The Rudolf Steiner Archive

From within our work in the Anthroposophical movement we look forward into the future of humanity and we let our souls and hearts be permeated with that which we believe will embody itself in the streams of evolution and in the forces of evolution of the future of humanity. When we contemplate the great truths of existence, when we look up to the Forces, Powers and Beings who reveal themselves to us in the spiritual worlds as the cause and foundation of all that meets us in the sense-world, here also we rejoice to know that the truths which we bring down from the spiritual worlds will and must be gradually realised more and more in the souls and hearts of the men of the future. Thus for the greater part of the year our spiritual gaze is directed either to the immediate present or the future.

All the more do we feel ourselves impelled on the special days of the year—on the Festivals which come through to us from time and its changes as set reminders of that which earlier humanity imagined and devised—on these feast days we feel ourselves impelled to realise our union with this earlier humanity, to sink ourselves a little into that which led men of past time out of fulness of heart and soul to place these sign-marks in the course of time which come down to us as the ‘Festivals of the year.’ If the Easter Festival is such as to awaken in us, when we understand it, thoughts of human powers and of the power of overcoming all the lower through the higher, everything externally physical through the spiritual, if the Easter Festival is a festival of resurrection, of awaking, a festival of hope and confidence in the spiritual forces which can be awakened in the human soul; so, on the other hand, the Christmas Festival is a festival of the realisation of harmony with the whole cosmos, a festival of the realisation of Grace. It is a festival that can again and again bring home the thought: No matter how doubtful everything around us may appear, however much the bitterest doubts may enter into faith, however much the worst disappointments may mingle with the most aspiring hopes, however much all that is good around us in life may totter, there is something in human nature and essence—this the rightly understood thought of the Christmas Festival may say—that only needs to be brought vitally, spiritually, before the soul, which reveals to us perpetually that we are descended from the powers of good, from the forces of right, from the forces of the true. The Easter thought points us to our victorious forces in the future—the Christmas thought points us, in a certain sense, to the origin of man in the primeval past.

In such a case one can clearly see, how the unconscious or subconscious reason or spirituality of man stands far, far higher than man with his consciousness can wholly compass. We have often reason to admire that which men have established in the past out of the hidden depths of the soul more than that which they have established out of their intellectual thoughts and understanding. How infinitely wise it appears to us, when we open the calendar, and for the 25th December we find registered the Birth-Festival of Christ Jesus, and then we see registered in the calender for the 24th December ‘Adam and Eve.’ It may be said: How clearly reasonable and spiritual it appears that out of the dim subconscious work of the Middle Ages, when Christmas plays were performed here or there about Christmas time by people from different places, when the ‘singers’ as they were called gathered for their Christmas plays, that the Paradise Tree should be brought forward. As in the calender ‘Adam and Eve’ appeared before the Christ Birthday Festival, so in the Christmas plays of the Middle Ages, the Tree of Paradise was brought forward by the troupe which took part in the performance of the Christmas plays. In short, there was something in the deep hidden soul-depths of men which caused them to place directly together the earthly beginning of humanity and the Jesus Birth Festival. In the year 353, even in ecclesiastical Rome, the 25th December was not kept as the Festival of the Birthday of Jesus. Only in 354 the Jesus Birthday Festival was celebrated for the first time in ecclesiastical Rome. Previous to this, there was a festival which brought to men a consciousness similar to the Jesus Birth Festival, namely, the 6th January, the day of remembrance of the Baptism by John in Jordan, the day which was commemorative of the Descent of the Christ from the spiritual heights, and the Self-immersion of the Christ into the body of Jesus of Nazareth. That was originally the Birth of the Christ in Jesus, the remembrance of the great historical moment which is symbolically presented to us as the hovering dove over the head of Jesus of Nazareth. The 6th January was the commemorative day of the birth of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth. In the fourth century, however, it had for a long time been impossible for the self-assertive materialistic philosophy of the West to understand the penetration of Jesus with the Christ. Like a powerful fight this thought with instantaneous illumination was present to the Gnostics, who were in a certain respect contemporaries or direct followers of the Event of Golgotha. They were in the position of finding it unnecessary to seek the depth of this wisdom of the ‘Christ’ in ‘Jesus’ as we have to seek this wisdom again through modern clairvoyance. The Gnostics were able, by means of the last flickering of those old, original human clairvoyant powers to see, as it were, in the light of grace that which we must acquire again for ourselves concerning the great secrets of Golgotha. Much was clear to the Gnostics which we have to acquire again, for example, in particular, the secret of the birth of Christ in Jesus at the Baptism by John in Jordan.

Just as the old clairvoyance faded away for humanity generally, so did also the peculiar kindling of the highest clairvoyant power, of the highest Christmas light of humanity, which the Gnostics possessed. In the fourth century Western Christianity was no longer able to understand this great thought. Hence in the fourth century the true meaning of the Festival of the appearing of the Christ in Jesus was lost to Western civilisation. Man had forgotten what this ‘Festival of the Appearing’ of the 6th January actually meant. They had for a time—yes, right into our time, buried under much materialistic intellectual rubbish what indeed would not allow itself to be destroyed, the feeling toward the Christ-Figure in human evolution. If man could not understand that One Most High, as compared with humanity, had manifested Himself in the Baptism by John in Jordan, yet he could understand,—for that did not contradict materialistic knowledge,—that that bodily organism which was selected for the reception of the Christ was something significant. Hence they put back the Spirit-birth, which indeed took place in the John-Baptism in Jordan, to the Child-birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and set the ‘Jesus-Birth-Festival’ in place of the ‘Festival of the Appearing.’ To represent quite rightly and in detail, that which became the Christmas Festival of humanity always aroused significant feelings, high exalted feelings. Something significant lived in the human soul at the approach of Christmas, which may be expressed as follows: If man contemplates the world in the right sense, he can, by belief in humanity, fortify himself against certain things, against all life’s dangers and blows of fate; in the feeling of love and peace man can fortify himself in his deepest soul against all disharmony and strife of life. This is something which becomes ever more clearly bound up with the Christmas Festival. For what was it actually of which man reminded himself? From our anthroposophical point of view let us look at what man remembered.

We know what significant, real and powerful preparations human evolution had to go through in order that the Mystery of Golgotha could enter this human evolution. The human being who was the reincarnated Zarathustra, had to be born as one of the two Jesus children. He also had to be born for whom the real Jesus-Birth-Festival was the commemorative festival; he had to be born whose soul-substance had remained in the spiritual worlds. So long as humanity went through all that was possible within heredity through the generations up to the Mystery of Golgotha—for all other human souls had gone through the generations—so long had man been taking up the destroying forces that crept right into the blood. One single soul substance had remained behind in the spiritual worlds, guarded by the purest Mysteries and Mystery-centres, and then it was poured out into humanity as the soul of the second Jesus-child, the child of the Luke Gospel, that Jesus-child to whose birth all the commemorations and representations of the Christ-Festival, of Christmas, belong. At Christmas-time men’s thoughts went back to the origin of humanity, to the human soul, which had not yet descended, not even into Adam’s nature. They would say: In Bethlehem, in Palestine was born that soul-substance which had not taken part in the descent of humanity, but had remained behind, and for the first time in fact entered into a human body, in incarnating in the Jesus described by Luke. The human soul, when its thought is directed to the fact, may feel: One can believe in humanity, one can have faith in humanity; however much conflict, however much disbelief, however much disharmony has entered into it—and they have entered into all that has flowed into humanity from the time of Adam to the present—when one looks back on that which in olden times was called ‘Adam Kadmon,’ which became later the ‘Christ’ conception, there was kindled in the human soul confidence in the soundness of human force, and there was kindled confidence in the primeval peace-and-love nature of humanity. Hence the subconscious soul of man drew together the Jesus-birth Festival and the Adam and Eve Festival because man saw in fact his own nature in the Christ Child that was born, but his own nature in its innocence, in its purity.

Why then was the Divine Child placed before humanity for hundreds and thousands of years as the highest there was for the human soul to revere? For the reason that when man looks at a child and sees the child not yet able to say ‘I’ to himself, he can know that the child is still working on the human body, the Temple of the Eternally Divine, and because the human child who cannot yet say ‘I’ nevertheless clearly shows the sign of his origin from the spiritual world. Through this contemplation of the child nature man learns to have full trust in human nature. Here, where he can most easily foregather, when the sun shines least and warms the earth least, when he is not busied with the ordering of his outer affairs, here, when the days are shortest and the nights longest, when the earth gives him the best opportunity to foregather and to enter into himself, when all outer brightness, all outer beauty withdraws for a while from the outward view—here, the Western civilisation places the Birth-Festival of the Divine Child, that is, of the Human Being who enters the world pure and unsullied—and through the innocent entrance into the world can give to man at the time of his closest assembling with others, the strongest, the highest confidence through the knowledge of his divine origin.

To the anthroposophist it is a confirmation of the great truth that one can learn most from the child, when one sees that a festival of a child’s birth is placed in the course of time as a great significant festival of confidence in human evolution. So we admire the subconscious, the spiritual reason of the men of the past, who have placed such sign posts in the path of time. We feel then like those who decipher wonderful hieroglyphs, produced by the men of old through the placing of such festivals in the writing of the times and we feel one with these men of old. Whilst at other times our look is directed towards the future, whilst at other times we are willing to place our best powers at the disposal of the future, to strengthen and increase all faith in the future, here, on such festival days, we seek just to live in remembrance, to draw towards us as though incarnated the old thoughts teaching us at the present time that we can think truly in our way of what lies in the spiritual at the foundation of the external world; but that in earlier times—in a different way, it is true, but not less right, not less magnificent and significant—the True and Sublime was thought and experienced through the realisation of the oneness of humanity and the high possibilities that then lay ahead of humanity. This is our anthroposophical ideal, to be able to feel one with that which the men of old produced—often from the most hidden depths of the soul. These festivals, particularly the great ones, encourage this, if we can only through the anthroposophical truths imprint in our souls the significance of the hieroglyphic signs written in the path of time.

A wonderful thought unites with a wonderful emotion in our souls when we see how, in those centuries which followed the fourth which first transferred the Jesus-Birth Festival to the 25th of December, how there here flows into the souls of those men the feeling of confidence awakened through the child-nature, so that in painting, in the Christmas plays, everywhere, is shown how all the creatures of the Earth-kingdom bow before the Jesus-Child, before the Divine Child, before the divine origin of man. There comes before us the wonderful picture of the manger, how the beasts bow before this primal man; to these may be added those wonderful stories, as for instance that when Mary had taken the Child Jesus on the way to Egypt, a tree bowed itself, a very ancient tree, as the border was crossed by Mary with the child. Traditionally the legends of almost the whole of Europe relate that the trees in a remarkable way, in the Holy Night, bow to this great event. We could go to Alsace, to Bavaria, everywhere we find legends, how certain trees bear fruit in the Holy Night. All wonderful symbols which proclaim in fact how the birth of the Jesus-Child reveals itself as something which is connected with the whole life of the earth. When we recollect what we have so often said—that the ancient spiritual streams were given by the Gods to mankind, and how in ancient times men had clairvoyant insight into the divine spiritual world, how this clairvoyance gradually vanished from humanity in order that men might be able to come to the gaining of the ego—if we picture how here, in the whole human organisation something like a drying-up, a withering, of the old divine forces is taking place, and how through the Christ-Impulse which came through the Mystery of Golgotha there is a flooding of the withering divine forces with new water of life; then there appears to us in a wonderful picture what the Christmas legends relate to us, how the dried up and withered roses of Jericho shoot up of themselves in the Holy Night. That is a legend which we find everywhere noted down in the Middle Ages, that the roses of Jericho blossom in the Christ-night and unfold, because they first unfolded under the footsteps of Mary, who, when she carried the Child Jesus on the journey to Egypt, stepped over a place where a rose tree was growing. A wonderful symbol of what happened to human divine powers, that even things so dry and lifeless as that which one usually finds on the wayside, as the roses which apparently are dead, can spring up again and shoot forth through the Christ-Impulse which entered into the time evolution.

That to man was first given in reality what was destined from the beginning is expressed in the Jesus-Birth Festival, in the festival of the Birth of the Jesus infant. Before Adam and Eve existed, that was destined for humanity—so the Christmas legend says—which yet lies in the quite unspoilt divine child-nature of man. In truth however—and really on account of the influence of Lucifer—man has only been able to attain it after the whole period of time from Adam and Eve to the Mystery of Golgotha.

A deep emotion awakens in our souls when we take for our meditation a feeling, compressed into the one night of the 24th and 25th December, of what mankind has become from Adam and Eve to the birth of Christ in Jesus, through the Luciferic powers. If we can realise that, we shall really grasp the significance of this Festival, and realise the goal before humanity. It is as though humanity, if it would use its opportunity and take these sign posts of time as material for meditation, could really become aware of its pure origin in the cosmic forces of the universe. Here, looking up into the cosmic forces of the universe and penetrating a little by means of Anthroposophy, through the true spiritual wisdom into the secrets of the universe, humanity can first become ripe to understand this, that what as the Christ-Birth Festival was once understood by the Gnostics, was in fact the festival celebrated on January 6th, the Festival of the Birth of Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, as a higher stage of the Birth-Festival of Jesus. To enable us to plunge into the twelve great Forces of the universe, the twelve Holy Nights are set between the Christmas Festival and the festival which should be celebrated on the sixth of January, which now is the festival of the Three Holy Kings, and which in fact is the festival we have been speaking about.

Again, without man’s really knowing it in present knowledge, these twelve Holy Nights are established out of the hidden wise depths of the soul of mankind, as though they would say: ‘Realise the depths of the Christmas Festival, but sink during the twelve Holy Nights into the holiest secrets of the cosmos, that is, in the realms of the universe out of which Christ descended to the Earth.’ Only when mankind wills to be inspired through the thought of the holy childlike divine origin of man, to let himself be inspired by the wisdom that works through the twelve forces, through the twelve holy forces of the universe, symbolically presented in the twelve signs of the Zodiac, due in truth to spiritual wisdom—only when mankind sinks into true spiritual wisdom and learns to discern the course of time in the great cosmos and in the single human being, only then will the mankind of the future, fructified through Spiritual Science, find to its own salvation the inspiration which can come from the Jesus-Birth Festival so that thoughts for the future may be permeated with fullest confidence and richest hopes.

Thus we may as anthroposophists allow the Christmas Festival to work on our souls as an inspiration festival, as a festival that brings the thought of human origin in the holy divine primeval human child so wonderfully before our souls. That light which appears to us in the Holy Night as the symbol of the Light of humanity at its source, that Light which is symbolically presented to us later in the lights of the Christmas-tree, rightly understood, is the Light that can give to our striving souls the best and strongest forces for our true real world-peace, for the true blessedness and real hope for the world.

Let us feel ourselves strengthened for the needs of the-future by such thoughts on the facts of the past, on the establishing of the festivals in the past; Christmas thoughts, remembrance thoughts on the origin of humanity, thoughts well-rooted which will unfold themselves to real, to most mighty soul-plants for the true future of humanity.

[ 1 ] It is certainly true that much in the intellectual life of the present makes it difficult for one who is seeking the truth to accept spiritual scientific (theosophical) insights. And what has been said in the essays on the Lebensfragen der theosophischen Bewegung (Vital Questions of the (Theosophical Movement) can be taken as an indication of the reasons which exist especially for the conscientious seeker of truth in this respect. Many statements of the scientist of the spirit must appear entirely fantastic to him who tests them against the certain conclusions which he feels obliged to draw from what he has encountered as the facts of the research of natural science. To this is added the fact that this research can point to the enormous blessings it has bestowed and continues to bestow on human progress. What an overwhelming effect is produced when a personality who wants to see a view of the world built exclusively on the results of this research, can utter the proud words: “For there lies an abyss between these two extreme conceptions of life: one for this world alone, the other for heaven. But up to the present day, traces of a paradise, of a life of the deceased, of a personal God, have nowhere been found by human science, by that inexorable science which probes into and dissects everything, which does not shrink back before any mystery, which explores heaven beyond the stars of the nebula, analyzes the infinitely small atoms of living cells as well as of chemical bodies, decomposes the substance of the sun, liquefies the air, which will soon telegraph by wireless transmission from one end of the earth to the other, and already today sees through opaque bodies, which introduces navigation under the water and in the air, and opens new horizons to us through radium and other discoveries; this science which, after having shown the true relationship of all living beings among themselves and their gradual changes in form, today draws the organ of the human soul, the brain, into the sphere of its penetrating research.” (Prof. August Forel, Leben und Tod (Life and Death) Munich, 1908, page 3). The certainty with which one thinks it possible to build on such a basis betrays itself in the words which Forel joins to the remarks quoted above: “In proceeding from a monistic conception of life, which alone takes all scientific facts into account, we leave the supernatural aside and turn to the book of nature.” Thus, the serious seeker after truth is confronted by two things which put considerable obstacles in the way of any inkling he may have of the truth of the communications of the science of the spirit. If a feeling for such communications lives in him, even if he also senses their inner well-founded-ness by means of a more delicate logic, he can be driven toward the suppression of such impulses when he has to tell himself two things. First of all, the authorities who know the cogency of positive facts consider that everything “supersensible” springs only from day-dreams and unscientific superstition. In the second place, by devoting myself to these transcendental matters, I run the risk of becoming an impractical person of no use in life. For everything which is accomplished in practical life must be firmly rooted in the “ground of reality.”

[ 2 ] Not all of those who find themselves in such a dilemma will find it easy to work their way through to a realization of how matters really stand with respect to the two points we have cited. If they could do it, with respect to the first point they would, for instance, see the following: The results of the science of the spirit are nowhere in conflict with the factual research of natural science. Everywhere that one looks at the relation of the two in an unprejudiced manner, there something quite different becomes apparent for our time. It turns out that this factual research is steering toward a goal which in a by no means distant future, will bring it into full harmony with what spiritual research ascertains in certain areas from its supersensible sources. From hundreds of cases which could be adduced as proof for this assertion, we shall cite a characteristic one here.

[ 3 ] In my lectures on the development of the earth and of mankind, it has been pointed out that the ancestors of the present-day civilized peoples lived in a land-area which at one time was situated in that part of the surface of the earth which today is occupied by a large portion of the Atlantic Ocean. In the essays, From the Akasha Chronicle, it is rather the soul-spiritual qualities of these Atlantean ancestors which have been indicated. In oral presentations also has often been described how the earth surface looked in the old Atlantean land. It was said that at that time the air was saturated with water mist vapors. Man lived in the water mist, which in certain regions never lifted to the point where the air was completely clear. Sun and moon could not be seen as they are today, but were surrounded by colored coronas. A distribution of rain and sunshine, such as occurs at present, did not exist at that time. One can clairvoyantly explore this old land; the phenomenon of the rainbow did not exist at that time. It only appeared in the post-Atlantean period. Our ancestors lived in a country of mist. These facts have been ascertained by purely supersensible observation, and it must even be said that the spiritual researcher does best to renounce all deductions based on his knowledge of natural science, for through such deductions his unprejudiced inner sense of spiritual research is easily misled. With such observations one should now compare certain ideas toward which some natural scientists feel themselves impelled at present. Today there are scientists who find themselves forced by facts to assume that at a certain period of its development the earth was enveloped in a cloud mass. They point out that at present also, clouded skies exceed the unclouded, so that life is still to a large extent under the influence of sunlight which is weakened by the formation of clouds, hence one cannot say that life could not have developed under the cloud cover of that Atlantean time. They further point out that those organisms which can be considered among the oldest of the plant world are of a kind which also develop without direct sunlight. Thus, among the forms of this older plant world those desert-type plants which need direct sunlight and dry air, are not present. And also with respect to the animal world, a scientist, Hilgard, has pointed out that the giant eyes of extinct animals, for instance, of the Ichthyosaurus, indicate that a dim illumination must have prevailed on the earth in their time. I do not mean to regard such views as not needing correction. They interest the spiritual researcher less through what they state than through the direction into which factual research finds itself forced. Even the periodical Kosmos, which has a more or less Haeckelian point of view, some time ago published an essay worthy of consideration which, because of certain facts of the plant and animal world, indicated the possibility of a former Atlantean Continent.

If one brought together a greater number of such matters one could easily show how true natural science is moving in a direction which in the future will cause it to join the stream which at present already carries the waters of the springs of spiritual research. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that spiritual research is nowhere in contradiction with the facts of natural science. Where its adversaries see such a contradiction, this does not relate to facts, but to the opinions which these adversaries have formed, and which they believe necessarily result from the facts. But in truth there is not the slightest connection between the opinion of Forel quoted above, for instance, and the facts of the stars of the nebulas, the nature of the cells, the liquefaction of the air, and so forth. This opinion represents nothing but a belief which many have formed out of a need for believing, which clings to the sensory-real, and which they place beside the facts. This belief is very dazzling for present-day man. It entices him to an inner intolerance of a quite special kind. Its adherents are blinded to the point where they consider their own opinion to be the only “scientific” one, and ascribe the views of others merely to prejudice and superstition. Thus it is really strange when one can read the following sentences in a newly-published book on the phenomena of the soul life [Hermann Ebbinghaus, Abriss der Psychologie (Outline of Psychology) ]: “As a help against the impenetrable darkness of the future and the insuperable might of inimical powers, the soul creates religion for itself. As in other experiences involving ignorance or incapacity, under the pressure of uncertainty and the terror of great dangers, ideas as to how help can be found here, are quite naturally forced upon man in the same way in which one thinks of water when in danger from fire, of the helpful comrade in the peril of combat.” “In the lower stages of civilization, where man still feels himself to be quite impotent and to be surrounded by sinister dangers at every step, the feeling of fear, and correspondingly, the belief in evil spirits and demons naturally entirely prevail. In higher stages on the other hand, where a more mature insight into the interconnection of things and a greater power over them produce a certain self-confidence and stronger hopes, a feeling of confidence in invisible powers comes to the fore and with it the belief in good and benevolent spirits. But on the whole, both fear and love, side by side, remain permanently characteristic of the feeling of man toward his gods, except that their relation to one another changes according to the circumstances.”—“These are the roots of religion . . . fear and need are its mothers, and although it is principally perpetuated by authority once it has come into existence, still it would have died out long since if it were not constantly being reborn out of these two.”

Everything in these assertions has been shifted and thrown into disorder, and this disorder is illuminated from the wrong points of view. Furthermore, he who maintains this opinion is firm in his conviction that his opinion must be a generally binding truth. First of all, the content of religious conceptions is confused with the nature of religious feelings. The content of religious conceptions is taken from the region of the supersensible worlds. The religious feeling, for example, fear and love of the supersensible entities, is made the creator of this content without further ado, and it is assumed without hesitation that nothing real corresponds to the religious conceptions. It is not even considered remotely possible that there could be a true experience of supersensible worlds, and that the feelings of fear and love then cling to the reality which is given by this experience, just as no one thinks of water when in danger from fire, of the helpful comrade in the peril of combat, if he has not known water and comrade previously. In this view, the science of the spirit is declared to be day-dreaming because one makes religious feeling the creator of entities which one simply regards as non-existent. This way of thinking totally lacks the consciousness that it is possible to experience the content of the supersensible world, just as it is possible for the external senses to experience the ordinary world of the senses.

The odd thing that often happens with such views is that they resort to the kind of deduction to support their belief which they represent as improper in their adversaries. For example, in the above-mentioned work of Forel the sentence appears, “Do we not live in a way a hundred times truer, warmer, and more interestingly when we base ourselves on the ego, and find ourselves again in the souls of our descendants, rather than in the cold and nebulous fata morgana of a hypothetical heaven among the equally hypothetical songs and trumpet soundings of supposed angels and archangels, which we cannot imagine, and which therefore mean nothing to us.” But what has that which “one” finds “warmer,” “more interesting,” to do with the truth? If it is true that one should not deduce a spiritual life from fear and hope, is it then right to deny this spiritual life because one finds it to be “cold” and “uninteresting”? With respect to those personalities who claim to stand on the “firm ground of scientific facts,” the spiritual researcher is in the following position. He says to them, Nothing of what you produce in the way of such facts from geology, paleontology, biology, physiology, and so forth is denied by me. It is true that many of your assertions are in need of correction through other facts. But such a correction will be brought about by natural science itself. Apart from that, I say “yes” to what you advance. It does not enter my mind to fight you when you advance facts. But your facts are only a part of reality. The other part are the spiritual facts, through which the occurrence of the sensory ones first becomes understandable. These facts are not hypotheses, not something which “one” cannot imagine, but something lived and experienced by spiritual research. What you advance beyond the facts you have observed is, without your realizing it, nothing other than the opinion that those spiritual facts cannot exist. As a matter of fact, you advance nothing as the proof of your assertion except that such spiritual facts are unknown to you. From this you deduce that they do not exist and that those who claim to know something of them are dreamers and visionaries. The spiritual researcher does not take even the smallest part of your world from you; he only adds his own to it. But you are not satisfied that he should act in this way; you say—although not always clearly—“‘One’ must not speak of anything except of that of which we speak; we demand not only that that be granted to us of which we know something, but we require that all that of which we know nothing be declared idle phantasms.” The person who wants to have anything to do with such “logic” cannot be helped for the time being. With this logic he may understand the sentence: “Our I has formerly lived directly in our human ancestors, and it will continue to live in our direct or indirect descendants.” (Forel, Leben und Tod (Life and Death), page 21.) Only he should not add, “Science proves it,” as is done in this work. For in this case science “proves” nothing, but a belief which is chained to the world of the senses sets up the dogma: That of which I can imagine nothing must be considered as delusion; and he who sins against my assertion offends against true science.

[ 4 ] The one who knows the development of the human soul finds it quite understandable that men's minds are dazzled for the moment by the enormous progress of natural science and that today they cannot find their way among the forms in which great truths are traditionally transmitted. The science of the spirit gives such forms back to mankind. It shows for example how the Days of Creation of the Bible represent things which are unveiled to the clairvoyant eye.¹ A mind chained to the world of the senses finds only that the Days of Creation contradict the results of geology and so forth. In understanding the deep truths of these Days of Creation, the science of the spirit is equally far removed from making them evaporate as a mere “poetry of myths,” and from employing any kind of allegorical or symbolical methods of explanation. How it proceeds is indeed quite unknown to those who still ramble on about the contradiction between these Days of Creation and science. Further, it must not be thought that spiritual research finds its knowledge in the Bible. It has its own methods, finds truths independently of all documents and then recognizes them in the latter. This way is necessary for many present-day seekers after truth. For they demand a spiritual research which bears within itself the same character as natural science. And only where the nature of this science of the spirit is not recognized does one become perplexed when it is a matter of protecting the facts of the supersensible world from opinions which appear to be founded on natural science. Such a state of mind was even anticipated by a man of warm soul, who however could not find the supersensible content of the science of the spirit. Almost eighty years ago this personality, Schleiermacher, wrote to the much younger Lücke: “When you consider the present state of natural science, how more and more it assumes the form of an encompassing account of the universe, what do you then feel the future will bring, I shall not even say for our theology, but for our evangelical Christianity? . . . I feel that we shall have to learn to do without much of what many are still accustomed to consider as being inseparably connected with the nature of Christianity. I shall not even speak of the Six Days' Work, but the concept of creation, as it is usually interpreted . . . How long will it be able to stand against the power of a world-outlook formed on the basis of scientific reasonings which nobody can ignore? . . . What is to happen, my dear friend? I shall not see this time, and can quietly lie down to sleep; but you, my friend, and your contemporaries, what do you intend to do?” (Theologische Studien und Kritiken von Ullmann und Umbreit (Theological Studies and Criticism by Ullmann and Umbreit), 1829, page 489). At the basis of this statement lies the opinion that the “scientific reasonings” are a necessary result of the facts. If this were so, then “nobody” could ignore them, and he whose feeling draws near the supersensible world can wish that he may be allowed “quietly to lie down to sleep” in the face of the assault of science against the supersensible world. The prediction of Schleiermacher has been realized, insofar as the “scientific reasonings” have established themselves in wide circles. But at the same time, today there exists a possibility of coming to know the supersensible world in just as “scientific” a manner as the interrelationships of sensory facts. The one who familiarizes himself with the science of the spirit in the way this is possible at present, will be preserved from many superstitions by it, and will become able to take the supersensible facts into his conceptual store, thereby divesting himself of the superstition that fear and need have created this supersensible world.

The one who is able to struggle through to this view will no longer be held back by the idea that he might be estranged from reality and practical life by occupying himself with the science of the spirit. He will then realize how the true science of the spirit does not make life poorer, but richer. It will certainly not mislead him into underestimating telephones, railroad technology, and aerial navigation; but in addition he will see many other practical things which remain neglected today, when one believes only in the world of the senses and therefore recognizes only a part of the truth rather than all of it.

• 1. Compare: Rudolf Steiner, Die Geheimnisse der biblischen Schopfungsgeschichte (The Secrets of the Biblical History of Creation), Freiburg i, Br., 1954.

The course of the year has its own life. With this life the human soul can unfold a feeling-unison. If the soul opens itself to the influences that speak so variously to it week by week, it will find the right perception of itself. Thereby the soul will feel forces growing within that will strengthen it. It will observe that such inward forces want to be awakened—awakened by the soul's ability to partake in the meaningful course of the world as it comes to life in the rhythms of time. Thereby the soul becomes fully aware of the delicate, yet vital threads that exist between itself and the world into which it has been born.

In this calendar a verse is inscribed for each week. This will enable the soul to participate actively in the progressing life of the year as it unfolds from week to week. Each verse should resound in the soul as it unites with the life of the year. A healthy feeling of “at one-ness” with the course of Nature, and from this a vigorous “finding of oneself” is here intended, in the belief that, for the soul, a feeling-unison with the world's course as unfolded in these verses is something for which the soul longs when it rightly understands itself.

—Rudolf Steiner
Foreword to the Second Edition

On the Corresponding Verses by Hans Pusch

It is apparent that the Calendar of the Soul is composed of corresponding verses which divide the year into two halves, from Easter to Michaelmas, and back again to Easter. For the translator, the most important task is to bring the corresponding verses into harmony with each other. By printing them side by side, each verse can be experienced with its ‘octave’ of the corresponding one.

But something else comes to expression in letting them speak side by side. Their relationship follows a certain law of evolution. Out of the whole evolve the parts, and this is the meaning of subtraction. We number the verses from 1 to 52 according to the weeks of the year, Easter to Easter. And now a double subtraction has to take place. We have one verse, say Number 5 for the fifth week; to find its correspondence, we must subtract 1 from our 5, which leads to 4 ... and then subtract the 4 from 52, resulting in 48, the verse we are looking for. It is necessary each time to subtract from the verse number and then from the whole.

This tracing of the related weeks is a gesture akin to the process of evolution. Out of the majestic un-folding of macrocosmic forces, the microcosmic worlds came into being. We ourselves followed this same process of subtraction by evolving by degrees the consciousness of self. It was a process of diminution by which we slowly exchanged our ancient clairvoyant vision, embracing totality, for our present earth-bound sight and mind, geographically conditioned by the existence in a physical body.

Subtracting means, therefore, on the one hand a diminishing, but on the other it creates a new principle of evolution, that of polarity. Not only are the parts a contrast to the whole, but also the parts themselves form opposites. There is no better description of the process than the one Emerson gave in his essay “Compensation:”

“Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity ... If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must condense there. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation ... Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law.” What lived in Emerson's mind underlies the style and composition of these weekly verses. And it is the human being who must reach a stage of compensation, of balance between the opposites, enhancing the polarities to forces of inner growth and maturity. It is a most invigorating development when it is practiced year after year in faithful succession. By combining the two corresponding verses in the mind, we gain a new insight into the workings of that which is outside and that which lives within.

Today, we want to take a look at the world of medieval legends from the point of view of the theosophical worldview. Two important legends are characteristic of the intellectual development of Europe in the Middle Ages, the two legends that are grouped around the Holy Grail.

In earlier times, the knowledgeable expressed themselves to the people about the deepest truths through legends and myths. If the people who lived where Northern and Central Europe is today had been taught such concepts as we now get in the theosophical world view, the people of yore would not have understood them. The sages spoke to each people and age as that people and age could understand. They always based their teachings on the law of reincarnation.

The sages who told the secrets of the world to the peoples of Northern and Central Europe were the Druids. “Druid” means “oak”. When it is said that the Germans celebrated their religious services “under oaks”, it does not only mean that they really celebrated their services under natural oaks, but it also means that they were under the guidance of the Druids. And when it is said that Boniface “fell the oak,” it means that the old Druidic service was overcome by Christianity. A true fact was given in the form of the saga. The Druid introduced the true facts into the sagas. The Druid priest was already speaking to all the souls that are today absorbing our worldview. He spoke to them in a way that was appropriate for that time. All of us who have adopted the theosophical worldview have heard the same things before in myths and fairy tales, otherwise we would not be able to understand them today. This is the secret of the great masters: they live fully in the awareness that they are among people who are repeatedly embodied.

Throughout the Middle Ages, the basic truths of Germanic-Central European culture lived in a great saga. If we get to know this saga, we understand what was present in the Middle Ages. The Druid priests nourished the awareness that once upon a time there was a high culture far to the west. This culture was in a land called Nifelheim or Nibelungenheim. This Nifelheim was the old Atlantis. It used to be a foggy place because of its peculiar atmospheric conditions, which were very different from ours.

The Germanic tribal saga thus truly reflects the truth. It points to an ancient land that once existed between Europe and America, where the Atlantic Ocean is now. This ancient land of Atlantis perished, along with the treasures of power and wisdom. These treasures were referred to as gold, and their demise is told in the saga as the sinking of the gold of the Nibelungen hoard. The treasure of the Nibelungs is to be raised in a new way, more in the East, in Europe. First Wotan, then Siegfried are the initiates who have the task of bringing the old treasure back to today's Europe, of making the Nibelung hoard fruitful again for newer culture in a certain way. The fact that the saga presents us with a secret initiate, Wotan, helps us to gain a deep insight into another ancient culture. The letters W and B correspond to each other. Wotan, Wodan is the same as Bodha Buddha. Wotan is actually the Germanic form of the word Buddha. We come across a common origin of the European Wotan religion and the Asian Buddha religion. The Buddha religion did not spread so much in India, but among those peoples of Asia who still had something of the Atlantean culture in them. The Wotan peoples also brought their views from the Atlantean culture. Their further development was expressed in the legends that the Druid priests had taught them. The saving of the hoard of the Nibelungs - the Atlantean culture - by Wotan and Siegfried is particularly beautifully expressed in these sagas.

A tragically prophetic thread runs through these sagas, which can be found from Russia via Germany to France and England, and can be found everywhere where druid priests taught. They taught prophetically: a twilight of the gods will come. We are the remnants of Atlantean culture. We must die to make way for something better. Our initiates are prophets of what is to come. A certain tragedy is expressed in all those who are initiated in the manner of Siegfried. The Song of the Nibelungs contains an ancient form of initiation: the distress of the Nibelungs, the lament of the Nibelungs. The very intimate disciples were taught that another would come who would bring the spiritual life. The mood of the Götterdämmerung was spread everywhere. All lived in the feeling and the intimate disciples in the certainty: One will come who will be very different from our initiates. - This is expressed in the saga through Siegfried.

In Scandinavia and Russia, the Drotten mysteries were analogous to the Druid mysteries. “Drotte” is another form of Druid. Throughout the ancient mysteries, Sig is the name of the original, great initiate. All names composed with “Sig” lead back to Sig, for example Sigurd, Sigmund, Sieglinde and so on. Siegfried was the initiate who had found peace in initiation. “Peace” means that which leads the human being beyond all doubt; it is the satisfaction of desire, the desire for knowledge, for power. Siegfried is depicted in all pictures as invulnerable. Achilles, the Greek initiate, remained vulnerable at one point, at the heel. Siegfried, after overcoming the dragon, became invulnerable except for one point, the point between the shoulder blades. This is where the cross is to be carried. This symbol played a profound role in the ancient mysteries. There it was said: You are all vulnerable at the point where one will have the cross. The one who will cover this place with the cross, the cross-bearer, will be the great initiate who is no longer vulnerable. This is what gives the Nordic saga its great appeal. This wisdom was an apocalyptic wisdom.

All occultists know that this wisdom emanates from a central oracle of twelve initiates, the so-called “White Lodge”. From there, the wisdom is carried out into the world. Nowhere is this different from the fact that the individual knows himself to be connected to the others. Everywhere there were twelve members of the lodge. Such are also the twelve apostles. The consciousness of those who intuitively perceive and the wisdom of those who know leads back to the Round Table of King Arthur. This is nothing other than the Great White Lodge, which in the Siegfried initiation made clear to the nations what it had to say to the world. Great initiates were members of the Round Table, which existed in Wales until the time of Queen Elizabeth of England. Then it was abolished for political reasons.

Two very specific political currents were traced back to these primeval times by medieval popular consciousness. In the Frankish people, who were so fortunate as to conquer the West of Europe, there was a dynasty that actually traced its origins back to the times of Atlantis. They were called the “Wibelungen” or “Nibelungen” — from which the word “Ghibellines” later emerged. There was an old consciousness of a ruling dynasty rising among the Franks, rooted in the old Nibelungen land, combining secular and priestly power. That is why Charlemagne tried to have the royal crown placed on him in Rome, to add a spiritual element to the secular one.

Originally, all the power that was assumed was derived from what had come over from Atlantis. The fact that people thought and sensed that a twilight of the gods was coming also connected a certain tragic trait to the ruling dynasty. It was said: Those who want to know can well become initiates, but they must be replaced by something else. This sentiment was first expressed in the well-known Barbarossa saga; then something was added that was not in the usual saga. Barbarossa was correctly thought of as a continuation of the old Franconian rulers. The Hohenstaufen were the Ghibellines, Waiblingen, Wibelungen, Nibelungen, in contrast to the Guelphs, the Guelfs. The more intimate version adds to the well-known Barbarossa saga that Barbarossa brought the Holy Grail from Asia to Europe. He himself perished as a physical personality and now waits for his time to come. This expresses the whole mood of the Middle Ages towards ancient paganism and the new Christianity.

People began to look at their own national soul and said: We brought our culture over from ancient Atlantis. But it is destined to perish; Christianity must take its place. But it will rise again, purified, cleansed, elevated by Christianity. — A beginning was made to create a transition from the end of the descent to the beginning of the ascent. A beginning was made to imagine the course of the lower German spiritual culture in such a way that the clairvoyant, Atlantean consciousness was replaced by something that had yet to come. Natural bravery, piety, virtue had to be reclaimed in a different, new way. There were three conceptions, conceptions of three definite powers: Wotan is the intuitive power as represented by the initiate; Wili is the will itself; We is the mind, with a tragic trait where it becomes apocalyptic. Now another time was to come. Now, through the Christian teaching, the point of passage was to be gained, and one was to ascend again to what was before the twilight of the gods.

That Barbarossa sits in the mountain means that he is an initiate. The “mountain” is the place of initiation. Christ went with his disciples “on the mountain” - into the mystery. The ravens signify an initiation of Barbarossa. In the Persian initiation ritual, there are seven stages of initiation. The “ravens” signify the first stage of personal initiation. They denote the still existing connection of the initiate with the environment. Think of the ravens of Elijah. We also find ravens with Wotan. They mediate his communication with the environment. Thus, Barbarossa, the initiate, also had the ravens around him, which still kept him connected to the world.

Barbarossa had brought the Holy Grail from the Orient. This Holy Grail had been kept on the Mons salvationis, the mountain of salvation. It is now surrounded by the successors of King Arthur's Round Table, the twelve knights who added the Christian initiation to the old pagan initiation. The Grail is the symbol of the Christian initiation. Those who wanted to be initiated into the secrets of the Holy Grail became Christian initiates. One becomes a Christian initiate by first going through all doubts and then getting a firm hold in the connection with Christ Himself. One thing is necessary for this: direct trust in the figure of Christ. The first disciples placed particular emphasis on the fact that Christ was there. They say: We want to bear witness that we were with Him. We have laid our hands in His wounds. What we have seen and heard ourselves, that we proclaim. Paul is an apostle because he has truly seen the Risen One in spirit. It depends on the direct experience, which one acquires not through wisdom and logic, but directly.

It is clear to us what Parzival is meant to achieve on his wanderings. Parzival's mother is called Herzeleide. If you read Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, who was a thoroughly initiated man, deeply, between the lines and words, you will find that the name of Parzival's mother, Herzeleide, is a reflection of the tragic trait that lay in the German soul. Those who do not follow the Parzival path carry sorrow in their hearts; they have to gain peace for themselves. Wolfram von Eschenbach knew how to clothe the saga in a beautiful form. With the one fact, he meant a profound symbol - the female personality always signifies consciousness: Herzeleide is the state of consciousness from which Parzival starts. At first he has a tragic consciousness. He struggles through everything that worldly knighthood can offer, with a naive, simple consciousness, in order to come to the secret of the Holy Grail.

We must keep this together with the Barbarossa saga. Barbarossa went to Asia to seek the secrets of the Holy Grail, the initiation of Christianity. But he perished on the way to the Holy Grail. He has to wait “in the mountains” until Christianity can find the connection to the earlier initiation. Barbarossa brought Christianity, but has not yet achieved the deeper initiation of Christianity.

Parzival is the new Christian initiate, the great symbol that replaces the Siegfried initiation. Siegfried has overcome the lower nature, the lindworm, the snake. Parzival becomes the initiate of the Holy Grail, who gets to know the one who is invulnerable where Siegfried was still vulnerable. In Parzival, the original idea of Christianity is expressed. It no longer knows the idea of reincarnation. One regards the one life between birth and death as the only one. The valuable thing is the one incarnation. One no longer looks up to Manas, Budhi, Atma. The Parzival initiation was only to come to the awareness of the connection with Christ, to consider the one incarnation in which man comes to knowledge through compassion and not through knowledge to compassion, as it happens through theosophy. Theosophy teaches us to recognize how we are one with all people. Through it, one knows that one is responsible for what our brother does. Theosophy leads through knowledge to compassion. But humanity had to go through a period of development for a while, where it was to come to knowledge through compassion. It had to descend into the depths of compassion, because one can also come to knowledge there. It had to be so, in order that people might get to know this earthly world in all its importance. Christianity was to educate humanity, so that the earthly might also be grasped in its significance. Therefore, man first had to be directed, steered downwards, in the moral sense, towards physical life. Only then could he arrive at the great achievements that begin with city culture.

The progress of the Middle Ages is described in the saga in the transition from the Parzival saga to the Lohengrin saga. This saga emerges at a time when cities are being founded all over Europe, primarily serving the emerging bourgeoisie, which is no longer based on the spiritual life but on the material life. All material achievements are prepared in the cities, for example, the art of printing. Without the culture of the cities, modern science would not have been able to develop in this way. The universities are also a consequence of this culture. A Copernicus, a Kepler, a Newton and so on would not have been possible without it. Dante's “Divine Comedy” and the painters of the Renaissance can also be traced back to the culture of the cities.

The saga of the connection between Parzival, the father, and Lohengrin, the son, points to the importance of urban culture. Elsa of Brabant represents the cities, the urban consciousness. In all mysticism, that which works against the physical world is presented as something feminine. Goethe speaks of the “eternal feminine”; in Egypt, Isis was worshipped in this sense.

Let us consider the stages of the chela's initiation. The chela must first overcome three stages. The first step is that of the homeless man, where man is torn out of the physical world, where he becomes objective towards the physical world. He must unlearn to be partial, he must learn to love everything equally; he does not love less, but he transfers his love to everything that deserves love, not just to his homeland and so on. The second step is where the chela builds huts. He finds a new home. The disciples on the mountain have reached this stage. They are beyond space and time, they see Elijah and Moses. That is why they say: “Let us build huts.” The third stage is that of the swan. A swan is the chela who has come so far that all things speak to him, even those who have their consciousness on higher planes. On the physical plane, only man has the ego. The animal has consciousness on the astral plane, the plant on the mental plane (rupa plane), the mineral on the higher mental plane (arupa plane). One must rise to higher worlds to find the I, the names of other beings; there things speak their own names to the chela. The world then becomes resounding and sounding for him everywhere. In view of this fact, Goethe says:

The sun resounds in the ancient manner In the spheres of the brothers' song, And its prescribed journey it completes With a thunderclap.

He repeats this reference from the prologue in heaven where he leads Faust over into the higher worlds:

The new day is already born for the ears of the spirit. Rock gates creak and rattle, Phoebus' wheels roll and clatter, What a roar brings the light! It trumpets, it trompets, the eye blinks and the ear is amazed, Unheard-of things are heard.

It is not a matter of indifference that the Prologue in Heaven in the first part of “Faust” and the second part begin in this way. Goethe was pointing to something very specific: it is the third degree of chelaship, where the world around us becomes resounding and all things tell us their name. Jesus had reached such a degree when he was to receive Christ. This degree was designated in the White Lodge as the swan. Swans were those who were no longer allowed to speak their name, but to whom the whole world revealed its names.

Lohengrin, the son of Parzival, is the initiate who founded city culture, who was sent by the great Grail lodge to fertilize the consciousness of medieval humanity. Elsa of Brabant characterizes the striving human consciousness, which is fertilized by the environment, the masculine. The urban consciousness represented by Elsa is to be fertilized by Lohengrin, by the Holy Grail. The connection between Lohengrin and Elsa of Brabant is the connection between material culture and the spiritual task of the fifth sub-race. The swan is the man initiated in the third degree, who brings in the Master from the Great Lodge. Man must let the Master work upon him without asking about His nature. Elsa of Brabant must accept what He gives her as her due. The moment she asks out of curiosity, the initiate disappears. All this is expressed in the Lohengrin saga.

The Templars had brought the initiation wisdom of the Holy Grail from the Orient to the Mountain of Salvation, mons salvationis, the place of initiation of Christianity. An initiation ceremony pointed directly to the future of the whole human race. It was said: a time will come when Christianity will experience a new phase. The progress of human spiritual culture has always been consciously referred to as the progress of the sun. Before 800 BC, the sun passed through the constellation of Taurus for about 2200 years. Over in Asia, the bull was worshipped as the divine. Even before that, the twins were worshipped in Persia for the same reason: good and evil, duality. Around 800 BC, the Sun entered the sign of Aries or the Lamb. This is indicated by the legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece. Christ calls Himself the Lamb of God because He appeared under this sign. [Today the Sun is in the sign of Pisces.] The Knights Templar point to the next constellation; the Sun will then enter the constellation of Aquarius. There Christianity will truly arise for the first time, paganism united with Christianity. This culture will resurrect a new John. This moment will occur when the sun is in the sign of Aquarius. John means 'water bearer'; he will be the herald of a new era of Christianity. It is said that the Knights Templar pointed to John the Baptist, not to Christ. But the John of whom they speak is the Aquarius.

The last phase of Christianity, which originated with the initiate Lohengrin, has brought about the period of usefulness, which has now reached its peak. The theosophical movement wants to be the successor of such movements, as the Parzival movement was and as the one that originated with the initiate Lohengrin. Modern materialism also owes its origin to great initiates, but it must be replaced by a new phase, by a new cycle. This is what Theosophy wants to bring about. But it is always the initiates who speak when a new cultural impact is to be given.

What is today referred to as the theosophical movement or the theosophical worldview did not come into existence as a result of recent cultural developments, as did many other movements. The theosophical movement did not arise out of the arbitrary will of a single agitator. Sometimes a movement comes into being through an individual who is able to make an impact on people and to inspire them with his words. The Theosophical movement as such, however, has a completely different basis. It arose out of the realization that humanity needs such a movement, out of the realization that the spiritual treasures that have given people hope and joy since time immemorial must be brought to humanity in a new form.

When we look into the soul of a growing child, who is to grow up to face life and be equipped with the powers that prepare him for a healthy life, we see how, from the earliest age, the harshest doubts must take hold in his soul under the impressions of today's education. We see how the child is led into the knowledge of a supersensible world, a world in which answers are to be given to the questions about the riddles of life, to the question of how it relates to death and other serious questions, to all the great riddles of existence, which every human being must have answered not only from a mere feeling.

In the face of all these questions, which point to the supernatural, man is plunged into anxious doubt and bitter disappointment, even as a child, when he experiences what today's natural science, seemingly so powerful, presents to man. Especially those people who are predisposed to have the best sense of truth come, in their earliest youth, to the harshest doubts through what comes to them in our time. Many are often dominated by a great sense of apprehension; they do not want to touch on anything that goes beyond the visible. Indifference to these questions is one thing that is found in some people; the other is the bitter division of the soul between what science seems to give on the one hand and religious truths on the other.

One may wonder what is better: if a person goes through life indifferently, or experiences the tragic fate of being broken mentally. Perhaps one can say that there are always those who do not fall prey to such doubts. But anyone who understands the signs of the times knows that what is happening now is only the beginning of what will intensify more and more. Something must be offered so that people who, as a result of the findings of science, no longer believe that they can hold on to their belief in the supernatural, can find a way to it again. A way must also be found for those who believe they must break with religious traditions. We see how the best minds of our time see religious creeds as something that was right for a child's age, in their opinion; they need something that satisfies their consciousness. The theosophical worldview is there to open up a path to the primary sources of existence for even the most modern consciousness.

Those who seek such a path may recall one of the great minds of modern times, who never uttered the word “theosophy”, but whose entire thinking, feeling and sensing expressed the spirit of theosophy. He said: “He who possesses science and art also has religion; he who does not possess these two, let him have religion.” We may recall the moment when Goethe stood in Italy before the great works of art he had longed for so much before coming to Italy. “There is necessity, there is God,” he said when speaking of them. When he wanted to explain why necessity and God shone out of artistic form for him, he said: “I suspect that the Greeks proceeded according to the laws by which nature itself proceeds, and which I am on the trail of.

Let us summarize how Goethe's view of nature, his worldview and religious feeling interacted. Goethe had something of what we want to learn as a theosophical basic feeling. As a child, he already had this feeling. He sought out all sorts of minerals and plants, laid them on a music stand, and then he placed an incense stick on top; he ignited it with a burning glass through the first rays of the sun. In this way, he believed that he was close to the God who emerged from all of nature's works through this sacrifice that he offered him. Are we surprised that such a powerful religious feeling also comes to light in his scientific endeavors later on?

Goethe tried to discern how the ancient artists allowed the divine order to shine through in their works of art. In what the old artists created, he saw necessity, God. For him, the genuine artist was the one who caught the spiritual light of God in his soul, as a burning glass catches physical light. When Goethe saw in colors and forms, it appeared to him as genuine art. He who looks into nature longs for its creative interpreter, art. Goethe recognized the close connection between nature and art, how the same laws prevail in both, and for him science is the right one if it leads to this realization. “He who possesses science and art also has religion,” he says. For a mind as high as his, this realization could only give rise to a feeling for God in His lawfulness permeating all of nature.

Human nature needs impulses whereby this feeling penetrates into every soul. — Let us take a look at the much-maligned Middle Ages, when a scientific fact had not yet been transmitted through a thousand channels to the simplest human soul. Let us place ourselves in the position of an aspiring, simple human heart, as it was in relation to its teachers, and let us place ourselves in the course of historical events, as it all gradually came about back then, how the new era began and the Copernican world view brought about such a great change in the development of mankind. We want to realize how what is now called Theosophy was not necessary for people of the older times, how the vast majority of humanity at that time received it out of feelings that arose from religious convictions in most of them. It is precisely the development into our time that makes theosophy necessary. If it were not for modern science with its doubts and scruples, which it itself generates, there would be no need for theosophy.

Those who are familiar with Theosophy know that in reality there is no contradiction between religious beliefs and scientific truths. Since modern science has been influencing the world, there has been a need for an instrument of knowledge that goes deeper than science, which only looks at the world on the surface. Theosophy is entirely consistent with science. If we delve deeper into Theosophy, we will find that it is completely in line with science. It just goes deeper. It deals with the supersensible, with the superphysical world. The way it deals with it is exactly the same as the way research is done in modern science. Only it has to do with the supersensible world. By dealing with the world in which man himself is a supersensible being, it becomes a kind of religious knowledge. Theosophy does not doubt the truth of real religious knowledge. It wants to give new means to man, who is no longer able to hold on to this religious conviction with the old means.

Now that we have seen that the Theosophical worldview does not just correspond to arbitrariness, we want to point out the places where Theosophy has an enlightening and illuminating effect. Natural science is concerned only with that which can be derived from external experience. Since Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Kirchhoff and [Bunsen], and all those who in our own time have shed light on the material world, with what could this natural science not agree? We could cite a long series of wonderful results of modern science. The theosophist has no reason to withhold his admiration for this world of facts. But modern science has risen to its present eminence precisely because it has limited itself to the periphery of the external world.

Du Bois-Reymond, in his Ignorabimus speech at the Natural Scientists' Convention in Leipzig in 1872, said something remarkable about human knowledge. He says that the natural scientist is actually only able to understand the sleeping person, but not the waking person. He says that the natural scientist has to investigate the material foundations of the human being, how the atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen combine in the human brain when any impulse or thought comes about. He says that nothing is yet understood about the actual soul. He quotes Leibniz, who says: Imagine that the brain is so enlarged that you could walk around in it as if it were a factory. Even so, you would not know how the movements arise, nor why they give rise to the sensations: I see red, I smell the scent of roses, I hear the sound of an organ. Du Bois-Reymond did not want to admit to science that it had the possibility of finding out the bridge between the physical movements of the atoms and the mental sensations. Quite right he said: “If we have a sleeping person in front of us, then we can recognize him, because then what we call the inner soul experiences is not there. It has vanished down into an indefinite darkness while man sleeps.

Yet something else disappears when we are asleep: what we can call the sense of self, that which is at the center of our being. During sleep, the human being does not feel the experiences of the soul in his ego, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, etc. It would be the most nonsensical thing imaginable to claim that what says “I” to itself, what smells the scent of roses, hears organ tones, sees colors, that this disappears completely in the evening and is recreated every morning. No explanation based on external sensual facts is capable of saying a word that can resolve this. This is why Du Bois-Reymond was also able to say: The natural scientist can recognize the sleeping human being, but not the waking human being. — When falling asleep, the true human being disappears from the scientific explanation.

Only spiritual science can shed light on the true process. The sleeping person leaves his outer cover in bed in the evening and moves back into this body in the morning. He himself disappears into another world in the evening. To study him is the task of theosophy or spiritual science. It is possible to follow this person, but it is not easy for the present person to come to believe in this possibility. The theosophical world view introduces the human being to another world. It speaks of supersensible and superphysical worlds, not in a magical or superstitious sense, but in a completely natural sense, in the sense in which Johann Gottlieb Fichte spoke of them. In the fall of 1813, he said to his audience: “Imagine a world of the blind and born blind, for whom only the things and their relationships that exist through the sense of touch are known. Enter this world and speak to them of colors and the other relationships that exist only through light and for the seeing. Either you talk to them about nothing, and this is the happier outcome, if they say so; for in this way you will soon notice the mistake and, if you are unable to open their eyes, you will stop talking in vain.

For the blind from birth, this world of colors and light does not exist. We now imagine that a blind person is operated on in this room, so a whole new world would appear to him, which was there before, but for which he lacked the organ. A world that was not there for him before, now becomes his possession, by receiving a new organ. There are as many worlds for us as we have organs to perceive them.

It is the worst kind of illogicality when man wants to limit existence to what is within his reach. — We cannot operate on everyone born blind, but every person has dormant powers and abilities in their soul that can be awakened, what Goethe calls the spiritual eye. Then there comes a moment when a new world opens up for that person. There have been such awakened or initiated ones at all times. When the spiritual organs are awakened, man perceives a new world; what he then perceives is explained to him by the world of the supersensible. Just as there is always light and color around the blind, there are spiritual worlds around people in which spiritual beings exist. Religions have always spoken of these worlds in terms that people could understand. Theosophy speaks of them in terms that are appropriate for the present time.

Only those who have glimpsed these spiritual worlds or who know about it from those who have glimpsed it can narrate, communicate and research in relation to these spiritual worlds. To research, looking into it is necessary, but to understand, the ordinary logical human understanding is enough. Many things that people are told about these spiritual worlds may seem fabulous and fantastic to them. But take it as a story. If you immerse yourself in it, you will see that common sense and ordinary human logic are enough to understand it.

Even the reports of science are largely accepted without people themselves having followed the path of the researcher and tested everything. How many of those people who consider Haeckel's “History of Creation” to be a gospel have convinced themselves of what is written in it? It is extraordinarily difficult to carry out such tests; for example, the experience of the development of the human germ from stage to stage is something so difficult that one very rarely finds the opportunity to do so. It all looks different when you read about it in a finished, popular work. But even if you can't verify it all yourself, you can still say that you understand and believe.

There are higher spiritual methods for exploring the world of the senses, just as there are natural scientific methods. When we apply these methods, it becomes apparent that in sleep the true human being emerges from the human being that our eyes see. The physical human being cannot see this with his physical sense organs. But the awakened eye of the seer sees the I, sees the bearer of desires and passions. Man is there, even in sleep, but his consciousness can only sprout up in him when he plunges back into what his eyes see of the physical body.

In the theosophical worldview, we are shown how the true human being exists, who, during sleep, leaves the outer shells, and how this consists of two parts, the actual self and the astral body, the carrier of desires and passions. Two parts of the human being are spiritual. During sleep, from evening until morning, they are in another world. In the morning they re-enter the physical body.

Is the physical body itself so simple? We cannot get by with a simple explanation of it either. The same being that sinks into unconsciousness when falling asleep in the evening says “I” to itself again in the morning. The thinking observer of the world must find it understandable when the spiritual researcher tells him: When we look at man from birth to death, we see his nature is by no means exhausted in the physical. Only if we surrender to the most shortsighted prejudice can we stop at what really appears to us as man from the sensual-physical world.

If we observe the human being from birth, we see the unfolding qualities of the child as something that is not limited to the physical; we recognize how something spiritual is at work. In the growing human being, too, we see something working its way out from within that was there before the physical forms were there. In the Bach family, about 29 more or less significant musicians lived within 250 years. One could say: There you can see how the disposition of father and mother is inherited. But that does not contradict the fact that a spiritual process is at work behind the physical process. The musical ear is only one particular physiognomy of the inner ear. One inherits the physical from one's ancestors, but one does not inherit that for which the physical is the instrument, the spiritual, from one's ancestors. The spiritual predispositions are bound to the individual.

When a person realizes this, he sees something similar in the developing human individuality as in a person waking up in the morning. He says to himself that the spiritual person grows and develops in the developing human being. He does not just see a physical connection, but just as he does not just see a physical process in the waking person, he also sees something spiritual unfolding in the growing person.

This other spiritual element that unfolds in the developing human being remains with the sleeping physical human being. The sleeping physical human being remains in bed, but is also still connected to a spiritual element. This spiritual element, which we see gradually unfolding from childhood onwards, what was there before birth, what was there before conception, we call the human etheric body. Just as we see the carrier of feelings, passions and desires in the astral body, we call that which we see growing in the human being the etheric or life body. No plant exists without an etheric or life body. In the plant, it is still limited to regulating the forces of growth and reproduction. But in the human being, it is the carrier of all spiritual abilities, of habits, of memory. In the human being, it increasingly becomes the carrier of a higher spiritual essence, increasingly becoming the spirit of life. Just as the I leaves the human being with the astral body when sleep occurs, so the etheric or life body leaves the physical body at death, and the physical body decays.

Thus, Theosophy leads us beyond the riddles of existence; it shows us the reality that is still there when a person passes through the gate of death. The theosophical world view gives us a glimpse of the realms that man passes through when he passes through the gate of sleep, through the gate of death. Through knowledge, through insight, we are introduced to those worlds that are also sought in religions. Modern humanity needs this harmonization, this balance. That is why this world view has been brought to the world. Mankind can now only be seized by such impulses as the young Goethe sought to feel before his altar, as they were alive in the old Goethe when he was inspired by the works of art, if they are again able to penetrate into the higher, spiritual worlds through the knowledge of the theosophical world view. The theosophical world view shows the modern man his connection with the supersensible world again. Without this connection, man cannot remain healthy.

The theosophist is aware that not only a world of the senses surrounds man, but also a world of the supersensible. He who knows only this world sensually, loses the sense for this world, and the hope that the physical world is supposed to bring him disappears.

Theosophy wants to bring man back to a correct, a strong view of the supersensible world, which not only satisfies curious or tired knowledge, but which makes man, especially in this world, fit for work, full of hope and joy, because he knows: The meaning of this physical world is an eternal one, and because he knows: Everything I do in this sense has an eternal meaning. This gives people joy in their lives, diligence in their work, and that is what makes people healthy for life.

What holds good for people today as an almost undisputed authority is science; science in the sense in which it is pursued in the educational institutions of the country. We have often spoken of how far the validity of science can go, and it has also been pointed out that people today must free themselves from its authority. I want now to show how it has become a characteristic phenomenon—but only of the last three or four centuries—to regard medicine as one of these sciences which hold sway as authorities. Indeed, everything connected with medicine is just one science among others—a science the effects of which are intended to bring about the healing of the sick. Today it is hardly realised that this relation of medicine to the other sciences, and to the whole field of knowledge, has come about only during the last three or four centuries. For the further back we go in human evolution the more do we find how everything that could be cultivated by man in the way of science, of knowledge, was considered to be more or less of a medical nature—as having to do with healing. And when we look back to those olden times, particularly to the development then of occult science, we see that with the concept of this occult science, of this body of knowledge, there is always bound up the concept of healing. In any healing, spiritual science was always involved. Thus, at that time it could never have been said: Medicine is one science among many!—In those days when pure intellect was not thought to have any place in occult science it was said: In all science, in all knowledge, we must search for what aims at healing the whole human being.—This thought arose in the soul when they spoke.

But now the question necessarily comes up: What was there in those days to be healed? In this age of materialism a man is said to be ill when anything abnormal is noticed in him, either outwardly in his physical functioning or in his behaviour towards the material world. This material concept of illness is indeed, strictly speaking, a product of man's recent evolution, a product of the post-Grecian age. For in the. Greece of that time, where men were more awake and more receptive towards the world than those who came later, there still persisted the concept of illness—and of the tendency to illness—which prevailed in all ages up to the last two or three centuries B.C. Such matters as these have to be somewhat emphasised in order to be understood and perceived in their real significance. In those olden days people were convinced that all human beings permanently carried within them the seeds of illness. That in reality everyone went about the world with the predisposition to illness, was the prevailing conception. All men needed help at least in warding off illness; they needed healing the whole time—such was the opinion. Perhaps those things can be better understood if this notion of them is compared with one we come across a good deal, particularly now in connection with our social affairs and social demands. Many people today consider themselves called upon to make a stir about what is necessary in social, or other matters, for the future betterment of mankind. What conditions would be were their ideas to be carried out, they picture as a paradise on earth indeed, the realisation of certain ideas is even said to mean the dawn of the millennium. Certainly this may be well meant, though it has its roots in poor understanding and still poorer intelligence. But it may have the effect of merely exciting people in the agitator's way. For what could have a more powerful effect of this kind, particularly in a materialistic age, than the promise of a paradise on earth. And if besides they are told it will happen before they die, it is highly probable they will support anyone making the promise. Compared with that, anything like the idea of the “Threefold Commonwealth” appears hard indeed, for it does not speak of a paradise on earth but of a social organism in keeping with life—an organism which can really live. Over against the conception which includes this possible paradise on earth, and is supposed capable of bringing men health by putting their ideals into effect merely through improving conditions on the physical plane—over against this way of thinking lies another.

This other way of thinking, which held good in ancient times and had a quite different shade of feeling, I was trying to describe when I said: All human beings, in so far as they live and work on the physical plane, are to a certain extent hampered by the pre-disposition to sickness, and need constant healing. This conception is founded on what might be expressed thus—that here in the physical world a man is able to deal with the organisations necessary on the physical plane—with his domestic affairs; his rights and so on. But when all this is carried out through his own power alone, when nothing plays a part which has not to do with external institutions, the physical organism of man becomes more and more unhealthy. Ordinary measures are then quite unable to promote a sound social organism but only one that becomes weaker and weaker. For this to be avoided it is necessary for spiritual life to run side-by-side with the measures taken for the physical world. Then this spiritual life has the effect of paralysing the germs of sickness always being produced in men. All knowledge was worthless for mankind—so it was thought—which did not tend to counteract the poison constantly forming in the social organism. The process of cognition is a healing process. It was considered in those olden days that, were knowledge at fault in any particular epoch, the social organism would become sick. Hence, from the first, cognitional power was recognised as a healing force; only in the course of time did the doctor, the teacher, the priest become separate individuals, independent of a leader with knowledge of the Mysteries who was also responsible for the ordering of society as well as being doctor, teacher, priest and so on. All these faculties were originally combined in one man possessing the knowledge which, owing to its particular character, acted as a healing factor for mankind. Later only were they to be differentiated. At that period of human evolution, too, far less attention was paid to individual illness than is the case today. Certainly opinions were formed about individual cases, but they were not told to the patient for fear of hurting his feelings and horrifying him. On the other hand, the measures taken, drawn as far as possible out of the deep sources of knowledge, were considered a social cure.

Such a conception, it is true, could prevail in its fullness only at a time when a man's attitude to himself was quite different from what it is today. We have frequently spoken of how the intellectualism, that now takes such a prominent place in the acquiring of knowledge, is really, in its present form, only three or four hundred years old. This intellectualism, which sees its ideal in the natural laws perceived through abstract concepts, has little to do with the human personality, I have often described what effect this has. Picture anyone studying science today, any branch of science, in one of the usual centres of learning in the civilised world. The student sits there listening to the lecturer only with his head, with his understanding, his intellect; and he watches experiments being made. In all this very little part is taken by his soul, his heart, his being as a whole. It was very different in the old Mysteries when there was no question of remaining aloof. All that worked on the head, on the intellect, at the same time affected the entire man, laying hold of his heart, soul and will, so that his whole being could participate. By thinking in the abstract, by the abstract investigation of nature, our very life has become abstract, so much so that today a man hardly possesses the organ capable of seeing rightly what once was bound up with the whole social life of mankind. We have often spoken here about what in past ages of Judaism was called the “fearful, the inexpressible, name of God”, which eventually found utterance in the word “Jahve.” Why did the name inspire fear? It was because through the very power of the sound, the everyday mood of the one who uttered it, his everyday consciousness, was obliterated and another world arose before him. Because it necessitated the withdrawal of the ordinary consciousness, utterance of the word was dangerous. A man actually felt that when this name vibrated through him he was wafted to another world, where everything was different from the physical world,—This is a mood of soul of which people no longer have, nor can have, any notion. For today, a combination of sounds has no such shattering effect.

All this has to do with the constitution of man's soul and body from which in those times there was more to draw upon than there is now. Today the organic plays the greater part—hunger, thirst, various emotions, desires, the promptings of heart and soul, sympathies and antipathies. All that arises in this way out of man's organisation is, strictly speaking, part of him as an individual—an individual human ego. In the case of the men of old, in addition to hunger, thirst, and the desires of ordinary life, revelations of the divine arose. They felt in what had to do in this way with their own bodily nature and with their own soul, the presence of God. Who worked in them as well as in nature. What arose in these men of olden times made them capable of seeing in surrounding nature not what we see today but the spiritual. Present-day man is not disposed to allow that the very faculty of perception in those earlier days was different from what it is in man today.

One can certainly understand this prejudice, this assumption that the world was always seen in the way we see it today. For those who want proof in such matters, however, even external facts show clearly that the Greeks themselves—so we need not go far back in man's evolution—saw surrounding nature differently from how we do. To spiritual science with its spiritual vision this is perfectly clear, but the knowledge, thus brought to the surface so vividly through spiritual vision, can be arrived at also through physical facts, if we look, for instance, in Greek literature and notice the use of the Greek word chloros. By this they meant green, but curiously enough they used the same word for golden honey and the golden leaves in autumn; it was also applied to the gold of resin. And the Greeks had a word to describe the darkness of hair, which they used as well when speaking of lapis lazuli, that blue stone. No-one can assume the Greeks had blue hair;. So there is ample proof of such things, from which it can be seen that, as a people, the Greeks were simply incapable of distinguishing yellow from green, and that they did not perceive blue as the colour we do but saw everything tinged with the vividness of red or gold. We find all this confirmed by a Roman writer who speaks of how the Greek painters only used four colours—black, white, red, yellow. Judging from our present theory of colour we must say: The Greeks were essentially blind to the colour blue; they did not see the blue in green but only the yellow. The surrounding world had, for them, a much more fiery aspect, for they saw it all with a reddish tinge. The metamorphoses of human evolution thus affect even the way in which a man sees, and as we have said this is capable of external proof. To spiritual vision it is perfectly clear that the whole colour-spectrum of the Greeks was on the red side—that they had little feeling for the blue and violet. For them the violet was much redder than we see it. Were we, according to our present visual conception, to paint the landscape as a Greek saw it, we should have to use quite different colours from those we ordinarily do. They had no knowledge of what we see as nature, and the nature they saw is an unknown world to us. The evolution of mankind progresses indeed by metamorphoses. The point is that the time when intellectualism arose and men became inclined to meditation—the Greeks had little inclination that way—they lived objectively in the world of nature—was the time when a feeling was acquired for the dark colours, the blue, the blue-violet. It was not only the inner nature of the soul that was changed, but also what passed over from the soul into the senses.

You can therefore say that today, in this fifth postAtlantean period, we are indeed different men in our sense-faculties from the characteristic men of the fourth period, the Greco-Latin people. This is all connected with what has been said before. During the time when spiritual forces still arose from the emotions, from sympathies and antipathies, even from the body in its hunger, thirst, its satiation, these spiritual forces poured into the sense-organs. And these spiritual forces, streaming up from the lower bodily nature to pour themselves into the sense-organs, are those which play the chief part for the eyes in giving life to the various shades of yellow and red, enabling these colours to be perceived. The time has now come when the reverse is the most important task for mankind. The Greeks were still organised in such a way that their beautiful world-conception was mediated through their senses, into which flowed their organic life permeated by spirit. In the course of centuries this spirit-filled organic life has been suppressed by men. Out of our soul, out of our spirit, we must infuse it with fresh life; we must acquire the faculty for making our way into soul and spirit—as spiritual science enables us to do. By acquiring this faculty through spiritual science we shall take the opposite direction. In the case of the Greeks the streams came from the body to pour into the eye (see red in diagram I); the reverse must take place with us; we have so to develop soul and spirit that the streams (see blue in diagram I) from the soul and spirit reach the human organisation; and we must receive these streams in the other senses as well as in the eye. The way for mankind in future must be in the reverse direction to that of the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. Then the reflective man will once again become a knower of the spirit, but in another form, because of what comes to him from above. We have grown to be sensitive to the blue side of the spectrum.

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If I wanted to make a diagram I should have to draw it in the following way: The Greek was susceptible to red, lived in red and was familiar with the red part of the spectrum (see left of diagram II). We, however, must grow more and more accustomed to this part (see right of diagram II). But by doing so, and in that we find blue and blue-violet increasingly attractive, our sense-organs have necessarily to undergo change,

The sense-organs must become quite different in their finer structure from how they were. What then gradually pours into the sense-organs in a natural way, develops through the eye, for example. Imagination; through the ear. Inspiration; through the sense of warmth, Intuition. Thus there must be developed:

through the eye: Imagination,
through the ear: Inspiration,
through the warmth-sense: Intuition.

In the course of human evolution the finer structure of man's organisation goes through a metamorphosis, becomes different.

People today must be awake to such things, for they are standing at a momentous cross-roads; it is indeed a time when it has to be decided whether they can take the way enabling them to receive impressions from above. Pure intellectualism does not suffice; we must permeate intellectualism with spirit and soul. Then what develops within us as spirit and soul will work into the human organisation. But what if we do not develop it? When any organ is destined for a purpose for which it is not used, it perishes—is killed. There you have in the human organism itself what a past age, out of the assumptions of the time, accepted for the evolution of mankind. Just consider your eyes—into those eyes must be poured what should stream from above as spiritual life into the people of the future. Should this not come about, the eyes are doomed to suffer. Through their very nature they must deteriorate; and it is the same in the case of the ears, the same with the sense of warmth. What kind of knowledge then must we look for? A knowledge that will heal our organism of its tendency to sickness. We have to find our way back to perceiving that all knowledge—in so far as it is connected with man should be of a healing nature. We must return to the concept that we have to seek knowledge for this healing virtue, that medicine is not just one science among others, but that in the process of human evolution all knowledge must be a healing factor. This is because human beings all the time need that what arises in them on the physical plane should be healed. The man who promises an earthly paradise is not speaking rightly; he alone tells the truth who makes it clear: When everything has been done to establish good earthly conditions, a man has still to seek his connection with the spiritual world. For even the best conditions on earth need perpetual healing—healing that penetrates right into the human organism, as this, too, is always prone to sickness. In so many words: There must be a spiritual life in men with power to form healing forces out of itself.

Among the many grounds, which, out of the anthroposophical world-conception, have contributed to giving life to the idea of the “threefold” are those you may gather from what I have been saying today. For this idea of the “threefold” is such that, look where you will in man's present evolution—provided you can observe in the right way—the need for this membering into three is manifest to those who have a faculty for seeking the truth. Those with a little logic who, hearing about this “threefold” idea cannot immediately grasp it, or perhaps find it at variance with some other idea, should wait till they learn more about it. Then they will see that there is not just one proof nor one source alone for proving the necessity for the “threefold”, but that these are numberless. For wherever you look you find instances bearing independent witness to what I might describe as the present necessity for spreading this idea of the “threefold” in our social organism. And one of the most important spheres of all lies in the knowledge and understanding of the being of man himself. But where do we find science—so proud of its abstraction—turning its attention to the concrete?—The Greeks were still distinctly conscious that when they gave rein to their feelings the divine revealed itself to them. And we must acquire the faculty for bringing down spiritual forces of the soul from the spiritual heights; they must reveal nature to us, show us what nature is. In other words we must grow to realise that we cannot learn to know nature by perceiving it outwardly, but only with sense-organs strengthened by what comes from above—with an eye made keen by Imagination, an ear sharpened through Inspiration, and a sense of warmth through Intuition—that is to say, through selfless experience of the things and processes surrounding us.

Out of the will to heal has science developed.
Into the will to heal must science return.

What we look upon as science today, showing such veneration for its authority, is only an intermediate state: which state, however, is leading in the social sphere to the most terrible conflict.

We shall continue on this theme tomorrow.

... In order to describe the super-sensible events which are of special importance for the time in which we are living, we must remind ourselves that all life in the universe rests upon an ascending evolution. If we follow the path of man's evolution we find him first as he was endowed in the beginning, in the old Saturn period; then we find him penetrated by a new element in the old Sun period, still further developed in the old Moon period, and in the Earth period endowed with the fourth element, the Ego. And we know moreover that in the Jupiter period his soul forces will take on such a form as will make him comparable with the Beings of the Hierarchy of the Angels.

Now just as man advances and ascends in his evolution, so do the other Beings of the different Hierarchies proceed from lower to higher stages. It is not only the human Hierarchy which is subject to this ascending evolution, but also the Hierarchies who are above mankind.

From among these Hierarchies let us take the one which stands two stages higher than man, the Hierarchy of the Archangels. As I said yesterday many intellectual people are prepared to accept it if one speaks of ‘spirit’ in general; but if one proceeds to classes, orders, individuals, as one does in speaking of plants, animals and other spheres in natural science, then the educated man of to-day feels hostile. But we must do so, if we wish to deal with the spiritual world in a real and concrete way.

If you will look at the lecture cycle I held in Christiania on the evolution of the races of mankind, you will see that the evolution of the races is connected with the Hierarchy of the Archangels. The successive epochs of mankind are subject to the Archai, the Spirits of Personality.

Now if we take the most important Beings in the ranks of the Archangels, we have names which we have met with in other connections and which we can use like other names,—Raphael, Gabriel, Michael and so on.

We can call these Beings by such names, for the name is in no way the essential thing. We give them names in the same way as we give other things names; that plays a certain role in what we find as facts of super-sensible evolution. Our physical evolution is however dependent upon this super-sensible evolution.

As a matter of fact we can distinguish scientifically between the separate Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archangels; not abstractly by mere name-labels, but in such a way that we can see how the principal impulses in civilisation which appear, for instance, in the sense world in a particular part of the earth in the first Christian centuries are governed by a different Being from the one who directed the principal impulse of civilisation,—say in the 12th and 13th centuries, or from the one who directs the cultural evolution of our own day.

Let us for the moment confine ourselves to what relates to our own epoch of civilisation. We have to distinguish quite sharply from other epochs the period which began about the 15th'16th century and which received its character from the rise of the new natural science. This epoch brought natural science to the height it attained in the 19th century, a greatness which cannot be sufficiently admired. When one surveys the work done by humanity as a whole in natural science in these centuries, one sees that it has been accomplished by certain peoples who were guided from the super-sensible world by a Being appointed from among the Hierarchy of the Archangels, and that this Being is quite distinct from the one who is directing from the super-sensible world the spiritual culture of the epoch which is just beginning. If one gives the names which in the West have become customary for these leaders amongst the Hierarchy of the Archangels, then from the Christian era onwards one can point to different Beings who have guided the progress of civilisation. Without wishing to lay stress on the names as such, I will enumerate the names of Beings in the Hierarchy of the Archangels, just as one mentions the names of men who have taken part in something on the physical plane. The order of Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archangels who have in turn controlled the progress of civilisation are Oriphiel, Anael, Zachariel, Raphael, Samael, Gabriel, and Michael.

Gabriel was the guiding Spirit in the cultural epoch which came to an end for the spiritual world with the last third of the 19th century. For with the last third of the 19th century—and this is a fact that will become more and more evident—an epoch begins into which quite different influences and impulses flow from the super-sensible into the sense world. Whereas during the previous period men's souls were bound to what the senses observe and what the mind can grasp, in the coming period the man who is not going to sleep through the march of evolution will above all have to observe how super-sensible wisdom and knowledge will flow increasingly from the super-sensible world into earthly sense-evolution.

Speaking in an external way one might describe it as follows. In the period of evolution that is now passed, the super-sensible Beings were engaged in guiding the forces from the super-sensible worlds, so that as far as possible they should flow into man's earthly physical body; the Hierarchies had to prevent these forces from flowing into man's soul. From now on, however, the super-sensible forces will be so directed and guided from the super-sensible world that as much as possible may be able to flow into the human soul, so that a knowledge of Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition, may lay hold of the human soul. The truly living impulses in the civilisation of the coming epoch will be as charged with Inspiration and Intuition as the preceding epoch has been lacking in all Inspiration and in all knowledge of the spiritual.

Fifty years ago it would have been impossible to speak to men of what through the necessary course of world evolution can be said to them to-day; because at that time it would have been impossible for them to receive these things directly out of the spiritual world. The door has only now been opened, and as the times that are past were the most favourable for the development of the intellect, so will the immediate future be the most favourable for the development of Inspiration and Intuition.

Two epochs of time meet sharply at this point; one to which all Inspiration was denied, and one in which, although mighty forces will undoubtedly use every available means to fight against it, it will yet be possible to receive Inspiration, to make it the determining element in the mood and character of the soul.

And if we look further into the question, we discover that the super-sensible forces which did not flow directly into the soul in the past epoch were by no means inactive. What an external physiology cannot prove is nevertheless true; in the Gabriel period the super-sensible world was at work in the world of the senses, influencing man's physical body. During that period delicate structures arose within the front part of the brain, and were gradually implanted into the reproductive system. Thus it came about that the majority of human beings were born with a brain possessing other and more delicate structures than was the case, for example, in the 12th and 13th centuries. That was the special task of the age in which man turned his mind to the physical plane of the senses and was shut off from Inspiration; the impulses of the super-sensible world poured themselves into the body and developed this fine structure in the brain.

And this structure will more and more be present in those who now feel themselves capable of progressing to active thinking and to an understanding of spiritual science. And then in our epoch, in the epoch at the beginning of which we stand, super-sensible forces will not be used to form structures in the brain but to work in the soul through Imagination and Inspiration, to flow directly into the human soul.

This is what the Michael Rulership means.

Two Beings of the Archangels are to be distinguished in this way: One who guided man immediately before our time and worked upon the structure of the brain, and one who now works upon man and has to let stream into the human soul receptiveness for spiritual wisdom. Thus we can divide from one another the Beings who belong to the Hierarchy of the Archangels.

In these two examples I have tried to present to you concrete attributes and characteristics of these Beings. We shall not content ourselves with names; for even as we know nothing of a man when we merely know he is called Miller, so we know very little about Gabriel if we only know his name. But we do know something of a man when we can say of him that he is a man of compassion, or that he has done this or that. And it is the same when we can say of a super-sensible Being that he causes forces to flow into man's physical body, forces which can instil certain structures into the power of propagation, and when we can say of another Being that he helps to stimulate the perception for intuitive truth. Michael does not work so much for the spiritual investigator, the initiate himself, but for those who wish to understand spiritual investigation, for those who are endeavouring to pass on to active thinking; it is for these that Michael will work, as these forces accumulate in mankind in the coming centuries.

This transition is an important one in another respect. Through what happened at that time, a race of men is being formed who, owing to the whole way in which they are organised will in future incarnations be in a position to look back on their earlier earthly lives.

The human race must however first give itself this possibility. One cannot remember something one has not thought about. If at night you take off your cuffs without thinking, and without thinking put away the links, then you cannot find them next morning, because you had not thought about them. If you had taken care to impress upon yourself a picture of the whole surroundings where you put your cuff links down, then next morning you would go straight to the place.

If this is true as regards memory in ordinary life, we must look at the matter in the same way on the wider horizon of different earth-lives. It is the innermost nature of the soul that we must remember, that which really passes over into the being of the soul; but to do so, we must first have comprehended the life of the soul. And that can only be done through occult training. If one has not troubled in the earlier incarnation to have thoughts about the nature of the soul one cannot of course recollect it. Men will be constituted to remember, but they will experience this constitution at first as illness, as a dreadful nervous condition. For they will be constituted to remember the past, and yet they will have nothing which they can remember. When a man has impressions which he cannot turn to account, organs in him which he cannot use, then he falls ill.

This is the state of things we are approaching, Mankind will be organised to remember, but only those who have something to remember will be able to remember,—that is, those who by means of occult training have recognised the human soul in its special character as a member of the spiritual world. In every life that follows after one in which a man has recognised the soul as a spirit-being there will be remembrance of former earth-lives.

We are standing at an important turning-point. To understand Spiritual Science means fundamentally nothing else than to have a true feeling for the turning-point to which we have come in our age.

Now all the Beings who belong to the Hierarchy of the Archangels are not of the same nature nor of the same rank. When we speak of the Hierarchy of the Archangels we can say that they ‘relieve’ one another in the way I have described to you, but the highest in rank, as it were the chief, is the one who takes over the leadership in our age—Michael. Michael is one of the order of Archangels, but he is from a certain aspect the most advanced. Now there is, as you know, evolution; and evolution embraces all Beings. Beings are in an ascending evolution, and we live in the era when Michael, the chief of those of the nature of the Archangels, passes over into the nature of the Archai. He will gradually pass over into a Guiding Being, he will become the Spirit of the Time, the Being who leads and guides the whole of humanity. It is of the utmost importance that we should understand this. It means that something which in all previous epochs has not been there for the whole of mankind, now can and must become a possession of all mankind. What formerly appeared among certain peoples here and there—spiritual deepening—can now be something for the whole of humanity.

And when in this way we point to what happens behind the world of the senses, we can also point to what takes place here in the sense-world as an imprint or copy of the event that has just been described,—that a promotion, so to say, of this Archangel, takes place behind the world of the senses. Hitherto man has been able to possess personality. In the future he will also possess personality, but in a different way. Man has always participated to some extent in the super-sensible worlds—at any rate he always could do so with his life of soul; but the personal note, the personal colouring which he then showed in his life in the sense world did not come down from above, it came up from below, it came from Lucifer. It was Lucifer who gave man personality. One could therefore say: Man cannot enter the super-sensible world with his personality, he cannot bring it into the spiritual world, he must blot out his personality—otherwise he will pollute the spiritual world.

In future it will be required of man to allow his personality to be inspired from above, so that it can receive what will then flow out of the spiritual world. A personality will receive its stamp from what it has been able to absorb of spiritual knowledge; personality will become something quite different. In a sense man was formerly a personality through what separated him from the spiritual, through what was impressed into him from the body. In future he must be a personality through what he is able to receive from the spiritual world and work upon in himself.

In the past, blood and temperament determined personalities, and into these personalities impersonal elements streamed from the super-sensible world. Less and less will man be a personality on account of his blood and temperament. In future he will be able to become a personality through the character that he acquires from his participation in the super-sensible world. The Michael impulse which brings into the human soul an understanding for the spiritual life, will achieve this. Men with a pronounced character and personality will in the future have this character and personality through what they bring to expression from their understanding of the super-sensible worlds. The Alexanders, the Caesars, the Napoleons belong to the past. Certainly the super-sensible element flowed into them too, but their highly personal colouring they received from what came to them from below. Men who are personalities from the way in which they carry the spiritual world into the sensible, men who carry personality into mankind from the soul, will take the place of the Alexanders, the Caesars, the Napoleons. The strength of human deeds will in future come from the strength of the spiritual influence working into these human deeds.

All this belongs to what is important in the transition from one epoch into another. The transition, however, from the Gabriel epoch into the Michael epoch in our time has all the characteristics of a transition of the utmost significance.

It is possible, even with ordinary sound human reason, to come to an understanding of what has been said to-day, if one is only unprejudiced enough to observe our times and see how two possibilities come right up against one another in the last third of the 19th century.

The first possibility is to form a world-conception based upon natural science. To-day that is out of date; it has become antiquated, it no longer lies in the character of the age. People still do so because they simply carry forward what comes from the past. It lies in the character of the age, however, to construct a world-conception from the inspirations coming from the spiritual world and an understanding of them. We must receive this into our souls as a feeling, as an experience; then we shall learn to know what the anthroposophical world-conception means for individual souls, we shall learn to perceive what evolution is for mankind. It is given to us to be partakers in things of great significance.

And now I will remind you of something that I mentioned in the lectures I held here last time, the lectures where I spoke of the change in the function of the Buddha.¹ And here too is the point where the next lecture will join on to to-day's.

To-day's lecture may close with a question—a question that can arise in every soul and that will lead us from the important considerations which have occupied us to-day to considerations of still greater importance. When a promotion of Michael has been accomplished, when he has become the guiding Spirit of Western civilisation, who will take his place? The place must be filled. Everyone must say to himself: “Then some Angel must also have been promoted, and must enter the ranks of the Archangels. Who is it?”

I will close with this question, a question, as I said, that leads to still more important considerations which must occupy us in the next lecture.

To-day I wished to place before your souls the important character of this transition: the fact, namely, that those souls who can rouse themselves to activity will now be able to find an understanding for inspired truth. For that is the will of those who stand behind mankind, the guiding World-Powers of man's evolution. And the expression of this in the sense world is, that whereas during past ages temperament and heredity gave personality its individual colouring, in the future spiritual understanding will be the determining element. Spiritual understanding will determine the tone and character of a man's personality.

It is important to understand this,—still more important to carry it out. From this point we will pass on in our next lecture to a consideration which will find a response in every one of our souls.

• 1. Occult Research into the Life between Death and Rebirth, 17th, 20th February, 1913.

My dear friends! The point of today's talk is to clarify some things that you must allow to live firmly in your soul, and on the other hand, to identify a kind of central authority, at least in principle, even if the personal cannot be resolved today. I would like to emphasize first of all that today such things as the [oath] I am talking about here are usually misunderstood. They are understood as if it were a vow that one makes to anyone. Such views have come about particularly through the Catholic Church and the Masonic orders, which have always misunderstood these things and have misunderstood them all the more as time has progressed and different conditions have arisen for the whole being of man than was the case in earlier times. Today it is only possible to understand such things [as the swearing-in ceremony], which I have to give here in a formula, as a kind of examination of oneself, as something that one writes into one's soul when one takes on such an important mission as you want to take on. It will be necessary for those who take on this mission to actually proclaim it before those who are walking with them, so that everyone who walks with them knows with whom they belong. And so it is important that this kind of vow, which one makes to oneself, contains the things that are necessary for the spiritual world today.

The first thing is that it must contain what one should make clear to oneself as one's sense of belonging to the spiritual world. And here it is important that for someone who wants to work as you do, this work must be spiritually linked to the figure of Christ and to the event of Golgotha, in such a way that the spiritual nature of and that one's entire activity is developed as an implementer of that which has been introduced into the order of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha. One must come to recognize the present and future meaning of earthly evolution as coming from the Mystery of Golgotha.

But now something else is important. It is important not to understand such a matter only in a personal sense or in a narrow human sense, but to understand it as something that one professes before the whole world, and thus also before the higher hierarchies, and to accept the real consequences, that is, to fully recognize in a spiritual way what the Catholic Church, albeit in an externalized way, does recognize. She has indeed externalized everything and only retained the external forms for everything, but at least the external forms are recognized by the Church, even if not by the individual priest. This is shown, for example, by the fact that anyone who leaves the priesthood of the Catholic Church has the skin scraped off his fingers with which he has touched the consecrated host.

Then, of course, it is necessary to keep the most important moral qualities alive in oneself through constant practice, because only under the influence of these moral qualities is it possible to achieve real work from the spiritual world.

This is what the formula that I have to present to you says. It expresses it in the form in which, I would say, the cult of the spiritual world can really be expressed in human words. I would like to make it clear that the way I feel about this movement is entirely consistent with my presentation of this formula. How you then activate it, that is, how you then make such a vow in common - but in such a way that the others are present - that will then depend on you. It must be clearly understood that I shall always maintain the attitude towards this movement which I have defined at the outset, that I can therefore be of service in an advisory capacity for the external organization, but that what is to be done must come from your own ranks. This is not because I want to reject a sense of responsibility, because such a sense is also connected with the advice I give; but because it is really a matter of, once this movement has been established, keeping it independent, so that it can most certainly have the most intimate relationship with the anthroposophical movement, but nevertheless must stand on its own and should not be something like a branch or twig of the anthroposophical movement. And the anthroposophical movement, too, must, because it must remain a movement of knowledge by its very nature, refrain from founding a religion and in turn maintain its independence from this religious movement. The relationships can be the most intimate, everything can be carried and exchanged with each other, but this distinction must be made in certain ways.

So, first of all, I will read this oath of office to you. You can then comment on it yourself if anything in it is not clear to you, but I will not be able to recommend any significant changes.

“I want to direct my I in active yearning for work out of the spiritual world.”

In Christ and in the event of Golgotha I want to recognize how a supreme spiritual lives in the facts of life on earth.

In the recognition of this interweaving I will find the meaning of my activity.

Thus I will fit myself into the human order.

My self shall only feel meaningful in such an integration.

I will acknowledge that to stray from this path means the decay of my ego to the evil powers of the world.

I will always fight the impulses that prepare the way for such aberrations.

of personal vanity and ambition
inner dishonesty of the soul
and impulses of anger, which alienate the soul from itself.
I will continually renew within myself the awareness that I walk before God's gaze in everything I do.
To recognize and cultivate this as the content of my consciousness, I promise
before the Father-God, who is in me
before the Son of God who creates in me
before the Spirit God, who enlightens me."

This contains everything that, if you keep bringing it to your attention, indicates the direction you must set for yourself if you understand yourself correctly in order to find your way into the movement you want. Naturally, the way in which you carry this out depends on you. Before we proceed, I would like to say that I have given the matter a great deal of thought and that I think that, given the circumstances, it would be best if the remaining board of directors were to make its own additions. At the beginning of such a direction, everything that happens should actually be done in full agreement with all the individuals. Nothing should be done that the individual does not agree with. But on the other hand, it cannot be a matter of voting, but only of ensuring that there is a natural agreement, that people simply know what they want in this direction. For voting is often nothing more than something highly forced, while what is, so to speak, copied from the soul of another can actually lead to the right result. Again, I must leave it to you to decide what you will do with this advice.

Now there is a little more to be said. The point is that a certain wall should also be created to prevent someone who has once been accepted into the circle of your soul shepherds from leaving this circle again without further ado. It is really the case that in such a community there can be no flourishing if people enter and leave again. Therefore, in the times before liberalism enslaved spiritual life, all such communities had the means to exercise jurisdiction over those who had become apostates. We can no longer apply the older forms, which were felt somewhat differently, and therefore, since this whole rationale is something new, a new form must be found for it. This form can hardly consist of anything other than the fact that, when the central executive committee is formed, this central executive committee is given the special pledge that in the event of one resigning, one morally recognizes under all circumstances what the executive committee or a wider circle has decreed regarding the resignation.

In this context, the question of how we ourselves shape the hierarchy should of course be decided right at the beginning of our work. Since there are not very many of you so far, it would of course be quite possible for the board of three to exercise full central power. But perhaps that is not what can be considered right under all circumstances. It would perhaps be good to start with a hierarchy right from the beginning. Later on it will have to be the case that there is a considerable difference between those who have been working for some time and those who have only just begun to work, who have only just entered your circle. And there will have to be some kind of advancement. It will even be necessary to give certain names to the individual degrees to which those concerned ascend. The choice of names is a very difficult matter in general. We have already discussed how the older Latin names, which are not suitable in Protestant areas, can be replaced by German ones. The difficulty here is that separate names will have to be created for each language area into which your movement expands. But that must be accepted. It is difficult, however, because the power to create languages for such things has diminished considerably throughout the civilized world since the 15th century, and has now ceased altogether, so that if one wants to find an adequate word for the matter today, it is not that easy.

For example, I would not be able to find a different word for the Mass than “Human Consecration Ritual”, whereby perhaps “Consecration Ritual” could then be used as an abbreviation. What has been suggested – “sacrifice celebration” – would not really capture the inner meaning of the Mass. You can see that from the fact that the word 'Meß-Opfer' (sacrifice of the Mass) is possible; but if you say 'sacrifice ceremony', it would be a celebration of the sacrifice; but that is not what it is. The point is that through the sacrifice of the Mass, the human soul is brought into connection with the higher world. So the Mass itself can be called a sacrifice, but then something must be added. It is not a mere sacrifice, but one that is further defined by the word “Mass.” But everything that the Mass is can be found, at least to a very high degree, in the words “Human Consecration Ritual.” These words also include the concept that is necessarily associated with the Mass: that it is a congregational matter and that it is done at a gathering. The essence lies in the coming together, in the uniting. Of course, one could object that in Catholicism there are “silent” masses in which the priest, who as a Catholic priest is obliged to say mass every day, simply says mass in some corner of his church and there is actually no congregation; and in a monastery where the monks are priests, each one says his mass at an altar and there is actually no congregation either. But that is not really true. From some of what you have encountered in the texts for worship, you will be able to see that for the real Christian there is no distinction made between the living and the dead. Whether the dead, who are embodied in the body, inhabit the Mass or, as one has to assume when a so-called silent Mass is read, the dead, that is no difference in principle for the real Christian. If one were to see a fundamental difference in this, then one would not take the spiritual world in its full reality. You can also see this from a formula that occurs within the mass ritual itself. So one can say that if it were claimed that there are 'silent' masses, this is actually not true; it contradicts the spirit of Christianity. There are no 'silent' masses, but parish masses, and the coming together is part of the mass. This also belongs to those masses that have now become the opposite of a sacred act, to the fairground masses; the fairground mass also presupposes that people come together.

Coming together is part of the Mass, and that is precisely expressed in the words “Human Consecration Ritual”. But it is a ritual of consecration; the word “consecration” has been retained as a German word for the old word “initiation”. “Consecration” is related to ‘immersion’, to immersing oneself in something; and it has become common to have the feeling that one is immersed in the spirit of the original revelation when speaking of consecration, just as it is designated by the term ‘initiation’, which is of course much more appropriate. Both consecration and initiation lead man back to his divine beginning, to his divine origin. This is what the word “Human Consecration Ritual” may make clear. But it has many syllables, and that is something that can naturally be a stumbling block. In everyday speech, it can be abbreviated to “Weihehandlung”; but “consecration” alone cannot be said, because there are various consecrations, not only consecration of man, but also consecration of priests and even the consecration of utensils. We will manage in the next few days with the other words.

However, I would very much appreciate it if you would express your views on what I have just said. Of course, later on, differences of opinion within your group should not lead to revolutions at every opportunity – although different opinions are perfectly acceptable. But at the beginning, it is possible that consultations may lead to modifications of what is to be created or what was proposed first. So perhaps it would be possible for you to express yourselves at this point, so that we can move forward and arrive at something more definite as soon as possible.

Emil Bock: Perhaps there is already a strong willingness to do this this very afternoon, because after the words that Dr. Steiner spoke to us yesterday, we have prepared ourselves to close our circle with such an inner connection to the matter.

Rudolf Steiner: It was no exception?

Emil Bock: No, no exception has become known. It would only be our task now to find the form for the moment in which we can express this as the content of our souls.

Rudolf Steiner: For the form, it would be necessary to bring a picture of Christ. Therefore, I would think it would be better to start tomorrow. We then bring a picture of Christ that can be taken to this action.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: Is there no possibility of doing it in front of the Christ figure in the studio?

Rudolf Steiner: That is not really possible because for that it would have to be finished first. It does not depend on which form of Christ it is, it just has to be a Christ form.

Emil Bock suggests a time: tomorrow, Sunday morning. Rudolf Steiner agrees, as Sunday is also the most suitable day.

Emil Bock suggests asking further questions about things that are still unclear.

One participant would like to hear more about the special vow, and then also about whether the reading of the mass, for example, should also take place daily or how that would be handled.

Rudolf Steiner: As soon as you have been constituted, these things will arise from the matter itself. Daily reading of the fair, at least in meditative form, is something that seems necessary to me. The other, the special vow, refers to the exit. The exit must be made more difficult in a certain way. This is only possible if the formula is applied to this withdrawal, which of course can still be agreed upon at the beginning, but which must later be recognized by anyone who wants to join. It must be included in the formula that the leadership has to decide how to define the step that someone takes when withdrawing, and that he recognizes this from the outset. So you don't just generally acknowledge what it means, but what the person leaving thinks about himself in the individual case, but what the leadership thinks about him. Each individual would recognize this from the outset in the event of leaving. Of course, in today's democratic times, this seems a little harsh, but you really won't get anywhere in spiritual life if you don't create such a wall.

The other thing I would ask you to consider is this: first create a central power of three, and around these three create four others who simply replace the length of time in office with the quality you attach to them; in this way you arrive at an original seven and call the three “upper leaders” and the four others “leaders”. For the others, a word would still have to be found for the old term 'priest', which did not seem right to you either; but I don't have one yet. “Leader” and ‘senior leader’ would initially be terms that could be used. We avoid terms such as ‘bishop’, ‘deacon’ and so on. So originally the top ladder would be the three senior leaders and the four leaders; we do not need a further hierarchy. The rest would be designated by the word that is used for the term ‘priest’. I would also have to advise this.

Emil Bock believes that there are no objections to this.

Wilhelm Kelber asks whether the appointment as a leader and senior leader is limited to a certain time.

Rudolf Steiner: This can only be for a limited time until a leader becomes a senior leader, so it can only be a position that is granted for life because it is connected to the whole being of the person.

Then something about the technical side of the matter. The point is that the original inaugurators of the whole movement, in formulating the plan, have already shown an act that has a significance, and on this basis it would be advisable to make, so to speak, original proposals for the questions that have now been raised. These initial proposals, in my opinion, based on how I have seen the matter develop, could be made by Dr. Rittelmeyer, Mr. Bock, Ms. Spörri and Mr. Klein. I think that this very inner circle should come together and make initial proposals to the others after very serious consideration, so that the fact, which is a fact, is taken into account: the original initiation. Then these proposals would have to be presented to the wider circle, which should do with them as it wishes. When one makes such proposals, it is the case that the smaller the circle, the greater the sense of responsibility with which they are made. Therefore it would be good to make them initially only as advice. In this way it can best be determined what is wanted. It would be good if all this could be worked out before we meet tomorrow at 10 o'clock.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: We have actually agreed that we want to carry out the whole constitution in consultation with you. We would very much appreciate advice on how to proceed in some form before we ask the group.

Rudolf Steiner: Very well, then we shall proceed in that way. We can undertake the action we have spoken of at ten o'clock, and what you have proposed in the closest circle we can then begin tomorrow after the action.

Emil Bock suggests that, in order to reach a conclusion more quickly, the results of the meeting should be communicated to Dr. Steiner that same day, which he agrees to.

The first specialized course for medical practitioners given by Rudolf Steiner took place at Easter, 1920. Several medical students also participated: Helene von Grunelius (1897–1936), Manfred von Kries (1899–1984), Henk and Madeleine [‘Maddy’] van Deventer (1888–1983). At an advanced age, Madeleine van Deventer wrote an article in which she recorded her memories: Die anthroposophisch-medizinische Bewegung in den verschiedenen Etappen ihrer Entwicklung [The Anthroposophical Medical Movement in its Various Stages of Development] (Arlesheim, 1982). The following material was taken from her article and also from Wer war Ita Wegman [Who was Ita Wegman] Volume I, by J. E. Zeylmans van Emmichoven, 1990.[1]

From the beginning, a number of medical students took part in the medical courses. [...] During the third course which took place in the autumn of 1922 in Stuttgart, there were about fifteen students. We often gathered in the cafés of Stuttgart. Intense conversations took place there. It had been clear to us for quite some time already, that although Rudolf Steiner's medical lectures satisfied our need for knowledge, they did not meet our humanity. We had repeatedly asked the physicians of the Stuttgart Clinic to request of Rudolf Steiner that he give other lectures to deal with the more human-moral aspect. The answer was: “We can't do that because we haven't yet fully understood the value of what he has already given us.” Where-upon we answered: “We can't wait for that. Who knows how long Rudolf Steiner will still be among us.” We knew, with that assurance which youth may have, that his time was measured, and that it would be unpardonable if he did not hear the questions which would enable him to deal with the more intimate aspect of medical work. When we realized that the path via the ‘older physicians’ led nowhere, we decided to appeal to Rudolf Steiner directly. So after discussing it amongst ourselves we decided to submit the following question at the end of the Stuttgart Course, during the time set aside for questions: “Is it not possible to show us students a way of becoming anthroposophical physicians even while we are still students?” The paper with the question on it was ignored by the discussion leader. It floated down under the table. Rudolf Steiner asked, “What is that note?” He was told, “It is a question from some students.” The only thing left to us was to turn to Rudolf Steiner directly. After the discussion we asked for a meeting with him and were asked to come the next day. Of the fifteen students, only four of us were present the next day (October 29, 1922) in front of Rudolf Steiner's apartment [...]

We brought forth our concern as well as we could. We said quite openly that we weren't able to do much with the lectures in this cycle; they seemed to us to be directed entirely toward the older physicians. We hoped to be able to understand more later, but for now we were unable to find our way there. We were searching more for what was human and moral. One of us mentioned medical school experiences. To get anything positive out of the negative aspects of university teaching, a high level of spiritual knowledge was already necessary. Another voiced the hope that there might be lectures concerning what was generally human with the subtheme of ‘Medicine’, just as there had recently been the Pedagogical Youth Course [The Younger Generation, GA 217] which had dealt with the generally human from the perspective of world history.

Rudolf Steiner listened intensely and then said: “If you want to form a humanitarian group of people, effective in the culture as the pedagogues want to be, that is a contradiction in terms. You see, for the pedagogues, the pedagogy itself could be completely absorbed in what is generally human. That is not possible in your case. You can gather either as a humanitarian group with general cultural tasks, or as medical practitioners and physicians. Both together cannot exist in this form. You may not forget the purely medical within the purely human. Also, the pedagogues are in quite a different situation: through their profession they have maintained a much stronger connection to the living human being, the child. Through their work they really cannot lose touch with the human being. But the academic medicine of today is entirely dead, has no connection at all to the human being and has no idea what happens when it concerns itself with a sick person.

In your case it is actually an entirely different matter. You feel in yourselves a vast abyss across which you have to find a bridge. You must find the bridge from the medical-scientific to that which is moral, loving. You see, if, for example, I speak of that which I call the warmth organization of the human being, then for the moment that is an abstraction for you. But you must find the bridge, so that you experience this warmth organization in such a way that out of the experience of this warmth differentiation in the individual organs, you find your way to what is morally-warm. We will have to arrive at the point where that which we call a ‘warm heart’ can be felt into the physical realm itself. You must find the way out of the scientific-physiological into the spiritual-moral and out of the spiritual-moral to the anatomical-physiological. Such a group of people, that have a ‘warm heart’ and who know right into the physical sphere how the ego in themselves works on the warmth organization, such a group will then be able to affect its surroundings out of much deeper warmth forces; it will be able, through these forces of love, which work into the physical realm, to affect the culture. On the other hand, if such people sink down, in spite of all, to the level of philistines, of narrow-mindedness, then it will become clear that sclerotic and other forces will become effective in a most radically destructive manner, much more destructive than for others!

Gather up fifty, sixty, seventy medical students who share your attitude, and bring them to me and I shall talk to you more of this. Naturally, they will have to be younger medical people, for you see, to the older ones, I really cannot speak of these things. But gather up fifty, sixty, seventy young medical students for me, they must be medical people, and young, of course not schematically according to age; for, indeed, there are old people, too, who are still young. Well, you understand what I mean, bring them to me and I will give a course for you to which one might give the theme: ‘The Humanizing of Medicine.’ ” (The quotations are unfortunately not exact. They were recorded later from memory.)

With that we were dismissed and the search for the young medical people began. [...] All inquiries flowed to Helene von Grunelius who carefully filtered and appraised them.

1923 saw several additional conversations with Rudolf Steiner in connection to our goals. I remember a meeting in the carpentry shop with Rudolf Steiner, Ita Wegman and the assistant physicians from the Clinic. Besides myself and my brother there must have been one or two other students there. The theme was Rudolf Steiner's indication that we ought to take a notebook and on the left hand side write what the professor says, or a good case history, while on the right hand side we were to transpose the medical symptoms into the language of the human sheaths. As an example, Rudolf Steiner gave the following: ‘The patient has edema of the lower half of the body’, would be transposed into: ‘Weak etheric in the lower half of the body’. It was advice which we did not follow enough, for we lacked confidence. [...]

Helene von Grunelius was, as van Deventer put it, ‘the soul’ of this group. That this was so can also be surmised from her invitation for medical students to the planned course which was to take place in Dornach in January, 1924:

Arlesheim, August, 1923

In the meantime you will have heard more about the incredibly significant lecture cycle held by Dr. Steiner from June 10 to 17, 1923, in Dornach [The Anthroposophical Movement, GA 258]. Through these lectures we anthroposophists should be moved to self-awareness. Why did we become members of the Anthroposophical Society, and are we conscious of the responsibility we have thereby taken on in relation to the spiritual world? If a society like the Anthroposophical Society is to be truly vital and capable of fulfilling its task in the world, then it must always follow a straight path toward its goals. That means that everything that is wanted and worked for in such a society must arise from the heart, the very center of Anthroposophy itself. Dr. Steiner emphasized this most particularly when he came to speak of the scientific tendencies which have sprung up within the anthroposophical movement in the last years. This is where our self-awareness must begin.

For a long time now, we younger physicians have felt that our medical movement is proceeding along a strongly intellectual track. We became particularly conscious of this during the medical course held in Stuttgart in October, 1922 [in Fundamentals of Anthroposophical Medicine, GA 314, Mercury Press]. With the exception of Dr. Steiner's lectures, these lectures, as regards the direction of their thoughts, might just as well have been given at any university. Inwardly, we rebelled against them because we perceived that the human being was not considered in his totality; warmth of heart and the pure will forces were ignored. We, however, really wanted to be able to stand within medicine as anthroposophists, meaning, as complete human beings. We perceived that all our medical work would get the proper impetus only if it arose directly out of the basic impulses of the anthroposophical movement.

We will find our way to true healing in the present time only if we really recall the core of what is anthroposophical. First of all, we must become conscious of our true humanity, and as physicians, especially of our will to heal. It is just Anthroposophy that gives us the possibility of acquiring those capacities which reveal the relation of every single thing in the outer world to the human being, so that we are then able to direct the forces of the outer world to the sick human being, so that they support his own forces of healing.

Another, no less important, task of the physician will be to accompany the human being as steady advisor, showing him how he can overcome the tendencies toward illness slumbering in him because of his onesided soul development, only by unfolding his entire human nature. For ruling the individual human being as well as all of contemporary culture are the destructive forces of the brain and of the intellect, striving toward decline. But if we want to be effective in the ascent of development we must develop in ourselves forces of the future, forces which will make us capable of true healing. We can only acquire perceptions of the human being which are necessary for such working by deepening our studies of the physical and chemical processes on the one hand, and on the other hand, by attempting to grasp, in a living way, the soul-spiritual in the other human being. Only then will we gain a real view of how these realms relate to each other in the human being. Then we will be able to see and to show how the soul-spiritual works into the physical structuring and differentiating, and how this physical in the human being can and must, in turn, be transformed into the soul-spiritual through the efficacy of moral impulses in the warm force of heart.

The task which we physicians must carry within the anthroposophical movement is so great, that only if we unite all our forces can we even attempt it. With the rebuilding of the Goetheanum, a new medical science must also be rebuilt, a humanizing of medicine.

If you would like to work with us in this way, please inform us in detail soon, so that we may begin our work together as soon as possible and meet during the fall or the Christmas holidays.[...]

On November 1, 1923, Helene von Grunelius wrote to her friend Madeleine van Deventer in Utrecht:

[...II was in Arlesheim from Friday evening until today (Thursday). I went there to inquire about the course, since we are now up to thirty-five people. After talking it over with Dr. Wegman, Dr. Steiner committed himself for eight days immediately after the Delegates Conference at Christmas (it will last from December 24 to January 1) in other words from January 2 to 9. I think this will be an opportune time for everyone. I gave him the list. He had no comment (about the names). Dr. Wegman thought he would consider it more closely in a few days, and comment on the individuals and ask questions. So he might cross people off the list if he has the impression that their attitude is not active enough and they're not really ready to follow through courageously on all he intends to bring (at least that's my impression). He expects total work from us. He said: initiative is necessary. There probably are individuals who have it, but it ought to come about that an entire group develops initiative. And that ought to be possible with a group of young people. Then he said how much the continuation and success of our work depends on its being spread in the outer world. We are now at a stage in the medical movement when it is mostly enthusiasm that can be effective, for we haven't much to show yet by way of success in healing.

[...] We can't say anything to the people yet about the course, because we have to wait to see whether Dr. Steiner will have anything to say about the list in the next few days. In any case, only people who have been invited by us or Dr. Steiner can take part in the course (we've already invited Steffen and Wachsmuth). If others ask us, we will say that we are not dealing with a 'medical course' but a particular study amongst a small group with Dr. Steiner. I gave my point of view about the Stuttgart physicians first and also mentioned how the medical conference in September had affected us, whereupon Dr. Steiner said: yes, they would actually be disturbing, if they were present. This judgment was very clear, as was the whole opinion he had of them, which wasn't exactly lofty. We agreed that we would not say anything about this statement, and if the Stuttgart physicians are insulted or complain, we, ourselves, will take the responsibility. I will try to prepare them as carefully as I can for the fact that we will not invite them to the course. [...]

Grunelius' unadorned language reflects the mood clearly. How things stood with those taking initiative for the first ‘Young Doctors' Course’ is evident. Their resistance to the older physicians was no doubt intensified by Dr. Steiner's remarks. On December 5, she wrote another letter to van Deventer with quotations from a letter of Ita Wegman's which show her attitude toward these students.

Dear Maddy, [...] Enclosed is the final (meaning, from our point of view, just about final) list. [...] Names underlined in red are those who have definitely committed themselves to the course. People responded very quickly and enthusiastically. [...] In the meantime, I did hear from Dr. Wegman. She says that, as regards the list, it is very difficult for her and also for Dr. Steiner, since both of them don't know all the people, to say whom they want and whom they don't want. Actually the organizers, meaning you and Maddy van Deventer, should choose the people, invite them and take responsibility for making sure that the people you have invited really understand what it's all about. [...] “What I gather from Dr. Steiner is that the emphasis of the course will be on the morally-human and the anthroposophical in medicine, in other words, mainly for those still studying, and for the young physicians, who, during their studies and the beginning of their practice did not find what they sought as satisfaction in their profession and their studies. So the main focus will be on this not-being-satisfied. Therefore, you must choose people who are really asking and seeking in this way. From what I can tell, not much by way of therapy will be given in this course.” [...]

By the way, we did not send a form letter, instead I wrote personally to everyone. In this case it surely was better and more effective. [...]

At the moment I am circulating the December, 1920 lectures [of December 17, 18 and 19 in GA 202, The Bridge between Universal Spirituality and Physical Man][2] and Hygiene [Health Care As a Social Issue, April 7, 1920 in GA 314][3] amongst the people, so that everyone will have read them by the time the course starts. [...]

Regarding The Bridge lectures [included in this volume] M. P. van Deventer has this to say:

In discussions between Helene von Grunelius and myself, we realized the significance of the lectures we had both heard in December 1920, which were later published and became known by the title The Bridge. The role of the warmth organization as mediator between soul and body appeared to us to be of fundamental significance. The Bridge lectures were available only in the Archives. However, upon being asked, Rudolf Steiner immediately gave us permission to duplicate and distribute them to all future participants for common preparation.

In late summer Rudolf Steiner asked me about the state of the preparations. In the course of the conversation he suddenly became very serious and requested that I tell him exactly what we really wanted. He demanded utter clarity of consciousness. I attempted to speak about the path which we already wanted to embark upon during our studies. I was too reticent, however, to speak about meditative practices. Afterwards I had the feeling as if I had failed an exam. I immediately wrote to Helene von Grunelius and asked her to go to Dornach as soon as possible and continue the discussion.

This continuation took place in late Fall 1923. Helene complained that it was impossible for her to follow the advice of keeping a notebook because she wouldn't know whether what she wrote on the right side was correct. Rudolf Steiner answered: “That doesn't matter. In the course of time you'll correct yourself; besides, you can send the notebooks to me. However, if you would like to gain greater certainty, I can give you a meditation.” Then he gave her the Warmth Meditation and told her that she could pass it on to all future participants. He himself would give it to Dr. Wegman. He called it a chain meditation (passed on from person to person by word of mouth), not a circle meditation. And he described it as the path of the physician towards beholding the Etheric Christ. [...]

In Dec. 1923 we could again report to Rudolf Steiner. By then we had unfortunately only found 30 participants. “Why shouldn't I speak to 30 people,” he said. As a date he gave us the week immediately following the Christmas Foundation meeting, beginning January 2. We wrote this to all participants and invited them at the same time to come already December 24 to participate in the Christmas Foundation meeting.

In this way, all were immediately united with the new stream which began with the new founding of the General Anthroposophical Society and the founding of the High School for Spiritual Science. The ‘Course for Young Doctors’ was thus the first event of the High School for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach.

Notes:

1. The English translation of that book, and thus much of the text in this introduction, was done by Dorit Winter and has been published in 1994 by Mercury Press.

2. These three lectures are included in this book starting on p. 221.

3. Available from Mercury Press

On the essence of practice
Transcription for Prof. Dr. Hans Wohlbold, Munich, from 1917.

The essence of practice lies in the appropriation of the imaginative activity that can elevate spiritual reality to knowledge. The essential thing is that this imaginative activity is experienced independently of the physical organization. It is a matter of experience to know: now I notice how I am able to think, etc., without the usual conditions of the imagination being tied to the physical body. This point in time occurs in the course of practice. In particular, I advise:

1.) In the evening, a backward imagining of the day's experiences. This is a first step with an imagining that does not bind itself to the usual pursuit of imagining. The imagining becomes freer.

2.) To concentrate in complete calm on a short train of thought. This should be completely manageable, so that one does not mix in unconscious or subconscious reminiscences of images, etc., but really remains in a mental activity with complete awareness. Then one lets the thought-content fall away in consciousness and tries to retain the energy, to remain consciously for a short time without thought-content. In this way one brings the ability to perceive to that calm energy which is necessary to grasp the spiritual, which otherwise, as it were, falls through the meshes of ordinary thinking and thus does not come to consciousness.

I advise doing exercises 1 and 2 in the evening.

In the morning it is good to do a kind of thought-concentration similar to the second one. Pictorial imagination can play a role here, as I have discussed in principle with the rose-cross exercise in the second part of “Occult Science”. In order to gain the necessary calmness of thought concentration, it is good to do the six exercises (as auxiliary exercises) described in the second part of my “Secret Science”.

The purpose of practicing lies partly in the application of stronger soul activity in contrast to the ordinary. Just as in the physical world, at critical points, the quantitative naturally changes into the qualitative, so the increase of the ordinary capacity for knowledge becomes that which can have the spiritual world as its object.

Exercises for Adolf Arenson
given in Stuttgart at the beginning of April 1904
Manuscript archive number 5299, 5300, 5301.

I. Every day, review the experiences of the personality during the day. You consider the most important experiences you had during the day and the way you behaved within them. All this is done with the aim of learning from life. How can I do a better job of something I did today? Such questions are asked. This does not make you dull to pleasure and pain. On the contrary. You become more sensitive. But you don't get stuck worrying and regretting what you've done; you turn it into a resolution to do better in the future. You become your own architect. Just as an architect does not stand and regretfully lament over a house he has built, that it is not better, but rather evaluates the experiences he has with the less good one for a next possible construction, so man does the same with himself. Our personality is lost in regret and worry; through learning it rises. Regret and worry are of no use; we should spend the time we waste on them on our upward development. The whole process should not take more than three to four minutes. You then fall asleep with a manas that has received the strength to develop upwards within itself. If you can add an important resolution for life or even a good thought for fellow human beings, it is particularly good. This gradually transforms you, because you have given the manas, which is free of all personal barriers during sleep, a worthy content that promotes development.

II. In the morning as the first mental work of the day:

a) Elevation to one's own higher self through complete surrender to the formula:

I am the living urge in my covers.
My higher self is pure like the purest crystal.

b) Concentrated devotion to a high thought. The meditation of Bhagavad-Gita, chap. III, Karma Yoga, is best. From the third verse onwards:

3. As I have already told you...

Always just one verse. You stay with one verse for two weeks. After two weeks, you choose the next one and so on. In this meditation, as well as in the previous elevation to the higher self, the field of vision of consciousness must be completely pure. Every other thought must be kept away completely. If one should arise, it must be banished with all one's strength.

c) Devotional mood toward that which is most sacred to one. (The Creative All, God, etc., according to the personality, according to what one has learned to honor and name as the highest.)

For the morning meditation, 8-10 minutes.

Patience and perseverance, absolute earnestness are absolutely necessary. One must get into the mood in which the spirit perceives this meditation as a need as natural as the body's physical needs. And then one waits to be given. It will be given to everyone in due time.

It can be started now on April 16 (not earlier), then again on May 16.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3105/06

Morning meditation - 5 minutes

1. Brighter than the sun
purer than snow
finer than ether
is the Self
the spirit in my heart
That Self is me

2. 5 minutes

Inhalation: seek the way - 1 time (deep, calm)

Breathing retention: Search for the path in contemplation – 3 times.

Exhalation (not in spurts): Search for the path by boldly stepping out of yourself – 2 times.

(3 times)

because:

14 days: Before the eye sees
14 days: Before the ear
14 days: Before
14 days: Before them

3. Devotional surrender to one's own divine ideal. 5 minutes

Ending:
1st month: Self-confidence
2nd month: self-control
3rd month: presence of mind
4th month: energy

In the evening

Review of the day: If there was an experience:
Have I learned enough from it?
If there was an action:
Can't I do it better?
Without regret. Only with the intention of learning from life.
From back to front. From evening to morning.

Without alcohol.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3107

In the morning

I.) Brighter than the sun
purer than the snows
more subtle than the ethers
is the Self
its spirit in my heart
this Self am I
I am this Self.

Full waking consciousness.

II.) Think of the left hand and the heart and at the same time imagine:

Seek the way

Now you stop at the heart and think:

Seek the way of inner contemplation.

Now think of the right hand and fold it over the left, imagining:

Seek the way by boldly stepping out of yourself.

III.) Devotional surrender to that which one regards as a divine ideal.

In the evening

Review of the day.
Without regret.
From evening to morning. Backwards.
You can fall asleep doing this!!

Exercises from a Notebook: Archive number 105, 1906

February 16.

1.) Radiant ---

2.) Inhalation, exhalation, holding the breath.

I am, which is poured through the whole body.

This three times in succession, whereby actually the “I am” should accompany
the whole process.

Inhalation, exhalation, retention of breath
It - whereby it is actually “I” - It is
This again three times

Inhalation, retention of breath, exhalation The inner being

3.) The currents within the body.

Then, after the meditation, a sinking into and letting oneself be affected by the following figures:

What does it mean to disappear into oneself and to arise again from one's disappearance?

How does a point become a circle, and how does a circle become a point?

What is inner, what is outer; what is upper, what is lower; what is matter, what is spirit; what is physical matter, what is ether?

What is astral?

How do the spirits of the sensation affect the wearer of the substance?

Imagine that the lines are clasps made of whalebone, which are in the above position; but in every moment they resist this length through their strength.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3187/88

In the evening

First look back over the life of the day, presenting individual episodes of this life in pictures. Going back from the evening to the morning. This need only take 5-7 minutes. Then, with the feeling, “From the spiritual world my self flows to me,” concentrate on the center of the eyebrows and direct the words to this point:

“I am.

Then, with the feeling, ‘The spiritual world lives soulfully in the silent word,’ concentrate on the larynx and direct the words to this point:

”It thinks”.

Then, with the feeling: “The spiritual world creates its knowledge,” concentrate on the heart, arms and hands and direct the words into this area:

“It feels.”

Then with the feeling: “In me the spiritual world creates its self-awareness,” concentrate on the aura, which is thought of as egg-shaped and surrounding the body; at the same time, direct the words into this area:

"It wills.

The meditation should last 10-15 minutes.

In the morning

The meditation of the Rose Cross, as described in “Occult Science”.

In addition, the 6 subsidiary exercises.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 6860-62 with note:
End of August [1906] Stuttgart.

Immerse yourself completely in the idea of

an impersonal higher self

It is not important that you visualize something prescribed by someone, but that you try to form the best idea of the “higher self” that you can, based on your level of development.

Now treat this idea as if you were placing it in the place inside the head where the pineal gland (Z) is located. Transfer your consciousness there for a while and fill it completely with the above idea of an “impersonal higher self”. So for a while you imagine that your own being is in Z, compressed, and that you are the above idea. Banish everything else from your consciousness.

Once you have done this for a while, slowly guide the above idea from Z in a line to the beginning of the spinal cord, approximately where the brain passes into the spinal cord. Then you continue it from there approximately down the area of the spinal cord to a point called K (kundalini). After imagining that you have imbued the above idea with kundalini power (spiritual) fire, you slowly guide it back up along the spinal cord to a point inside the head: approximately at the point (B) of the small brain (back of the head). Now you imagine (impersonal higher self) from this point in two lines to the two eyes and let it flow out through them, as it were, into infinite space. Then you draw it back in through the eyes and guide it to point B. Do this again by leading the image from B to the two ears, letting it flow through them into infinite space and then back

to B through the ears. Once you have imagined that you have led the “impersonal higher self” through space twice and filled it with its content, then lead the thus enriched idea again from B through the spinal cord to K, imbue it there in the imagination with the spiritual fire and now lead it very slowly (so slowly that the time during which one ascends from K to the point at the throat at laryngeal level takes about 20 minutes) to the throat (at laryngeal level). There one now thinks intensely:

I am not you.

I, the concept of the higher self according to all the paths it takes in the above sense.

You, the ordinary self that one does not identify with at this moment.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3192

Christian Gnostic Meditation

I. Early in the morning, immediately after awakening, when no other impressions have yet passed through the soul, one seeks to free the consciousness completely from all memories of everyday life, one seeks to distract one's attention from all external perceptions. Then, when one has attained this inner silence, one lets live alone in the soul:

The first five verses of the Gospel of John. II. Then, for the first fortnight, one should try to recall one's whole past life in order to get to know oneself completely. After the first fortnight, one should read the whole Gospel of John, so that one lives in one chapter every day for seven days.

So in the first 7 days: 1st chapter from sentence 6 to the end
So in the second 7 days: 2nd chapter
etc.

When you have reached the 13th chapter, you try to experience

foot washing to experience the feeling of how every higher being owes its existence to the lower ones, and must therefore humbly bow down to them.

Flagellation the feeling that one can stand upright facing the scourging of life, i.e. facing all suffering and pain.

Crowning with thorns: the feeling that you have to stand tall, even in the face of all scorn and mockery.

Crucifixion: the feeling that your own body is something alien that you carry and to which you are tied from the outside.

Mystical death: You experience the curtain that still covers the spiritual world, but then also how it tears and you look into the spiritual world.

You learn to see the causes of evil and the evil ones: descending into hell.

Entombment: You feel at one with all beings on earth, with the earth itself. You are immersed in it.

Resurrection: This can only be experienced because the words of ordinary language are insufficient to describe it.

III. Then one calls the figure of Christ Jesus to mind and delves into the following image:

I, in Your Spirit.

In the evening: review of the entire day.

I and III are the same every day; only II changes every 7 days, as described.

After completing cycle II, you start again from the beginning and so on forever. After a long time, you may experience the inner and outer symptoms mentioned in the description of Christian development.

Outwardly one feels as if one's feet are surrounded by water.

Outwardly one feels a burning sensation etc. over the whole skin.

Outwardly one feels pain in the head.

Outwardly the wounds redden during meditation.

Internally, one experiences the vision as if one were personally performing the washing of the feet.

Internally, one sees oneself being scourged.

Internally, one sees oneself wearing the crown of thorns.

Inwardly you see yourself crucified.

Exercise with the Rose Cross Visualization.
Handwritten manuscript archive number 3229

Evening:

1.) Retrospective. Pictorial. Retrospective.

2.) Search You, my soul, to plunge into yourself, sensing you;
At the bottom of you lies your spirit;
In your spirit the spirit of the world is at work.
I am in all this
thinking feeling
living.

(Peace of mind)

In the morning:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

In you, you world letter
I see
The sevenfold workings of the spirit
In seven rose stars
The dark paths of life
In the black wood of the cross
I am in all this.

(Peace of mind)

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3236/37/38

In the morning:

Concentrate on a line that goes through the body, so

The line does not go through the spinal cord, but a little in front of it through the body.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Then meditate on the following words:

Warming light penetrates into me from above
The gravity of the earth spreads warming light within me
and shapes me,

Then, for a longer period of time, hold the idea

I am

Then do not imagine anything, but wait in empty consciousness for what comes.

In the evening: try to concentrate on your own physical sensations in the following stages:

I am my head
I am my neck
I am my arms
I am my chest wrapping
I am my heart
I am the blood that circulates in me
I am my lungs

Then, concentrate on the breath in the following way:

Concentrate on inhalation and perceive the inhaled air as J

Concentrate on the inhaled air filling the body and perceive it as A

Focus on the exhalation and feel the air leaving the body as O

Do this for seven consecutive breathing cycles;

then focus contemplatively on the inside of the head (point a)

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Feel as if the sound J A O were resounding there; hold this sound for one to two minutes, then imagine nothing but wait in empty consciousness for what comes. Neck: luminous stream along the spine A

Luminous stream from the center of the eyebrows to the neck: J

Luminous stream along the spine: A

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Light flow inside from the spine back to the center of the eyebrows: O

(seven times every 2 minutes (14 minutes)

J A O penetrates into me through me out of me

J A O creates forces in me through me out of me as often as

J A O lives, webend in me through me out of me, possible.

Mood:

J A O as the name of Christ
This is connected with the secret of
how Christ works in man.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 5273

1.) Evening: 4-5 minute review of the day's life (in reverse chronological order).

2.) Evening: The following meditation for 4-5 minutes:

I feel myself in the space of light (thereby imagining the light-filled world around me)

Light weaves my etheric body (imagining my own body consisting of light)

I feel myself in the world of colors (imagining a sea of colors in which you yourself are)

The world of colors of the mind gives me the soul (imagining your own soul).

In light and color, My Self thinks, feels and wills.

3.) In the morning: Imagine a black cross with seven shining stars.

Meditate on this:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

4-5 minutes:

My Self
Thinks, feels and wills
Through light and color 4-5 minutes
I rest quietly
In my higher self
My I In
Christ.

In addition, the six exercises: concentration of thought, etc., as they appear in Occult Science.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3233

I. Day: Evening, 10 minutes:

Summarize a realization in a short sentence.

Transformation into a mathematical or physical symbol.

Breaths:

Inhalation: Consuming the symbol for several minutes through the head.

Holding the breath: Storing the symbol.

Exhalation: Imagine letting the symbol out along with the air you breathe out, without the symbol.

Morning: 15 minutes:

Repeat the same exercise.

Remain with an even inner soul, without external impressions and without memories of life on the physical plane.

Day 2:

Evening:

Summarize a realization into one sentence.

Transform it into a plant symbol.

Breaths:

Inhale: Consume the symbol through the heart.

Holding the breath: Holding the symbol

Exhaling: Imagining that you are holding the symbol within you and letting out air without a symbol.

Morning:

Repeat the exercise and remain as on the first day.

III. Day:

Evening:

Summarize a realization in a short sentence.

Transform it into a symbol from the animal kingdom.

Breaths:

Inhale the symbol through the larynx.

Hold your breath: Hold the symbol.

Exhalation: Imagine that [the] symbol remains inside and empty breath goes out.

Morning: Repeat as on other 'days.

No alcohol. No lentils, beans, peas.

Handwritten Exercise: archive number 5269

Evening:

1.) Retrospective review of the events of the day in reverse chronological order. 4-5 minutes.

2.) First, concentrate on the visualization: I think things and facts.

Hold this visualization for about a minute, excluding other thoughts.

Then concentrate on the visualization:

My thinking flows in time.

Hold this image again for a minute.

After this preparation, concentrate on the following in succession (3-4 minutes):

I follow the flowing thought
I will recognize my will in my thinking
I will find my I in my thinking will
I will live as I in my thinking will
I await the solution of the I from the I.

Then a calm inner frame of mind.

In the morning: visualization of a blue circular area with a red surrounding.

Then transform it into a red circle with a blue surrounding. Transform back into the previous state.

Do this 7 times in a row.

Observe inwardly how, as a result, thinking gradually becomes mobile, free within itself and ultimately elevated to a body-free state.

With the soul thus prepared, concentrate on some simple object and observe how this inner activity is now different from what it would be without this preparation.

The whole thing takes 4-5 minutes.

Do the six exercises as in the second part of “Occult Science”.

The time indications are, of course, based on how you feel.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3230.

In the morning:

I recognize the thought-image
of a being
in my head;
I think the feeling-rhythm
invigorating my being
in my heart;
I feel the willpower strengthening my limbs in my entire body.

At noon:

Let the power of the right eye flow into my left arm and the power of my left arm into my right leg.

Let the power
of the left eye flow
into my right arm
and the power of my right arm
into my left leg.

Before falling asleep:

I will
leave my body
My feelings follow me
My will enters the spiritual realm
power permeates him
He seizes all limbs when awakening

Supplement

End of an exercise with no beginning. Archive number 1704.

Now, with all your strength, as far as your memory reaches, go through your own life in concrete terms and feel responsible for descending into this incarnation; say to yourself that every part of one's destiny has been earned by myself – then realize the distance that exists between the life in such an incarnation, burdened with unbalanced karma, and the life of the purified person – with a completely balanced life account (karma).

Looking up to the idea of a purified Master.

That is what I shall become, that is what I want to become.

Notes on “Light on the Path”. From a notebook from 1906. Archive number 105. It is not known what the individual dates refer to.

II/1 (meditation of 1/11) is about the following:

When the higher self has taken complete possession of the person, when the personality shell has fallen away, then the whole choir of higher spirits can speak through him, just as the sensual world speaks through him before – in order to prepare for this moment, one must develop within oneself the attitude that renounces defending one's own, separate self. One ceases to be a warrior; one becomes an instrument of the Warrior.

The saying does not refer to the higher fact itself, but gives the instruction for developing the attitude through which the higher fact is attained.

On the meditation of 12/1.

Instead of “king”, it should be “kings”, because [one] is dealing with whole hosts of higher spirits; however, one can only speak of one fighter because at this level of being, the many resonate in complete harmony so that their expression appears as one.

From the meditation of 13/1.

Nothing – at least nothing essential – is left behind, but is redeemed in the course of time, i.e. absorbed into the higher. The higher (good) itself absorbs evil in the course of time and transforms it into good through its own power.

First of all, we are dealing with the divine spirit. It could not develop up to certain levels if it did not repel evil from itself and thus first reached a certain height without this evil.

264-17

With the evil in him, he could not have reached a height; but now at this height he is able to retrieve the evil and take it with him on his further journey.

The saint redeems the criminal. God redeems Satan.

Regarding 16.1

Wherever intuitive knowledge is mentioned here, it should be read as 'imaginative' knowledge. Intuitive knowledge is developed through [the] second sentence: unlearning sensitivity.

1. Sensory knowledge: everyday knowledge.

2. imaginative knowledge: spiritual seeing (pictures)

3. intuitive knowledge: spiritual hearing (the inner word).

4. knowledge of God - complete oneness with the absolute.

The realization regarding [name] is quite correct, and the more you attain in this direction, the faster you progress. However, we must give each such thought the right spiritual weight by acting as if we could do everything despite the opposite assumption:

1. I am clear in my feelings that [the person concerned]'s fate is the right one.

2. I am clear in my will that I should nevertheless act as if I could extend [the person concerned'] life into the immeasurable.

Feelings and will must always go in opposite directions. Otherwise, the realization is not spiritual, but abstract.

Except during meditation: reflection.

During meditation: live with the contemplative thought.

Regarding January 19:

When considering such ideas, it is always important to keep the counter-thought in mind: Inner peace should never be bought by turning away from the outside world, but always only after harmonizing with the outside world. This is just the same as with two other pole thoughts, for example; the esotericist never thinks or speaks one or the other without at least subtly striking the corresponding opposite pole in the background. Say, for instance,

God is in me

, then I should at least think subtly:

I am in God

, and thereby the one-sided thought-form is always paralyzed by the corresponding other, as for instance the physical body is paralyzed by the etheric body.

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The forces (r ) act within the body and would immediately dissolve it if the pole forces did not hold it together from the outside. Dynamically, the etheric body is the positive pole and the physical body is the negative pole.

20.

Excessive emphasis on the inner self can easily lead to rigidity in the ahamkara. One can rise very high and still remain in it. That is why all esotericism has an important sentence:

Everything contributes to your immortality,

what is not done for this immortality

is done.

For example: if I devote myself to a teaching, I do raise myself, but not completely. If I build this teaching into a Gothic cathedral or into the soul of another person, or even just into my dealings with people, then what I have planted outside myself becomes part of my eternal body.

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The building plan as such

The master builder dies.

The effects of the cathedral become the building blocks of the eternal soul of the master builder. This is also the basis of the sentence:

Pray and work.

Contemplating the absolute, the relative has lost all power over you. Polarity thought:

You cannot recognize an absolute without shining the light of the absolute into the relative.

A criminal is only recognized in his relativity if one is clear about how the divinity in the criminal reveals itself.

Such a dream can be a very good pointer: Tired swallow - Looking into development (symbolized by the swallow emerging from the reptile) is initially tiring and allows the wings to unfold less than independent progress in dullness. Seen more deeply, however, the former leads safely to the goal. It is precisely the deepest wisdom that appears worthless to people who live only in the moment. Such thoughts play around you and sometimes break through in dreams.

The dream of the 24th is significant. All such dreams are symbols of higher truths. The first part: floating in the vegetable corresponds approximately to the image of man in the 5th round. (There is no longer any mineral present). All visions that have a basis are prophetic to a certain extent, for no highly developed human being can see anything that will not later become part of the experience of all human beings.

Consciousness will only achieve continuity when experiences are present not only in dreams but also in dreamless sleep.

Dream experiences are images analogous to the seen image. Dreamless sleep experiences are always hearing experiences and, if they are to be of any value, articulated hearing experiences, e.g. words.

Sometimes you don't even need to understand the words. Because they can appear in the reminiscence as in a language that is not understood by us.

ad. 25.

All forms are at the same time expressions of the eternal. If we seek the eternal in form, we find it; if we seek it by fleeing from form, we separate ourselves even further.

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ad. 26.

The subtlety of vibrations causes a heightened sensitivity to the outside world. A drunkard is immune to the vibrations of another drunkard. Therefore, at first the drinker becomes unpleasant to the non-drinker. It is the same with everything. Through the subtlety of vibrations, evolution precisely unlocks all impurity, baseness, etc. of the surrounding world, and in this way only an intensification of crucifixion in the material world can be achieved. The capacity for suffering in the world around increases with evolution. Only when one has overcome oneself, i.e., has stepped beyond the subtlety of the vibrations, then comes peace. But then one has not finer, but on the contrary simpler vibrations in oneself. Not refinement, but simplification of the vibrations is what matters.

I. Two undeveloped people.

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The vibrations correspond to each other, and consequently they coincide; one does not perceive the other.

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II. An undeveloped and a developed person.

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Each individual rhombus of the second one perceives those of the first one, but cannot paralyze them.

III. An undeveloped and a more highly developed human being.

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The simple vibrations of the second one do notice the deviations in the first one, but they are strong enough to paralyze them.

ad. 27.

This in particular should be considered in the light of the previous law of simplification. Man becomes greater when he becomes simpler.

ad. 29.

It is important to understand that sensitivity is not the same as sensitivity. It therefore means:

Before the ear is able to hear, it must replace sensitivity with a simplified perception. In sensitivity, the person reacts to the external world. In the perception, the eternal that is absorbed into the person permeates the external world with the simple rhythms of infinity.

ad. 30. All in the sense of I II III.

ad. 3/2.

The masters are not a bulwark against evil, but the guides to the absorption of evil. We should not exclude evil, but absorb it and use it in the sphere of good. The lion's rage is only evil as long as it is used selfishly by the lion; if a ruler could appropriate the lion's rage and use it to build welfare institutions, it would be good. Therefore, evil is to be recognized as non-real. There is no evil. Evil is only a displaced good. Only with this realization is spiritual alchemy possible.

ad. 6.

That is precisely the progress made by Christianity, that the personality is taken along into eternity.

Therefore the Christian principle is correct: You will rise with your transfigured body, i.e. through Christian thinking the personality becomes eternal.

Pentagram and hexagram exercise

as a supplement to the letter to Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden dated November 15, 1908

Memorandum of the esoteric lessons in Berlin, November 29, 1907 and January 7, 1908

Berlin, November 29, 1907. Memory notes by Günther Wagner.

A current flows through the etheric body in the form of a pentagram: from the point of the I in the forehead to the two feet, from there to the antipolaric hands and from one hand to the other through the heart. When the body and limbs are bent, the currents also bend. The various planets are connected with the various parts of the currents as indicated. The planets are to be understood more as principles that actually always work on all globes, only on the individual in an outstanding way.

The principle of Saturn is the physical basis
of the sun: eternal growth, eternal progress
of the moon: holding back, retarding, solidification
of Mars: courage to introduce the aggressive into the life of the senses, the red blood
of Mercury: leading out of the life of the senses
of Jupiter: liberation of the ego
of Venus: rising in love.

The colors correspond to these planets and the principles:

Saturn - Green
Sun - Orange
Moon - Violet
Mars - Red
Mercury - Yellow
Jupiter - Blue
Venus - Indigo ¹

The hexagram corresponds to currents in the astral body, but this is not to be understood as a line figure; the double triangle is only an average. (While the currents in the etheric body form the lines of a pentagram, the hexagram represents the currents in the astral body.

Pentagram and Hexagram Exercise

264-25

On the Pentagram and Hexagram Exercise of the Esoteric Hour, Berlin, November 29, 1907.

264-26

the astral body in a completely different way, not linearly, but two-dimensionally physically.) If the figure is turned on its vertical axis, the real figure emerges, although the horizontal cross-section does not quite correspond to a circle (oval). The horizontal lines thus actually form a surface; the upper one at arm level, the other at knee level.

The downward-pointing triangle has to do with the bodies: the astral body (Moon), etheric body (Sun), physical body (Saturn principle). The other triangle with the higher parts: sentient soul (Mars), intellectual soul (Mercury) and consciousness soul, which is only at the beginning of its development (Jupiter). Accordingly, the colors.

One should meditate on these figures and the meaning of their details in order to become aware of one's own inner life and its relationship to the cosmos. One will then awaken strange feelings within oneself.

Memo notes from the same session by Camilla Wandrey

The principle of Saturn (Oriphiel. Green. Lead): the physical basis, but spiritual.

The principle of the Sun (Michael. Orange. Gold): eternal growth, eternal progress. Individual life.

The principle of the moon (Gabriel. Violet. Silver): Holding. Retarding. Freezing. Appearance in Maya.

The principle of Mars (Samael. Mars. Red. Iron): Courage. The aggressive. Introduction to the sensual life through the red blood. Consciousness.

The principle of Mercury (Raphael. Yellow. Mercury): leading out of the life of the senses. Divine intelligence. Holy Spirit.

The principle of Jupiter (Zachariel. Blue. Tin): Liberation of the ego. Power. Father. The principle of Venus (Anael. Indigo. Copper): The rising in pure love. Love. Son. Transition from God to man. Mediator.

The pentagram

The hexagram

The hexagram corresponds to currents in the astral body. But it is only an average. If the figure were rotated around its vertical axis, the real figure would emerge, the horizontal average of which corresponds approximately to a circle. The upper surface can be experienced at arm level, the lower at knee level.

The downward-pointing triangle is connected to the physical body, Saturn. Moon: astral body. Sun: etheric body. The upward-pointing triangle with the higher parts: Mars (the soul of feeling). Mercury (the soul of mind). Jupiter (the soul of consciousness).

Through intense meditation on these figures, man gains knowledge of himself and his connection with the macrocosm. The pentagram represents the currents of the etheric body and their connection with the planets.

The physical body is connected with all the forces in the universe. It is the center of the irradiation of all the forces of the zodiac.

The etheric body is initially connected to the center of the earth.

The astral body is connected to the center of the moon.

The I is not only a point that has gradually united through the growth of the forehead and the retraction of the etheric body at the upper root of the nose, but there is a second point in front of it. The connecting line to this point changes, the direction of this line points to the center of the sun. The more a person develops, the closer the two points come together. The developing human being must place himself in this second point, that is, outward, and he must learn to look at his body as at anything physical besides him (Tat tvam asi [= That art Thou! Famous formula of the Veda]); this frees the human being from egoism. A vivid reliving of the mystery of Golgotha and the fact that the superfluous, egoistic blood of humanity has flowed there is a help in this.

Meditation should be like sacrificial smoke rising to the gods.

Berlin, January 7, 1908 (continued from November 29, 1907) Memory notes by unknown hand

If we want to profitably observe such an occult figure (the hexagram) as in the previous lesson, it is not enough to stare at it constantly. Rather, we must picture it over and over again in our minds in quiet hours and meditate on the meaning of the individual colors. Only in this way will we gain the advantage and benefit that such occult signs can have when viewed in the right way. For the whole wisdom of the world is given to us in a few such occult figures. And by delving into them, the spiritual connections of the higher worlds will gradually become clear to us.

Let us take two colors from the hexagram that are opposite each other: red and green. These two colors are deliberately placed opposite each other. What might the red color mean, what the green? We find the green color in the plant world outside, covering the earth with its blanket. And what is the relationship between man and plants? We know that man on Saturn led an existence that in some respects corresponds to our present-day minerals. Not that man was ever a mineral! Our present-day mineral kingdom is in fact the youngest of the natural kingdoms. We also know that man on the Sun led a plant-like existence. Today a greenish sap flows in plants. A similar sap flowed through the human being of that time. If, by some magic, astral components were to be pressed into the plant today, it would turn red! The fact that man on the moon acquired the astral body turned the inner sap red – the red blood came from it.

Consider that the plant is chaste, it has no desires, passions: anger, fear, dread. By becoming in some respects worse than the plant, man received something that elevated him above the plant: the waking day consciousness. The plant world of today is asleep. A plant is the reverse of a human being. A plant's roots point towards the center of the earth, where its I is located. The same force that works downwards in the plant works upwards in the human being. The fact that the human being received blood expresses the reception of the I. The expression of the I is the red blood.

If you look at the inner surface of a green leaf with spiritual eyes, it will appear red to you. This red power is, so to speak, spiritual. If you see a red surface against a white background, look at it sharply and then look at the white surface, a green spot will appear. And the same is true the other way round. These colors are called complementary colors. Thus, the inner spiritual connection is also expressed in such a physical phenomenon.

Or let us take two other colors: blue and orange, which are opposite each other. You should know that orange has two aspects: orange and gold.

Where do we find the color blue in nature? When we look up into the boundless distance of the vaulted sky! And where do we find the color gold? In the paintings of the old masters, we see golden backgrounds. These old masters still painted according to a tradition that possessed some knowledge of the phenomena and beings of higher worlds. When we look out into the celestial space with spiritual eyes, it appears in golden depths. That is why we see angelic heads on a golden background in the old paintings, because when you look out (mentally) into the celestial space, it appears to you in golden colors.

Thus we must search for and gather together what is scattered throughout the cosmos, for the building of our soul. Just think how all the foodstuffs needed for the building of our body are scattered over the earth. Imagine that vividly! It is exactly the same in the spiritual realm. From the chaos the soul must also gather together what is suitable for its building up.

When a soul begins to meditate in this way, an organ in the physical body begins to develop: the mucous gland. In the normal average person, the mucous gland is an organ, hardly the size of a cherry stone, located behind the pineal gland. But it contains disproportionately great powers. It regulates the correct build-up of the body in relation to its size. The so-called giants who are shown around have a disease of the mucous gland. In some way, the forces set in motion by them must be allowed to run their course. When the Meditand begins to work on himself, forces are awakened in the mucous gland. From the mucous gland, the organic structure from the chaos of sensations to the astral body takes place. When the mucous gland flows around the pineal gland with golden threads, then the time has come when the transformation of the astral body into the spirit self, into manas, has progressed so far that the etheric body can now be transformed into the buddhi.

Those who meditate on such occult signs in this way will work purposefully on building up their higher bodies. Sometimes, in the briefest of moments, the soul can grow tremendously. One could say that it is not time that is needed for development, but rather profound inner calm.

From the same hour, memory notes by Günther Wagner:

Meditating on the hexagram. Pointed end up red, pointed end down green. Contrasts: complementary colors. Green is the color of plants. Red is the color of human blood.

Human beings have only been able to achieve progress by also accepting desires and passions. That part of the earth's astral body that belongs to the plant world is red. Thus, physically green, spiritually red: the plant. In plants, the red astral forces point downwards towards the center of the earth, while in humans, the same forces have reversed and point upwards.

Green and red: opposites. Likewise blue and orange, or rather in one of the two aspects: golden [addition in a different hand: violet and golden]. These too are complementary colors. In the physical world the sky is blue, in the devachan world it is golden, as can still be seen in old, early medieval paintings. Such are the other opposites.

By contemplating such symbols given to us by the masters, we transform and shape our astral body, especially the aura, around (to the manas). All sorts of scattered outer experiences may point out to us these color relations, and so our spiritual body is formed, shaped, and developed by the assimilation of all sorts of scattered experiences, as our physical body is by the assimilation of all sorts of physical food gathered from the face of the whole earth.

And as our astral body thus orders and organizes itself, it acts specifically on the mucous gland or pituitary body (hypophysis), a small organ, hardly the size of a cherry stone, which is initially involved in the growth of the body. Through such an organization of the astral body, the mucous gland begins to become more and more luminous; it emits rays and gradually envelops the pineal gland lying before it, stimulating it; as a result, the effects on the astral body expand and begin to impress and reorganize it.

• 1. In other contexts, different correspondences are sometimes given, e.g. for eurythmy or on the color sketch “Man in Connection with the Planets”. This should not be understood as a contradiction, but as an expression of different aspects. See, for example, the lecture in Vienna, June 1, 1918.