with souls with whom we have formed connections during our life between birth and death. We cannot form new relationships, original connections with other human beings during the life between death and a new birth; we can form no such connections originally and directly. When we have loved or hated someone here, i.e., when we were connected with him either in a positive or in a negative way, this again rises from a gray spiritual depth, in the gradual awakening of the life after death, so that we live within these souls, as I have just described.

Thus, a great part of this experiencing, or this inner life-presence of the dead, consists in the fact that everything that exists in the form of a link with other souls, during our last or earlier incarnations, gradually rises up from a gray spiritual depth. This can widen out—and in the case of many departed souls it widens out very soon after death—but in an immediate way. Someone may die; he may have stood in some kind of relationship to a soul dwelling either on the earth or in the spiritual world. This relationship appears before him once more after death, as I have described just now. But this soul with whom he is linked up has relations with other souls, with whom, perhaps, he has never come into contact during any of his lives between birth and death. But here, after death, such souls can establish an indirect contact with the so-called dead soul, and thus enter into relationship with him.

But, as I have already said, these are never direct connections, for they are always mediated by the souls with whom we are linked up karmically through our physical life. The connection with souls where no relationship has been established during physical life is always quite a different one, and is transmitted through the soul who was connected with us in physical life.

You can easily realize, now, that first there are direct, then indirect relationships. Through the fact, however, that all souls are more or less connected with one another throughout the earth, and that during his long life between death and a new birth, man forms, indirectly at least, many new connections—through this fact, the human being enters a very wide field of mutual experience with other souls, if we also take into consideration these indirect relationships. Even when we are here on earth we have already within us this living-into other souls. In the spiritual world we have lived together with innumerable souls, over and over again. The feeling of being at one with all souls, which an abstract philosophy considers only abstractly, and discusses as an abstract at-oneness, has its quite concrete side. Namely, that souls are scarcely to be found over the whole earth with whom there is not at least a distant and indirect connection. We must grasp this fact as concretely as possible, then this will lead us to something real. What the departed experiences is thus a gradual growing into and awakening into a world based, in a wider sense, on his karma. An inward brightness that increases more and more spreads, as it were, over this world, as our experiences become richer in this second realm, which is based upon the animalic realm, just as our experiences in the plant realm are based upon the mineral realm. Our experiences become ever richer and richer.

Imagine this experience extending in all concrete directions, and you will obtain a great deal of that which permeates the soul of the departed between death and a new birth; for all thoughts that connect us in any way with other souls are bound up with this experience. Herein lies an infinitely rich world. Essentially is it so (you will gather this from the cycle on Life Between Death and Rebirth) that during the first half of this life between death and a new birth, the development is more filled with wisdom, more permeated with wisdom. In a wise way man becomes accustomed to the connections that he gradually draws up again out of the spiritual depth. He becomes familiar with all this in a very wise way. Essentially, the threads leading to all karmic relationships of a direct or indirect nature begin in what I have called in the Mystery Plays “The Midnight Hour of Being.” Then follows the further working out, and then an element of force, similar to the will, but only similar, not exactly the same—enters into the life of the soul. This element of force, similar to the will, makes the human being stronger and stronger. Above all, it strengthens those impulses in him that are added to the wisdom-filled survey of the world, as elements and impulses pertaining to the will, as impulses of force.

A certain form of will becomes active in man during the second half of the life between death and a new birth. If we observe this will (we can do this especially in the case of souls who, through this or that circumstance, have a shorter or a shortened life between death and new birth) we find that the will takes a peculiar direction, which may be characterized by saying—the will arises in order to wipe out in some way the traces of our life, the traces of karma.

Please grasp this quite clearly. Such a will, aiming at the effacement of the traces of karma, becomes more and more evident in man. This effacement of the traces of karma is connected with the deepest secrets of human life. Were man to have a continual and full survey of the wisdom which he can acquire very soon, comparatively soon, after death, then there would be numberless human beings who would prefer to wipe out the traces of their existence, rather than enter into new lives. The elaboration of our earlier lives into a karmic connection, which we achieve, can only be achieved because we are dulled by certain beings of the higher hierarchy during the second half of the life between death and a new birth; we are paralyzed in regard to the light of wisdom, so that we restrict our activity and our will- impulses more and more. And we must say that the aim of this is to restrict them in such a way that we create what can then become united with a physical human body in the stream of heredity, and can live out its earthly destiny in this physical body.

We can only understand these thoughts fully when we consider earthly destiny itself. How dream-like this earthly destiny is for man on earth! As a child he accustoms himself gradually to the conditions of earthly life. What we call destiny comes to him in the form of single life experiences. Out of the woof of these life experiences, something is formed which is in reality man himself. For think what you would be as far as the present day, had you not lived through your own particular destiny! You can indeed say—I myself am what I have experienced as destiny. You would be quite another human being had you experienced a different destiny. And yet, how strange destiny seems to be, how little interwoven with what man calls his ego! In how many countless cases the ego feels itself struck by destiny! Why? Because what we ourselves do towards the molding of our destiny remains hidden in the subconsciousness. What we experience takes up its place in the world of sense-experience and in the world of thoughts. It merely strikes against our feeling life. Our feeling life remains passive to this. What we have in common with the realm of the dead springs forth actively out of our feeling life and out of the life of the will impulses. What springs forth in this way, and what we ourselves do without our consciousness, by dreaming and sleeping through it, this forms our destiny; we ourselves are this. We dream and sleep through all we do toward the molding of our own destiny. We wake in what we experience as our destiny, but only because it remains unconscious. What is it that remains in reality unconscious? That which sounds across as impulses, out of earlier incarnations on earth, and out of the life between death and a new birth in a purely spiritual way—out of the regions where also the dead are to be found—a region which we dream and sleep away. At the same time, these are forces that come also from ourselves. They are the forces with which we mold our destiny. We weave our destiny out of the same region that the dead inhabit in common with us.

Think how we grow together with this world, of which we now know something to a certain extent—how we sleep through it and how we experience it—although we have not yet spoken of the experiences in connection with the beings of the higher hierarchies. This will also be considered. But what I wish to convey in a description of this kind is that we must place the realm of the so-called dead within the same realm in which we ourselves live, and we must become conscious of the fact that we feel separated from the dead (but in reality we are not separated from them) only because we dream and sleep away our feeling-life and will-life, where the dead are. However, something else can be found in this world that we dream and sleep away, something that man as a rule does not follow at all in his usual consciousness. Sometimes he becomes aware of this when it appears before him in specially striking cases; but these are exceptional, outstanding cases, which only draw attention to what is always permeating life and streaming through it. You yourselves will have heard of many cases resembling the following one:—

Someone is in the habit of taking a daily walk; it leads him to a mountain slope. He goes there every day; it is his special pleasure. One day he goes there again as usual. Suddenly, while he is walking, he hears something like a voice, although it is not a physical voice, which tells him:—Why are you taking this walk? Can you really not do without this pleasure? It speaks more or less like this. He begins to hesitate and turns aside, in order to think over what has just happened to him. In this instant a piece of rock rolls down; it would quite certainly have struck him, had he not turned aside.

This is a true story, but one that only points out sensationally something that is always present in our lives. How often you plan to do this or that—and this or that prevents you. Think how many things would have been different, even in the smallest experiences of life, had you started out at an appointed hour, instead of half an hour later, because something detained you. Think what changes have thus come into your life; what changes have also come into the lives of many other people! It is quite easy to picture this. Let us suppose that you have planned to take a walk at 3:30 PM; you were supposed to meet another person and to tell him some news that he, in his turn, would have told to someone else. Because you came too late you do not tell him this news; this was not done, and with a certain right. Here we see a universal order of laws that differs from the one that we describe as a necessity of Nature. It consists therein, that someone is prevented from continuing his walk because he hears a voice that causes him to turn aside, and thus saves him from being struck dead by the falling piece of rock. We feel that here a different world system is at work. But this world system permeates our existence always, not merely when such sensational events take place. Even in such matters, we are used to see only the sensational aspect of things. We do not notice this other world. Why? Because we turn our gaze toward the events that occur in our life and in our surroundings and not toward the events that do not occur, events that are continually being prevented, continually being hindered.

From a certain moment in spiritual experience, that which does not happen is held back from us. That from which we are, as it were, prevented, can rise up in our consciousness in the same way as that which does happen; except that it comes to our consciousness as another world system. Try to place this world system before your souls by saying to yourselves: man is accustomed to look only at what happens and not at what has been prevented from happening. What he does not notice in this case is intimately connected with the realm in which the dead are, in which we ourselves are with our dreamlike feeling and sleeping will. Within us, we cut ourselves off from this other world because dream and sleep play also into our waking life. All that seethes, lives and weaves beneath the boundary which separates our thinking from our feeling contains, at the same time, the secrets that build not only the bridge between the so-called living and the so-called dead, but also the bridge between the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom and of so-called chance.

Today I would like to give a spiritual-scientific historical consideration that can be important to us, especially in view of the momentous events we are facing, the events that the whole of European humanity is facing. Next Wednesday, I will then touch on a more intimate matter of the spiritual life of the human being. If some of us may find what we are to consider today seemingly remote, it is only seemingly so and should not be remote, because spiritual science should fill our souls with the deepest attention for everything that can contribute to the understanding of our time. As I said, on Wednesday we will then return to a purely human spiritual-scientific matter.

Today I would like to start with one question. But do not be alarmed, and do not think that by placing this question at the beginning of our deliberations I am in the slightest degree seeking to revive old disputes in our movement. As you will see, it is a completely different matter, although I will start with a question that could easily be misunderstood at first. The question I would like to raise is: Why, especially during this time of war, does Mrs. Besant continue to defame our German movement in her English magazines? Why did she find it necessary, right in the first months of the war, to say that our German movement had only the intention of being a kind of agency for anti-English political aspirations in Germany? Why did she find it necessary to say that this German movement of ours had the intention of bringing about her own – Mrs. Besant's – dismissal as president of the Theosophical Society in order to establish herself in India and from there organize some kind of anti-English, pan-German movement against England? Why does Mrs. Besant continue to spread these slanderous accusations against our German movement during this war in such an ugly manner, and why will she probably continue to do so?

Within our spiritual movement, we need nothing more than to have a clear, insightful view of what is going on in the world. That which can so easily please those who often believe that they are standing firmly within our movement, a certain - forgive the harsh expression - mental somnolence in the face of world events, is a great disadvantage, especially within such a spiritual movement. We must strive to have the clearest possible view of the affairs of our external existence. For nothing could be easier than for all manner of charlatanry and fraud to attach themselves to such a movement within the development of humanity. And since, within the limits that we have often emphasized, a certain amount of trust is needed even among the small group of those who want to understand certain things here, it is also obvious that, seduced by a certain trustfulness, precisely personalities of our movement are, so to speak, clouded by those who do not want to tell them the truth, but only want to graft all kinds of things into their souls, in order to breed a spiritual bodyguard for all kinds of endeavors, which in the proper sense are not truly spiritual endeavors of humanity, so to speak, by the detour of theosophical or other spiritual beliefs.

We have often pointed out the position of the Russian people within the development of the fifth post-Atlantic cultural epoch, and since I have often discussed the relevant matters in this regard here in Stuttgart during this war period, I will not go back over them today, although you can read about them in individual cycles. Rather, I would like to draw attention to the fact that there are certain fundamental characteristics of the Russian people that make this Russian people particularly suitable for entering into the development of the fifth post-Atlantic or even sixth post-Atlantic cultural development in the way often characterized.

First of all, we have a characteristic of the Russian people that could be called an especially extensive adaptability of the soul to anything of a spiritual nature that confronts the Russian person in any way, a certain adaptability of the soul. It is the case that the Russian person is less productive, less creative in his own soul than the Central or Western European person, that he is, as it were, dependent on receiving and on living through intensively what he has received, but not on shaping it independently out of his own resources. Thus you can see how the Russian people received the Byzantine religion and left it at the point it was at when they received it. And today one can still see from the ceremonies of the Russian Church how ancient oriental essence shines through these ceremonies. One can, I would like to say, look through the form of the Russian Church at ancient sacred oriental things and feel this ancient sacred oriental essence.

Compare this with what has occurred in the Occident, where, as you know, in a development of dogma and ceremony that has been repeatedly challenged, there has been a continuous reshaping, transformation, and thus a creative intervention in what was once adopted by the community that then became the Roman Catholic Church, Protestantism, and so on. This adaptability, this receptivity, is to some extent the first fundamental characteristic of the Russian people.

A second fundamental characteristic is a certain dislike on the part of the Russian people for what we call the permeation of life with intellectuality. The Russian person does not like to be constrained by many precisely defined laws in social life. He demands, as it were, a kind of arbitrary existence of the ego. That the intellect spans a network of legality and that the individual then strictly adheres to such forms of intellect in social life, that is what the Russian man, at least practically, does not want to understand, even if he sometimes goes into it theoretically. He asks more about what the ego wants at the moment, based on the inspiration of the moment.

A third characteristic of the Russian people is – Herder, in particular, pointed this out in a thorough manner; the Slavophiles then took up this Herderian view, which is a German view, and developed it to the point of a kind of megalomania – that the Russian people have retained what is generally found in the oriental character, a certain peacefulness. However strange it may sound, it is in the nature of the Russian people, because the Russian people did not make this war as such: it was instigated by those in power. He has a certain peaceableness. He has the deep belief that the way in which Western European religion develops leads to conflict and quarrel. It is not in the character of the Oriental man to wage war against his fellow men because of religious dogmas. It is even a little strange – it is indeed true, but it is true – that people now notice it so strongly in the Turks, who also have this oriental trait, that they do not become aggressive with regard to religious life itself.

As I said, it lies in the faith, in the consciousness of the Russian people. These three qualities, on the other hand, are particularly susceptible to abuse by those who seek to exploit them. It is very easy to use the adaptability of the Russian character, as the Slavophiles did and as the Pan-Slavists are now doing to a great extent, to persuade the Russian people that they are called upon to replace the decrepit, senile European culture, which is decaying and dying, with Russian life instead.

On the other hand, if the second quality I mentioned is misused, one can persuade the Russian people that the whole of Western and Central European culture has become decrepit because of its particular penchant for intellectualism, for a certain rationality, that this Western European culture is devoid of any truly true mystical quality.

And thirdly, if you want to abuse the third quality of the Russian people, which has been mentioned, the most peaceful quality can be perverted by organizing the otherwise peaceful masses and calling them to the bloodiest fight. Because really, the contradictions touch each other in the world, and especially such contradictions as are being discussed here. But what the Russian people have to mean in the development of European culture is not related to what Russian rulers are now making of this Russian people, but to the three qualities mentioned.

. And these three characteristics determine the Russian nature to enter into a certain connection with the Central European and Western European nature. Because the Russian national character is adaptable, it is called upon, first of all, to achieve what we have often spoken of, what it has to achieve in the sixth post-Atlantic cultural period, first of all not through creativity, but through existence. To achieve this, it must absorb what comes to it from the West. I have often spoken of it as a kind of spiritual marriage. Years, even decades before the outbreak of this war, I may say, a kind of marriage that is necessary between the Central European being and the Russian being in terms of spiritual development.

The fact that the Russian people have a certain aversion to intellectualism will make it possible to create certain social institutions with the Russian people that will only be possible if the aforementioned marriage really takes place.

And in a similar way, the Russian national character will have to relate to what can be given within Central Europe in general. Tomorrow, in the public lecture, we will again have to speak of such things that follow from the Central European nature and that must be incorporated as something great, powerful, and everlasting into the whole course of human development. But the Russian people will have to accept what is achieved by the Central European nature. It is not initially self-creative within this post-Atlantic period.

But now, in contrast to this, what can be characterized as the essence of Russian nationality, .the Central European nationality and the Western European nationality, that Western European nationality, which after the reign of Queen Elizabeth of England essentially became a British nationality, an Anglo-Saxon nationality. And among the many results of these momentous events, which of course it is not my profession to somehow color, it will most certainly be the case that the other Western European states, no matter how these events turn out, will gradually become vassals, dependent peoples of England. In particular, the French will experience the bitterest disappointments. But these are not the things that really matter. What matters to us today is to emphasize the great contrast that exists between the Central European character and the Western European, especially the British and Anglo-Saxon character.

There has never been – and this may go unnoticed today by those who do not want to think, who do not want to observe – a greater contrast in world-historical development than this contrast between Central European and Anglo-Saxon natures. Not as if the individual personality could not rise above it. That is not the point; the point is nationality. Of course, when such things are being characterized, it is never meant to imply that the individual Englishman cannot, of course, rise above the things being characterized. We should not think that we have somehow fallen into the errors of our belligerent opponents and that we must now thoroughly vilify the English character because it is different. Of course, it would be necessary to try to gather together all the possible building blocks that would actually be needed to fully understand the contrast I have been hinting at. But this contrast can become clear to us from the point of view of: on the one hand, if we look at the Central European nature, at the heart of which stands the German nature, in relation to the Russian nature of the East, and on the other hand, if we look at the British, French nature in its relationship to the Russian East. There we have one of the greatest contrasts in the development of mankind. I must, however, merely point out to you today some of the things that I will be discussing in tomorrow's public lecture. But I would like the small group of those who belong to the spiritual science movement to understand what will be said in more detail tomorrow more deeply than it can be understood at first, if one does not penetrate deeper into spiritual science.

You see, the Central European nature is one that is national in a completely different way than any other nationality in the whole development of mankind. Take all the Western European peoples: they are national, so to speak, out of the blood. The German is national out of the soul. The German is national in that he constantly strives to lift certain contents of the soul life out of the general soul life and to transplant them into his own soul. That is why we experience something so great within the German character, such as Goethe's works of art, Herder's historical reflection or the world-view efforts of Hegel, Schelling and Fichte.

Even if these things are still little known in wider circles today, they will become known. For, contrary to all opinions expressed about them, I must say that they can become popular, they can be presented in such a way that every child can understand them, despite the fact that this is not believed today. That will happen. Everything that is a genuine German world view grows out of the deepest soul essence of the German people. And a spiritual movement could never arise within the German soul that would be similar in character to the spiritual movements of the West, if it is to be fruitful. We must not overlook this difference, we must face it squarely. Within the German national soul, everything that is the content of spiritual science must stand in harmonious relationship to what the people as such produce. That is why I said last time I was here in Stuttgart: If you look at the world view of Schelling, Fichte and Hegel, it is as if the whole nation were meditating. One always feels placed in the folk, but in the soul of the folk when one speaks of the German folk. One cannot speak of German nationality in any other way than by taking into account the spiritual characteristics of this German nationality, that which must be striven for. And it is impossible within Germanness, as it is possible in England, for science to exist on the one hand and for this science to want to completely ignore faith on the other. That is not possible in the long term within the German nation. The German wants unity. He wants to have a spirituality that can stand fully on the ground of science, and he wants to have a science that knows how to justify itself before the spiritual life.

This contrast is most evident in the Goethean and Newtonian theories of colors. For more than thirty years I have been trying to bring out the Goethean theory of colors in contrast to the Newtonian one. While Goethe's theory of colors arises entirely from the deep interweaving of the soul with the world, Newton's theory of colors proceeds from a mechanical view of the world and strives for nothing else. And physics today is so anglicized that it does not even notice what is at stake in this field, that it naturally considers anyone who takes Goethe's theory of colors seriously to be a fool.

There is a striving towards spirituality within German national character. Therefore, within German national character, one is also obliged to reckon with what has been sought in ardent spiritual striving by the best of this nation, by those whom we have already mentioned and by those whom we will mention again tomorrow, precisely as a path to spiritual science. But then this German national character cannot but strive objectively, turned to the matter itself. This is something that the English or the French cannot understand. The Frenchman wants to have a beautiful word, to have everything shaped into a beautiful phrase, and then he is satisfied. The Englishman wants to ask where the use of knowledge or the like lies. But the fact that the knowledge we strive for is something that must grow out of the soul like a flower out of a plant, without which man does not feel like a whole human being, is something that neither the French — as Frenchmen, of course, the individual is not at issue — nor the Anglo-Saxons understand.

The task of the German soul is to accomplish what has been achieved since the time of the ancient Greeks for the fourth post-Atlantic cultural period, namely to shape the experience of the soul into a world of ideas. And one really does not need to be a nationalist in the narrow-minded sense, but rather a completely objective observer of the development of humanity, to emphasize this. And you know that I have not only emphasized this in the context of this war, but these considerations have been part of what I have been saying among us for years, for a decade and a half.

But the fact that this German essence is so, means that it is called upon, for psychological and objective reasons, to enter into the spiritual marriage with the Russian East. And the cultural task of the future will never be able to be fulfilled in any other way than by the Russian adaptability accepting what can come out of German national character. And all future cultural development is a question of this connection between Central Europe and Eastern Europe.

The situation is different for Western Europe. Western Europe has adopted what the fourth post-Atlantic cultural period has brought and developed it independently, but in the way I have often described: only through the three soul forces: sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul. What this fourth post-Atlantic cultural period essentially sends out is not productive. In particular, the British folk soul, the Anglo-Saxon folk soul, has the task of developing the consciousness soul, developing that which is primarily oriented towards usefulness in relation to the physical plane.

Hence all the phenomena that we see occurring within Western Europe, especially within the Anglo-Saxon peoples. But now this Anglo-Saxon people in particular instinctively feel that what is actually fruitful is the Central European, essentially the German influence of Central Europe. And those who lead the so-called occult movements of Western Europe, namely the Anglo-Saxon people, know what is at stake. Those who lead the occult movements in the Anglo-Saxon culture are initially filled with two trains of thought. The first train of thought is that they say to themselves: the Roman Catholic essence is gone; that essentially belongs to the fourth post-Atlantic period. The Anglo-Saxon essence must take the place of what was in the Roman cult. And every occultist of a certain kind, that is, every occultist who is steeped in his own nationality, and with the exception of a few, all of them in Anglo-Saxonism, knows — that is, he imagines that he has real knowledge — that the “Anglo-Saxon race”, as he says, must take the place of the Roman essence. This is taught in all occult schools. It is a fixed dogma.

And in the same way, people instinctively know that, to a certain extent, the recruits for the introduction to life of everything that culture must bring, the recruits who must absorb it passively through their adaptation, are Russian people.

These two things are very well known to the Anglo-Saxon occultists, that is, they see it that way, that is their conviction. Their conviction is, on the one hand, that Anglo-Saxonism has to replace the Roman essence; everything else, Protestantism, Calvinism and so on, are only appendages. Anglo-Saxonism must produce something in the world – as I said, I am now speaking of the occultists – that stands for the fifth post-Atlantic culture in the same way as the Roman Catholic essence stood for the second period of the fourth post-Atlantic culture, even as late as the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.

And now every occultist on this side is convinced that, above all, the bridge must be created between what Anglo-Saxons ascribe to themselves and the Russian essence. To infuse into the Russian soul that which Anglo-Saxon occultism seeks to teach is the ideal that emerges from the second point I have mentioned for every Anglo-Saxon occultist: to use the Russian soul as a kind of wax into which is imprinted that which Anglo-Saxon occultism wants. This ideal is far more prevalent in the circles I am now talking about than anything that is the main thing for us here.

For us, the main thing is real knowledge, real striving for truth, and our honest fundamental conviction is that when we find the truth, this truth will give people what they need, and that this truth, when we seek it in the right way, will also fructify in the right way the coming cultural epochs, so that what must happen to the peoples of Europe will come to pass, if the truth is honestly sought in the right way. Nothing more is needed than the honest search for truth; that is the true principle of spiritual science.

But this is opposed by a principle such as I have just characterized, which puts a particular race at the helm, a particular race in power, in power above all in relation to the life of the soul. We are not speaking politically now, we are speaking of what is rooted in the depths as occult paths: to make the Anglo-Saxon soul powerful and to use the Eastern European nature, which is adaptable and receptive, and to infuse it with what one wants to infuse into it, so that a marriage can arise between Anglo-Saxon and Russian. The inner impulses of human development speak of a marriage of the German nature with Russian nature. The selfish will of Anglo-Saxon occultism speaks of the fact that Russian nature must be permeated with Anglo-Saxon nature in terms of occult development of the soul.

You must face these things squarely; they are extraordinarily important. I am mentioning them as they are taught more and more in all possible occult directions in the West, especially in the Anglo-Saxon occult schools. But that which basically only the consciousness soul has to cultivate cannot acquire real content. Real occultism, however, which does not unfold desires for power but seeks the truth, is completely in organic, vital connection with the German development and is completely anchored within the German development.

But what has happened, my dear friends? If the development since the Middle Ages had not been disturbed by Ahrimanic forces, if what has happened in Europe for spiritual science had developed organically, without Ahrimanic influences (we will talk about some very late events again tomorrow), then it would be easier to see today that everything the West has achieved in the way of spiritual science has emerged from the Germanic essence. But permeated by Anglo-Saxon influences, German spiritual science was carried in masks into Anglo-Saxon and also into French culture. Only the terminology, the naming of the individual facts, was adapted to the French or English language. But if you get to the bottom of it, all that is contained in French and English occultism is German spiritual scientific research in a masked form, Central European spiritual scientific research.

In a way that I will discuss in a moment, what was called the Theosophical Society contained nothing but facts with Indian or other names that were found within German spiritual science. And the aim of the Theosophical Society was to conceal these facts from the Germans as much as possible. For the Anglo-Saxon world aims to obliterate the truth of the Central European development in relation to spiritual science everywhere and to replace it with itself. Here it is the most eminent lust for power that springs from occultism. And it was a simple necessity that the peeling which has now really taken place since the turn of the century should take place, that what was originally German and what unfortunately our Germans only too gladly received with open arms from Englishness should be returned, that it should be restored in its original purity. A truth has been established. It had to be established. The fact that this truth has been established will never be forgiven by the English Theosophical Society of our German aspirations, as they have been from the beginning. This can only be veiled by slander.

But very systematically, very purposefully, all those who want to develop power within the occultist aspirations are proceeding. Therefore, it is so necessary not to be asleep in the face of these efforts, but to develop some clarity. Clarity is especially necessary in the face of significant phenomena. And clarity is particularly necessary, for example, in the face of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who was of course the decisive personality for the Theosophical Society.

What underlies clarity in this area can be linked to two facts: The first fact is that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a Russian woman who had grown out of her Russian background. The second fact is that she left behind a kind of secret science in English guise, that she gradually grew completely into what Anglo-Saxon occultism strives for, but in a roundabout way that was due to the great talent of this woman. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was, I might say, in a certain sense, a mediumistic personality, who could only develop such adaptability, including occult-spiritual qualities, out of her Russian nationality. What the Russian otherwise has as generally human qualities, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky had precisely in terms of occult qualities. And so it came about that in Western Europe she was first attracted by French occultism, then by a certain type of British occultism, which she found to be an appropriate infusion for her soul. She believed she had to give the world something that the Anglo-Saxon occultism, as it were, prefigured, revealing itself out of the Russian soul. Instead of the coming union of the Central European and Russian natures, the penetration of Russian nature — in Helena Petrovna Blavatsky as the representative of Russian nationality — with Anglo-Saxon power occultism was deliberately and consciously placed. Those who, as it were, wanted to hold the threads of life as it develops outwardly in the physical plan were not uninvolved in this. Many tragic things have happened to the poor personality of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, which I cannot go into today. Precisely because of her profound and comprehensive mediumship, into which all kinds of things could be poured, many, many things have happened. And it was a long way from the starting point, where attempts were first made to transmit Central European material directly to Blavatsky, which then appeared in an admittedly kaleidoscopic, almost unusable form in the “Veiled Isis”. But very soon, other personalities took hold of her, under very different influences, and in place of the one who was her leader and who wanted to guide her to Central European beings, later, in the mask of the original leader, the so-called later Koot-Hoomi individuality, which, however, according to the truly knowledgeable occultists, was nothing more than a person in the pay of the Russians who consciously wanted to forge together what could emerge from the psychic ability of Blavatsky and Anglo-Saxon occultism. One is dealing with the clash, I would say, of an original individuality – some call it master, you can call it what you want – and a later impostor, a swindler, who had assumed the mask of the first and had been given the task, on the part of Eastern Europe, which I have just hinted at.

Then the time began when Blavatsky was to join forces with occult France, where she wanted to quickly achieve certain goals and therefore presented an occultist lodge in Paris with such conditions that could not be met, so that she soon had to be expelled again because, under the influence of the individuals behind her, she always combined occult intentions with political power impulses. Then followed the American episode, which again had a political background. All these things were intended to present something to Europe that would convince Europe that a kind of new world religion for Europe could emerge from the union of spiritual Russian and Anglo-Saxon occultist lust for power. That was to be presented to Europe. And what had emerged from the German essence was to be overrun.

Oh my dear friends, I well remember – and it could be unpleasant for some how clearly such things stand before my soul – how Mrs. Besant held her very first meeting in Germany in Hamburg, and how I interpellated her within a small circle at the time, how she thinks about the development of occultism in the 19th century, and how she gave the answer in Hamburg at the time: At the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, something like occult striving asserted itself in Germany, but the Germans got stuck in pure abstractions, and it turned out that the great – as she expressed it, she always expressed herself grandly – that the great wave of spiritual life had been granted to the British people. Of course she said that in English, but it was even greater in English!

For Blavatsky, the time came when it became necessary for all those who were serious about spiritual science and who could not get involved in Anglo-Saxon lust for power to do something. And that is what later in occult circles was called Blavatsky's “occult imprisonment”. There was no other way of bringing it about. And the decision to impose this occult imprisonment, as it is called, upon Blavatsky was taken by a gathering of honest occultists, or at least the majority of them, in the last third of the nineteenth century.

Occult imprisonment consists of the fact that, through certain processes, it is possible to imprison a person's aspirations in a sphere from which he cannot see out, so that his aspirations are reflected back and he cannot cause certain damage that he would otherwise cause.

The process I am about to describe, this imposition of occult imprisonment, is not flawless; but, as I said, the people could not help themselves in any other way. Blavatsky was a strong psychic personality and could have a strong effect. That is why her writings have such an overwhelming and, on the other hand, misleading power.

Then there was what can be described as certain Indian occultists, who wanted to take a little revenge in this way because of the English stranglehold, taking possession of Blavatsky's personality, and that's where the Indian influence came in. I have discussed this in more detail elsewhere, but here I will only hint at it.

So the Indian influence came, and that is how that dubious occult science came into being, which was cultivated in the Theosophical Society for a long time and which had to be cleansed of that which was to appear in Central Europe as spiritual science. For that which is to arise in Central Europe as spiritual science must, in the sense I have indicated, be thoroughly honest, that is to say, it must strive for the truth as such and be convinced that the truth, flowing through our souls and through the development of humanity, will bring about the right thing within nations and also within the existence of human beings, the social order of human beings: pure, honest seeking of truth! And this pure, honest seeking of truth is, after all, still our main task.

I wish that this would be understood more precisely within our spiritual scientific movement here, then one would also forgive me certain additional conditions, which I must set, and would see that these conditions must be taken more precisely. How often do I admonish our friends, one should, so that one can remain pure with what is to be brought to the world as spiritual science, so that it cannot be adapted from any side, do not come to me with all kinds of other things that can be so easily combined with spiritual scientific endeavors. Of course, people are quite willing to do anything that human will can demand, and in a friendly way many things can happen, but in any case it must be understood why I repeatedly and repeatedly admonish people not to believe that I am even remotely involved in pharmacology, any more than I am involved in other, non-spiritual fields. It is necessary that our members should get into the habit of taking seriously what I say, namely, that in the main they should not come to me with medical matters. It is essential that these matters should be understood, because it is still necessary, at least for the time being, to keep the spiritual-scientific endeavour, as far as I am concerned, quite separate from other matters. There are enough medical personalities within our movement to whom our members can turn for help. Since I emphasize this again and again, it should be taken seriously, at least in principle, when I say: I do not want to get involved in any kind of healing; because in doing so, the world will only misunderstand what the spiritual scientific movement should do through me in the first instance, and that should not be misunderstood.

How little there actually was in Anglo-Saxonism of a proper understanding of the pure, objective striving for truth could be known by those who had once heard a remarkable lecture by Mrs. Besant on “Theosophy and Imperialism”. From this lecture one could intuitively feel much of what I had to say today based on the facts: Spiritual science should never be mixed with any kind of lust for power, with any kind of direct political aspiration, although it goes without saying that someone who is a good spiritual scientist can be the best politician. But that is not the point. Rather, spiritual science must not become what occultism is in Anglo-Saxon culture, which I have tried to characterize; spiritual science must not become something that has been striven for precisely through Blavatsky, and then in many respects also through Mrs. Besant, only with less talent and less gift than through Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The endeavour was, after all, on the part of Anglo-Saxondom to found a kind of occult religion by means of the spiritual experiences of a personality such as Blavatsky was. This religion would have carried Anglo-Saxondom, by way of conquest over Germanism, directly into Russism. In the schools, where not in Blavatsky's way but in the Anglo-Saxon occult way of teaching the things I have already mentioned are taught, the war in which we are now engaged has been spoken of again and again as a necessary one. And again and again in such schools the outcome of this war is spoken of very suggestively in such a way that one says: This and that must happen because of this war. - It is not said out of a sense of prophecy, but because it is desired, because the aim is to gain as much influence as possible, to prepare people through all channels that can be reached at the time. Because when people are taught all kinds of occultism in masks, the aim is to prepare people for a certain direction. That is why I must ask – I must discuss these things because they are already being discussed publicly, and because someone who represents spiritual science as I do must make it clear how he stands on these things: Why did an occult personality known to occultists in Paris travel to Rome again and again immediately after the war between Germany, Russia, England and France broke out, and as late as October 1914? Why did this person play a role in Rome that later had an influence on the situation in Italy, a role similar to that played by certain people who belonged to the 'Grand Orient de France' or were connected with Anglo-Saxon freemasons, and which had a profound influence on the course of current events, much more than one might think?

But I must ask something else: why does the yearbook, which the same personality, who is used, one could also say abused, by certain currents of occultism, for all sorts of stuff – as I said, because it is already being discussed in the world, so I have to show on which side I stand in these matters? Why does the 1913 yearbook, published by this personality and which actually appeared in 1912, state: 'He who believes he rules Austria will not rule, but another, younger one will rule, who is not yet destined to rule'? Why is this in a yearbook of a medium that is part of a certain occult current? Why is the same thing repeated in the yearbook in 1914 – that is, before the year 1914 came, for 1914, but already published in 1913: The tragedy of the Habsburg house will be fulfilled faster than one might think. Why is this in these yearbooks? And even more: Why does a Parisian paper, which could be called 'Paris Midday' in German, already express the wish in 1913 that the Austrian 'heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand must be murdered? This paper corresponds approximately to what is in Berlin 'B. Z. am Mittag': 'Paris midi' is that, widely read. Why does the almanac state on one page what I have quoted: “He who thinks he rules will not rule, but a younger one will rule,” and on the other page the wish that this archduke be murdered? Why does the same paper, when the debate on the three-year term of office in France took place, cynically write: If mobilization should take place in France, Jaures will be the first to be assassinated'? Do you think that, my dear friends, is prophecy? I would just like to show you that I am not on the side of those who think this is prophecy, but that it all points to deep, dreadful undercurrents in the abuse of charlatanry, but downright dangerous to humanity, in the occult.

Today I wanted to tell you something that may not be uplifting, but it is all the more serious. I wanted to ask your soul whether a person does not really have to acquire a very clear view if they want to be involved in an occult current, and whether it might not be a bad thing if you wanted to oversleep the most important things. My dear friends, anyone who wants to study the connection of the Theosophical Society – as it has gradually become more and more – with such things, need only keep a sharp eye on the activities of such personalities as, for example, Mrs. Catherine Tingley. And it is also instructive that when something was to be introduced into what should be solely Anglo-Saxon, from a more Christian point of view, even through a strong medium, in the little book 'Light on the Path' by Mabel Collins, the slander started. For most of what has been said against the medium through which “Light on the Path” has been given to humanity is slander.

I wanted to speak to you today with some seriousness, so that out of this seriousness many of us may get an idea of how necessary it is to become aware of the Central European mission in relation to spiritual science, and that it is absolutely necessary for this Central European mission to become a world mission. Above all, this Central European mission must be a pure and honest striving for truth. But this pure and honest striving for truth was understood in a strange way, and the distortions of the truth were also understood in a strange way. You know that the relationship between the German spiritual movement, to which we belong, and the Theosophical Society was dissolved long before the war. All that I have hinted at was understood in a strange way. Just consider that Mrs. Besant, for example, managed to say that I had aspired to become president of the Theosophical Society in India in order to oust her from the presidential chair and to use pan-German currents in England-hostile fashion in favor of the German Reich by way of a detour through India! You will really believe that this is not true, that this is an objective untruth!

The following is in contrast to this: In 1909, a society was founded against the horrors of Mr. Leadbeater, and later also against the humbug of Alcyone, which was to include all countries of the world and was to be a counterweight to those misled by Mrs. Besant. And at that time I was invited from India to become the chairman, the president of this international society, and I not only refused, but in 1909 in Budapest, in front of witnesses, I told Mrs. Besant that I never want to be anything else within the spiritual movement of modern times than the one who leads this movement within the German national organism. I said this before witnesses in Budapest in 1909 to Mrs. Besant. Now she takes it so seriously with the truth that she writes in her English magazine that I had tried to go to India and so on, in order to displace her from there! One can no longer speak of objective untruthfulness, since it is, of course, a conscious lie. But it is necessary to work with such means when the issue is that one has to fight against the course of truth itself; and that is basically what Anglo-Saxon occultism is. Because the truth is this: what is connected to the essence of Central European beings is what, as spiritual science, has to permeate human culture. But this has to be veiled, covered, masked in some way from England. And more and more in the 20th century, Mrs. Besant has also become an instrument of this veiling.

There is a sufficient need to reflect on what should flow in our movement. The spiritual-earthly task is really there. We have no reason to do so without examining and testing, to give blind allegiance to one or the other. But that is not something that can be very tempting today: to want nothing more than the honest development of the truth. You know how attacks and also ridicule and scorn are raining down from all sides within and outside our society. But in addition to all this, there is something else: More and more of our spiritual-scientific movement is flowing out into this or that soul. Those who have an eye for it already feel what flows from our books or our public lectures into the soul of people. But when these people, who are sometimes quite willing to defend what they have allowed to flow into them, should unreservedly profess what our movement is trying to do in such earnest, namely to enter into the spiritual path of humanity, then peculiar phenomena come to light. Sometimes it is really the case that people are glad to grasp many a truth that has been produced on our soil, but that they take every honest, wholehearted approach to us as if, for example, they would burn their fingers by actually touching me. It is a very common phenomenon, more common than one might think! Among those who are honestly concerned, not with some personality or other, but with my own, honest spiritual scientific striving for truth, one can assume that they will also profess it unconditionally. Because, my dear friends, the seriousness is great, the seriousness is enormous.

The things I have said should not be spoken out of some national sentiment. Basically, I have only told you facts; they should characterize what is present as occult antagonisms in Europe and which, for those who want to see, can already explain much of the antagonisms of the physical plane.

And I would like to emphasize it again and again: we need seriousness in order to find the right direction in a serious time, so that what I have already emphasized here may come true, which lies in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit —
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought of a question?

Questioner: Doctor was kind enough to tell us what it is like when the spirit has left the body. The last lecture was very clear to me and my colleagues. But in “Theosophy” there is a sentence that says that when the spirit is separated from the body, the soul still retains desires. That is still a very hard nut for us to crack.

I have another question, something completely different.

Dr. Steiner: Very well, tell me the second question too.

Questioner: By chance I came across a brochure by a Dr. Heuer. I assume that Dr. Steiner has read the brochure, so that we already know that. This Mr. Hauer presents Dr. Steiner as if he were saying nothing new, as if we already know everything that he says about anthroposophy, that we already know all of this. And then, among other things, he says that the most incredible thing about anthroposophy for him is the story of the two Jesus children.

The questioner must also say, however, that this is also incomprehensible to him about the two Jesus children, how the one Jesus child comes from another world.

Dr. Steiner: I also have the brochure, I just haven't cut it open yet.

The questioner continues: If it is not immodest, he would like to ask the doctor to say something about the Jesus family.

Further question: I have been asked by my colleagues in the last few days about the Christ-being. It would be very dear to me if the doctor could say something about the Christ-being.

Dr. Steiner: Is there perhaps another question to be asked so that we can deal with it in context?

Now, I would first like to address the first question about desires. The fact of the matter is this: if you look at what a person experiences differently from how a plant or a stone experiences things, then you will find that a person experiences their world of thoughts. A plant does not show that it has a world of thoughts. Thoughts are there, living in the plant. But to look for conscious thoughts in a plant would be nonsense.

However, something remarkable has come about in the external way in which science partly proceeds today. Today there are all kinds of scholars, and since there are also those who cannot quite believe that there are only physical processes everywhere, that there are only mineral, inanimate processes, they at least assume that there is something spiritual. But since they know nothing about the spiritual itself, they say: the spiritual expresses itself in the fact that some being performs this or that.

There are plants that behave in the strangest ways. For example, there is a plant called the “Venus flytrap” because of the way it behaves. This Venus flytrap has rosette leaves that bear a leaf blade at their broadened stem. It consists of two parts. There are three bristle-shaped outgrowths on both sides of the blade. When an insect alights on the leaf and touches these outgrowths, the two wings of the leaf fold together so quickly that the small insect is trapped. So that is how it is.

Those who only talk about the soul in an external way and know nothing about it, they say: just as there is a soul in a human being, there is also a soul in a plant. I always have only one thing to say to these people: I know a little instrument into which you put a little bacon that has been browned a little: a mousetrap, and when the mouse sips the bacon, the mousetrap closes by itself. So anyone who draws conclusions from such things, as with the Venus flytrap, must assume that there is a soul, and should also say: the mousetrap has a soul because it also closes by itself. It always depends on the reasons for assuming the matter.

You see, that is precisely the characteristic of anthroposophy: it starts from reasons in everything, whereas the others, if they do assume a soul, know nothing about the soul and ascribe a soul to a plant like this, when something similar happens to it as to a mousetrap when an insect comes near it. But in anthroposophy there is nothing of outward appearances that lead to it, but there is the real realization of the soul. Part of this realization of the soul is that man develops desires. It is desire when, for example, he is thirsty. When I am thirsty, I have the desire to drink water or something else. Now, fine; the thirst is satisfied by the water. All of this is desire, where you wish for something from within your organism, want something; that is always desire.

You see, there is something people never think about. They do not think about the mental state that underlies when a person wakes up. Not true, when a person wakes up, now examine the people, how much more carbon dioxide in the blood and so on, that is, they examine only the physical conditions. But the truth is that man wakes up because he has desire for his physical body. When you fall asleep at night, you no longer have any desire for your physical body. It is completely filled with fatigue substances. There is no longer any good in there. The soul, that is, the ego and the astral body, want to recover outside of the physical body. In the morning, when the physical body has recovered, which the soul, which is outside the physical body, notices from the condition of the skin, because it is close to it, the soul goes back into the physical body because it desires to be inside the physical body as long as the physical body is able to live at all. So the soul has the desire throughout life to live inside the body.

Take something else: you cut your finger and it hurts you. There is the finger (drawing $. 202). Now you cut into it, and it hurts you. What has happened? Yes, the physical body is torn a little bit apart. You can cut into the physical body, but not into the astral body. I will now draw the astral body into the physical body. If I draw it large, there is a gap where the astral body is. But it wants to be able to enter the place where the physical body is torn apart as well. It has the desire to be inside the body and cannot do so because the body is torn open. That is what the pain is all about.

Now imagine that if the soul has this desire for the physical body throughout life, then something must happen after death.

If as a child you develop the craving to eat as much sugar as possible, then you develop the craving to get sugar. And if at a certain stage in your life someone finds it useful for you to eat less sugar, you still have the craving for sugar. Let's say you have developed diabetes, and you are therefore no longer supposed to do it – yes, it takes a long time to get rid of that habit! You always have the craving for sugar and have to slowly get rid of it. You know, if someone drinks a lot, he develops a craving for it; he has to slowly wean himself off it. If someone eats opium, as I told you the other day, and they are weaned off it, they will go crazy with desire for the opium.

Now, throughout life, there is a craving for the body in the ego and astral body. After death, the soul always wants to wake up back into the body. First it has to get out of this habit. This process takes about a third of the whole life. In fact, sleep takes a third of the whole life. On the first day after one has died, one wants to go back. You want to do what you did on the last day of your life; on the second day you want to do what you did on the day before that, and so it goes on. So you have to get rid of the desire for this third of your life. So after death you don't have any thirst or hunger cravings, but you do have a constant craving for everything you experienced through your physical body. After death, it is like this: you have grown fond of the area around your hometown all your life. You have always seen that. Yes, you have seen it through your physical body. Only a Turk believes that he has something much more beautiful in terms of meadows and flowers and so on after death than he has here on earth. So you have to get out of the habit of all that. And it is precisely this getting out of the habit that makes it necessary to say that the desires still remain. Is that not understandable? (Answer: Yes!)

So after death, the desires for the physical body and for life in general remain, but not hunger and thirst, because for that you need a stomach; you no longer have that, you put it in the coffin. But after death, you still have the desire to see everything that you saw during your life.

But now something else is added: after death, one can see just as little in the spiritual world, into which one has now entered, as a child here in the physical world can immediately see. One must first acquire this. One must first grow into the spiritual world. So that the first state after death, one third of life, consists of being still blind and deaf to the spiritual world, but still longing for the physical world. That occurs after two or three days, during which, as I have related, the dead person looks back. And only when he has given up that, does he grow into the spiritual world and can then perceive in a spiritual way. Then he no longer has any desire for the physical world. So anyone who can judge the soul's life can also judge what remains of the physical life. And of course it is not only pleasant things that remain. If someone had the desire to constantly beat people, the desire to beat people remains, and then he must slowly get out of the habit of doing so. These are the things that one can see.

Anthroposophy is concerned with recognizing what can actually be seen of the soul, that is, what is actually visible. That is what it is all about.

As for the other question, the question of Christ Jesus, we will deal with it today, so that nothing remains unsatisfied in you. However, I must first say something about history.

I have told you about various conditions on Earth in very ancient times. Now it is like this: we have conditions on earth that are actually no older than about six to eight or nine thousand years, according to scientific observations, so let's say six to nine thousand years. I have already drawn your attention to this. Before that time, you could not go very far from here, because you would enter the so-called glacial region. Switzerland was where you can walk around today, all the way down, covered by glaciers. The glaciers flowed in valleys where the rivers are now; the Aare, the Reuss and so on are only the thin, diluted glacier streams that remain from the distant, distant past.

But this period, in which a large part of Europe was covered by these glaciers, was preceded by a very different time. Because the earth is constantly – you just have to consider large periods of time – rising and falling, rising and falling. If, for example, there is sea here (he draws) and land up there, then this land is floating in the sea. All land floats in the sea. Can you imagine that? It is not that it goes down to the bottom, but that the land, all the lands, float in the sea. There is also sea under the lands.

Now you will say: Why doesn't it float back and forth like a ship? I will tell you something else first. In fact, the countries are floating in the sea, but suppose it were Great Britain, England (it is drawn). England is an island. It actually floats in the sea, but it floats near Europe, and the distance does not change. But even according to scientific views, it was not always the same as it is now, but there were also times when the water went up over it. Then England was under the sea. If you crossed this bit of sea, you naturally came to the ground. So the thing is that there were times when England was under the sea.

Yes, it's even like this: if you examine the soil of England, you will find certain fossilized animals in this soil. But they are not all the same. If you examine a piece of soil from England here and further up, you will find very different fossilized animals, and even further up there are yet again very different fossilized animals and even further up yet again very different fossilized animals. Four successive layers of fossilized animals can be found in the soil of England!

Where do these fossilized animals come from? When the sea floods a land, the animals die. Their shells sink, and the animals are fossilized. If I find four successive layers in a soil, the land in question must have been flooded by the sea four times. A layer was always deposited there. And so it is found that the land of England has been four times above water and four times below. Four times England was above water, it rose again and again.

Now you may ask: Why does such an island, which is actually floating in the water, not go back and forth like a ship? Yes, because it is not held by the earth. If it were only a matter of the earth, it is impossible to imagine how everything would be shaken up! England would soon be dashed against the coast of Norway, then it would be dashed against America and so on, and all the countries would be dashed against each other, if it only depended on the earth. But it does not depend only on the earth, but the constellation of stars in the sky sends out the forces that hold a country in a certain place. So it is not the fault of the earth. It is the star constellation. And you can always prove: when the situation has changed, the star constellation has changed – not the planets, of course, but the fixed stars. Those who do not want to know about this world do the same as people who say that the powers of thought come from the brain alone. If I have the soft ground and just make my footprints, and someone comes down from Mars for my sake and thinks that the footprints come from the earth, the earth sometimes throws up the sand, sometimes pulls it down – it is not at all the case, I pushed in from outside. And so the convolutions of my brain have also come from outside, from mental thinking. It is the same with countries that have come over the earth: they are held by the star constellations. So we must not only see spirit in people on earth, and on earth in general, but in the whole universe.

Such things, gentlemen, just imagine, older people knew them, but in a completely different way than we do today. I will give you a proof. There is a great Greek philosopher who lived several centuries before the birth of Christ, his name was Plato. He knew a great deal. He tells us that one of the wisest of his countrymen, Solon, the lawgiver of Greece, was once a guest at the home of an Egyptian. The Egyptians were the more advanced people at that time; only the Greeks behaved more cleverly than we do. The Greeks revered the Egyptians, as we shall see, but they did not learn Egyptian, the ancient language of the Egyptians. The Greeks did not learn Egyptian! Our scholars must all learn Greek! The Greeks were much cleverer. We do not imitate what they did with it; but we do imitate their language. Our scholars become narrow-minded precisely because they do not grow into what is original to them on earth, but are distracted from what is peculiar to human beings by having to find their way into a very old language. Now, in Switzerland they are fighting against this; but it took a long time. Our boys, if they wanted to become doctors, first had their heads turned by having to learn Greek. I'm not saying this because I also had to learn it, I love the Greek language very much. But that's what some people should learn who want to get something out of it, but not those who want to become doctors or lawyers, and forget it again later in life.

Plato recounts that Solon visited an Egyptian, who told him: “You Greeks may be an advanced people, but you are still children, for you know nothing of the fact that the lands are constantly being pulled out over the sea and submerging again, that upheavals are always taking place.

The ancient Egyptians still knew it; the Greeks no longer knew it. Only Plato still knew it. He knew that there was land out there in the Atlantic Ocean, where ships now sail from Europe to America, that the west coast of Europe was connected to the east coast of America by land. But the old truths have been forgotten. And that was because people had even more unconscious knowledge. We have acquired abstract knowledge. We need that for our freedom. For people in those days were not free; but they knew more. And Lessing, I told you, gave something to the fact that these ancient people knew more than the later.

So we come to say to ourselves: It is the case that there were ancient times when people, through their own nature, knew that there is a spiritual reality everywhere. People have known this for quite a long time.

There is, for example, a Roman emperor, Julian, in the 4th century AD. This Julian was taught by people who still had some knowledge of Asian wisdom. And this Julian said: There is not one, but there are three suns. The first sun is the physical sun, the second is a soul sun, and the third sun is a spiritual sun. The first is visible to us, the other two are invisible. That is what Julian said.

Now something very strange happened. Julianus was vilified throughout history because he did not believe in Christianity. But he believed in what people knew before Christianity. And when Julian once had to lead an Asian campaign, he was suddenly murdered. It was a kind of assassination attempt. But this assassination was carried out by those who hated him because he had appropriated the old knowledge.

You must remember that even in ancient times, things were handled quite differently than they are today. The Egyptians were terribly clever people, as I have already mentioned. But they did not have a writing system like ours, they had a pictographic writing system. The word was always similar to what it meant. And the people who were scribes in Egypt were taught: Writing is something sacred; you must imitate things very faithfully. And do you know what happened to anyone who made a mistake in copying pictographs out of negligence? They were sentenced to death! Well, today people would look on in amazement if someone who made a spelling mistake were sentenced to death because of it. But human history does not go as one dreams it would. Indeed, the ancient Egyptians were wise and cruel in some respects. Of course there is progress in humanity. But just because writing was something so sacred to them, we must not deny that they were wise in other respects and knew things that are only now gradually emerging in anthroposophy, in a completely different way. They dreamt it, and we know it; it was a completely different way.

Well, you see, Julianus was right. It is actually the case that just as you have soul and spirit in your body, so the sun has soul and spirit. That is precisely what the one who knows the soul says. He is not saying that the Venus flytrap has a soul, because it is nonsense to say that everything that moves in some purposeful way has a soul. But he knows that when the light shines, it has a soul, it moves soulfully; because he perceives that. And so it was known: the sun contains a living being.

Now you know that it is said: In Palestine, at a certain time, Jesus of Nazareth was born. You see, gentlemen, Jesus of Nazareth grew up - you can actually verify today what is in the Gospels, so it is true - as a fairly simple boy. He was the son of a carpenter, a joiner. That's right. He grew up as a fairly simple boy. Now he still had a great deal of ancient wisdom. Therefore, it is based on truth that at the age of twelve he was able to answer the scholars very cleverly. It still happens today that a twelve-year-old boy gives more sensible answers than a “disinstructed” scholar! But from this it was clear that he was a very gifted boy. Now he grew up, and when he was thirty years old, something suddenly changed in him. That is a fact; something changed in him all of a sudden.

What changed in him when Jesus was thirty years old? When Jesus was thirty years old, he suddenly realized, prepared by his earlier great knowledge, what was no longer known at the time, which only a few hidden scholars had from an ancient wisdom, of which Julian later found it. He realized through an older knowledge: The whole universe and the sun contain soul and spirit. He was imbued with what lived in the universe by knowing this. If you know it, you have it.

Now in those days, in those times, people had to be taught things in pictures. What I am telling you today can only be expressed in this way from the 15th century onwards. Before that, we did not have these concepts. So it was expressed in such a way that it was said: a dove descended, and he received the Holy Spirit within him. Of course, those who were able to perceive it knew that something had happened to him. That is how they expressed it, and in one gospel it says: “Then a voice from heaven was heard: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’.” Translated correctly: “This is my beloved Son, today I have given birth to him.” That means that what happened at the age of thirty was correctly understood as a second birth. With Jesus' birth, only Jesus was born, who was more talented than the others, but who did not yet have this feeling within him. This was felt to be something extraordinarily important. And that is the baptism of John in the Jordan.

There was something that caused me great concern at the time. In science, there are such concerns, gentlemen! You had, as you know, the four Gospels, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Don't you think everyone knows today that these four Gospels contradict each other? If you start reading in the Gospel of Matthew and read about the family tree of Jesus, and compare it with the family tree of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, they contradict each other. People say: they contradict each other. But they don't think any further about why it contradicts itself. At most, they say: one invented it, the other invented it; one just invented something different from the other, that's why things can contradict each other.

But that is not the case. It is like this: Goethe, for example, says of himself: “I have the stature of my father” — that is, he looked a lot like his father.

From my father I have the stature,
The serious way of life,
From my mother, a cheerful disposition
And the desire to tell stories.

Now, maybe at the age of three, Goethe was not yet able to tell stories; but maybe at the age of nine he could. Then he had to say: “Beautiful, from my mother I have the desire to tell stories, it has been passed on to me from my mother, it has come into me from my mother.

I tell you this because it will help you understand how my concern about the contradictions in the gospels has been resolved.

Now I have taken these two gospels, the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Unless someone carelessly says that it is invented, no one can understand why these two things contradict each other. And I have now examined the spiritual science behind it and found that not just one boy was born, but two Jesus boys were born. Both boys had the name Jesus. There is no need to be surprised about that; for example, if a boy in Austria is named Joseph, then there is no surprise if another boy born at the same time is also named Joseph. There is no need to be surprised if two boys are named Seppl or Franz. So there was no reason to be surprised if two boys were named Jesus at the time. And both lived together until they were twelve years old. And then something strange happened: because they lived together, the gifts that one of them had suddenly appeared in the other. Just as a son can inherit from his mother, so one of the Jesus boys inherited gifts from the other. And the one Jesus boy, from whom the other had inherited the gift, did not live on, he died at twelve years of age, he died soon after. So the one was left and, through the shock that the other perished, had the wisdom of the other shine within him. This is precisely how he was able to shine before the scholars.

His parents could say: Where did he get all that? — If you ascribe it to psychic influences, then that is also explainable. And such psychic influences simply exist. One of the Jesus boys did not have the wisdom until he was twelve; the other died, and the wisdom was transferred to the one Jesus boy, partly because of the shock of his death, partly because they were friendly with each other. And he went through the baptism in the Jordan. Two Jesus boys were born, not one. In the twelfth year, one of them died, and the other was suddenly awakened by this shocking event and gained the wisdom of the other.

And then you find out: the one evangelist, Matthew, described the one Jesus boy for the childhood of Jesus, and the other, Luke, described the other Jesus boy. And so the two agree with each other. I didn't make that up. It was the result of my research. And that's why I'm talking about the two Jesus boys, precisely because of a certain science that the others don't have.

And from this you can see that the same principles that are followed in natural science, that when the causes are there, the effects occur, are also followed in spiritual science. You don't just assume that you say: Well, yes, two people have invented something, the one Jesus child of Matthew is invented, the other Jesus child of Luke is invented. At the time when the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written, there was no question of such an invention at all. People spoke figuratively; but they did not invent anything, because the things were taken so seriously that a few centuries earlier in Egypt, anyone who wrote down something that was not true was sentenced to death. We cannot be so reckless as to say that people in earlier times invented anything. They expressed things in pictures, but it would never have occurred to them to invent anything. He who says that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke could have been invented is speaking as one who knows nothing. But that is what today's scholars and theologians say. Since they cannot explain the contradictions otherwise, they have to admit that they are contradictory. But the fact that we know there are two Jesus children, one the Jesus child of the Gospel of Matthew and the other the Jesus child of the Gospel of Luke, clarifies the story in the best possible way.

Now Mr. Hauer, who is a private lecturer in Tübingen and also a traveling teacher, has come forward – speaking for anthroposophy does not bring in any money today, but speaking against anthroposophy does – and has come forward against anthroposophy, this Mr. Hauer now comes and finds: That is something strange. — Yes, gentlemen, it is of course something strange because no one has thought of it! It is of course something strange if I claim that there were not one but two Jesus children; one of whom died at the age of twelve. That is of course something strange, of course. There is no need to be surprised that it is something strange. But it is precisely because not everyone said it that it is strange. That is why Hauer finds it strange. This can be found on one page of Hauer's book.

On the other page, you will find: Yes, Steiner says nothing that was not already known. Yes, gentlemen, what Mr. Hauer did not know, he finds strange. He complains about that. On the basis of what he has gleaned from somewhere — because the old wisdom has been had, and today it is of course recorded everywhere — I do not glean it, but he does! — he comes to the conclusion: Yes, Steiner says nothing that others have not already said. So you are at the mercy of these people. Whenever something needs to be said, they say: He says nothing new. If I write a geometry book, I naturally have to include the Pythagorean theorem; it was discovered by Pythagoras 600 years before the birth of Christ. Of course, if I have a number of new things in it, I must also have the Pythagorean theorem in it; today I will prove it somewhat differently, but it is in it. One cannot be reproached for that, that what was already there is rediscovered after it has been forgotten! And so it is that many of the things that spiritual science claims today, in a different way, because it is not the case in the same way, can be found in a different way in the writings of the ancient Gnostics, who are the writers of an ancient time. At the time when Christ was around, there were still such Gnostics, and even later. They wrote down such ancient wisdom, but not out of science, but out of ancient knowledge, not like anthroposophy. Now people compare what anthroposophy says and what the Gnostics say. This is a little bit like what happens with the Gnostics again, because it is true. And then they say: Well, he is saying nothing different from what the others have said! But with the two Jesus children, Mr. Hauer cannot say: Steiner came upon something that the others already knew! Because he has no idea that anyone has ever known that.

I have not yet cut open the whole book, but what I have seen of it is full of such contradictions. It does not make sense at all when you compare one page with another. But that is how today's scholars do it. On the one hand they say: Others have said that many times before. - And on the other hand they say: He is not saying anything new, we already knew all that! Yes, but if they already knew all that, why are they grumbling about it? And on the other hand, when something comes that they didn't know, they find it incredible.

But you see, after I had found this, really found it through spiritual research, of the two Jesus children who lived side by side until the twelfth year, I knew nothing but this, that it is a fact. Then we once saw a picture in Turin. The picture is very strange. It shows the mother of Jesus and two boys, one of whom is not John, because John is known from all the pictures where Jesus and John are together, but there are two boys in it who look quite similar, but still cannot be brothers, because they look alike, and yet not alike. It is quite clear that they are two little friends. Whoever first found that there were two Jesus children would then have to consider what this picture means. This picture was created relatively late in the centuries; but when it was still known that there were two Jesus children, an Italian painter painted the two Jesus children in one picture.

If Hauer had known today that this was still the case from ancient knowledge, he would now say: Steiner simply saw the picture in Turin! He would say that he already knew that anyway. Then he would say at the same point: Steiner is not claiming anything new, he is only claiming the things that have been known anyway. - Such are people!

It is actually quite dreadful when you look into these apparently stupid contradictions with which people today fight anthroposophy. On the one hand, what I say is supposed to be pure invention, invented by me. Now, let us assume that it is invented by me; but then the same person cannot say in the same book: He is not saying anything new! — Because he himself claims that I invented the things I say, and reproaches me for it. And then he says that others have known this all along. It is, in fact, sheer madness what is being done. Whereas if one really approaches the Christ event and investigates it as one otherwise investigates facts, then it becomes clear: this tremendous gift, which the boy Jesus already had, came about through the interaction between the two boys.

I will prove to you that such an exchange can take place, unbeknownst to other people. Let me tell you about such a case. There was once a little girl who already had older siblings; these other siblings learned to speak quite well. This girl did not learn to speak properly at first; but a little later, when the other children learned to talk, she began to talk. But she spoke a language that none of the adults understood. She invented a language for herself. For example, she said “Papazzo,” and when she said “Papazzo,” she meant the dog. And in a similar way, she invented names for all the animals. These are scientific facts. These names are not found anywhere.

Now this girl had a little brother after some time. And the little brother learned this language very quickly from his sister. And they spoke to each other in this language. The little brother died when he was twelve or so, and the sister stopped using this language and also learned the language of the others. She then married later and became a completely ordinary woman who told people that this was the case. She went through it herself. It is so. The two children communicated with each other in this language, talked to each other in this language; no one else understood it. Gentlemen, that can be the greatest wisdom! Only the two of them understood and agreed with each other.

From this you can see how one is influenced by the other. Why should not the one Jesus boy, who died at the age of twelve, have known something that no one understood at all! You still experience that when you know the facts.

So, nothing else is being claimed than what, in the most eminent sense, can also be truly scientific. Now, people who do not accept this as scientific are simply unable to piece together the facts. The person who knows that something like this exists, that two children speak this language that no adult understands and share spiritual things with each other in which the adults do not participate, he who understands this, he understands everything I say about the two Jesus children up to the twelfth year. And that this was an extraordinary event is not surprising. It does not happen every day. And in the form in which it happened, it has only happened once in the history of the earth, that this tremendous enlightenment comes to this man at the age of thirty.

Now, you see, here the story of Christ is transformed into real science, into real knowledge. And you can't help it; it transforms itself through knowledge.

Now you can say: All right, so at the age of twelve, Jesus was already enlightened to a certain extent by the other one who died. But at the age of thirty, yes, he suddenly became a different person again, which the evangelist expresses by saying: A dove flew down and settled on him.

Yes, gentlemen, the fact is that he has become another. What has happened then? I have already explained to you: when a child is born, the germ is there. The spirit of the universe must act on the germ. It is no wonder that the spirit of the universe is at work there when it has even worked on the island of England, as we have seen. What happened to Jesus in his thirtieth year could not be explained from the earth. Just as a human being is created through fertilization, in that one thing influences the other, so at that time the whole universe had an influence on the thirty-year-old Jesus, fertilizing him with soul and spirit, and through this he became Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus, to put it better. For what does it mean? Christ means he who is enlightened. And Jesus is an ordinary name, as it was common in Palestine, just as today in Austria one is called Sepperl, Joseph, or in Switzerland so and so, where one also finds similar names in every house. So Jesus was the name of many, and he was called the Christ because this enlightenment occurred.

Yes, gentlemen, when you read my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact,” you will find it demonstrated there: This enlightenment has been artificially produced in certain people before, only to a lesser extent. These were then called mystery ways. The difference between those who were educated in the highest wisdom in ancient times and the difference between them and Jesus Christ was that these mystery wise men were taught by others in the schools that were called mysteries in those days. With Jesus, it happened by itself. Therefore, it was a different process.

In the ancient mysteries, those who ascended to the highest knowledge simply became “Christ”; just as today you need not be surprised if someone has studied until the age of twenty-five - before that he was the very ordinary Joseph Müller, but now he is suddenly a doctor. That is how one became a “Christ” in the old mysteries, although not in such an innocent, that is, simple way; because of course you can be the biggest idiot and still become a doctor at the age of twenty-five! That was not possible in the old mysteries; there it was a deep, deep wisdom. There you became the 'Christ'. It was a title given to the highest sages, as the title 'doctor' is given today after a certain course of study; only in those days, when it was done properly, it was real wisdom. And with the Christ it just came naturally. But that means that what was otherwise given by the earth, by people, was given from the farthest reaches of the universe. This only happened once. As a result, world history took a different turn. And no one can deny this secret, not even those who are not Christians, that world history has taken a different turn.

The Romans did not take this into account, they did not know it. Christianity was founded in Asia Minor by Jesus Christ. At the same time, the Romans advanced from the old republican state to the empire, and they persecuted the Christians. The Christians had to make themselves catacombs underground. There they reflected on what their Christianity was. What was done above ground? The circuses were built, and people, the slaves, were tied to the pillars and burned as a spectacle for those sitting in the circus. That was above ground. And down in the catacombs, the Christians practiced their religion, which at that time was just for enslaved people. Religion just means connection - religere = to connect -; down there, the Christians practiced their religion.

And what about a few centuries later? The Romans are no longer there in the old way. What they used to watch in the circuses for their own pleasure, the burning people, was gone, because the Christians had taken its place. That is how it is in the world.

And so it will come to pass: those people who today speak as Dr. Hauer, whom you mentioned earlier, will be swept away. And that which today, though not physically but spiritually, must work in the catacombs, will indeed work! But one must only realize how it is a matter of real science; and how those who do not study much today are annoyed that something like this comes out!

When I come back, I will be able to continue with that. But essentially, you will already have understood which path this is taking.

Dear Friends,Yesterday I began to speak about the path that has been sought to arrive at a baptismal ritual, and I introduced it by pointing out that in these rituals there must be a real connection between an insight into the supersensible worlds and what takes place here in the ceremony. We have perhaps seen from this that if we are to speak of a real ceremony, we have to relate to the world somewhat differently than we do today. You will perhaps understand me even better if I say the following.

Today, people strive in the outer world for knowledge of natural laws. They consider this knowledge to be something that they set as a goal and believe that it must be achieved unconditionally as a kind of last resort. Now, when anthroposophical spiritual science is more widely recognized, it will be something very surprising when people find that the natural laws they talk about today only apply — (it is drawn on the board) if this is the earth — a certain distance beyond the earth, but not beyond that. For example, at a certain height, the chemist would try in vain to carry out his laboratory experiments in the usual way, not only because what he imagines analogous to the laws of the earth does not prevail there, but because completely different laws prevail there. While, for example, a theory such as Einstein's theory of relativity, which he invented and which impresses the world, can be called an ingenious theory within the context of earthly existence, beyond earthly existence it is – forgive the trivial expression – simply nonsense, real rolled-out nonsense. And one can certainly not expect someone who has insight into the supersensible world to accept the visualizations that Einstein undertakes, not even if he only executes them as thoughts. I am merely drawing your attention to Einstein's comparison of the clocks, where he says that if a clock were to fly away at the speed of light and then return, it would — as he imagines — be on the same hand position as before. That is complete nonsense. Anyone who thinks realistically knows that such an image cannot be realized. He should just imagine, in line with the higher world, how this clock returns, which he lets walk out at the speed of light. Einstein also imagines that if a person were to move at the speed of light, he would gradually become as thin as a sheet of paper because the movement would also cause deformation. Ingenious thought up, but it is absolute nonsense, because the human organization is not something with which one can mathematize, but something with which one must reckon as a being, and which, by its own nature, precludes one from simply letting it become as thin as a sheet of paper. These are all very unrealistic ideas, and so are the rest; but, as I admit, for the earthly being they are extraordinarily ingenious ideas.

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Now, the one who acts sacramentally must come to ideas that are quite different from those that one can have merely within earthly existence. On the one hand, St. Paul's saying must be taken quite seriously: “Not I, but the Christ in me.” It must be taken so seriously that it is connected with the other saying: “All power is given unto me, not only in the kingdoms of the earth, but also in the kingdoms of heaven.” That is, the actions that are carried out must be able to be imagined in the sense of eternal becoming, not just of earthly becoming. Now, for example, all the manipulations we carry out today with our several seventy elements of chemistry have no significance at all; other ideas that we have to form are of great importance. Without these ideas, one cannot achieve real imaginative knowledge at all, and it can be said that when imaginative knowledge becomes real, one gets such ideas as are needed for sacramentalism.

Now I will describe to you – as I said, all these things are of course in the process of becoming – how the baptismal act can be performed after I have tried to draw your attention to the fact that one must have a different relationship to the substances of the world than the current zeitgeist.

Now, for the baptismal act, one has to prepare three small vessels, which should actually have the following shape when seen from the side (it is drawn on the blackboard), so that they can be arranged on a small table. In these three vessels one has some water, salt and ash. Imagination suggests that one should actually use pure wood ash. The little table on which these vessels stand — I will have to talk about these things later — is best covered with a blue carpet or something similar. The three vessels then stand on a red doily and are arranged as I have drawn here. And now one prepares the thing so that one has water in this vessel here (see plate), salt in this vessel here, ash in this vessel here. I have been able to bring it out so far.

Now, in order to understand this, we must be clear about what real ideas must be associated with salt, water and ash if we are to relate to them through imagination. In the imagination, the idea of restoration connects with the water, the restoration of something or other that has lost its essential being in some ongoing process, whereby the water can thus reveal its mediating presence in the world process. This water is to be taken pure; distilled water is best used. The water dissolves the salt. In every salt process, that is, whenever salt settles somewhere – and we can certainly use the general term salt here for everything that settles in this way – so whenever salt settles, it means that the salt also releases a spiritual-ethereal content into the environment. So the salt that is dissolved in the liquid, in the water, that is, as one knows through the imagination, holds wisdom. The dissolved salt holds wisdom. As the salt coagulates, as the salt settles, the real wisdom evaporates into the environment and the salt becomes empty of wisdom. You have to think of all this as being more connected with the process than with the substance, because it is a process that takes place in the most eminent sense in one's own human organism; and when you think, when you develop thoughts, you are only filled with thoughts by the fact that salt is deposited in you. The denser the development of thoughts, the more salt is deposited.

A tremendous light falls from this truth on the whole physiology of the human body. It may well be that you do not subjectively participate with consciousness in this development of wisdom that is taking place. If, for example, you develop salt in a dream, even in a dull dream that is already perceived by the human consciousness as sleep, then this salt deposit definitely means fulfillment with wisdom, and at this level of knowledge, wisdom can be said to be everything that is the spiritual correlate of the growth phenomena. So when you look at the plant cover of the earth and let the growth of the plants take effect on you, from the point of view of the being of the earth it means a continuous salting or salinization process in the plant and an outpouring of wisdom. While the physical eye perceives the process of growth, the spiritual eye should see in this growth a process whereby the spiritual, as it were, is released, whereas it was formerly bound in the salt.

“You are the salt of the earth.” Such things are already to be found in religious documents, and I would ask you to pay close attention to the fact that any merely abstract explanation of “You are the salt of the earth” does not capture the meaning; originally, it was meant to be quite specific.

So it is a matter of understanding this salting process and now knowing that in the moment when one has salt and dissolves it again, the water substance is permeated by regenerative forces.

On the other hand, consider that which has now become pure ash; it has not emerged from a coagulation process, not from a deposition process, but it has emerged from the fire process; it is the opposite process. What comes from the material side as the material field of activity for the spiritual is also the result of the fire process.

You will understand this best if you imagine that you have some water, add salt on one side and ash on the other. What happens is a process from the extraterrestrial world, whereas our chemical processes only relate to the earthly world. If I add some salt on one side and some ash on the other, I create growth force, that is, active spirit. Through the ash that I let flow in, I add that which must always combine with the dissolution of the salt; this must always combine to give the spirit the possibility of being material.

Now, of course, the whole thing must not be carried out without the human being really making the whole cosmos consciously present within himself. Therefore, the baptismal act begins with a kind of monologue, after the child has first been brought in with the godparents.

Now one must be clear about what takes place in baptism. I have already said that anthroposophical activity can only be one that works and shapes out of the reality of the present. Therefore, when it comes to the act of baptism, we cannot today enter into a dialectical discussion about whether the act of baptism should be performed at the beginning of earthly life or whether it should perhaps only be performed in the course of life when one is conscious. Today we are dealing with the fact that we simply have to place ourselves in what is, and that is that the act of baptism is performed at the beginning of earthly life. Now it is important to always know that when one places oneself in the cosmic process in this way, one is actually not that chaotic whole that one is usually aware of, but rather one stands as the threefold being. This threefold nature is such that the actual thinking tends towards an understanding of what the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is, that the feeling tends towards an understanding of what the Son, the Christ, is, and that the all-willing tends towards an understanding of the Father. One must always feel connected, knowing oneself as a thinking, feeling and willing being through the triad of the soul with the Spirit, with the Son, with the Father. If one pronounces this in the sequence as I have now pronounced it, one is aware that one is pursuing one of the world currents, the current that goes from heaven to earth. If one pronounces it as it was originally pronounced: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, then one places oneself in the world current that goes from the earth upwards.

So first a monologue is spoken:

To you world spirits
My will
My feeling and my thinking,
Through the power of the
All-pervading Water
Through the might of the
All-sustaining Salt
Through the weight of the
All-renewing Ashes
That I may lead
This soul into the community of Christ Jesus.

From this monologue, you can see the meaning that the act of baptism must have when it is performed at the beginning of life on earth, when it is thus aligned with present-day consciousness. The act of baptism must then signify that the person being baptized is accepted into the Christian community and considered a member of the Christian community. It is, so to speak, the vow that the Christian community, which baptizes the child, accepts him and, insofar as this can happen in the sense of Christian development, watches over his Christian development. So that, my dear friends, is what we have to bear in mind when we perform a baptism today. This is its meaning.

After this monologue has been spoken, the officiant of the baptismal ceremony turns to those present who have the child that was brought in before the aforementioned prayer. The officiant now speaks to those present:

Dear baptismal community:

This soul, which has been sent down
from the spiritual community into the earthly community
We are to receive it
and carry it into the
community of Christ Jesus.
It originates in the body
from divine cosmic power
It originates in the soul
from divine words of activity
It shall live in the spiritual sphere
From divine spiritual goal.

Now you also have all this in the baptismal act, in that one first points out what this soul is to the body, to the soul, and how life on earth is to take on a meaning that is given by the last lines:

It shall live the spiritual sphere
From divine spiritual goal.

To this one has just to contribute, about that one has, that one vows to watch.

Now the one who performs the baptismal act will extend his hand to the two godparents standing on his left and right and then speak:

As the guardians

— that is, the godparents —

order from the heart's sacrificial strength

— now the names of the godparents are mentioned. And then one speaks to the godparents:

That you lead this soul into the
community of Christ Jesus
This should tell you in this moment of celebration:
The power of sacrifice of your heart.

You see, the ceremony must be guided entirely by personal considerations. Now the leader of the baptismal ceremony steps in front of the child. He speaks:

Looking up to the spiritual world's powers of light
Feeling myself with the power of the Christian community I call you

— now the name of the person being baptized is pronounced first. Then the index and middle fingers are moistened with the water and spoken:

This is not common water
It is the Spirit's all-pervasive power
I baptize you (say the name of the person being baptized)
with the water of all-pervasive world-birthing

Now the A sign is made on the forehead of the person being baptized with the water. Now dip both fingers into the water again, then into the salt and say:

Let this not be common salt
Let it be the soul's all-preserving power
I baptize you (say the name of the person being baptized)
with the salt of all-preserving world powers.

This sign is made

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Let this not be common ashes
Let it be the goal that renews man
I baptize you (name of the child)
with the ashes of the goals of the world that renew.

And now the sign of the cross is made on the chest of the person being baptized. We will have more to say about these signs. Then one speaks to the child:

So live in the community of Christ Jesus (name of the person being baptized)
Through the power of water
Through the power of salt
Through the ash, power of renewal
In the Father's cosmic substance (the sign of the cross is made over the child).
In the stream of the Christ's word (the sign of the cross is made again).
In the splendor of the Spirit's light (the sign of the cross is made again).

The officiant of the baptismal ceremony now speaks to the community:

I have before and with
your thinking spirits
before and with
your feeling souls
before and with
your human will
this (or these) (name(s) of the person to be baptized)
guided from
spirit-light-worlds
into the community of Christ Jesus
. Guide this soul so that it
may grow in the community of Christ.
Amen.

The baptismal act is at an end. Now the Lord's Prayer can be prayed at the conclusion with the understanding of which we spoke. Then the baptismal act as such, as I can perform it in the present, would be at an end.

You see, when one seriously considers reintroducing ritual and symbolism, what is really at issue is, if I may say so, a fully human – is a word — a whole-human understanding of the world (the word “whole-human” is written on the board), an understanding that lives not only in thinking but also in feeling and willing. Otherwise, what we do in this way remains either a mere sign, which is also abstract, or it is performed as a mere magical act, which also does not really reach the human being. Something must live in the ceremonial act, where man grows together with the originality in the spirit. We must, so to speak, in the moments when we perform ceremonial acts, try to really experience the spirit within the material work in its immediate presence. It is, of course, always there, but it is not experienced when it is merely looked at with the eyes and done with the ordinary human will. But such ceremonial acts are those where it is done out of the spirit, and where the volition itself is sustained in the spirit, where therefore something actually happens that goes beyond earthly activity, and which basically, when it happens, gives meaning to our entire earthly existence, that we may divide our time into ordinary weekday moments and into holiday moments.

In such moments, when we perform things that are a living testimony to the fact that in an earth where man is supposed to be present, through man the divine is also truly present, there is something that must first be felt in the modern consciousness of time. For modern time consciousness tends towards two aberrations: First, the error that I have already characterized from a certain point of view, which we have in today's knowledge, that only recognizes that knowledge that wants to penetrate external nature in an external abstract way. That is the one error. The other error is when we mystically immerse ourselves only in our inner being and only deal with ourselves.

This is at the same time the spiritual battle that Luther fought, on the one hand sensing the devil in that natural scientific aberration, which he felt was approaching, and on the other hand sensing the great, the immense danger that arises when man merely loses himself in his inner being and egoistically cuts himself off from the world. This egotistical shutting out of the world is to be avoided, on the one hand, by not carrying out spiritual acts within oneself alone, but in such a way that one has contact with the outer world; and, on the other hand, overcome what is merely abstract and unmanageable, by not merely doing things that have such an abstract and unmanageable character, but doing things that are done out of the spirit itself.

Only when we again come to a proper concept of sacramentalism will we have overcome, on the one hand, the dangers of science and, on the other, the dangers of mysticism. Luther fought against the enemies of man, of whom he had an inward fear and who could approach him, on the one hand, as the emerging natural science and, on the other, as its necessary correlate, abstract mysticism within man, which is at the same time an egoistic mysticism. Anthroposophy must overcome both obstacles. It does this by not shying away from completely immersing itself in science, that is, by going through what is experienced in natural research and knowledge, so that the human being, so to speak, plunges into this abyss, in which, if he remains in it, he would absolutely lose himself. And on the other hand, anthroposophy does not shy away from the mystical abyss, which one must also get to know; one must really be able to experience mysticism, but one must also be able to overcome it. One will not have to fall into this abyss, into the abyss of egoism. Man can lose himself in egoism just as he can lose himself in nullity on the other side.

To stop at natural science means to be tempted by all the luciferic powers as a human being, even if one also wants to come to a spiritual one. To stop at mysticism means to be tempted by all the ahrimanic powers as a human being. One simply has to know this. It must be clearly understood that it is through the power of Christ that we can overcome natural science and mysticism. We must not be afraid to experience these two things, for these enemies of humanity are only dangerous when they rule in us unconsciously. They lose their power over man only when he consciously elevates them to full consciousness. I would particularly like to place this sentence in your hearts, my dear friends: that for our time consciousness, the only thing that can apply is what I tried to present scenically at the end of the final scene of my first mystery drama, “The Portal of Initiation”, that only by emerging into consciousness can the real enemies of humanity be overcome. So, in answer to Luther's soul-struggle, Anthroposophy simply says that one has to oppose the Luciferic power, one has to oppose the Ahrimanic power, and one has to overcome them both through the power of Christ; one has not to retreat from them, but one has to overcome them. One simply has to learn what it means when, on the one hand, the luciferic power says: you, follow me out into the vastness, where you, with your abstract knowledge, measure nature in all its vastness — then one has to have the answer: “I can do that, I can measure the vastness of nature in all its infinities with my intellect, but when I measure these infinities with my intellect, I have to leave love at the threshold. Love must then be left behind at the threshold. But if I leave love behind at the threshold, then the power of Christ does not remain with me in the expanses, but the luciferic forces of the world draw near to me in the expanses. And on the other hand, when I descend into my own inner being, I must know that the Ahrimanic power lurks at the threshold. I must know that when I descend into this interior, at the threshold the Ahrimanic forces present me with the illusion that everything I can strive for spiritually lies in my ego. And I must know how to say: If, in descending into this inner being, I do not have the strength to overcome egoism, if I develop an egoistic mysticism, then I can never find in its true form, in the form of Christ, that which prevails in myself.

The human being must find these two strengths, otherwise he is either tempted, through what has been brought forth by modern civilization, to dissolve as a soul in an infinite cosmic unconsciousness in space, or to contract into himself in an intense egoism and lose the I in his inner being. [Man must find both these strengths so that] his ego does not float through the cosmos like a hermit, but is connected with the power of Christ.

All these, my dear friends, are sentiments that must permeate us if the ceremony is to have meaning, and we will be able to find this meaning for the ceremony more and more truly ourselves if we know how to enter into what surrounds us in a deeper way. We must learn to combine the gospel, the teaching, the message with the ceremony. But to do that, we must first come to an understanding of the gospels; we must first learn to read them.

You see, it is not so easy to read the Testament at all. The strangest conflicts arise when something like this is not understood in the right light. Because it touches on a question that was asked during our meeting here, I would like to point to a certain experience that I once had with regard to the content of this question.

Someone had heard — someone who actually had the good will, the good eye to understand what comes from anthroposophical spiritual science —, he had heard or even read in a cycle that I said that both the Old and the New Testament should actually be taken quite literally. So basically, literal readings are not really wrong. He paid little attention to the fact that preparation is needed to understand the words [of the Old and New Testaments] in order to be able to read them, and so he simply said from his abstraction: “But man will go astray if you simply tell today's man that the Gospels are to be understood literally, and then modern man – and he identified himself with a modern man – reads in the Bible: ”And it And it came to pass, that they fled from before the people of Israel, and were at the descent of Beth-horon, and the Lord rained upon them great stones from heaven, even unto Azekah, and they died; and there were those that died by the hailstones, and they were more in number than those that fell by the sword of the children of Israel, the people of Joshua. And Joshua spoke to the Lord of Hosts at the time when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the eyes of the children of Israel, and he spoke as he did so that Israel's eyes might see: Sun at Gibeon, stand still, and Moon in the valley of Ajalon! And the sun stood still at Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, until the people had avenged themselves of their enemies.” — And now comes the most important sentence -: ”Is this not written in the book of those who see God? And the sun stood still in the midst of heaven at Gibeon, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. Never before has there been such a day for the people of the earth, when the Lord of Hosts allowed such a thing to happen at the voice of a single man; but that became the sign that the Lord was there with the people of Israel."

This passage must be read first. You will see how a true reading of the passage actually opens up the possibility of understanding the matter. Now this person said to me: If I read that, then of course it can only be meant symbolically; and I am disappointed in you, because it seems to me that you make judgments that are impossible to record in detail, as if you wanted to save the Bible by saying something like: the Bible must be taken literally. —

In this context, I have to say that it is of course not possible for me to give you a full explanation of this passage now. It requires a little more, a lot more preparation. But, as I said, we want to come back to this passage in the next few days because a question along these lines has been raised. But what I want to say now is that it is necessary to be able to read the Gospels. Now it is not possible to read the Gospels correctly without placing them in the context in which they were spoken. Today, my dear friends, much of what is written in the Gospels is simply taken in such a way that sentences are omitted that are important in the very least sense for understanding. For example, if something like this is written somewhere in the Gospels: And when the sun had set, Christ Jesus healed the sick here and there - today this is naturally understood as if a modern person were to say: When the sun had set, he said this or that. But nothing is unnecessary in the Gospels. If it were unnecessary, “when the sun had set,” then it would not be there. And it means that everything that is now being told is being accomplished by Christ Jesus after the sun has set; that means that if the sun were still there, it would be an obstacle to what is to be accomplished. — So the understanding of the Gospels must be drawn from what went into the writing of the Gospels. But first of all it is necessary to be clear about one thing, which I now want to discuss from a certain point of view.

We have received three religious festivals for the year from the most diverse Christian confessions; and before I want to continue saying anything else about rituals and ceremonies, I would like to talk about the festivals, because otherwise we will not be able to understand each other.

First of all, we have Christmas, we have Easter, and we have Pentecost. Christmas has been transferred from an old consciousness to the time when the sun draws its strength most powerfully from the earth, when the earth, with all its activity, and thus also with what it can be for man, is most dependent on itself. At Christmas time, we are dealing with the earth that is abandoned to itself, and in the face of this, human beings must remember to awaken in their souls that which can come to them from the earth that is abandoned to itself. Thus we have fixed the Christmas festival quite according to earthly conditions. Even in its fixing lies the fact that the human being who experiences the Christmas season in the right way, I would like to say, feels connected in warm fervor with that which the earth can give out of its own strength.

My dear friends, if you have lived in the countryside, you will have experienced how, in the fall, farmers dig large pits to a certain depth in the ground; they put their potatoes in them, and then they cover them up. These potatoes are kept in the right way by the warmth stored in the depths of the earth, so that they do not freeze. Why don't they freeze? Because the earth physically stores the warmth of the summer sun in its womb during the winter season. And if we were to observe everything that the earth stores from the summer season, not only in terms of warmth, but also in terms of light, mineral chemistry and life, then, my dear friends, we would be connected to the earth differently in our consciousness. Then, especially in the depths of winter, at the winter solstice, one would have to say to the earth: In you, everything that draws towards the earth in summer is revealed to me, in the warmth of the worlds, in the light of the worlds, in all that lives in the vastness of the world in terms of measure, number and weight, in all that lives in the vastness of the world in terms of life force. All of this is present in earthly existence during the winter season, and most strongly during the winter solstice. It is the inner substantiality of the earth to which we appeal when we set the Christmas festival in the season in which the sun most strongly withdraws its power from the earth. In a sense, we turn completely to the center of the earth by setting the Christmas season; in a sense, we are alone with the earth and its substantial existence; we are expelled from our heavenly context, but we see that we have given from this loneliness of the earth into the earth itself when we set the Christmas season on the calendar.

We then live our way out of this Christmas season, approaching Easter through various intermediate stages, which we will also discuss. And so, out of an ancient awareness that Easter was not determined according to earthly conditions, man is meant to turn outwards into the cosmos at Easter time. Man does not set the Easter season according to the substantial transformations of the earth; man sets it according to heavenly relationships, according to the relationships that exist between solar and lunar processes. Easter is on the first Sunday after the spring full moon. Why is Easter on the first Sunday after the spring full moon? For the reason that on Sunday we delve into that which is eternal, but because we want to celebrate this eternal in the sense of connecting our consciousness with the realm of the heavens, which is accessible from the outside. When the full moon appears, it radiates the light of the sun back to us with its full power. We thereby attune ourselves, not only to the mechanical movements of the outer universe, but we attune ourselves to the intensity of the universe. We attune ourselves to the light, but it is not the usual moonlight that reflects back to us, it is the moonlight that appears to us when the sun begins to send its power down to the earth ever stronger and stronger. There we are on earth, there we are not abandoned to the heavens and have to turn to earth, there we are as men so arranged in the cosmos that the light of the world stops in us, which does not go to the interior of the earth, which now stops in us men, and we turn to that what stops there, what is reflected back into us men. What is reflected back at the first full moon of spring is exactly the same power that is reflected back from the full moon itself at this time; it is the power of the sun that is held back. We set the date of Easter according to our connection with heaven. In a certain sense, we relate to earth and heaven in a different way at Easter than at Christmas, and it is a significant, profound immersion in the course of time when one becomes aware of what it means to set Christmas as an earthly festival and to set Easter as a heavenly festival.

Now, my dear friends, we do not yet penetrate this with spiritual consciousness, but we move within what lies within the Christmas and Easter seasons, basically at first in the sensual manifestation of the eternal world activity. For us human beings, we participate in this sensual world activity through warmth on the one hand and through light on the other; we do not go further. We come, by remaining in the sensual, to the point that is announced [in the Bible] with the words: You, the Lord of Hosts, Lord of the hosts localized in the stars, Lord of the stars, You have ordered everything according to measure, number and weight. - We can inwardly experience warmth, we can outwardly experience warmth, that is, warmth can be given to us in sensual observation. We can inwardly experience light, we can outwardly experience light, that is to say, light can be given to us in sensory perception. But that which we experience as measure, number and weight, that is missing, so that we are not aware that we know absolutely nothing about our own center of gravity, although we use it when walking and standing, that we know nothing about our equilibrium, although we live through it constantly, that we know nothing about our weight. We are so physically arranged that we know nothing of our weight, and we could not live on earth if we knew our weight, because we could only know of our weight through our brain making this weight conscious in us. If the brain, with its entire weight – that is about 1300 grams – were to rest on the blood vessels that are located under the brain in our head, my dear friends, these blood vessels would be crushed every moment. We do not live with the absolute weight of the brain, we live within this weight in such a way that the brain fluid constantly penetrates up and down through the arachnoid space and the spinal canal, and the brain floats in the brain fluid. You know that according to Archimedes' law, every floating body loses as much of its weight as the weight of the displaced water. Our brain displaces so much water that it weighs about 1200 to 1300 grams; but that is almost as much as the brain weight less 20 grams, so that the brain presses only with 20 grams instead of with 1300 grams on its base. But that is what we experience. In this upward striving, we experience ourselves.

This is something that can initially only be observed from the outside, something that is not fully appreciated by human beings in its inner significance. We do not experience what the ordering of the world is in terms of the divine principle, the order of measure, number and weight; but we have to change our inner being by experiencing the time [from Christmas to Easter] and to live spiritually into what changes outwardly in a sensory way. We must add to this an understanding of that which can only be experienced inwardly, an understanding of that which can only be present in our consciousness if we experience it inwardly. We must proceed to make arrangements that are now based neither on earthly observations nor on heavenly observations; we must proceed in such a way that we then only say: Whitsun falls so many days after Easter. So many days, that is, we no longer rely on anything that can be observed externally; we only set [the Pentecost] according to an internal process and thus step out of the sensual by developing from Easter to Pentecost.

Take what I have suggested in the abstract, my dear friends, as a fully human understanding – as I said, “fully human” written as one word: ganzmenschlich —, take this as a fully human understanding, for then it does not just take hold of thinking, but also of feeling and willing, and the powers of understanding are absorbed in feeling and willing. If you imbibe what I have said inwardly in relation to thinking alone, you will indeed have something, but it will be something through which the fruit of Christ will only sprout thirtyfold in the soul. If it penetrates to your feeling, you will have something through which the fruit of Christ will bear fruit sixtyfold in you. But if you permeate thinking, feeling and willing, then the Christ-fruit will bear a hundredfold fruit in you. Take this in with the whole human understanding, not with two-thirds thinking and feeling, not with one-third mere thinking, but take it in with the whole human understanding, then you will find the mood that must live in the Christian by living from Christmas to Pentecost. He then lives the year with, he lives it in a concrete way, and he is ready to live into the Johanni mood, which he can only experience if he does not become intoxicated by the ever stronger and stronger growing sun. If he becomes intoxicated, that is, if he does not live towards the summer solstice in such a way that he lives through it with all his powers, then he undergoes a certain world fainting; he fades, so to speak, powerlessly in the summer warmth and sunlight. But if he holds together through what he has developed from Easter to Pentecost, he remains aware of what has been placed in his soul by divine world powers, and he experiences what is there at the summer solstice, at the time of St. John, with the full power of his inner being, insofar as this full power of his inner being is meant to be there.

And then he can go on living, in that what he has, as it were, transplanted into himself as a human being, can mature more and more within him, so that his inner being ripens towards the Christmas season to such an extent that he is strong enough to draw from the earth what the earth itself can give him.

In this way, an understanding of the year is awakened in our soul. And it is out of such an understanding that the Gospels are written, and it is out of such an understanding that we must know how to distribute their content throughout the year. If we thus include the Gospels as messages in our religious services, they must be included in such a way that they are included out of our inner understanding. And if we want to advance to that which enables us to really place ourselves in all acts of consecration, then we must find the breviary. But we can never find this breviary if we do not know how to attach ourselves to that which can be achieved in such an understanding of the year, in a cosmic, whole-human understanding. Therefore, I will have to give you the principle of the secret of building up a breviary. This consists in the fact that we first have a prayer for each day, a prayer that is inwardly meditative in character, but which has something cognitive for each day of the week, that we are able to direct this prayer in four parts through the month to the east, west, south and north, and that we are able to carry it through the twelve months of the year, so that a real annual cycle emerges from it. A breviary must therefore be constructed in such a way that inner experiences are rhythmically repeated through the breviary, which will be structured like the seven days of the week, the four weeks of the month and the twelve months of the year. We will see how a breviary should be structured, beginning with that which is connected to the course of the year through the twelve, that which relates to space through the four, and that which relates to the day through its essential content. The content of the day will be the content, the guiding force will be that which relates to the weeks, and the mood will be that which relates to the twelve months of the year. No breviary has ever been different, and if you, my dear friends, have the will to move on to such things, then you must also be prepared to acquire an understanding of these things.

I had to assume that this would follow from the baptismal ritual before we move on to further discussions of rituals.

In a series of lectures, we want to take in a general picture of the theosophical attitude and world view and that which can be considered the basis for our spiritual scientific work. And in doing so, we want to base these theosophical considerations on the Gospel of John. It will come about quite naturally that after a few lectures, light will be shed on the most remarkable piece of writing in the world. Because that is this Gospel of John. Today, let me point out what the Gospel of John actually is.

First, we need to create a basis for understanding the profound first chapter. When you read the gospel, you can be edified by the grandeur of the images, but as a person of the present, you can no longer really grasp what this gospel actually means. In the past, it was considered a record of how the real Christ Jesus lived on earth and what actually happened in Palestine. In more Protestant and modern research, it was later believed that John's gospel seems to contradict the other three gospels. The first three, the Synoptics, were therefore summarized. The fourth gospel is not considered to be of equal value because it was written much later. It contains nothing historical, but is a kind of poetic rendering, a poem in which the writer has set down what he thought of the life of Christ Jesus. This is the point of view of the so-called believer of the present day. With a certain amount of justification, the famous theologian Bunsen said: “If the Gospel of John is nothing more than the poetic outpouring of an individual, then with it the whole of Christianity falls.” All this research is based on the inability of the last four to five centuries to even understand what is meant by the Gospel of John.

Man and his views have changed, and today's man cannot imagine that the world can be viewed from a different point of view. What is really understandable to people today is sensory and intellectual knowledge. In the past, however, people still knew that there is another kind of knowledge. They knew that there are other senses and other sources of knowledge. Today's materialistic research is in stark contrast to the orthodox biblical believer with regard to this knowledge. This also applies to the Mosaic creation story. The believers take it literally, and modern research says: This can never be taken literally; we are dealing with long, long periods of time. The Bible believer and the natural scientist do not understand each other at all. They have sought a kind of compromise, trying to understand the whole story of creation allegorically, saying that it is only meant symbolically. How was the story of creation understood in church circles five hundred years ago? No one in the church originally said: this is what happened materially and visibly before our very eyes. To the medieval theologian, that would have seemed grotesque. The idea that the seven days of creation were to be taken literally only came in through materialism.

As a kind of lawful necessity, the materialistic world view swept over our earth, and the first thing this wave took hold of was religion. At first, it was not science that was grasped by the materialistic view, but the church. What used to be understood spiritually was now imbued with the materialistic attitude. Now science is fighting something that the materialistic world view has brought about.

One example of this is the concept of the Lord's Supper. In the 12th century, the church was shocked when people began to understand the Lord's Supper as if wine could actually turn into blood and bread into the actual body. The spiritual teaching of transubstantiation was forgotten.

nn So the spiritual meaning was lost bit by bit. The theologian of the 6th and 7th century still knew what was meant by the story of creation. When it says, “Adam fell into a deep sleep,” it refers to a dream vision through which Adam experienced the seven-day work as an astral process.

What happened in the distant past could no longer be grasped by the senses. But those who saw with their soul could grasp it in a higher spiritual state. But it then appears to them in images. So it was astral images that Adam saw in his dream during the seven days of creation; he looked back at the original world from which he came.

Thus, the religious documents were attributed to higher sources of knowledge. The fight against the Bible is based on misunderstandings. To take the Gospel of John literally in a materialistic sense is to misunderstand it. This is not to say that it should be taken symbolically. What is written in the Gospel of John cannot be experienced in this physical-sensual world any more than the work of the seven days, the story of creation, but only in a different state of consciousness. The author of the fourth Gospel describes what he perceived not within but outside of the physical body, in a different state of consciousness. The other three Gospels can still be taken literally, but the Gospel of John cannot. It is more true than true; it contains the deepest truth of Christianity. It sees the center of world evolution in Christ Jesus. For John, the Christ hidden in Jesus is an outstandingly high personality that can only be understood by soaring to a higher level of knowledge. To understand what is alive in the Gospel of John, it is necessary to recognize the deepest secrets of existence. To understand the human being and the leader of humanity, one must grasp the essence of the cosmos. The Gospel of John begins with words that are based on the whole secret of the world. The most peculiar thing about these words is that they not only appeal to our understanding, but also have a magical mental effect. They give us a picture of how the human being and the cosmos are connected.

The Gospel of John must be experienced. You have to take the first words as material for meditation, let them live within you. This is spiritual food for life. You have to say to yourself: This is material for me to live with for five minutes a day. These words will open your spiritual eyes and ears; you will experience the magical power of these words, which are forces, and you will experience them in astral images. Let me bring you closer to the soul of what the writer of the Gospel of John felt as an impulse, what he wanted to say. At first he was one who was a newborn according to his soul, one who had been awakened by the power of the insights that lie in the sentences: |

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.

That is the first part of the meditation. And this is the second part:

There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.
He came for a witness, to bear witness about the Light, that through him all might believe.
He was not the Light, but a witness about the Light.
For the true light that enlightens all men was coming into the world.
It was in the world, and the world was made through it, but the world did not recognize it.
It came to what was individual in people (it came to what was individual in the people who were “I” persons), but what was individual in people (the “I” persons) did not receive it.
But those who received it, through it they could reveal themselves as God's children.
Those who trusted in his name were not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of human will, but of God.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we heard his teaching, the teaching of the only
Son of the Father, full of devotion and truth.

If you take the values of these words, not just their literal meaning, then they have infinite value. For example, it should read: “It came to the I-people” - instead of: “He came into his own.”

If you read these words, you have a brief outline of the theosophy of John and that which we also teach. So let us try to understand the very first words. To do this, a brief overview of the basic concepts of theosophy is necessary.

There are entities that are above human beings and no longer need a physical body. These are: the angels, the archangels, the first causes or causes, authorities, powers, dominions, thrones, cherubim, seraphim.

Verse 1: “In the first causes was the Word, and the Word was made life, and because it was creative, it was a god.” Everything, absolutely everything is the crystallized Divine Word, the spoken Word. Now man has the Word; later he will bring forth his own through the Word. The Primordial Beginnings are the entities that were already at the stage at the beginning of the evolution of the earth at which man will arrive at the end of the evolution of the earth.

Because John was able to feel this impulse, he had experienced in great astral visions what is contained in these sentences. But that was only the second thing in his soul, the first was the awakening of these powers. The third was now the following. We will try to understand it with an example. For example, you have a dream one night; it shows you a person you have never seen before. The dream gives you the certainty that you are not indifferent to this person; after a short time you will meet him. — This is how John felt about the experience of Christ. He had had astral visions in a dream state of what became history in Palestine. What his experiences were in higher worlds, his visions, then became experience in earthly life.

The meditation would be done in such a way that one morning a person begins to let the first words of the Gospel of John run through his soul every day. After months, after years, after decades he will experience something in his soul of what is contained in these words. The translation of these words is important: “It came as far as the ‘I’ people, but the ‘I’ people did not accept it.” If you go through these words, you will have a brief outline of theosophy in the Gospel of John: the theosophy that we teach. Hence its tremendous effect. Only those who first awaken these soul-spiritual powers within themselves will experience this.

Try to understand the very first words of the Gospel of John. To do this, a brief overview of the most elementary concepts of Theosophy is necessary.

Let us try it by starting from the bottom. If we look at the human being as he stands before us today, we can say that what we know something about today is the physical body, one limb only of the human being. Even the physical human body is permeated by other higher aspects of our being; that is why it looks as it appears to us now. If it were not permeated by other aspects of our being, it would be just a physical apparatus, with nothing moving it from within and nothing hurting it. Only the physical eye is like a physical apparatus. You must vividly keep in mind the possibility that man grows and that something hurts him, then you will recognize how the physical body is permeated with two other entities: one makes man grow, reproduce and nourish himself; this is done through his etheric body. The other is that he feels, that he has urges, desires and passions that come from his astral body. In order for the physical body to grow, it needs the etheric body. In order for it to feel, it needs the astral body. |

Hydrogen alone cannot represent water; it needs oxygen to do so. If hydrogen and oxygen separate again, we no longer have water; the connection is necessary here as well as there. If the human being is separated from his two other bodies, the physical body will immediately decay.

The sentient body, etheric body and physical body, these three elements of being go down to the animal. Man shares his physical body with the earth, the mineral; his ether body with the plants, and his astral body with the animals. We can also say: everything that requires growth and reproduction resides in the ether body; instincts, desire and pain sensations reside in the astral body.

At death, the physical body remains behind, the etheric and astral bodies initially remain together, and soon the etheric body also separates from the astral body. In sleep, the human being is literally a plant in the fullest sense: his body is still kept going only by the vegetative life, the etheric body. Normally, a person is unconscious and without will or desires when asleep. The few who retain their consciousness during sleep are the exceptions among humanity; they already represent a state that all people will reach in the future: they are the predisposed, predestined leaders and prophets of humanity.

How are dreams possible? How do they come about? There is a hidden potential in the astral body. When this ability is fully developed, consciousness arises.

To the physical body, to the etheric and astral bodies, one more is added. There is a word that differs from all others because it can only be said to oneself. It is the word “I”. This fact is of the utmost importance. Jean Paul's story gives us a beautiful example of the significance of this word. He describes how, as a very young boy, he stood under the door of his parents' house when suddenly the realization flashed through him: I am a self! It is a process in the hidden sanctum of the soul that pure natures feel particularly strongly as a mystery. The scope of this mystery was felt by the priests and sages of all times. It also underlies what the ancient Hebrews called the unspeakable name of God. The high priest would say the word “Joph” once a year to express the sound of the unspeakable. Joph is the “I”. Together with the bodies mentioned above, the “I” forms what is known as the Pythagorean tetrad.

The clairvoyant can see the higher bodies while fully conscious. It is a different matter with hypnosis. In this state, the hypnotized person sees what the hypnotist wants. The hypnotized person is subject to positive or negative suggestion, depending on whether they are led to believe that something is really there, that they feel something, for example, the sweet taste of a pear while biting into a potato, or that something is not there, for example, no people, no objects in the room, and so on.

This last state can be consciously brought about to make the etheric body visible. It is a higher kind of attention. Through a strong volitional act, you suggest the physical body away and then convince yourself that the space previously occupied by the physical body is not empty, but filled with a magnificent light substance, not comparable to anything earthly. In the heart and lung area, you can see wonderful movements of this light substance. This is the etheric body of the human being. The consciously clairvoyant person sees the etheric body protruding a little above the human body. In the case of horses, it protrudes much further.

The third thing that the clairvoyant can see, even if the etheric body is suggested away, is the astral body, which then appears as an elliptical cloud. There you can see the instincts and desires in the form of colored light formations, the bright yellow of developed intelligence and clear thinking, and the beautiful blue of piety and selfless sacrifice.

In addition to these three phenomena visible to the clairvoyant, there is a fourth one that is formed very differently in all people. In the space behind the bridge of the nose, one sees in the astral body a kind of hollow sphere of bluish color, similar to the core of a flame of light that appears blue through the yellow light envelope. In the undeveloped human being it is a small bluish oval; in the developed human being it appears as a blue glow.

Friendship, love, and religious feeling appear in green, blue, and blue-red; everything is in constant and intense motion while the etheric body is rotating.

If we now ask ourselves under what influences these four components of the human being have formed, the answer is that the physical body, which only reflects the life of the earth, is composed of the forces of the earth. The earth has an influence on it. The etheric body, like plants, depends not only on the earth but also on the sun; it strives towards the sun. Our astral body, however, depends on the forces of the stellar world, hence its name. Paracelsus is quite right when he says: “There is nothing in heaven and on earth that is not also in man, and God, who is in heaven and on earth, is also in man.” During the night, man lives in the stars, in the forces from which he was built. During sleep, his astral body experiences the paths in which the stars move and hold. From this astral body, the body born of the stars, the ego is now born.

What can be heard as the keynote of the movement of the stars in the universe is called the Pythagorean music of the spheres. This fundamental chord of the starry orbits and the universe, this tone is what the writer of the Gospel of John means when he speaks of the Word of the world. Thus, a first understanding of the deep mystical meaning of these words will begin to dawn on our consciousness. It will lead us ever deeper and deeper into the true occult meaning of this wonderful document.

[ 1 ] At this time there was established in Germany a branch of the Ethical Culture Society which had originated in America. It seems obvious that in a materialistic age one ought only to approve an effort in the direction of a deepening of ethical life. But this effort arose from a fundamental conception that aroused in me the profoundest objections.

[ 2 ] The leader of this movement said to himself: “One stands to-day in the midst of the many opposing conceptions of the world and of life as regards the life of thought and the religious and social feelings. In the realm of these conceptions men cannot be brought to understand one another. It is a bad thing when the moral feelings which men ought to have for one another are drawn into the sphere of these opposing opinions. Where will it lead if those who feel differently in matters religious and social, or who differ from one another in the life of thought, shall also express their diversity in such a way as thus to determine also their moral relationships with respect to those who think and feel differently. Therefore one must seek for a foundation for purely human ethics which shall be independent of every world-concept, which each one can recognize no matter how he may think in reference to the various spheres of existence.”

[ 3 ] This ethical movement made upon me a profound impression. It had to do with views of mine which I held to be most important. For I saw before me the deep abyss which the way of thinking characteristic of the most recent times had created between that which occurs in nature and the content of the moral and spiritual world.

[ 4 ] Men have come to a conception of nature which would represent the evolution of the world as being without moral or spiritual content. They think hypothetically of a purely material primal state of the world. They seek for the laws according to which from this primal state there could gradually have been formed the living, that which is endued with soul, that which is permeated with spirit in the form characteristic of this present age. If one is logical in such a way of thinking – so I then said to myself – then the spiritual and moral cannot be conceived as anything other than a result of the work of nature. Then one faces facts of nature which are from the spiritual and moral point of view quite indifferent, which in their own process of evolution have brought forth the moral as a by-product, and which finally with moral indifference likewise bury it.

[ 5 ] I could, of course, perceive clearly that the sagacious thinkers did not draw these conclusions; that they simply accepted what the facts of nature seemed to say to them, and thought in regard to these matters that one ought simply to allow the world-significance of the spiritual and moral to rest upon its own foundation. But this view seemed to me of little force. It made no difference to me that people said: “In the field of natural occurrences one must think in a way that has no relation to morality, and what one thus thinks constitutes hypotheses; but in regard to the moral each man may form his own ideas.” I said to myself that whoever thinks in regard to nature even in the least detail in the manner then customary, such a person cannot ascribe to the spiritual-moral any self existent, self-supporting reality. If physics, chemistry, biology remain as they are – and to all they seem to be unassailable – then the entities which men in these spheres consider to be reality will absorb all reality; and the spiritual-moral could be nothing more than the foam arising from this reality.

[ 6 ] I looked into another reality – a reality which is spiritual and moral as well as natural. It seemed to me a weakness in the effort to attain knowledge not to be willing to press through to that reality. I was forced to say to myself according to my spiritual perception: “Above the natural occurrences, and also the spiritual-moral, there is a veritable reality, which reveals itself morally but which in moral activity has at the same time the power to embody itself as an occurrence which attains to equal validity with an occurrence in nature.” I thought that this seemed indifferent to the spiritual-moral only because the latter had lost its original unity of being with this reality, as the corpse of a man has lost its unity of being with that in man which is endued with soul and with life.

[ 7 ] To me this was certain; for I did not merely think it: I perceived it as truth in the spiritual facts and beings of the world. In the so-called “ethicists” there seemed to me to have been born men to whom such an insight appeared to be a matter of indifference; they revealed more or less unconsciously the opinion that one can do nothing with conflicting philosophies; let us save the principles of ethics, in regard to which there is no need to inquire how they are rooted in the world-reality. Undisguised scepticism as to all endeavour after a world-concept seemed to me to manifest itself in this phenomenon of the times. Unconsciously frivolous did any one seem to me who maintained that, if we let world-concepts rest on their own foundations, we shall thus be able to spread morality again among men. I took many a walk with Hans and Grete Olden through the Weimar parks, during which I expressed myself in radical fashion on the theme of this frivolity. “Whoever presses forward with his perception as far as is possible for man,” I said, “will find a world-event out of which there appears before him the reality of the moral just as of the natural.” In the recently founded Zukunft I wrote a trenchant article against what I called ethics uprooted from all world-reality, which could not possess any force. The article met with a distinctly unfriendly reception. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, when these “ethicists” themselves had been obliged to come forward as the saviours of civilization?

[ 8] To me this matter was of immeasurable importance. I wished to do battle at a critical point for the confirmation of a world-concept which revealed ethics as firmly rooted along with all other reality. Therefore, I was forced to battle against this ethics which had no philosophical basis.

[ 9 ] I went from Weimar to Berlin in order to seek for opportunities to present my view through the press.

[ 10 ] I called on Herman Grimm, whom I held in high honour. I was received with the greatest possible friendliness. But it seemed to Herman Grimm very strange that I, who was full of zeal for my cause, should bring this zeal into his house. He listened to me rather unresponsively, as I talked to him of my view regarding the ethicists. I thought I could interest him in this matter which to me seemed so vital. But I did not in the least succeed. When, however, he heard me say “I wish to do something,” he replied, “Well, go to these people; I am more or less acquainted with the majority of them; they are all quite amiable men.” I felt as if cold water had been thrown over me. The man whom I so highly honoured felt nothing of what I desired; he thought I would “think quite sensibly” when I had convinced myself by a call on the “ethicists” that they were all quite congenial persons.

[ 11 ] I found in others no greater interest than in Herman Grimm. So it was at that time for me. In all that pertained to my perceptions of the spiritual I had to work entirely alone. I lived in the spiritual world; no one in my circle of acquaintances followed me there. My intercourse consisted in excursions into the worlds of others. I loved these excursions. Moreover, my reverence for Herman Grimm was not in the least diminished. But I had a good schooling in the art of understanding in love that which made no move toward understanding what I carried in my own soul.

[ 12 ] This was then the nature of my loneliness in Weimar, where I had such an extensive social relationship. But I did not ascribe to these persons the fact that they condemned me to such loneliness. Indeed, I perceived that unconsciously striving in many people was the impulse toward a world-concept which would penetrate to the very roots of existence. I perceived how a manner of thinking which could move securely while it had to do only with that which lies immediately at hand yet weighed heavily upon their souls. “Nature is the whole world” – such was that manner of thinking. In regard to this way of thinking men believed that they must find it to be correct, and they suppressed in their souls everything which seemed to say one could not find this to be correct. It was in this light that much revealed itself to me in my spiritual surroundings at that time. It was the time in which my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, whose essential content I had long borne within me, was receiving its final form.

[ 13 ] As soon as it was off the press, I sent a copy to Eduard von Hartmann. He read it with close attention, for I soon received back his copy of the book with his detailed marginal comments from beginning to end. Besides, he wrote me, among other things, that the book ought to bear the title: Erkenntnistheoretischer Phänomenalismus und ethischer Individualismus.¹ I He had utterly misunderstood the sources of the ideas and my objective. He thought of the sense-world after the Kantian fashion even though he modified this. He considered this world to be the effect produced by reality upon the soul through the senses. This reality, according to his view, can never enter into the field of perception which the soul embraces through consciousness. It must remain beyond consciousness. Only by means of logical inferences can man form hypothetical conceptions regarding it. The sense-world, therefore, does not constitute in itself an objective existence, but is merely a subjective phenomenon existing in the soul only so long as this embraces the phenomenon within consciousness.

[ 14 ] I had sought to prove in my book that no unknown lies behind the sense-world, but that within it lies the spiritual. And concerning the world of human ideas, I sought to show that these have their existence in that spiritual world. Therefore the reality of the sense-world is hidden from human consciousness only so long as the soul perceives by means of the senses alone. When, in addition to the sense-perceptions, the ideas are also experienced, then the sense-world in its objective reality is embraced within consciousness. Knowing does not consist in a copying of a real but the soul's living entrance into that real. Within the consciousness occurs that advance from the still unreal sense-world to the reality of this world.

[ 15 ] In truth is the sense-world also a spiritual world; and the soul lives together with this known spiritual world while it extends its consciousness over it. The goal of the process of consciousness is the conscious experience of the spiritual world, in the visible presence of which everything is resolved into spirit.

[ 16 ] I placed the world of spiritual reality over against phenomenalism. Eduard von Hartmann thought that I intended to remain within the phenomena and abandon the thought of arriving from these at any sort of objective reality. He conceived the thing as if by my way of thinking I were condemning the human mind to permanent incapacity to reach any sort of reality, to the necessity of moving always within a world of appearances having existence only in the conception of the mind (as a phenomenon).

Thus my endeavour to reach the spirit through the expansion of consciousness was set over against the view that “spirit” exists solely in the human conception and apart from this can only be “thought.” This was fundamentally the view of the age to which I had to introduce my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. The experience of the spiritual had in this view of the matter shriveled up to a mere experience of human conceptions, and from these no way could be discovered to a real (objective) spiritual world.

[ 17 ] I desired to show how in that which is subjectively experienced the objective spiritual shines and becomes the true content of consciousness; Eduard von Hartmann opposed me with the opinion that whoever maintains this view remains fixed in the sensibly apparent and is not dealing at all with an objective reality.

[ 18 ] It was inevitable, therefore, that Eduard von Hartmann must consider my “ethical individualism” dubious.

[ 19 ] For what was this based upon in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity? I saw at the centre of the soul's life its complete union with the spiritual world. I sought so to express this fact that an imaginary difficulty which disturbed many persons might resolve itself into nothing. That is, it is supposed that, in order to know, the soul – or the ego – must differentiate itself from that which is known, and therefore must not merge itself with this. But this differentiation is also possible when the soul swings, like a pendulum, as it were, between the union of itself with the spiritual real on the one hand and the sense of itself on the other. The soul becomes “unconscious” in sinking down into the objective spirit, but with the sense of itself it brings the completely spiritual into consciousness.

[ 20 ] If, now, it is possible that the personal individuality of men can sink down into the spiritual reality of the world, then in this reality it is possible to experience also the world of moral impulses. Morality becomes a content which reveals itself out of the spiritual world within the human individuality; and the consciousness expanded into the spiritual presses forward to the perception of this revelation. What impels man to moral behaviour is a revelation of the spiritual world in the experiencing of the spiritual world through the soul. And this experience takes place within the individuality of man. If man perceives himself in moral behaviour as acting in reciprocal relation with the spiritual world, he is then experiencing his freedom. For the spiritual world works within the soul, not by way of compulsion, but in such a way that man must develop freely the activity which enables him to receive the spiritual.

[ 21 ] In pointing out that the sense-world is in reality a world of spiritual being and that man, as a soul, by means of a true knowledge of the sense-world is weaving and living in a world of spirit – herein lies the first objective of my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. In characterizing the moral world as one whose being shines into the world of spirit experienced by the soul and thereby enables man to arrive at this moral world freely – herein lies the second objective. The moral being of man is thus sought in its completely individual unity with the ethical impulses of the spiritual world. I had the feeling that the first part of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and the second part form a spiritual organism, a genuine unity. Eduard von Hartmann was forced, however, to feel that they were coupled together quite arbitrarily as phenomenalism in the theory of knowledge and individualism in ethics.

[ 22 ] The form taken by the ideas of the book was determined by my own state of soul at that time. Through my experience of the spiritual world in direct perception, nature revealed itself to me as spirit; I desired to create a spiritual natural science. In the self-knowledge of the human soul through direct perception, the moral world entered into the soul as its entirely individual experience.

[ 23 ] In the experience of spirit lay the source of the form which I gave to my book. It is, first of all, the presentation of an anthroposophy which receives its direction from nature and from the place of man in nature with his own individual moral being.

[ 24 ] In a certain sense The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity released from me and introduced into the external world that which the first period of my life had brought before me in the form of ideas through the destiny which led me to experience the natural-scientific riddles of existence. The further way could now consist in nothing else than a struggle to arrive at ideal forms for the spiritual world itself.

[ 25 ] The forms of knowledge which man receives through sense-perception I represented as inner anthroposophical experience of the spirit on the part of the human soul. The fact that I had not yet used the term anthroposophic was done to the circumstance that my mind was always striving first to attain perception and scarcely at all after a terminology. My task was to form ideas which could express the human soul's experience of the spiritual world.

[ 26 ] An inner wrestling after the formation of such ideas comprises the content of that episode of my life which I passed through between my thirtieth and fortieth years of age. At that time fate placed me usually in an outer life-activity which did not so correspond with my inner life that it could have served to bring this to expression.

• 1. Phenomenalism in the Theory of Knowledge and Individualism in Ethics.

[ 1 ] It is certainly true that there is much in the intellectual life of the present day that makes it difficult for those who are seeking the truth to recognize the spiritual-scientific (theosophical) insights. And what has been said in the preceding article about the “Life Questions of the Theosophical Movement” may be taken as an indication of the reasons which exist in this direction, especially for the conscientious seeker after truth. Many a statement of the spiritual scientist must appear quite fantastic to him who examines it by the sure judgments which he believes he must form from what he has learned as the facts of natural scientific research. In addition, this research is able to point out the enormous blessing that it has brought and continues to bring to human progress. How overwhelming it is when a person who wants to build a world view solely on the results of this research is able to say the proud words: “For there is an abyss between these two extreme views of life: one for this world alone, the other for heaven. To this day, however, human science has nowhere found the traces of a paradise, of a life of the dead, or of a personal God. This inexorable science, which fathoms and dissects everything, which shrinks from no mystery, which explores the heavens behind the nebulous stars, which analyzes the infinitely small atoms of living cells and chemical bodies, which dissects the substance of the sun, which liquefies the air, which soon will be able to telegraph from one end of the earth and soon even wireless telegraphy from one end of the earth to the other, already sees through opaque bodies, introduces shipping under water and in the air, opens up new horizons for us with radium and other discoveries; this science, which, after proving the true relationship of all living beings among themselves and their gradual transformations of form, today draws the organ of the human soul, the brain, into the realm of its thorough research.” (Prof. August Forel, “Life and Death”, Munich 1908, page 5.) The certainty with which one believes to be able to build on such a foundation is revealed in the words that Forel adds to the above remarks : “Starting from a monistic view of life, the only one that takes all scientific facts into account, we leave the supernatural aside and turn to the book of nature.” Thus the serious seeker after truth finds himself confronted with two things that place strong obstacles in the way of any presentiment he may have of the truth of spiritual-scientific communications. If he has a feeling for such communications, or even if he senses their inner justification through a finer logic, he may be forced to suppress such impulses if he has to tell himself two things. Firstly, the authorities who know the cogency of certain facts find that all “supernatural” things are merely the product of fantasy and unscientific superstition. Secondly, I run the risk of becoming an impractical person, useless for life, through devotion to such supernatural things. For everything that is done for practical life must be firmly rooted in the “ground of reality.”

[ 2 ] Not everyone who is placed in such a dilemma will easily work their way through to the realization of how the two things characterized really are. If they could, they would see the following, for example, with regard to the first point: the results of spiritual science are in no way in contradiction with the research of natural science. Wherever one looks at the relationship of the two impartially, something quite different emerges for our time. It turns out that this research into facts is heading towards a goal that will bring it into full harmony with what spiritual research must establish from its supersensible sources for certain areas in the not too distant future. From hundreds of cases that could be brought forward as evidence for this assertion, one characteristic case will be emphasized here.

[ 3 ] In my lectures on the development of the earth and of mankind, I have pointed out that the ancestors of the present civilized peoples lived in a region of the earth which once extended over the surface of the earth in the place now occupied by a large part of the Atlantic Ocean. In this magazine, the articles “From the Akasha Chronicle” have referred more to the mental and spiritual characteristics of these Atlantean ancestors. In oral discourse, it has also often been described how the surface of the earth in the old Atlantean land looked. It was said: At that time, the air was saturated with water vapor. Man lived in the watery mist, which never cleared up to the point of complete air purity in certain areas. The sun and moon could not be seen as they are today, but were surrounded by colored halos. The distribution of rain and sunshine that we see today did not exist at that time. One can explore this ancient land clairvoyantly: the rainbow did not exist at that time. It did not appear until the post-Atlantean period. Our ancestors lived in a misty land. These facts have been obtained by purely supersensible observation; and it must even be said that the spiritual researcher does best when he carefully avoids all conclusions from his scientific knowledge, for such conclusions easily lead him astray from the unbiased inner sense of spiritual research. Now, however, compare with such statements certain views to which individual natural scientists feel impelled to adhere at the present time. There are today researchers who find themselves obliged by the facts to assume that the earth was embedded in a mass of clouds at a certain time in its development. They point out that even today the cloudy sky outweighs the unclouded sky, so that life is still largely under the influence of sunlight that is weakened by cloud formation, so that one cannot say that life could not have developed in the former cloud cover. They also point out that those organisms in the plant world that can be counted among the oldest were those that could develop even without direct sunlight. Thus, among the forms of this older plant world, those that need direct sunlight and anhydrous air, like desert plants, are missing. And as regards the animal world, a researcher (Hilgard) has pointed out that the giant eyes of extinct animals (for example, the ichthyosaur) indicate that there must have been a twilight-like illumination on the earth in their era. I do not consider such views to be in need of correction. They interest the spiritual researcher less for what they establish than for the direction in which the research of facts sees itself forced. Some time ago, the magazine “Kosmos”, which stands more or less on the Haeckelian point of view, published an essay that is worth considering, which pointed to the possibility of a former Atlantic mainland from certain facts of the plant and animal world.

[ 4 ] If one were to compile a larger number of such things, it would be easy to show how true natural science moves in a direction that will lead it in the future into the stream that can already be irrigated from the sources of spiritual research. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough: spiritual research is in no way in contradiction with the facts of natural science. Where such a contradiction is seen by its opponents, it does not refer to the facts but to the opinions that these opponents have formed and which they believe necessarily follow from the facts. In reality, however, Forel's opinion, for example, has nothing whatsoever to do with the facts of nebular stars, with the nature of cells, with the liquefaction of air, etc. This opinion is nothing more than a belief that many have formed out of their need for belief in the real world of the senses, and which they place next to the facts. This belief has something very dazzling for the modern man. It leads to an inner intolerance of a very special kind. Those who adhere to it delude themselves into regarding their own opinion as the only “scientific” one, and the opinions of others as arising only from prejudice and superstition. It is really strange, for example, to read the following sentences in a recently published book on the phenomena of the life of the soul (Hermann Ebbinghaus, “Abriß der Psychologie”):

[ 5 ] "The soul finds help against the impenetrable darkness of the future and the insurmountable power of hostile forces in religion. Under the pressure of uncertainty and in the face of great danger, people naturally think of analogies to the experiences they have otherwise had in cases of ignorance and inability, and how they could be helped here, just as one thinks of water to save in a fire or of a helping comrade in a fight.» “At the lowest levels of civilization, where people still feel very powerless and surrounded by sinister dangers at every turn, the feeling of fear and, accordingly, the belief in evil spirits and demons, understandably predominates. At higher levels, on the other hand, where a more mature understanding of the interrelationships of things and a greater power over them gives rise to a certain self-confidence and stronger hope, the feeling of trust in the invisible powers also comes to the fore, and with it the belief in good and benevolent spirits. But on the whole, both fear and love remain side by side, constantly characteristic of man's feelings towards his gods, only in different proportions according to circumstances.» “These are the roots of religion... Fear and need are its mothers; and although it is essentially propagated by authority, once it has come into being, it would have died out long ago if it were not constantly reborn from those two."

[ 6 ] How everything is shifted and confused in these assertions; how the confused matter is illuminated from false points of view. How strongly, moreover, the person who makes the assertion is influenced by the belief that his opinion must be a generally binding truth. First of all, the content of religious ideas is confused with the content of religious feeling. The content of religious ideas is taken from the realm of the supersensible worlds. Religious feeling, for example, fear and love towards the supersensible beings, is made the creator of the content without further ado, and accepted without any hesitation that something real does not correspond to religious ideas. The possibility that there could be a genuine experience of supersensible worlds is not even remotely considered; and that the feelings of fear and love cling to the reality given by such an experience, just as, in the end, no one thinks of water as a means of salvation in a fire, or of a helping comrade in a battle, if he has not previously known water and a comrade. In such a view, spiritual science is declared to be a fantasy, because religious feeling is allowed to become the creator of beings that are simply regarded as non-existent. Such a way of thinking completely lacks the awareness that it is possible to experience the content of the supersensible world, just as it is possible for the outer senses to experience the ordinary world of the senses.

[ 7 ] The peculiar thing about such views is that they often fall into the kind of conclusion for their faith that they present as offensive to their opponents. For example, the above-mentioned Forel text contains the sentence: “Do we not live in a hundred times truer, warmer and more interesting way in the I and in the soul of our descendants, than in the cold and misty mirage of a hypothetical heaven, with the equally hypothetical singing and trumpeting of supposed angels and archangels, whom we cannot imagine and who therefore mean nothing to us?» Yes, but what does it have to do with truth, what «one» finds «warmer», «more interesting»? If it is true that a spiritual life should not be derived from fear and hope, is it then right to deny this spiritual life because it is found to be “cold” and “uninteresting”? The spiritual researcher is in the following position with regard to such personalities who claim to stand on the “firm ground of scientific facts”. He says to them: I do not deny any of the facts you present from geology, paleontology, biology, physiology, etc. Of course, many of your assertions certainly need to be corrected by other facts. But such corrections will be made by natural science itself. Apart from that, I say “yes” to what you present. It does not occur to me to fight against the book when you present facts. But your facts are only part of reality. The other part is spiritual facts, which explain the course of the sensual ones. And these facts are not hypotheses, not something that “one” cannot imagine, but the experience of spiritual research. What you bring forward beyond the facts observed by you is, without you noticing it, nothing more than the opinion that such spiritual facts cannot exist. In truth, you bring forward nothing as proof of this assertion of yours, except that such spiritual facts are unknown to you. From this you conclude that they do not exist and that those who claim to know something about them are dreamers and visionaries. The spiritual researcher takes nothing, absolutely nothing, from your world; he only adds his own to it. But you are not satisfied with this procedure; you say, though not always clearly, that “one” may speak of nothing else but what we speak of; we demand not only that one should admit to us what we know, but we demand that one should declare as a vain phantasm everything of which we know nothing. There is no help for anyone who wants to get involved in such “logic”. He may understand this logic with the sentence: “In our human ancestors, our ego used to live directly and it will also live on in our direct or indirect descendants” (Forel, “Leben an und Tod”, page 21). But he should not add: “Science proves it, as it does in the cited writing. For science ‘proves’ nothing in this case, but rather the belief, which is tied to the world of the senses, sets up the dogma: What I cannot imagine must be considered a delusion; and whoever sins against my assertion is committing a crime against genuine science.”

[ 8 ] Anyone who knows the human soul in its development will find it quite understandable that the spirits are initially blinded by the enormous progress of natural science and cannot find their way around the forms in which high truths have traditionally been handed down. Spiritual science returns such forms to humanity. For example, it shows how the days of creation in the Bible reflect things that reveal themselves to the clairvoyant eye. The spirit, bound to the world of the senses, finds only that these days of creation contradict the achievements of geology, etc. In recognizing the profound truths of these days of Creation, spiritual science is just as far removed from dismissing them as mere “mythical fabrications” as it is from applying any kind of allegorical or symbolic explanations. How it proceeds, however, is completely unknown to those who still fantasize about the contradiction of these days of Creation with science. Nor should it be believed that spiritual research draws its knowledge from the Bible. It has its own methods, finds the truths independently of all documents and then recognizes them in these. However, this path is necessary for many present-day seekers of truth. For they demand a spiritual research that has the same character as natural science. And only where the nature of such spiritual science is not recognized does one fall into perplexity when it comes to protecting the facts of the supersensible world from the dazzling effects of opinions apparently based on natural science. Such a state of mind was even foreseen by a man of warm soul, who, however, could not find any spiritual-scientific, supersensible content for his feelings. Almost eighty years ago, a man of this kind, Schleiermacher, wrote to Lücke, who was much younger than himself: “When you consider the present state of natural science, as it is increasingly developing into a comprehensive world knowledge, what does it bode for the future, I will not even say for our theology, but for our Protestant Christianity? I fear that we will have to learn to manage without many things that many people are still accustomed to thinking of as being inextricably linked to the essence of Christianity. I don't want to talk about the six-day work, but the concept of creation as it is usually construed... how long will it be able to hold out against the force of a world view formed from scientific combinations that no one can escape?... What is to become of it, my dear friend? I shall not live to see that time, but can calmly go to sleep; but you, my friend, and your contemporaries, what do you intend to do? » («Theolog. Studien und Kritiken», by Ullmann and Umbreit, 1829, page 489.) This statement is based on the opinion that the «scientific combinations» are a necessary result of the facts. If they were, then “nobody” could escape them; and anyone whose feelings draw him to the supersensible world can wish that he may be granted the privilege of “going to sleep peacefully” before the onslaught of science against the supersensible world. Schleiermacher's prediction has been fulfilled to the extent that “scientific combinations” have taken hold in wide circles. But at the same time, there is currently a possibility of getting to know the supersensible world in just as “scientific” a way as the sensory connections of facts. Those who familiarize themselves with spiritual science, as is already possible today, will be protected from many superstitions, but will be able to incorporate the supersensible facts into their understanding, and thereby, in addition to all other superstitions, also strip themselves of the belief that fear and need have created this supersensible world. Anyone who can bring themselves to adopt this view will no longer be inhibited by the idea that they could be alienated from reality and practice by engaging in spiritual science. He will then recognize how true spiritual science does not impoverish life, but enriches it. Through it, he will certainly not be led to underestimate telephony, railway technology and airship travel; but he will see many other practical things that are currently disregarded, where one only believes in the world of the senses and therefore only recognizes part of reality, not the whole of it.

Today we will concern ourselves with three important ideas connected with parts of human nature. These may be said to form guiding threads through the entire world. They are as follows: Activity or Movement; Wisdom, which is also called Word, and thirdly Will. When we speak of activity we usually mean something very general. The esotericist however sees in activity the foundation of the whole universe as it surrounds us. The original form of the universe is for the esotericist a product of activity. What is seemingly completed is really a stage of continuous activity, a point in continuity. The whole world is in ceaseless activity. In reality this activity is Karma.

When speaking about man, we speak of his astral body as being Karma, as being activity. Actually the astral body is that part of the human being which is closest to him. What man experiences, so that he differentiates between well being and misfortune, happiness and sorrow, emanates from his astral body. Love, passion, joy, pain, ideals, duty, are bound up with the astral body. When one speaks of joy and sorrow, desires, wishes, etc., one is speaking of the astral body. Man continually experiences the astral body, but the seer perceives its form. This astral body is in continuous transformation. At first it is undifferentiated, so long as man has not yet worked upon it. In our time however man works upon it constantly. When he distinguishes between what is allowed and what is forbidden, he works into it out of his ego. Since the middle of the Lemurian Age until the middle of the Sixth Root-Race man works upon his astral body.

Why does man work upon it? He works upon his astral body because, in the sphere of activity, every single activity calls forth a counter effect. If we rub our hand on a tabletop it becomes hot. The warmth is the counter effect of our activity. Thus each activity calls forth another. Through the fact that certain animals migrated to the dark caves of Kentucky they no longer needed their eyesight but only sensitive organs of touch, in order to find their way about. The result was that the blood withdrew from their eyes and they became blind. This was the result of their activity, of their migration into the caves of Kentucky.⁷

The human astral body is in continual activity. Its life consists in this. In a narrower sense this activity is called human karma. What I do today has its expression in the astral body. If I give somebody a blow, that is activity and calls forth a counter blow. This is balance restoring justice—karma. Every action calls forth its counter action. With this must be considered the concept of cause and effect. In karma there is always something needing to be brought into balance; something further is always demanded.

The second guiding thread in human nature and in the universe is wisdom. Just as karma has something needing to be balanced, wisdom has something of rest, of equilibrium. It is therefore also called rhythm. All wisdom, according to its form, is rhythm. In the astral body there may perhaps be much sympathy, then there is much green in the aura. This green was once called forth as complementary colour.

Originally, instead of the green, there was red, a selfish instinct. That has been changed into green through activity, karma. In wisdom, in rhythm, everything is completed, balanced. In man everything rhythmical, filled with wisdom, is in the etheric body. The etheric body is therefore that in man which represents wisdom. In the etheric body repose, rhythm holds sway.

The physical body actually represents the will. Will, in contrast to absolute rest, is the creative element, that which is productive. Thus we have the following ascent: firstly karma, activity, what needs to be balanced; secondly wisdom, what has been brought to rest; thirdly will, such an overabundance of life that it can sacrifice itself. Thus activity, wisdom, will, are the three stages in which all being flows.

Let us study from this point of view the human being as he stands before us. In the first place man has his physical body. As he is at the present time, he has no influence at all upon his physical body. What man physically is and does is brought about from outside by creative forces. He cannot himself regulate the movement of the molecules of his brain; neither of himself can he control the circulation of the blood. In other words, the physical body is produced independently of man and is also sustained for him by other forces. It is as it were only lent to him. Man is incarnated into a physical body produced for him by other forces. The etheric body too is in a certain respect produced for him by other powers. On the other hand, the astral body is formed partly by other powers, partly by man himself. That part of the astral body which is formed by man himself becomes his karma. What he himself has worked into it must have a karmic effect. This is the undying, the non-transient in him. The physical body has come about through the karma of other beings; but that part of man's astral body in which he has worked since the Lemurian Age, that is his karma. Only when man through his work has transformed the whole of his astral body, has he reached the stage of freedom. Then the whole of his astral body is transmuted from within. He is then entirely the result of his own activity, of his karma.

If we select some particular stage of development we always find a part of man's astral body which is his own work. That, however, which is the result of his own work lives also in the etheric body and the physical body. In the physical body lives what man has made out of himself, through the physical body it lives in the physical world. He would be unable to form concepts about the physical world if he did not work in it through his organs. What man experiences in his astral body he builds into himself. In what he observes in the physical world his three sheaths are active. When for instance he sees a rose, all three sheaths are engaged. To begin with he perceives red. In this the physical body is engaged. In a camera obscura the rose makes the same impression. Secondly, the rose is conceived in the etheric body as a living idea. Thirdly, the rose gives pleasure to the person and in this the astral body is engaged. These are the three stages of human observation. Here the innermost part of man works through the three bodies into the external world. What man takes in from the outer world, he takes in through these three bodies.

Desire underlies all those things involving human activity or karma. Man would have no reason to be active if he had no desires. He has however the desire to take part in the world surrounding him. This is why we also call his astral body his body of desires.

An inner connection exists between man's activity and his organs. He needs his organs both for the lowest and the highest impulses. He also needs them in art. When someone has once and for all absorbed everything from the world, he has no further use for his organs. Between birth and death man accustoms himself to perceive the world through his organs. After death what he is thus accustomed to must slowly be put aside. If he still wishes to make use of his organs to perceive the world, then he finds himself in the condition which is called Kamaloka. It is a condition in which there is still desire to perceive through the organs, which however are no longer there. If after death a person could say that he had no further desire to use his organs, Kamaloka would no longer exist for him. In Devachan everything which man formerly perceived around him with his organs, is there perceived from within—without organs.

Karma, man's activity through the astral body, is something which has not reached a state of balance. When however the activity gradually comes into a state of balance, equilibrium is brought about. If one strikes a pendulum it gradually reaches a state of balance. Every activity which has not reached a state of balance finally comes to rest. Irregularities which are few in number can be observed, but when they are extremely numerous they balance each other. By means of an instrument, for instance, one can observe the irregularities caused in a town by electric trams. In a small town, where the trams are fewer the instrument continually shows strong oscillations, but in a big town, where the movement is greater and more frequent, the instrument is much quieter, because the many irregularities equalise themselves. So it is also in Devachan with each single irregularity.

In Devachan man looks into himself. He observes what he has taken in. He must observe this for as long as is needed for it to reach a rhythmical condition.

A stroke calls forth a counterstroke; but only through many intermediate happenings does the counterstroke return. The effect however persists during the intervening period. The inter-relationship between stroke and counterstroke is worked over in Devachan and transformed into wisdom. What has been worked over and transformed into wisdom is metamorphosed in man into rhythm in contradistinction to activity. What has been changed into rhythm passes over into the etheric body. After Devachan one has become wiser and better because in Devachan all experiences have been worked over. That part of the astral body, which as vibrations has been worked into the etheric body, is immortal. When a man dies that part of the astral body is preserved which he has worked over and transformed, also the very small part of the etheric body which has been worked through; the remaining part of the etheric body is dissolved in the cosmic ether. In so far as this very small part has been worked through, to that degree is his etheric body immortal. Hence when he returns he again finds this small part of the etheric body. What needs to be added to bring about completion determines the duration of his sojourn in Devachan.

When a human being has progressed so far that he has transformed his entire etheric body, Devachan is no longer necessary. This is the case with the occult pupil who has perfected his development and who has transformed his etheric body so that it remains intact after death and has no need to pass through Devachan. This is called the renunciation of Devachan. It is permissible to allow someone to work on one's etheric body when one is certain that he no longer brings anything of evil into the rest of the world; otherwise he would work his harmful instincts into it. Under hypnosis it can happen that the one hypnotised works into the world the harmful instincts of the hypnotist. In the case of normal people the physical body prevents the etheric body from being dragged and drawn hither and thither. When however the physical body is in a state of lethargy it is possible for the etheric body to be worked into. If one person hypnotises another and works harmful instincts into him, these also remain with him after death. Many of the practices of black magicians consisted in their creating willing servants by this means. It is the rule of white magicians to allow nobody to have his etheric body worked into unless by someone whose instincts have passed through catharsis. In the etheric body rest and wisdom prevail. When something bad enters into it, this element of evil comes to rest and therefore endures.

Before the human being as pupil is led to that point at which of his own choice he can work on his etheric body, he must at least, to a certain extent be able to evaluate karma in order to achieve self-knowledge. Meditation therefore should not be undertaken without continual self-knowledge, self-observation. By this means, at the right moment man will behold the Guardian of the Threshold:⁸ the karma which he has still to pay back. When one reaches this stage under normal conditions it merely signifies the recognition of his still existing karma. If I begin to work into my etheric body, I must make it my aim to balance my still remaining karma. It can happen that the Guardian of the Threshold appears in an abnormal way. This happens when a person is so strongly attracted to one particular life between birth and death, that because of the very slight degree of inner activity he cannot remain long enough in Devachan. If someone has accustomed himself to be too outward looking, he has nothing to see within. He then soon comes back into physical life. His desires remain present, the short Devachan is soon over, and when he returns, the collective form of his earlier desires still exists in Kamaloka; he comes up against this also. He incarnates. The old is then mingled with his new astral body. This is his previous karma, the Guardian of the Threshold. He then has his earlier karma continually before him. This is a specific form of the Double.

Many of the popes of the notorious papal age, as for example Alexander VI, have had such a Double in their next incarnation. There are people, and at present this is not infrequent, who have their previous lower nature continually beside them. That is a special kind of insanity. It will become ever stronger and more threatening, because materialistic life becomes ever more widespread. Many people who now yield themselves up completely to materialistic life will in their next incarnation have the abnormal form of the Guardian of the Threshold at their side. If now the influence of spirituality were not to be very strongly exercised, a kind of epidemic seeing of the Guardian of the Threshold would arise as the result of the materialistic civilisation. Of this the neurotic tendency of our century is the precursor. It is a kind of losing oneself in the periphery. All the neurotics of today will be harassed by the Guardian of the Threshold in their next incarnation. They will be pursued by the difficulties of a too early incarnation, a sort of cosmic premature birth. What we have to strive for in Theosophy is a sufficiently long time in Devachan, in order to avoid too early incarnations.

From this aspect we must consider the entrance of Christ into world history. Previously, anyone who wished to achieve a life in Christ had to enter into a Mystery school. There a state of lethargy was induced in the physical body and only through the purified priesthood could there be added to the astral body what was still needed for its purification. This constituted initiation.

But through the coming of Christ into the world, it came about that a man who felt himself drawn to Christ could receive from him something which could take the place of this old form of initiation. It is always possible that someone through union with Christ can preserve his astral body in so purified a condition that he is able to work into his etheric body without doing harm to the world. When one bears this in mind the expression ‘vicarious atonement through death’ receives a quite other significance. This is what is meant by the atoning death of Christ. Before this, death in the Mysteries had to be suffered by everyone who wished to obtain purification. Now the One suffered for all, so that through the world-historic initiation a substitute has been created for the old form of initiation. Through Christianity much that is of a communal nature has been brought about, which previously was not communal. The active power of this substitution is expressed in the fact that through inner vision, through true mysticism, community with Christ is possible. This has also been embodied in language. The first Christian initiate in Europe, Ulfilas, himself embodied it in the German language, in that man found the ‘Ich’ within it. Other languages expressed this relationship through a special form of the verb, in Latin for instance the word ‘amo’, but the German language adds to it the Ich. ‘Ich’ is J. Ch. = Jesus Christ. It was with intention that this was introduced into the German language. It is the initiates who have created language. Just as in Sanskrit the AUM expresses the Trinity, so we have the sign ICH to express the inmost being of man. By this means a central point was created whereby the tumultuous emotions of the world can be transformed into rhythm. Rhythm must be instilled into them through the Ich. This centre point is literally the Christ.

All western nations have developed activity, passionate desires. An impulse must come from the East in order to bring into, them a more tranquil condition. There is already a precursor of this in Tolstoi's book, ‘On Doing Nothing’.⁹ In the activity of the West we find chaos in many spheres. This is continually on the increase. The spirituality of the East should bring a central point into the chaos of the West. What throughout long periods of time had its function as karma, passes over into wisdom. Wisdom is the daughter of karma. All karma finds its compensation in wisdom. An initiate who has reached a certain stage of development is called a Sun Hero, because his inner being has become rhythmical. His life is an image of the sun which in its rhythmical course traverses the heavens.

The word ‘Aum’ is the breath. The breath is related to the word as the Holy Spirit is to Christ, as the Atma is to the I.

• 7 . Often quoted by Rudolf Steiner. See: Darwin, Origin of Species, Chapter 5.
• 8 . See: Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and the Third Mystery Play.
• 9 . Published 1893. A detailed description of Tolstoi's ideas in contrast to Western ideas is to be found in Rudolf Steiner's lecture 3.11.1904. Theosophy and Tolstoy. (Typescript).