The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A study I began before our course started will become fully comprehensible only if we go back even further in considering the development of humanity in recent history. Basically, we have only given a few indications concerning the developments in the nineteenth century. It will be our purpose today to follow the spiritual development of mankind further back in time, giving special attention to an extraordinarily important and incisive event in the evolution of Western civilization. It is the turning-point that came about in the fourth century. There emerged at that time a figure still vivid in the memory of Western civilization, namely, Aurelius Augustinus.¹ We find in him a personality who had to fight with the great intensity, on the one hand, against what had come down from ancient times, something attempting during those first Christian centuries to establish Christianity on the basis of a certain ancient wisdom. On the other hand, he had to struggle against another element, the one that eventually was victorious in Western civilization. It rejected the more ancient form and limited itself to comprehending Christianity in a more external, material way, not to penetrate Christianity with ideas of ancient wisdom, but simply to narrate its events factually according to the course it had taken since its establishment, comprehending it intellectually as well as that was possible at that time.

These conflicts between the two directions—I would like to say, between the direction of a wisdom-filled Christianity and a Christianity seemingly tending toward a more or less materialistic view—these conflicts had to be undergone particularly by the souls of the fourth and the early fifth century in the most intense way. And in Augustine, humanity remembers a personality who took part in such conflicts.

In our time, however, we have to understand clearly that the historic documents call forth almost completely false ideas of what existed prior to the fourth century A.D. As clear as the picture may be since the fifth century, as unclear are all the ordinary ideas concerning the preceding centuries. Yet, if we focus on what people in general could know about this period prior to the fourth century A.D., we are referred to two areas. One area is that of knowledge, cultivated in the schools; the other is the area of ritual, of veneration, of the religious element. Something belonging to very ancient times of human civilization still extends into these two areas. Though cloaked in a certain Christian coloring, this ancient element was still more or less present during the first Christian centuries in both the stream of wisdom and that of ritual.

If we look into the sphere of wisdom, we find preserved there a teaching from earlier times. In a certain sense, however, it had already begun to be replaced by what we today call the heliocentric world system—I have spoken of this in earlier lectures here. Nevertheless, it still remained from former astronomical teachings, and might be designated as a form of astronomy, but now not from the standpoint of physical cosmological observation. In very ancient times, people arrived at this astronomy—let us call it etheric in contrast to our physical astronomy—in the following way: People of old were still fully aware of the fact that human beings by nature belong not only to the earth but also to the cosmic surroundings of the earth, the planetary system. Ancient wisdom had quite concrete views concerning this etheric astronomy. It taught that if we turn our attention to what makes up the organization of the upper part of the human being—and here I make use of expressions that are familiar to us today—insofar as we view the etheric body of man, the human being stands in interaction with Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars. People thus considered certain reciprocal effects between the upper part of the human etheric body and Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars. Furthermore, people found that the part of the human being that is of a more astral nature has a sort of interrelationship with Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. The forces that then lead man into his earthly existence and that bring it about that a physical body is fitted into this etheric body, these are the forces of the earth. Those forces, on the other hand, that cause the human being to have a certain perspective leading beyond his earthly life, are the forces of the sun.

Thus it was said in those ancient times that the human being comes out of unknown spiritual worlds he passes through in prenatal life but that it is not as if he merely entered into terrestrial life. Rather, he enters from extraplanetary worlds into planetary life. The planetary life receives him as I have described it, relating him to the sun, moon, earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The orbit of Saturn was considered to be the approximate sphere the human being enters with his etheric body out of extraplanetary into planetary life. Everything that is etheric in the human being was definitely related to this planetary life. Only insofar as the etheric body then expresses itself in the physical body, only to that extent was the physical body related to the Earth. Insofar as the human being in turn raises himself with his ego beyond the etheric and astral body, the ancients related this to the sun.

Thus, one had a form of etheric astronomy. It was certainly still possible for this etheric astronomy not merely to look upon the physical destinies of the human being in the way physical astronomy does. Instead, since people viewed the etheric body, which in turn stands in a more intimate relationship to the spiritual aspect of the human being, in an interplay with the same forces of the planetary system, the following possibility existed. Since the forces of destiny can express themselves out of the planetary system by way of the etheric body, it was possible to speak of the human constitution and to include in the latter the forces of destiny.

In this teaching of antiquity, this etheric astronomy, which was continued even after people already had developed the heliocentric system as a kind of esoteric-physical science, a last wisdom teaching had emerged from ancient instinctive wisdom investigations and had been retained as a tradition. People spoke of the influences of heaven in no other way but by saying, Indeed, these influences of heaven exist; they bear not only the affairs of nature but also the forces of human destiny. Thus, there certainly existed a connection between what we might call a teaching of nature, namely cosmology, and what passed over later into all that people now consider as astrology, something that in ancient times, had a much more exact character and was based on direct observation.

It was thought that when the human being has entered the planetary sphere on his way to a new birth and has been received by it insofar as his etheric body is concerned, he subsequently enters the earth. He is received by the earth. Yet, even here, people did not merely think of the solid earth. Rather, they thought of the earth with its elements. Apart from the fact that the human being is received by the planetary sphere—whereby he would be a super-earthly being, whereby he would be what he is only as a soul—it was said that like a child he is received by the elements of the earth, by fire or warmth, by air, water, and the solid earth. All of these elements were considered the actual earth. Consequently, it was thought, the human being's etheric body is so tinged by these external elements, so saturated, that now the temperaments originate in it. Thus, the temperaments were pictured as closely tied to the etheric body, hence to the life organization of the human being. Therefore, in what is actually physical in man—at least, in what manifests through the physical body—this ancient teaching also saw something spiritual.

The most human aspect of this teaching, I would say, was something that can still be clearly discerned in the medical science period. The remedies and the teaching of medicine were certainly a product of this view of the relationship of the etheric body to the planetary system as well as of the way the etheric human being penetrates, as it were, into the higher spheres, into air, water, warmth, and earth, so that the physical impressions of the etheric soul temperaments found their way into his organization: black gall, white gall, and the other fluids, phlegm, blood, and so on. According to this commonly held view the nature of the human constitution can be known from the body fluids. It was not customary in medicine in those days to study the individual organs, of which drawings could be made. The intermingling of the permeation with fluids was studied, and a particular organ was viewed as a result of a special penetration of fluids. People then thought that in a healthy person the fluids intermingled in a specific manner; an abnormal intermingling of fluids was seen in a sick person. Thus we may say that the medical insight resulting from this teaching was definitely founded on the observation of the fluid human organism. What we call knowledge of the human organism today is based on the solid, earthly organism of man. In regard to the view of the human being, the course taken has led from an earlier insight into the fluid man to a more modern insight into the solid human being with sharply contoured organs.

The direction taken by medicine runs parallel to the transition from the ancient etheric astronomy to modern physical astronomy. The medical teaching of Hippocrates² still corresponds essentially to etheric astronomy, and, actually, the accomplishments of this medical conception concerned with the intermingling of fluids in man remained well into the fourth century A.D. in an exact manner, not only in tradition as it was later. Just as this ancient astronomy was subsequently obscured after the fourth century and physical astronomy took the place of the old etheric astronomy in the fifteenth century, so, too, pathology and the whole view of medicine was then based on the teachings of the solid element, of what is bounded and expressed by sharp contours in the human organism. This is in essence one side of humanity's evolution in the inorganic age.

Now we can also turn our attention to what has remained of those ancient times in cultic practices and religious ceremonies. The religious ceremonies were mainly made available to the masses; what I have just been describing was predominantly considered to be a treasure of wisdom belonging to centers of learning. Those cultic practices that found their way from Asia into Europe and that, insofar as they are religious endeavors, correspond to the view I have just explained, are known as Mithras worship.³ It is a worship we find even as late as the first Christian centuries extending from East to West; we can follow its path through the countries of the Danube as far as the regions of the Rhine and on into France. This Mithras worship, familiar to you as far as its outer forms are concerned, may be briefly characterized by saying that along with the earthly and cosmic context the conqueror of the Mithras-Bull was depicted imaginatively and pictorially in the human being, riding on the bull and vanquishing the bull-forces.

Nowadays, we are easily inclined to think that such images—all cultic pictures, religious symbolizations which, if we may say so, have emerged organically out of the ancient wisdom teachings—are simply the abstract, symbolic product of those teachings. But it would be absolutely false if we were to believe that the ancient sages sat down and said, Now we must figure out a symbol. For ourselves we have the teaching of wisdom; for the ignorant masses we have to think up symbols that can then be employed in their ceremonial rites, and so on. Such assumptions would be totally wrong. An assumption approximately like that is entertained by modern Freemasons; they have similar thoughts about the nature of their own symbolism. But this was certainly not the view of the ancient teachers of wisdom.

I should now like to describe the view of these sages of old by referring in particular to the connections of the Mithra worship to the world view I have just outlined above. A fundamentally important question could still be raised by those who had retained a vivid view of how the human being is received into the planetary world with his etheric body, of how man is subsequently received into the sphere of earthly elements into warmth or fire, air, water, and earth, of how through the effects of these elements on the human etheric being black gall, white gall, phlegm, and blood are formed. They asked themselves a question that can occur now to a person who truly possesses Imaginative perception. In those times, the answer to this question was based on instinctive Imaginative perception, but we can repeat it today in full consciousness. If we develop an Imaginative conception of this entrance of the human being from the spiritual world through the planetary sphere into the terrestrial sphere of fire, air, water, and earth, we arrive at the realization that if something enters from the spheres beyond into the planetary sphere, hence into the earth's sphere, and is received there, this will not become a true human being. If we develop a picture of what is actually evolving there, if we have an Imaginative view of what can be beheld in purely Imaginative perception outside the planetary sphere, then enters into and is received by the planetary sphere and is subsequently taken hold of by the influences emanating from the earth sphere, we see that this does not become a human being. We do not arrive at a view of man; instead we attain to a conception that can be most clearly represented if we picture not a human being but a bull, an ox.

The ancient teachers of wisdom knew that no human beings would exist on earth if there were nothing besides this extraplanetary being that descends into the planetary sphere of evolution. They saw that at first glance one does arrive at the conception of the gradual approach of an entity out of extraplanetary spheres into the planetary and hence the earth sphere. But if one then proceeds from the content of these conceptions and tries to form a vivid Imaginative view, it does not turn into a human being; it becomes a mere bull. And if one comprehends nothing more in the human being but this, one merely comprehends what is bull-like in human beings. The ancient teachers of wisdom formed this conception. Now they said to themselves, In that case, human beings must struggle against this bull-like nature with something still higher. They must overcome the view given by this wisdom. As human beings, they are more than beings that merely come from the extra-planetary sphere, enter into the planetary sphere, and from there are taken hold of by the terrestrial elements. They have something within them that is more than this.

It is possible to say that these teachers of wisdom came as far as this concept. This was the reason they then developed the image of the bull and placed Mithras on top of it, the human being who struggles to overcome the bull, and who says of himself, I must be of far loftier origin than the being that was pictured according to the ancient teaching of wisdom.

Now these sages realized that their ancient teaching of wisdom contained an indication of what is important here. For this teaching did look upon the planetary sphere, upon Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, moon, and so on. It also said that as the human being approaches the earth, he is constantly lifted up by the sun so as not to be submerged completely in the terrestrial elements, so as not to remain merely what proceeds from the etheric body and the mixture of black and white gall, phlegm, and blood when it is received by the planetary sphere and when the astral body is received by the other planetary sphere through Mercury, Venus, moon. What lifts man upward dwells in the sun. Therefore, these sages said, Let us call man's attention to the sun forces dwelling in him; then he will turn into Mithras who is victorious over the bull!

This then was the cultic image. It was not meant to be merely a thought-out symbol but was actually to represent the fact, the cosmological fact. The religious ceremony was more than a mere outer sign; it was something that was extracted, as it were, out of the essence of the cosmos itself.

This cultic form was something that had existed since very ancient times and had been brought across from Asia to Europe. It was, in a sense, Christianity viewed from one side, viewed from the external, astronomical side, for Mithras was the sun force in man. Mithras was the human being who rebelled against the merely planetary and terrestrial aspects.

Now, a certain endeavor arose, traces of which can be observed everywhere when we look back at the first Christian centuries. The tendency arose to connect the historical fact, the Mystery of Golgotha, with the Mithras worship. Great were the numbers of people at that time, especially among the Roman Legions, who brought with them into the lands on the Danube and far into central Europe, indeed even into western Europe, what they had experienced in Asia and the Orient in general. In what they brought across as the Mithras worship there lived feelings that, without reflecting the Mystery of Golgotha, definitely contained Christian views and Christian sentiments. The worship of Mithras was considered as a concrete worship relating to the sun forces in man. The only thing this Mithras worship did not perceive was the fact that in the Mystery of Golgotha this sun force itself had descended as a spiritual entity and had united itself with the human being Jesus of Nazareth.

Now there existed schools of wisdom in the East up until the fourth century A.D. that by and by received reports and became aware of the Mystery of Golgotha, of Christ. The further east we go in our investigations, the clearer this becomes. These schools then attempted to spread a certain teaching throughout the world, and for a time there was a tendency to let flow into the Mithras cult what agrees with the following supersensory perception: The true Mithras is the Christ; Mithras is his predecessor. The Christ force must be poured into those forces in man that vanquish the bull. To turn the Mithras worship into a worship of Christ was something that was intensely alive in the first Christian centuries up until the fourth century. One might say that the stream intending to Christianize this Mithras worship followed after the spreading of the latter. A synthesis between Christendom and the Mithras worship was striven for. An ancient, significant image of man's being—Mithras riding on and vanquishing the bull—was to be brought into relationship with the Christ Being. One might say that a quite glorious endeavor existed in this direction, and in a certain respect it was a powerful one.

Anyone who follows the spread of Eastern Christianity and the spread of Arianism⁴ can see a Mithras element in it, even though in already quite weakened form. Any translation of the Ulfilas-Bible⁵ into modern languages remains imperfect if one is unaware that Mithras elements still play into the terminology of Ulfilas (or Wulfila). But who pays heed nowadays to these deeper relationships in the linguistic element? As late as in the fourth century, there were philosophers in Greece who worked on bringing the ancient etheric astronomy into harmony with Christianity. From this effort then arose the true Gnosis, which was thoroughly eradicated by later Christianity, so that only a few fragments of the literary samples of this Gnosis have remained.

What do people really know today about the Gnosis, of which they say in their ignorance that our anthroposophy is a warmed-over version? Even if this were true, such people would not be able to know about it, for they are familiar only with those parts of the Gnosis that are found in the critical, Occidental-Christian texts dealing with the Gnosis. They know the quotes from Gnostic texts left behind by the opponents of the Gnosis. There is hardly anything left of the Gnosis except what could be described by the following comparison. Imagine that Herr von Gleich would be successful in rooting out the whole of anthroposophical literature and nothing would remain except his quotations. Then, later on, somebody would attempt to reconstruct anthroposophy based on these quotes; then, it would be about the same procedure in the West as that which was applied to the Gnosis. Therefore, if people say that modern anthroposophy imitates the Gnosis, they would not know it even if it were the case, because they are unfamiliar with the Gnosis, knowing of it only through its opponents.

So, particularly in Athens, a school of wisdom existed well into the fourth century, and indeed even longer, that endeavored to bring the ancient etheric astronomy into harmony with Christianity. The last remnants of this view—man's entering from higher worlds through the planetary sphere into the earth sphere—still illuminate the writings of Origen; they even shine through the texts of the Greek Church Fathers. Everywhere one can see it shimmer through. It shines through particularly in the writings of the genuine Dionysius the Areopagite.⁶ This Dionysius left behind a teaching that was a pure synthesis of the etheric astronomy and the element dwelling in Christianity. He taught that the forces localized, as it were, astronomically and cosmically in the sun entered into the earth sphere in Christ through the man Jesus of Nazareth and that thereby a certain previously nonexistent relationship came into being between the earth and all the higher hierarchies, the hierarchies of the Angels, of Wisdom, the hierarchies of the Thrones and the Seraphim, and so on. It was a penetration of this teaching of the hierarchies with etheric astronomy that could be found in the original Dionysius the Areopagite.

Then, in the sixth century, the attempt was made to obliterate the traces even of the more ancient teachings by Dionysius the Areopagite. They were altered in such a way that they now represented merely an abstract teaching of the spirit. In the form in which the teaching of Dionysius the Areopagite has come down to us, it is a spiritual teaching that no longer has much to do with etheric astronomy. This is the reason he is then called the “Pseudo-Dionysius.” In this manner, the decline of the teaching of wisdom was brought about. On the one hand, the teachings of Dionysius were distorted; on the other hand, the truly alive teaching in Athens that had tried to unite etheric astronomy with Christianity was eradicated. Finally, in regard to the cultic aspect, the Mithras worship was exterminated.

In addition, there were contributions by individuals such as Constantine.⁷ His actions were intensified later by the fact that Emperor Justinian⁸ ordered the School of Philosophers in Athens closed. Thus, the last remaining people who had occupied themselves with bringing the old etheric astronomy into harmony with Christianity had to emigrate; they found a place in Persia where they could at least live out their lives. Based on the same program, according to which he had closed the Athenian Academy of Philosophers, Justinian also had Origen declared a heretic. For the same reason, he abolished Roman consulship, though it led only a shadowy existence, people sought in it a kind of power of resistance against the Roman concept of the state, which was reduced to pure jurisprudence. The ancient human element people still associated with the office of consul disappeared in the political imperialism of Rome.

Thus, in the fourth century, we see the diminishing of the cultic worship that could have brought Christianity closer to man. We observe the diminishing of the ancient wisdom teaching of an etheric astronomy that tried to unite with the insight into the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. And in the West, we see an element take its place that already carried within itself the seeds of the later materialism, which could not become a theory until the fifteenth century when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began, but which was prepared in the main through taking the spiritual heritage from the Orient and imbuing it with materialistic substance.

We must definitely turn our minds to this course of European civilization. Otherwise, the foundations of European civilization will never become quite clear to us. It will also never become really clear to us how it was possible that, again and again, when people moved to the Orient, they could bring back with them powerful spiritual stimuli from there. Above all else, throughout the first part of the Middle Ages, there was lively commercial traffic from the Orient up the Danube River, following exactly those routes taken by the ancient Mithras worship, which, naturally, had already died away at the beginning of the Middle Ages. The merchants who traveled to the Orient and back again, always found in the East what had preceded Christianity but definitely tended already towards Christianity. We observe, moreover, that when the Crusaders journeyed to the Orient, they received stimuli from the remnants they could still discern there, and they brought treasures of ancient wisdom back to Europe.

I mentioned that the ancient medical knowledge of fluids was connected with this old body of wisdom. Again and again, people who traveled to the Orient, even the Crusaders and those who journeyed with the Crusades, upon their return always brought back with them remnants of this old medicine to Europe. These remnants of an ancient medicine were then transmitted in the form of tradition all over Europe. Certain individuals who at the same time were ahead of their age in their own spiritual evolution then went through remarkable developments, such as the personality we know under the name Basilius Valentinus.⁹

What kind of personality was he? He was somebody who had taken up the tradition of the old medicine of fluids from the people with whom he had spent his youth, at times without understanding it from this or that indication. Until a short time ago—today it is already less often the case—there still existed in the old peasant's sayings remnants of this medical tradition that had been brought over from the Orient by the many travelers. These remnants were in a sense preserved by the peasantry; those who grew up among peasants heard of them; as a rule they were those who then became priests. In particular those who became monks came from the peasantry. There, they had heard this or that of what was in fact distorted treasure of ancient wisdom that had become decadent. These people did undergo an independent educational development. Up until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the educational development an individual went through by means of Christian theology was something much more liberal than it was later on. Based on their own spirituality, these priests and monks gradually brought a certain amount of order into these matters. They pondered what they had heard; out of their own genius, they connected the various matters. Thus originated the writings that have been preserved as the writings of Basilius Valentinus.

Indeed, these conditions also gave rise to a school of thought from which Paracelsus¹⁰ even Jacob Boehme¹¹ learned. Even these individuals still took up the treasure of ancient medical wisdom that lived, I might say, in the folk group soul. One can notice this primarily in Jacob Boehme, but also in Paracelsus and others, even if one considers their writings only in a superficial way. If you look closely at, for example, Jacob Boehme's text “De Signatura Rerum,” you will find in the manner of his presentation that what I have said is very obvious. It is a form of old folk wisdom that basically contained distorted ancient wisdom. Such old folk wisdom was by no means as abstract as our present-day science; instead, there still existed a sensitivity for the objective element in words. One felt something in the words. Just as one tries to know through concepts today, one felt in the words. One knew that the human being had drawn the words out of the objective essence of the universe itself.

This can become evident in Jacob Boehme's efforts to feel what really lies concealed in the syllable, “sul,” or again in the syllable, “phur” of “sulphur”. See how Jacob Boehme struggles in “De Signatura Rerum,” to draw something out of a word, to draw out an inner word-extract, to draw something out of the word “sulphur” in order to come to an entity. The feeling is definitely present there that when one experiences the extract of words, one arrives at something real. In former times, it was felt, something had settled into the words the human soul absorbed when it moved from spheres beyond through the planetary sphere into earthly existence. But what the soul placed into the words due to its closeness to the intermingling of fluids when the child learned to speak was still something objective. There was still something in speech that was like instruction by the gods, not merely like human instruction. In Jacob Boehme we see this noble striving that can be expressed somewhat as if he had felt, I would like to consider speech as something in which living gods work behind the phenomena into the human organization in order to form speech and, along with speech, a certain treasure of wisdom.

Thus we see that the ancient body of wisdom does indeed continue on into later ages, though already taken up by modern thinking, which, it is true, is yet barely evident in such original and outstanding minds like Jacob Boehme and Paracelsus. Into what has thus been brought forth the purely intellectualistic, theoretical element is now imprinted, the element that is based on man's physical thinking and takes hold only of the physical realm. We see how, on the one hand, purely physical astronomy arises, and how, on the other hand, physiology and anatomy come about, which are directed exclusively upon the clearly defined organs of man—in short, the whole medical adumbration.

Thus, the human being gradually finds himself surrounded by a world that he comprehends only in a physical sense and in which he himself as a cosmic being certainly has no place. Concerning himself, he grasps only what he has become by virtue of the earth; for it is thanks to the earth that he has become this solidly bounded, physical, organic being. He can no longer reconcile what is revealed to him of the universe through physical astronomy with what dwells in his form and points to something else. He turns his attention away from the manner in which the human form indicates something else. He finally loses all awareness of the fact that his striving for erect posture and the special manner and means by which he attains to speech out of his organism cannot originate from the Mithras-Bull, but only from Mithras. He no longer wishes to occupy himself with all this, for he is sailing full force into materialism. He has to sail into materialism, for religious consciousness itself, after all, has absorbed only the external, material phenomenon of Christianity. It has then dogmatized this external, material phenomenon without attempting to perceive through some wisdom how the Mystery of Golgotha took place, but instead trying to determine through stipulations what truth is.

Thus we observe the transition from the ancient Oriental position of thinking based on cosmic insight to the specifically Roman-European form of observation. How were matters "determined" in the Orient, and how could something be “determined” about the Mystery of Golgotha based on Oriental instinctive perception? If we take the insight coming out of the cosmos, looking up at the stars, that insight, though it was an instinctive, elemental insight, should lead to, or was at least supposed to lead to, the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. This was the path taken in the Orient. Beginning with the fifth century, there was no longer any sensitivity for this path. By replacing the Asiatic manner of determination more and more with the Egyptian form, earlier Church Councils had already pointed out that the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha should not be determined in this manner, but that the majority of the Fathers gathered at the Councils should decide. The juristic principle was put in the place of the Oriental principle of insight; dogmatism was brought into the juristic element. People no longer had the feeling that truth must be determined out of universal conscience. They began to feel that it was possible to ascertain, based on resolutions of the Councils, whether the divine and the human nature in Christ Jesus was two natures or one, and other such things. We see the Egypto-Roman juristic element pervading the innermost configuration of Occidental civilization, an element that even today is deeply rooted in human beings who are not inclined to permit truth to determine their relationship to it. Instead, they wish to make decisions based on emotional factors; therefore, they have no other measure for determining things except majority rule in some form.

We shall say more about this tomorrow.

• 1 . Aurelius Augustinus, A.D. 354–430, Church Father and philosopher. See Rudolf Steiner, Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1972.
• 2 . Hippocrates, 460–377 B.C., founder of Greek medicine. Explained illnesses as results of faulty mixture of four body fluids: blood, yellow bile, phlegm, and black bile.
• 3 . Mithras: Persian-Indian cult of Mithras, the god of light and sun, spread through Europe in first century B.C. by Roman troops. Celebrations in underground caves, knew baptism, communion, celebration of birthday of the god on December 25.
• 4 . Arianism, teachings of the presbyter Arius of Alexandria (died A.D. 336), who rejected the idea that Christ's being was identical with the being of God the Father.
• 5 . Ulfilas (Wulfila in Germanic), A.D. 311–383, missionary to the West-Goths in the Balcan region; founder of Arianic-Germanic Christendom, who translated the Bible into Gothic.
• 6 . Dionysius the Areopagite, member of the Areopagus in Athens, around A.D. 500. Converted by Paul (Acts 17:34). Connected Christianity with neo-Platonic philosophy. Also compare with Lecture XV of June 2, 1921, in this volume.
• 7 . Constantine I., the Great, A.D. 286 or 287–337. Roman emperor from 306 to 337, made Christianity the state religion in 324.
• 8 . Justinian I, A.D. 483–565, Byzantine emperor from A.D. 527–565, builder of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. In A.D. 529, he closed the Platonic Academy of Athens.
• 9 . Basilius Valentinus, born around 1394, alchemist of the fifteenth century. His collected writings were first published in Hamburg by W. S. Lange in 1677.
• 10. Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus of Hohenheim, 1493–1541. Concerning this great Swiss doctor and philosopher, see Rudolph Steiner: Eleven European Mystics, Rudolf Steiner Publications, New York, 1971.
• 11. Jacob Boehme, 1575–1624, concerning the mysticism of the master shoemaker, see above book.

Yesterday, in closing, I called attention to the fact that, since that time, according to the spiritual-scientific point of view, we have to reckon the evolution of mankind on earth as having made a circuit from Pisces to Pisces. When I have spoken in this connection of the evolution of mankind on earth, it must naturally be correctly understood. We speak of the overall evolution of mankind in such a way that we let it begin in the old Saturn time, and therefore it can naturally only be a partial evolution of mankind when we speak here of the evolution of mankind on earth. But one can imagine it this way: During the time of Saturn, the Sun and the Moon, man quite naturally took on a very different form, one that cannot be compared to the present form of man. And when we speak here of the formation of humanity on earth, it means that the preparations for this physical human formation began at the end of the Lemurian age, that it developed in the way I have described in my writings, in the Atlantean time, thus precisely in the time that represents such a full cycle of the spring equinox of the sun.

Now let us discuss the conditions to which man was subject during this time, when he had, so to speak, returned to his starting point. I would like to present something schematically so that you have the complete picture of what I actually mean with these explanations. We cannot say that human evolution has taken place in such a way since the last Lemurian period, when the spring point of the sun was also in Pisces, that we can depict this evolution as a cycle that simply returns to itself. That would be wrong. We have to think of this cycle, because of course I am only giving a picture of the development, we have to think of it as a spiral. We must therefore imagine that, if the starting point of evolution lies in the ancient Lemurian period here, this evolution returns in such a way that man has naturally risen to a higher level of his being, but at this higher level, in relation to his relationship to the cosmos, has in a sense returned to his starting point in the present age. And how he had to live in these circumstances, let us bring that to mind today.

Some time ago, I gave a lecture to a small group in Stuttgart about a possible astronomical world view. I pointed out how, for a long time, the so-called Ptolemaic world view was regarded as correct by mankind. This Ptolemaic conception of the world is thoroughly ingenious, it is so, I might say, in certain line forms geometrically summarizes that which must be summarized if we want to express the view we have of the stars, their positions and their orbits, by pictorial representations. Then, for certain reasons, which I have often described, this Ptolemaic system was replaced by the Copernican system, which, with some important modifications, is still regarded today as essentially correct. In Stuttgart, I showed that this Copernican system is nothing more than a linear representation of what we see when we look into the cosmos with our eyes, telescopes or other instruments. I also showed that it cannot be said that this Copernican system is any more correct than the Ptolemaic system; it is only a different way of summarizing the phenomena. And I have then tried to summarize these phenomena myself, linking them to what man – who, after all, if, for example, the earth has a movement, must go along with this movement – can experience within himself. Today I want to present only the result to you; the other is not important for us today.

If we begin to summarize these phenomena not in a one-sided way, as is the case with both the Ptolemaic and Copernican world systems, but if we take into account everything that is available to us, then we come to the conclusion that this summary will ultimately become so complicated that we can no longer get by with a simple world system, which we can represent with a pencil or a planiglobe. It is not at all possible, basically, to summarize things in as simple a way as one would usually like to summarize them. And one can indeed arrive at something very strange in this way, which I would like to present to you quite simply, because, however paradoxical they may appear to people of the present day, these things must be discussed.

People believe that the science of the present is the most intelligent thing that has ever existed, and that basically nothing more intelligent could possibly be invented. And because of this belief, humanity is indeed heading for a terrible cultural fate. But the right thing must also be presented in a certain way. If you take into account more and more circumstances, you will end up in such a state of mind regarding the complexity of the world system that this state of mind is very similar to the one you have when you have just woken up and experience the chaotic images of the soul, which I said yesterday and the day before yesterday sit in us as an undercurrent. I have schematically drawn the human organism for you according to etheric body and physical body and said: These chaotic images emerge from it, which are actually always there even during the day. They can be found very effectively in dreamy natures, but everyone notices them at the bottom of their soul. And they can be particularly strongly noticed when a person submerges with his ego and astral body into his physical and etheric bodies in the morning. Now I do not mean these images themselves – these images are, of course, very poetic and imaginative for the people concerned, depending on their level of perfection or imperfection, or they are very chaotic, the latter being the more common case. But I am talking about the state of mind that a reasonably logical person experiences when they are accustomed to thinking logically and then find themselves immersed in this world of images. What is meant is the state of mind that comes to those who do not approach it with all the prejudices and simplifications that prevail when constructing world systems, but who approach it without prejudice. Then, in relation to what one ultimately achieves, in relation to the complexity, in relation to the interweaving, one enters into a similar state of mind.

Of course, our time has brought it about – and that is even a great boon compared to the mental disposition of most people – that every schoolboy knows exactly: at the focus of an ellipse is the sun, the planets revolve around it, the fixed stars stand still, and so on. – Every schoolboy knows this, and it is tremendously simple. But if you approach these things without prejudice and without theoretical fuss, you do not find this simplicity. Instead, things become enormously complicated, and in the end you arrive at the kind of frame of mind I have described, in which you say to yourself: you have to move into something that transitions from the definite to the indefinite, from the definitely drawn lines into problematically drawn lines. You enter into a frame of mind that tells you: What you are taking into your head is basically an image, an image that is woven and that you can simplify, as when you, say, make a diagram of Raphael's Madonna. But just as you would not have the whole of Raphael's Madonna from that, you have just as little in the Copernican system what is actually in front of us in space in the form of an image that includes an infinity of details and particulars. Just when you are considering such a consideration, you will understand: If we have to say something like that to ourselves when we contemplate the phenomena of the universe, then we cannot actually stand face to face with reality as such; for we stand before what presents itself to us in a state of soul like the world of images that we encounter when we enter our body from the cosmos in the morning. So there can be no question of standing face to face with reality.

These are the kinds of considerations that must be made if one wants to have an understanding in the full sense of the word of what it actually means: we live with our consciousness in the world of illusion, of maya. We also live in Maya with regard to the image we have of the universe and its phenomena. And finally, we can also observe the phenomena that the sensory world weaves around us, and we come to something similar. We do not, however, come to what a, I would say, clumsy theory of knowledge has come to at the end of the 18th and in the course of the 19th century, which always repeats: Yes, out there the phenomena are, for example, through mechanical and dynamic laws, or as one says recently, electrons, and they exert an impression on our senses, and that which is then perceived by us, that is only an effect of that which is out there; but that is just only the appearance for us. To speak of appearances to us in this sense is, after all, a clumsy theory of knowledge. With such a view, one can indeed have some strange experiences.

One need only turn against this theory of knowledge with a few lines here or there today, and someone will come along and say, “But Kant said...” People have become so wrapped up in Kantianism that they consider it a kind of Bible; at least many do. They change this or that, but on the whole they consider it a kind of Bible. One can have the strangest experiences there. I once held courses on such questions in Berlin, it was in the winter of 1900 to 1901, the same winter about which Herr von Gleich has proclaimed that a certain Winter taught me about Theosophy – he has confused the winter of 1900 to 1901 with a Mr. Winter who is supposed to have taught me about Theosophy! I don't know whether he read it or was told that I once gave these lectures in winter, which were then printed, they were given in Berlin in the winter of 1900 to 1901, and so the word “winter” was taken for the name of Mr. Winter. Yes, this argument is no more intelligent than the other stupid and dishonest arguments of General von Gleich. But you see, at these lectures in Berlin there was also a dyed-in-the-wool Kantian. I can't say he was listening, because he was usually asleep, and I don't know how many people can listen while sleeping, but I could tell at the time that he only woke up when he could somehow apply Kant. And once it happened that I repeated an argument – it wasn't even mine – in which it was said: If one really speaks of the thing in itself as being completely unknown, as Kant did, then it could consist of pins, so that behind the sensory phenomena there could only be pins. But when I said this, the person in question jumped up as if stung by an adder and said: Behind the phenomena is not space and time. There are pins in space, so the thing in itself cannot consist of pins! — It is just one of the examples that one so often encounters when people believe that their Bible, their Kantian Bible, is somehow being touched.

Now, it is not the case that any “things in themselves” throw effects into us, so to speak, which then merely trigger sensory qualities, so that we are actually only wrapped up in our sensory qualities; it is not like that. But something else is true. Please just take the following: Stand outside at, say, 11 o'clock in the morning and look at the surrounding area, but look at it carefully, not as some people draw it, because what they draw is nonsense, of course it doesn't reflect the appearance of the senses. Instead, look at it at 11 o'clock, at 12 o'clock with all its lighting effects. The whole sensory tapestry has changed completely by noon, by five o'clock, by eight o'clock. The picture around you is constantly changing. You are never dealing with anything but interwoven effects and impressions. A tree – what do you see of the tree? You see the reflected light, you may see the leaves moving in the wind, and so on. In short, you never see anything permanent. You simply see an objective appearance. While the clumsy theory of knowledge speaks of a subjective appearance, you see an objective appearance, and this objective appearance naturally also communicates itself to the eye. Just as the tree intercepts the light rays in a certain way, reflects them and so on, so the eye also has a certain relationship to the light rays, and we can say: the phenomenal, the apparent, the illusory , the Maja nature, which is spread out in the sense world around us, is of course also present in our subjective picture; but because it is objectively changeable, it is also changeable in the subjective picture.

This is what I wanted to substantiate, for example, in the first section of my “Philosophy of Freedom” or in my booklet “Truth and Science” and so on. So even when we face the world, we are not dealing with a lasting, permanent reality; we are dealing with something that, one might say, is coming and going in the moment. We are dealing with appearances. And if we wanted to construct this image theoretically, we would come up with nothing more than the few lines in the Sistine Madonna. And so it is in everything we are immersed in. We are immersed in the world of phenomena, of Maja, but even though we are immersed in this world of Maja with all our perception, we are not dependent on this world. For it is quite clear to us when we emerge from the cosmos with our I and our astral body in the morning and submerge into our etheric body and our physical body, that what we are submerging into contains an objective, a truth. Certainly, what swirls towards us as chaotic images is only an appearance; but what we submerge ourselves in contains a truth. And in the moment when we submerge ourselves, whether we do so through: I want to move my limbs, or through: I want to bring my ideas into fantasy forms, or let's say through: I want to bring my ideas into logical thought connections – in what becomes us when we immerse ourselves in our body, in that, we know, we have something that does not depend on us, that we receive, that receives us. And the moment we wake up is the one that communicates our sense of being to us.

This sense of being is, in a sense, something that permeates and runs through our entire thinking. But our thinking itself moves more in the world of phenomena, of appearance, of maya. And let us expand what I am presenting from ordinary experiences to include the whole person.

Those who, with the help of such insights, as can be gained on the basis of my descriptions in “How to Know Higher Worlds”, can look at the whole person, will soon know how the human being, as a soul-spiritual being, goes through the state between death and a new birth, how it penetrates into the physical world, becomes embodied, in order to go through the state between birth and death, and then again a state between death and a new birth. I have developed some important details about these processes in the last lectures here. When the moment comes when one can look back into the world that lies before birth or before conception, one realizes that we have gone through the world that actually makes up our sense of being, the world from which our sense of being comes, between death and a new birth. One only acquires the right feeling for being, the feeling for being that is not subject to doubting or skepticism, when one looks back into this world of existence that lies before conception.

But now something significant appears, as you can already gather from my Viennese lectures from the spring of 1914. I will now present it to the soul in a different form, namely, something appears that confronts us before the human being descends from the state between death and a new birth to his physical embodiment. During this time, the desire to be, the desire to exist, fades more and more from the human being. As he develops between death and a new birth, I would say that the human being passes through an absolute satiation with the feeling of being. That is one of the achievements that man acquires between death and a new birth, that after going through the first stages after death, he comes more and more, through the relationship to the world into which he then enters, to a strongly penetrating feeling of being, to a — if I may use the expression — being anchored in the being of the world. And this becomes stronger and stronger until a kind of supersaturation with the feeling of being occurs, and then, towards the end of the time between death and a new birth, I would say that a true supersaturation with the feeling of being occurs. I could also call it something else. I could say that a true hunger for non-being occurs in the human being. Those spiritual-soul entities that come down to earth as human beings actually show, before they come down to earth, a strong hunger for non-being. And from this state of mind or spirit, we could say: Because man hungers for non-being, he plunges into Maja in this state, into the world that we have before us both in relation to the world of stars and in relation to the earthly phenomenal world. There is a longing for this non-existent world, for this world, which one is in soul moods towards, as one is towards the chaotic images when one goes to their bottom, this world, which actually presents us with a different aspect in every moment. We are, after all, completely immersed in an illusory world, in a Maya world, as we immerse ourselves in this world. The soul and spirit want to submerge themselves in this Maya world, and that is what we are actually dealing with. The others are more or less side effects. This is the strongest impulse that lives in the spiritual-soul human being when he approaches earthly existence: this longing for Maya, this longing to live in the soft, permeable phenomenon, not in the saturated, intense being. And what then envelops the human being as an etheric body and as a physical body has been born out of the cosmos and is used to clothe the human being. In the last few days, I have described how the embryo in the mother's body is formed out of the cosmos.

We must therefore imagine that the human being basically comes from a completely different world. There he acquires this hunger for existence, for life in the Maja, by approaching the physical earthly existence, and he is received by plunging into the Maja with his I and with his astral (see drawing, red, blue), of which the etheric body and the physical body (yellow, red) are formed in the maternal body through fertilization as its covering from the cosmos. The human being comes from a world that is not spatial-temporal, that cannot be found in space, but he is clothed in space with what is formed in the mother's body. He then emerges into this every time he wakes up. When falling asleep, he emerges from it. A rhythm of submerging into the physicality and of being drawn out of it is formed.

Today's ideas are actually such that one has great difficulty in dealing with them in relation to reality. This convergence, for example, of a completely different current that a person goes through before he comes to his embodiment, and the external that then envelops him, which of course has nothing essential to do with him before - as it really becomes, I have described on other occasions - this interaction, that can hardly be described by today's science in an appropriate way because it lacks the concepts for it.

The same thing can be seen in another area. When a physiologist talks about light or color today, his main concern is to describe something that the eye does, to find out what it is. But in reality it is actually just as if someone wanted to describe any of the personalities sitting here and, above all, describe this carpentry workshop here because you walked in here. Basically, the light that enters the eye and takes effect in the eye has no more to do with the eye than you have with the carpentry workshop when you walked in and the carpentry workshop now also envelops you. If someone describes the carpentry workshop and you, they naturally describe it as a whole. But that is not the case. It is difficult to find the truth in the face of today's complicated ideas.

And so we can say: that which is spiritual and soul in man comes into this world of the earthly primarily out of an urge for non-being. And every waking state, that is, every state that is experienced from waking up to falling asleep, is a new education for being, a re-impregnation of consciousness with being.

The human being is in the state in which he is last between death and a new birth, I would like to say, so glad when he can arrive at his physical embodiment, he is so glad. I have often described to you how the brain floats in the cerebral fluid. If the whole weight, one thousand three hundred and fifty grams or something like that, were to press on the veins under the brain, the veins would be crushed, they could not exist; but the brain only presses with about twenty grams. Why? Because the brain floats in the cerebral fluid. And you know Archimedes' principle. Right, it was Archimedes who found it. He was once in a tub bathing and felt how he was getting lighter and lighter in the bath, and he was so pleased about this discovery that he immediately ran naked through the streets shouting: I've got it, I've got it!” — namely, that every body in a liquid loses as much of its weight as the weight of the water body that it displaces. So if you have a container of water and you put a solid object in it, it becomes lighter than it actually is outside the water, and it becomes lighter by the amount that the displaced water weighs, that is, by its own weight, if you think of it as being made out of water. So if, for example, there were a cube here and you thought of it as a water cube and weighed it, the actual cube would become lighter by the weight of the water cube. And so the brain becomes lighter, except for twenty grams, weighs only twenty grams because it floats in brain water. So the brain does not follow its full gravity. It is pushed upwards. This force that pushes upwards is also called buoyancy. Man looks forward to this, to coming into something that actually pulls him upwards, that really pulls him upwards. And he learns to be heavy again at twenty grams, and through heaviness we learn the feeling of being. Man is again imbued with the feeling of being between birth and death. And this is then developed and increased in the evolution after death.

This is what, I would say, has so disappeared from the consciousness of modern humanity that the greatest philosopher at the beginning of this newer time, Cartesius or Descartes, coined the formula: Cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am. - It is the most nonsensical formula one can think of, because precisely by thinking, one is not. One is precisely outside of being. Cogito ergo non sum – is the real truth. Today we are so far removed from the real truth that the greatest modern philosopher has put the opposite in the place of truth. We acquire the feeling of being precisely when thinking feels itself in the organism, when thinking feels itself embedded in what is heavy. This is not just a popular image, it is reality in the face of appearances.

But this can teach us how the human being, as he initially knows himself, goes down to earth in knowledge, actually submerges himself in the Maja and, within the Maja, learns what he needs again after death: the feeling of being.

Now, when one describes what I have described to you now, then one has something that is specifically human in human development. This, I would like to say, rhythmic movement between the feeling of being and the feeling of not being can be visualized for meditation in the following way. You can say, when you live in mere thoughts: I am not. When one lives with reference to the will, which physically rests in the metabolic-limb-human being, then one says: I am. And between the two, between the metabolic-human being and the pure brain-human being, who says: I am not, when he understands himself, because that which lives in the brain are merely images; that which lies in between is the rhythmic alternation between: I am and I am not. For this, the external physical is breathing. The exhalation fulfills the breathing process with what comes from the metabolism, with carbon dioxide. I am – is exhalation. I am not – is inhalation. I am not

I am not
I am – I am not exhalation – inhalation
I am

The inhalation is related to: I am not - of thought. Inhalation happens in such a way that we take in air into our ribs, pushing the water of the arachnoid space upwards and thereby pushing the cerebral fluid upwards. We bring the vibration of the breathing process into the brain. This is the organ of thought. The inhalation process transmitted to the brain: I am not. Again, exhalation, the cerebral fluid – through the arachnoid space – presses on the diaphragm, exhalation, the air impregnated with carbon, turned into carbonic acid: I am – out of the will. Exhalation: out of the will.

All this, understood in this way, is a purely human process, because the person who wants to transfer it to the animal, because the animal also breathes, is just like a human being who takes a razor to cut his flesh because it is a knife. Of course animals also breathe, but animal breathing is something different from human breathing, just as a razor is something different from a table knife. Those who base their definitions on the outward appearance of things will never arrive at any kind of useful explanation of the world. Death is something different for humans, something different for animals, something different for plants. Anyone who starts from a definition of death will come to just as little of a useful explanation as someone who starts from the definition of a knife and says, for example, “A knife is something that is so fine on one side that it cuts through other objects.” Of course, that gives a nice general concept, but one cannot understand anything about what really is. So, these are specifically human processes that I have described to you. They are the human processes that man has gone through while the vernal point made the circuit from Pisces to Pisces. This is precisely the time in the evolution of the earth when man, in the leading parts of the nations, has gone through everything that I have described to you now, and which all tends to show how it actually happens, how man, human being, by descending into the physical world through birth, plunges into the maja, and with death is reborn out of the maja again, enriched by the feeling of being, which he needs for the further life after death. This is the most important fact: this being born through death with the feeling of being, while being born is the human being's spiritual-soul entity plunging into maya. It is precisely because we plunge into maya, that is, into a world of images, that we are free. We could never be free if we were in a world of facts with our consciousness between birth and death. We are only free because we are in a world of images. Images that are in the mirror do not determine us causally. A world of facts would determine us causally. What you bring to the image that hangs before you must come from you. The phenomena of the world do not determine us as human beings in what I called in my Philosophy of Freedom pure thinking, which does not come from the organism. What comes from the organism is, as you have seen, imbued with the sense of being, even if in the brain this sense of being is present in such a small percentage that it is about twenty to one thousand three hundred and fifty. One must look at this again and again, how man actually develops the longing for Maja by being born into earthly life, and how earthly life educates him to the feeling of being. That is what we have gone through during the time from the last Lemurian period into our period, where a sun cycle of 25,920 years, a great world cycle, has been gone through. Now, however, we are in the time in which development has returned to its starting point, but I have drawn it in such a way that I said: we have to indicate it schematically in a spiral (see drawing on page 170). The development of humanity has indeed returned to its starting point, but at a higher level. But what does this higher level mean? This higher stage means that we, as humanity, have always plunged into Maya with our birth and then, out of our physical existence, have gained the feeling of being. But the earth has also changed in the meantime; the earth today is no longer the same organism that it was in the Lemurian or Atlantean times. Today, as I have often stated, the Earth is already in a process of dissolution.

Geology also knows this. Read about it in the beautiful geological works of Eduard Sueß, 'The Face of the Earth': the Earth is in a crumbling process, the Earth is in a dissolution process. This means that we will no longer have every opportunity to acquire the feeling of being in a sufficient way. And now that a cycle has been completed, as I explained yesterday and today, humanity is facing the danger of going through deaths in which it has developed too little sense of being, simply because our earth no longer provides the necessary intensity of the feeling of being. With this new period, which I have now explained to you as a period of the whole cosmos, the prospect opens up for humanity to pass through death with a feeling of lightness that is, if I may express it so, too great. Humanity may become more and more materialistic, and the consequence of this, if it becomes more and more materialistic, will be that it carries an insufficient feeling of heaviness or being through the gate of death.

This is something that is already quite clear to those who are familiar with the conditions in the world today: souls today are carried through the gate of death by their own sense of non-being, so that they experience the opposite of what a person who falls into water and cannot swim experiences — they sink. These souls sink when they pass through the gate of death, due to the little weight they have. How the expression 'weight' is used in the spiritual world, that occurs at an important point in my Mysteries. They rise to the top and are lost. This can only be counteracted by people rising from concepts that can be easily acquired today and that figure in our entire lives, to that which must be achieved with a certain effort of physical life: that is, such concepts that are not produced by physical life alone, that are acquired through spiritual science.

What do people who absolutely want to remain in today's thinking say about spiritual science? They say: Yes, what is described, for example, in this Steinerian “occult science”, that is fantastic, that is arbitrary, that cannot be imagined! Why do people say that? People can see chalk, they can see tables, they can see legs, and they can only imagine what has once presented itself to them in this way; they do not want to imagine anything other than what they have appropriated from the bellwether of external physical reality. They do not want to develop any inner activity in imagining. Anyone who wants to study Occult Science: An Outline must make an effort themselves. If he gapes at an ox, he has a reality, to be sure; he needs not make any effort, but only gape at it and then form a so-called concept, which is no concept at all. What it is about is that the concepts that are hinted at by spiritual science, for example by my “Occult Science” or “Theosophy” or by the other books, demand this inner activity. A large part of humanity, which is now more materialistic than ever because it wants to educate the world of ideas in a materialistic way, the spiritualists, would really rather not get involved in thinking through and working through Occult Science; they prefer to let themselves be by Schrenck-Notzing or others, where such lumps, shaped like human beings or the like, appear to them in such a way that they can remain completely passive; they do not need to make any effort at all.

But in doing so, one becomes lighter and lighter and works against one's continued existence after death. However, by working one's way into the activity needed to penetrate spiritual science, one has to make a greater physical effort, connect more strongly with the physical than is the case today under so-called normal conditions. One must use stronger concepts. But in so doing, one also takes one's sense of being with one through death and is then equal to life after death.

That is something, is it not, that today's man likes so much: to add nothing to what he encounters in life. If he is to add something, to be active, it immediately becomes uncomfortable for him. Outwardly, in our social lives, we have always striven to learn as much as possible and to learn according to the templates prescribed by the state; so that when we have happily reached the age of twenty-five or twenty-six and are ready to start our legal clerkships, we are then pushed into some scheme and entitled to a pension after so many decades; now we are safe. We are only in our twenties, but we are insured for life. We let our body retire – that is guaranteed from the outset – then comes the church, the church confession, which also demands nothing more than that we passively surrender to what is offered to us. And the church then retires our soul when we are dead; it insures us against it without our doing anything, except at most living in faith, just as our body was retired before. This is something that must be broken with if civilization is not to arrive at its decline. Inner activity, inner active participation in what man makes of himself, even what he makes of himself as an immortal being, is necessary. Man must work on his immortality. That is the one thing that most people would like to be magically removed. They believe that knowledge can only teach one something of what is so anyway, can at most teach one that man is immortal. There are those who say:

Yes, I live here, as life exists here; what will be after death, I will see then.

He will see nothing, absolutely nothing! For the argument is about as ingenious as that of the Anzengruber personality: “As surely as there is a God in heaven, I am an atheist!” — These things are of the same logic. The fact of the matter is that, with regard to the spiritual and mental, by taking it into our knowledge, we make the spirit mature so that after death it does not go through the opposite state of someone sinking in confusion, that is, of someone rising without essence. We must work on our essence so that it can pass through death in the right way. And the assimilation of spiritual knowledge is not just the assimilation of abstract knowledge, it is the penetration of the spiritual and mental life of man with the forces that conquer death.

This is, after all, the essence of the Christian teaching. Therefore, a person should not merely believe in Christ, as a modern confession would have it, but should take to heart the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me.” The power of Christ in me must develop and be cultivated! Faith as such cannot save the human being, but only the inner cooperation with Christ, the inner development of the power of Christ, which is always there if one wants to develop it, but which must be developed. Initiative and activity are what humanity will have to fill itself with. And it must realize that mere passive faith makes man too easy, so that in time immortality would die on earth. That is Ahriman's endeavor. And to what extent it is Ahriman's endeavor, we will then bring before our soul in a next lecture, because today we are in the midst of the battle between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic powers. And just as we have protected our unconsciousness to a certain extent, with the spring equinox marking a boundary, we will have to enter the next boundary in such a way that we place ourselves with full

1987 we place ourselves in that which interweaves the world's being: the battle of the Luciferic with the Ahrimanic spirits. Through spiritual science we are led into reality, not just into an abstract knowledge. More about this next time.

It is our aim in these lectures to speak of important questions of mankind's evolution, and you have already seen that all sorts of preparatory facts drawn from distant sources are necessary to our purpose. In order that we may have a foundation as broad as possible, I shall remind you today of various things that have been said from one or another standpoint during my present stay here, but which are essential for a right understanding of the two coming lectures.

I have pointed out to you that in that evolutionary course of mankind which can be regarded as first interesting us after the great Atlantean catastrophe, significant changes took place in humanity. I have already some months ago indicated how changes in humanity as a whole differ from changes taking place in a single individual. The individual as the years go on becomes older. In a certain respect one can say that for humanity as such, the reverse is the case. A man is first child, then grows up and attains the age known to us as the average age of life. In so doing the man's physical forces undergo manifold changes and transformations. Now we have already described in what sense I a reverse path is to be attributed to mankind. During the 2,160 years that followed the great Atlantean catastrophe mankind can be said to have been capable of development in a way quite different from what was possible later. This is that ancient time which followed immediately upon the great flooding of the earth—called in geology the Ice Age, in religious tradition, the Flood—from which there actually proceeded a kind of glacial state.

We know that at our present time we are capable of development up to a certain age independently of our own action; we are capable of development through our nature, our physical forces. We have stated that in the first epoch after the great Atlantean catastrophe man remained capable of development for a much longer time. He remained so into the fifth decade of his life, and he always knew that the process of growing older was connected with a transformation of the soul and spirit nature. If today we wish to have a development of the soul and spirit nature after our twenties, we must seek for this development by our power of will. We become physically different in our twenties and in this becoming different physically there lives at the same time something that determines our progress of soul and spirit. Then the physical ceases to let us be dependent on it; then, so to speak, our physical nature hands over nothing more, and through our own willpower we must make any further advance. This is how it seems, externally considered—we shall see immediately how matters stand inwardly.

There was in fact a great difference in the first 2,160 years after the great Atlantean catastrophe. Then indeed man was still dependent on his physical element far into old age, but he had also the joy of this dependence. He had the joy of not only progressing during his growth, and increasing, but of experiencing, even in the decline of life-forces, the fruit of these declining life-forces as a kind of blooming of soul qualities, which man can feel no longer. Yes, external physical cosmic conditions of human existence alter in relatively not such a very long time.

Then again came a time in which man no more remained capable of development to such a great age, into the fifties. In the second epoch after the great Atlantean catastrophe, which again lasted for approximately 2,160 years, and which we call the Old Persian, man remained still capable of development up to the end of his forties. Then in the next epoch, the Egypto-Chaldean, he could develop up to the time of his forty-second year. We are now living—since the 15th Century—in the period where man carries his development only into his twenties. This is all something of which external history tells us nothing, which moreover is not believed by external historical science, but with which infinitely many secrets of mankind's evolution are connected. So that one can say: Mankind as a whole drew in, became younger and younger—if we call this change in development a becoming-younger! And we have seen what consequence must be drawn from it. This consequence was not so pressing in the Greco-Latin age; a man then remained capable of development up to his thirty-fifth year through his natural forces. It becomes more and more pressing, and from our time onward quite specially significant. For as regards humanity as a whole we are living, so to say, in the twenty-seventh year, are entering the twenty-sixth and so on. So that men are condemned to carry right through life the development they acquired in early youth through natural forces, if they do nothing of their own freewill to take their further development in hand. And the future of mankind will consist in their receding more and more, receding further, so that I, if no spiritual impulse grips mankind, times can come in which only the views and opinions of youth prevail.

This becoming younger of humanity is shown in external symptoms—and one who regards historical development with more sharpened senses can see it—it is shown by the fact that in Greece, let us say, a man had still to be of a definite age before he could take any part in public affairs. Today we see the claim made by great circles of mankind to reduce this age as much as possible, since people think that they already know in the twenties everything that is to be attained. More and more demands will be made in this direction, and unless an insight arises to paralyse them there will be demands that not only in the beginning of his twenties a man is clever enough to take part in any kind of parliamentary business in the world, but the nineteen-year-olds and eighteen-year-olds will believe that they contain in themselves all that a man can compass.

This kind of growing younger is at the same time a challenge to mankind to draw for themselves from the spirit what is no longer given by nature. I called your attention last time to the immense incision in the evolutionary history of mankind which lies in the 15th Century. This is again something of which external history gives no tidings, for external history, as I have often said, is a fable convenue. There must come an entirely new knowledge of the being of man. For only when an entirely new knowledge of man's being is reached, will the impulse really be found which mankind needs if it is to take in hand of its own freewill what nature no longer provides. We dare not believe that, the future of humanity will come through with the thoughts and ideas which the modern age has brought and of which it is so proud. One cannot do enough to make oneself clear how necessary it is to seek for fresh and different impulses for the evolution of humanity. It is of course a triviality to say, as I have often remarked, that our time is a transition age—for in reality each age is a transition. But it is a different thing to know what is changing in a definite age. Every age is assuredly an age of transition, but in each age one should also look about and see what is passing over.

I will link this to a fact—I could take a hundred others—but I will link on to a definite fact and let it serve as an example—one could draw on hundreds from every part of Europe. In the first half of the 19th Century, in 1828 in Vienna, a number of lectures were held by Friedrich Schlegel, one of the two brothers Schlegel, who have deserved so well of Central European culture. Friedrich Schlegel sought in these lectures to show from a lofty historical standpoint what the development of the time required, and how these requirements should be studied if the right direction were to be given to the evolution of the 19th Century and the coming age.

Friedrich Schlegel was influenced at that time by two main historical impressions. On the one hand he looked back at the 18th Century, how it had gradually evolved to atheism, materialism, irreligion. He saw how what had gone on in people's minds during the course of the 18th Century then exploded in the French Revolution. (We wish to make no criticism, merely to bring forward a fact, to consider a human outlook.) Friedrich Schlegel saw a great onesidedness in the French Revolution. To be sure, one might find it today reactionary if such a man as Friedrich Schlegel sees a great onesidedness in the French Revolution, but one would also have to look on such a verdict from other aspects. On the whole it is fairly simple to say to oneself that this or the other was gained for mankind through the French Revolution. It is no doubt very simple; but it is a question whether someone who speaks enthusiastically in this way of the French Revolution is really altogether sincere in his inmost heart. One questions it! There is a crucial test of this sincerity which simply consists in this: one should consider how one would look at such a Movement if it broke out round one at the present day? What would one say to it then? One should really put oneself this question when judging these matters. Only then does one have a kind of crucial test of one's own sincerity, for on the whole it is not so very difficult to be enthusiastic over something that went on so and so many decades ago. The question is whether one could also be enthusiastic if one were directly sharing in it at the present day.

Friedrich Schlegel, as I have said, looked on the Revolution as an explosion of the so-called Enlightenment, the atheistic Enlightenment of the 18th Century. And side by side with this event to which he turned his attention he set another: the appearance of that man who took the place of the Revolution, who contributed so enormously to the later shaping of Europe—Napoleon. Friedrich Schlegel from the lofty standpoint from which he viewed world-history, pointed out that when such a personality enters with such a force into world-evolution he must really be considered from a different standpoint from the one that is generally taken. He makes a very fine observation where he speaks of Napoleon. He says: ‘One should not forget that Napoleon had seven years in which to grow familiar with what he later looked on as his task; for twice seven years the tumult lasted that he carried through Europe, and then for seven years more the life-time lasted that was granted him after his fall. Four times seven years is the career of this man.’ In a very fine way this is pointed out by Friedrich Schlegel.

I have indicated on various occasions what a role is played by this inner law in the case of men who are really representative in the historical evolution of humanity. I have pointed out to you how remarkable it is that Raphael always makes an important painting after a definite number of years. I have pointed out how a flaring-up of Goethe's poetic power always takes place in seven-year periods, whereas between these periods there is a dying down. And one could bring forward many, many such examples. Friedrich Schlegel did not look on Napoleon exactly as an impulse of blessing for European humanity!

Now in these lectures Friedrich Schlegel showed what, in his view, the salvation of Europe demanded after the confusion brought by the Revolution and the Napoleonic age. And he finds that the deeper reason of the disorder lies in the fact that men cannot lift themselves to a more all-embracing standpoint in their world conception, which indeed can only come from an understanding of the spiritual world. Hence, thinks Friedrich Schlegel, instead of a common human world-conception, we have everywhere party-standpoints in which everyone looks on his point of view as something absolute, something which must bring salvation to all. According to Friedrich Schlegel the only salvation of mankind would be for each man to be aware that he takes a certain standpoint and others take others, and an agreement must come about through life itself. No one stand point should gain a footing as the absolute. Now Friedrich Schlegel considers that true Christianity is the one and only thing that can show man how to realize the tolerance that he means—a tolerance not inclining to indifference, but to strong and active life. And therefore he draws the conclusion (I must emphasize it is in 1828) from what he has put before his audience: the whole life of Europe, above all, however, the life of science and life of the State, must be Christianized. And he sees the great evil to be that science has become unchristian, States have become unchristian, and that nowhere has what is meant by the actual Christ-Impulse penetrated in modern times into scientific thought or the life of the State. Now he demands that the Christ-Impulse should once more permeate the scientific and State-life.

Friedrich Schlegel was of course speaking of the science, the political life of his time, 1828. But for certain reasons which will shortly be clearer to us than they are now, one could look at modern science and modern political life as he regarded them in 1828. Try for once to inquire of the sciences which count for the most in public life: physics, chemistry, biology, national-economy, political science too, try to inquire of them whether the Christian impulse is seriously anywhere within them! People do not acknowledge it, but all the sciences are actually atheistic. And the various churches try to get along well with them, as they do not feel strong enough really to permeate science with the principle of Christianity! Hence the cheap and comfortable theory that the religious life makes different demands from those of official science, that science must keep to what can be observed, the religious life to the feelings. Both are to be nicely separate, the one direction is to have no say in the other. One can live together in this way, my dear friends, one can indeed! But it gives rise to the sort of conditions that now exist.

Now what Friedrich Schlegel brought forward at that time was imbued with a deep inner warmth, and his great personal impulse was to serve his age, to demand that religion should not merely be made a Sunday School affair but should be carried into the whole of life, above all the life of science and State. And one can see from the way he spoke at that time in Vienna that he had a hope, a great hope, that out of the disorder produced by the Revolution and Napoleon, a Europe would come forth which would be Christianized in its life of State and Science. The final lecture treated especially of the prevailing spirit of the age and the general revival. And as motto for the lecture, which is truly delivered with great power, he put the Bible text: ‘I come quickly and make all things new.’ And he headed it with this motto because he believed that in the men of the 19th Century, to whom he could speak at that time as young men, there lay the power to receive that which can make all things new.

Anyone who reads through these lectures of Friedrich Schlegel's leaves them with mixed feelings. On the one hand, one says: From what lofty standpoints, from what lucid conceptions men have spoken formerly of science and political life! How one must have longed for such words to kindle a fire in countless souls. And had they kindled this fire what would Europe have become in the course of the 19th Century! I repeat: it is with mixed feelings that one leaves off reading. For in the first place: that is not what came about; what came about are these catastrophic events which now stand so terribly before us. And these catastrophes were preceded by a preparation in which one could have seen exactly that such events had to come. They were preceded by the age of materialistic science—which had become stronger than it was in Friedrich Schlegel's time—preceded by the age of materialistic statesmanship over the whole of Europe. And only with sorrowful feelings can one now behold such a motto: ‘For lo, I come quickly and make all things new.’ Somewhere there must be a mistake. Friedrich Schlegel most certainly spoke from utterly honest conviction. And he was in no slight degree a keen observer of his time; he could judge of the conditions—but yet there must have been something not quite in accord.

For, my dear friends, what did Friedrich Schlegel understand by the Christianizing of Europe? One can admit that he had a feeling for the greatness, the significance of the Christ-Impulse. And hence he also had the feeling that the Christ-Impulse must be grasped in a new way in a new age, that one cannot stop short at the way in which earlier centuries had grasped it. That he knows; a feeling of that is present in him. But, nevertheless, with this feeling he finds support in the already existing Christianity, Christianity as it had developed historically up to his time. He believed that a movement could proceed from Rome of which it could be said ‘I come quickly and make all things new’. He was in fact one of those men of the 19th Century who turned from Protestantism to Catholicism because they believed they could trace more strength in the Catholic life than in the Protestant. But he was a free spirit enough not to become a Catholic zealot.

There is, however, something which Friedrich Schlegel has not said to himself. What he has not told himself is that one of the deepest and most significant truths of Christianity lies in the words: ‘I am with you always even unto the end of the Earth-time.’ Revelation has not ceased; it returns periodically. And whereas Friedrich Schlegel built upon what was already there, he should have seen, have felt, that a real Christianizing of science and the life of the State can only enter if fresh knowledge is drawn out of the spiritual world. This he did not see; he knew nothing of it. And this, my dear friends, shows us, by one of the most significant examples of the 19th Century, that again and again even in the most enlightened minds the illusion crops up that one can link on to something already existing. It is thought that one need not draw something new from the well of rejuvenescence. With these illusions people can no doubt say things and carry out things that are great and brilliant, but it leads to nothing. For Friedrich Schlegel's hope was for a Europe of the 19th Century with its science and political life permeated by Christianity. It must come quickly, he thought, a general renewal of the world, a general re-establishing of the Christ-Impulse. And what came? A materialistic trend in the science of the second half of the 19th Century, compared with which the materialism known by Friedrich Schlegel in 1828 was child's play. And then also came a materializing of political life (one must know history, real history, not the fable convenue which is taught in schools and universities) of which likewise in 1828 he could see nothing around him. Thus he prophesied a Christianizing of Europe and was so bad a prophet that a materializing of Europe came about!

Men live willingly in illusions. And this is connected with the great problem that is now occupying us, the problem that will become clear to us in the coming days: men have forgotten how really to become old, and we must learn again to become old. We must learn in a new way how to become old, and we can only do so through spiritual deepening. But, as I said, this can only become clear in the course of our study. Our time is in general disinclined for it, still disinclined, and it must cease to be disinclined and grow inclined for it.

In any case, my dear friends, the customary thought and feeling of today are not aiming at familiarizing themselves with a certain ease and facility with what, for instance, forms the spiritual challenge of the anthroposophical Spiritual Science. One can see that by various examples: I will bring forward one that lies to hand.

I had a letter the day before yesterday from a man of learning. He writes to me that he has just read a lecture of mine on the task of Spiritual Science,¹ which I gave two years ago, and that he now sees that this Spiritual Science has, after all, something very fruitful for him. There is a thoroughly warm tone in this letter, a thoroughly amiable, kindly tone. One sees that the man is gripped by what he has read in this lecture on the task of Spiritual Science. He is a trained Natural Scientist, standing in the difficult life of today, and he has seen from this lecture that Spiritual Science is not stupid and not unpractical, but can give an impulse to the time. But now let us look at the reverse side of the matter. The same man five years ago sought to attach himself to this Spiritual Science, to join a group where Spiritual Science was studied, begged moreover at that time to have various conversations with me, and these he had. He took part in group meetings five years ago, and five years ago he so reacted that the whole matter became repugnant to him, and he turned away from it so strongly that in the meantime he has become an enthusiastic panegyrist of Herr Freimark, whom you know from his various writings. Now the same man excuses himself by saying that it would perhaps have been better, instead of doing what he did, to have read something of mine, some books of mine, and made himself acquainted with the subject. But he had not done that, he had judged by what others had imparted to him, and then he had got such a forbidding picture of Spiritual Science that he found it was not at all suited to his own path of development. Now after five years he has read a lecture and has found that this is not the case.

I quote this example—and it could be multiplied—of the way in which people stand to what desires in the only possible way—not in the way of Friedrich Schlegel—a Christianizing of all science—a Christianizing of all public life. I quote it as an example of the habits of thought of today, especially of the science of our time. It is therefore no proof that a man has found something antipathetic to him, if he approaches the Anthroposophical Movement, has various talks, takes part in group meetings, grumbles vigorously about the members of these meetings and what they say to him, concludes that he must now abuse Anthroposophy as a whole, and afterwards becomes an enthusiastic panegyrist of Freimark, who has written the vilest articles on Spiritual Science. After five years the same person decides that he will really read something! So it is no proof at all, if so and so many people today are abusive or agree with the abuse, that deep down they might not have a natural tendency to attach themselves to anthroposophical Spiritual Science. If they have as much good will as the man in question, they need five years, many need ten, many fifteen, many fifty, many so long that they can no longer experience it in this incarnation. You see how little people's behaviour is any kind of proof that they are not seeking what is to be found in anthroposophical Spiritual Science.

I bring this example forward because it points to the profoundly important fact I have often mentioned—namely the lack of stability in going into a matter, the holding fast to old traditional prejudices, which people will not let go! And that again is connected with other things. One only needs to transpose oneself in feeling into those ancient times of which I have spoken to you earlier and today. Think of a young man after the Atlantean catastrophe in his connection with other people. He was, let us say—twenty, twenty-five years old; near him he saw someone of forty, fifty, sixty years. He said to himself: What happiness someday to be as old as that, for as one lives one goes on gaining more and more. There was a perfectly obvious, immense veneration for one who had grown old; a looking up to the aged, linked with the consciousness that they had something else to say about life than the young men. Merely to know this theoretically is of no consequence, what matters is to have it in one's whole feeling, and to grow up under this impression. It is of infinite consequence to grow up in such a way as not merely to look back at one's youth and say: Ah, how fine it was when I was a child! This beauty of life will certainly never be taken from men by any kind of spiritual reflection. But it is a one-sided reflection which was supplemented in ancient times by the other: How beautiful it is to become old! For in the same degree as one became weaker in body, one grew into strength of soul, one grew into union with the wisdom of the world. This was at one time an accepted part of training and education.

Now, my dear friends, let us look at still another truth which, to be sure, I have not expressed in the course of these weeks, but which in the course of years I have already mentioned here and there to our friends: We grow older. But only our physical body grows older. For from the spiritual aspect it is not true that we grow older. It is a maya, an external deception. It is certainly a reality in respect of physical life, but it is not true in respect of the full nature of man's life. Yet, we only have the right to say it is not true, if we know that this human being who lives here in the physical world between birth and death is something else than merely his physical body. He consists of the higher members, in the first place of what we have called the etheric body or the body of formative forces, and then the astral body, the ego—if we only speak of these four. But even if we stop short at the etheric body, at the invisible, super-sensible body of formative forces, we see that we bear it within us between birth and death, just as we carry about our physical body of flesh and blood and bones. We carry in us this etheric body of formative forces, but we see there is a difference: the physical body grows ever older, the etheric or body of formative forces is old when we are born; in fact, if we examine its true nature, it is old then and it becomes ever younger and younger. We can say, therefore, that the first spiritual member in us continually becomes more vigorous and younger, in contrast to the physical-corporeal that becomes weak and powerless. And it is true, literally true, that when our face begins to get wrinkled then our etheric body blooms and becomes chubby-cheeked. Yes but, the materialistic thinker could say this is completely contradicted by the fact that one does not perceive it! In ancient times it was perceived. It is only that modern times are such that people pay no attention to the matter and give it no value. In ancient times nature itself brought it in its course, in modern times it is almost an exception. But even so, there are such exceptions. I remember that I once spoke of a similar subject at the end of the eighties with Eduard von Hartmann, the philosopher of the ‘Unconscious’. We came to speak of two men who were both professors at the Berlin University. One was Zeller, a Schwabian, then seventy-two years old, who had just petitioned for his pensioning off, and who thus had the idea ‘I have got so old that I can no longer hold my lectures.’ He was old and fragile with his seventy-two years. And the other was Michelet; he was ninety-three years old. And Michelet had just been with Eduard von Hartmann and said ‘Well, I don't understand Zeller! When I was as old as Zeller I was just a young fellow, and now, only now, do I feel really fitted to say something to people ... As for me, I shall still lecture for many long years!’ But Michelet had something of what can be called a ‘having-grown-young-in-forces’. There is of course no inner necessity that he had grown so old; for instance, a tile from a roof might have killed him when he was fifty years old or earlier. I am not speaking of such things. But after he had grown so old, in his soul he had in fact not grown old, but precisely young. This Michelet, however, in his whole being, was no materialist. Even the Hegel followers have in many ways become materialistic, although they would not assent to that, but Michelet, although he spoke in difficult sentences, was inwardly gripped by the spirit. Only a few, however, can be so inwardly gripped by the spirit. But this is just what is sought for through anthroposophical spiritual science: to give something that can be something to all men, just as religion must be something to all men, that can speak to all men. But this is connected with our whole training and education.

Our whole educational system is constructed on entirely materialistic impulses—and this must be seen in much deeper connections than is generally indicated. People reckon only with man's physical body, never with his becoming-younger. No account is taken of one's growing younger as one grows older! At first glance it is not always immediately evident. But nevertheless, all that in course of time has become the subject of pedagogy and instruction is actually only able to lay hold of men in their youth, unless they happen to become professors or scientific writers. It is not very often that one finds that someone cares to take up in the same way in later life, when he no longer needs it, the material which is absorbed today during one's schooldays. I have known doctors who were leaders in their special subject, that is to say, who had so passed their student years and youth that they had been able to become intellectual leaders. But there was no question at all of their continuing the same methods of acquiring knowledge in later years. I once knew a very famous man—I will not mention his name, he was so renowned—who stood in the front rank in medical science. He made his assistant attend to the later editions of his books, because he himself no longer took part in science; that did not suit his later years.

This is connected however with something else. We are gradually developing a consciousness that what one can absorb through learning is really only of service for one's youth and that one gets beyond it later on. And this is so. One can still force oneself later to turn back to many things, but then one must really force oneself—it does not come naturally as a rule. And yet, unless a man is always taking in something new—not just by allowing it to enter him through the concert hall, the theatre, or, with all due respect, the newspaper or something of that kind—then he grows old in his soul. We must absorb in another way, we must really have the feeling in the soul that one experiences something new, one is being transformed, and that one reacts to what one takes in just as the child reacts. One cannot do this in an artificial way, it can only happen when something is there which one can approach in later life precisely as one approaches the ordinary educational subjects when one is a child.

But now, take our anthroposophical spiritual science. We need not puzzle our heads over what it will be like in later centuries; for them the right form will be found. But in any case, as it is now—to the dislike however, of many—there is no primary necessity to cease absorbing it. No matter how extremely aged one may have become at the present time, one can always find in it something new that grips the soul, that makes the soul young again. And many new things have already been found on spiritual scientific soil—even such new things as let one look into the most important problems of today. But above all the present needs an impulse which directly seizes upon men themselves. Only in that way can this present time come through the calamity into which it has entered, and which works so catastrophically. The impulses in question must approach men direct.

And now if one is not Friedrich Schlegel but a person having insight into what humanity really needs, one can nevertheless keep to several beautiful thoughts that Friedrich Schlegel had and at least rejoice in them. He has spoken of how things must not be treated as absolute from a definite standpoint. He has, in the first place, only seen the parties which always regard their own principle as the only one to make all mankind happy. But in our time much more is treated as absolute! Above all, it is not perceived that an impulse in life can be harmful by itself, but can be beneficial in co-operation with other impulses, because it then becomes something different. Think of three directions that take their course together—I shall make a sketch.

One direction is to symbolize for us the socialism to which modern mankind is striving—not just the current Lenin socialism. The second line is to symbolize what I have often characterized to you as freedom of thought, and the third direction is Spiritual Science. These three things belong to one another; they must work together in life.

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If socialism, in the crude materialistic form in which it appears today, attempts to force itself upon mankind, it will bring the greatest unhappiness upon humanity. It is symbolized for us through the Ahriman at the foot of our Group, in all his forms. If the false freedom of thought, which wants to stop short at every thought and make it valid, seeks to force itself, then harm is again brought to mankind. This is symbolized in our Group through Lucifer. But you can exclude neither Ahriman nor Lucifer from the present day, they must only be balanced through Pneumatology, through Spiritual Science, which is represented by the Representative of mankind who stands in the centre of our Group. It must be repeatedly pointed out that Spiritual Science is not meant to be merely something for people who have cut themselves adrift from ordinary life through some circumstance or other and who want to be stimulated a little through all sorts of things connected with higher matters. Rather is Spiritual Science, anthroposophical Spiritual Science, intended to be something that is connected with the deepest needs of our age. For the nature of our age is such that its forces can only be discovered if one looks into the spiritual. It is connected with the worst evil of our time—that countless men today have no idea that in the social, the moral, the historical life, super-sensible forces are ruling; indeed, just as the air is all around us, so do super-sensible forces hold sway around us. The forces are there, and they demand that we shall receive them consciously, in order to direct them consciously, otherwise they can be led into false paths by the ignorant, or those who have no understanding. In any case the matter must not be made trivial. It must not be thought that one can point to these forces as one often prophesies the future from coffee grounds and so on! But nevertheless in a certain way and sometimes in a very close way the future and the shaping of the future are connected with what can only be recognized if one proceeds from principles of spiritual science.

People will need perhaps longer than five years to see that. But precisely because of these actual events—the signs of the time demand it—there must again and again be emphasized how it is the great demand of our age that people realize the fact that certain things which happen today can only be discovered and, above all, rightly judged, if one proceeds from the standpoint gained through anthroposophical Spiritual Science.

• 1. See: ‘The Mission of Spiritual Science and of its Building at Dornach.’

We will now continue our discussions by speaking of certain matters of method, and here I should like to say that in these few lectures our purpose cannot be to give detailed indications but only general principles. You can also study the Waldorf School Seminar Courses, and with the indications you have received here you will be able to understand them thoroughly. We must get a clear picture of the child between the change of teeth and puberty; we must know that in the years before the change of teeth the inherited characteristics are the determining factors, and that the child receives from his father and mother a “model” body which is completely thrown aside by the time he changes his teeth, for during the first seven-year period it is being replaced by a new body. The change of teeth, indeed, is only the external expression of this replacing of the old body by a new one, upon which the soul and spirit are now at work.

I have already told you that if the spirit-soul is strong, then during the school period from the change of teeth to puberty the child may go through great changes as regards the qualities he formerly possessed. If the individuality is weak, the result will be a body that very closely resembles the inherited characteristics, and with the children of school age we shall still have to take into account deeply-rooted resemblances to the parents or grandparents.

We must be clear in our minds that the independent activity of the etheric body of man only really begins at the change of teeth. The etheric body in the first seven years has to put forward all the independent activity of which it is capable in order to build up the second physical body. So that this etheric body is pre-eminently an inward artist in the child in the first seven years; it is a modeller, a sculptor. And this modelling force, which is applied to the physical body by the etheric body, becomes free, emancipates itself with the change of teeth at the seventh year. Then it can work as an activity of soul.

This is why the child has an impulse to model forms or to paint them. For the first seven years of life the etheric body has been carrying out modelling and painting within the physical body. Now that it has nothing further to do as regards the physical body, or at least not as much as before, it wants to carry its activity outside. If therefore you as teachers have a wide knowledge of the forms that occur in the human organism, and consequently know what kind of forms the child likes to mould out of plastic material or to paint in colour, then you will be able to give him the right guidance. But you yourselves must have a kind of artistic conception of the human organism. It is therefore of real importance for the teacher to try and do some modelling himself, for the teachers' training of today includes nothing of this sort. You will see that however much you have learnt about the lung or the liver, or let us say the complicated ramifications of the vascular system, you will not know as much as if you were to copy the whole thing in wax or plasticine. For then you suddenly begin to have quite a different kind of knowledge of the organs, of the lung for instance. For as you know you must form one half of the lung differently from the other half; the lung is not symmetrical. One half is clearly divided into two segments, the other into three. Before you learn this you are constantly forgetting which is left and which is right. But when you work out these curious asymmetrical forms in wax or plasticine, then you get the feeling that you could not change round left and right any more than you could put the heart on the right hand side of the body. You also get the feeling that the lung has its right place in the organism with its own particular form, and if you mould it rightly you will feel that it is inevitable for the human lung to come gradually into an upright position in standing and walking. If you model the lung forms of animals you will see or you will feel from the touch that the lung of an animal lies horizontally. And so it is with other organs.

You yourselves therefore should really try to learn anatomy by modelling the organs, so that you can then get the children to model or to paint something that is in no way an imitation of the human body but only expresses certain forms. For you will find that the child has an impulse to make forms that are related to the inner human organism. You may get some quite extraordinary experiences in this respect in the course of your lessons.

We have introduced lessons on simple Physiology in the school, and especially in the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh classes, as this is obviously an integral part of the Waldorf School method. Our children paint from the very beginning, and from a certain age they also do carving. Now if you simply let the children work freely it is very interesting to see that when you have explained anything about the human being to them, the lung for instance, then out of themselves they begin to model such forms as the lung or something similar. It is really interesting to see how the child forms things out of his own being. That is why it is essential for you to take up this plastic method, and to find ways and means of making faithful reproductions of the forms of the human organs exactly in wax or plasticine—even, if you like, as our children often do, in mud, for if you have nothing else that is very good material to work with.

This is an inner urge, an inner longing of the etheric body, to be at work in modelling or painting. So you can very easily turn this impulse and longing to account by deriving the letters of the alphabet out of the forms which the child paints or models, for then you will be really moulding your teaching out of a knowledge of man. This is what must be done at this stage.

Now to proceed. Man consists not only of his physical body and etheric body, which latter is emancipated and free at the seventh year, but also of the astral body and ego. What happens to the astral body of the child between the seventh and fourteenth year? It does not really come to its full activity till puberty. Only then is it working completely within the human organism. But whilst the etheric body between birth and the change of teeth is in a certain sense being drawn out of the physical body and becoming independent, the astral body is gradually being drawn inwards between the seventh and fourteenth year, and when it has been drawn right in and is no longer merely loosely connected with the physical and etheric bodies but permeates them completely, then the human being has arrived at the moment of puberty, of sex maturity.

With the boy one can see by the change of voice that the astral body is now quite within the larynx, with the girl one can see by the development of other organs, breast organs and so on, that the astral body has now been completely drawn in. The astral body finds its way slowly into the human body from all sides.

The lines and directions it follows are the nerve fibres. The astral body comes in along the nerve fibres from without inwards. Here it begins to fill out the whole body from the outer environment, from the skin, and gradually draws itself together inside. Before this time it is a kind of loose cloud, in which the child lives. Then it draws itself together, lays firm

hold upon all the organs, and if we may put it somewhat crudely, it unites itself chemically with the organism, with all the tissues of the physical and etheric body.

But something very strange happens here. When the astral body presses inwards from the periphery of the body it makes its way along the nerves which then unite in the spine (see

drawing). Above is the head. It also forces its way slowly through the head nerves, crawls along the nerves towards the central organs, towards the spinal cord, bit by bit, into the head, gradually coming in and filling it all out.

What we must chiefly consider in this connection is how the breathing works in with the whole nervous system. Indeed this working together of the breathing with the whole nervous system is something very special in the human organism. As teacher and educator one should have the very finest feeling for it; only then will one be able to teach rightly. Here then the air enters the body, distributes itself, goes up through the spinal column (see drawing), spreads out in the brain, touches the nerve fibres everywhere, goes down again and pursues paths by which it can then be ejected as carbon dioxide. So we find the nervous system being constantly worked upon by the in-breathed air which distributes itself, goes up through the spinal column, spreads out again, becomes permeated with carbon, goes back again and is breathed out.

It is only in the course of the first school period, between the change of teeth and puberty, that the astral body carries this whole process of breathing, passing along the nerve fibres, right into the physical body. So that during this time when the astral body is gradually finding its way into the physical body with the help of the air breathed in, it is playing upon something that is stretched across like strings of an instrument in the centre of the body, that is, upon the spinal column. Our nerves are really a kind of lyre, a musical instrument, an inner musical instrument that resounds up into the head.

This process begins of course before the change of teeth, but at that time the astral body is only loosely connected with the physical body. It is between the change of teeth and puberty that the astral body really begins to play upon the single nerve fibres with the in-breathed air, like a violin bow on the strings.

You will be fostering all this if you give the child plenty of singing. You must have a feeling that the child is a musical instrument while he is singing, you must stand before your class to whom you are teaching singing or music with the clear feeling: every child is a musical instrument and inwardly feels a kind of well-being in the sound.

For you see, sound is brought about by the particular way the breath is circulated. That is inner music. To begin with, in the first seven years of life, the child learns everything by imitation, but now he should learn to sing out of the inward joy he experiences in building up melodies and rhythms. To show you the kind of inner picture you should have in your mind when you stand before your class in a Singing lesson, I should like to use a comparison which may seem a little crude, but which will make clear to you what I mean. I do not know how many of you, but I hope most, have at some time been able to watch a herd of cows who have fed and are now lying in the meadow digesting their food.

This digestive process of a herd of cows is indeed a marvellous thing. In the cow a kind of image of the whole world is present. The cow digests her food, the digested foodstuffs pass over into the blood vessels and lymphatic vessels, and during this whole process of digestion and nourishment the cow has a sensation of well-being which is at the same time knowledge. During the process of digestion every cow has a wonderful aura in which the whole world is mirrored. It is the most beautiful thing one can see, a herd of cows lying in the meadow digesting their food, and in this process of digestion comprehending the whole world. With us human beings all this has sunk into the subconscious, so that the head can reflect what the body works out and sees revealed as knowledge.

We are really in a bad way, we human beings, because the head does not allow us to experience the lovely things that the cows, for example, experience. We should know much more of the world if we could experience the digestive process, for instance. We should then of course have to experience it with the feeling of knowledge, not with the feeling that man has when he remains in the subconscious in his digestive process. This is simply to make clear what I want to say. I do not wish to imply that we now have to raise the process of digestion into consciousness in our teaching, but I want to show that there is something that should really be present in the child at a higher stage, this feeling of wellbeing at the inward flow of sound. Imagine what would happen if the violin could feel what is going on within it! We only listen to the violin, it is outside us, we are ignorant of the whole origin of the sound and only hear the outward sense picture of it. But if the violin could feel how each string vibrates with the next one it would have the most blissful experiences, provided of course that the music is good. So you must let the child have these little experiences of ecstasy, so that you really call forth a feeling for music in his whole organism, and you must yourself find joy in it.

Of course one must understand something of music. But an essential part of teaching is this artistic element of which I have just spoken.

On this account it is essential, for the inner processes of life between the change of teeth and puberty demand it, to give the children lessons in music right from the very beginning, and at first, as far as possible to accustom them to sing little songs quite empirically without any kind of theory: nothing more than simply singing little songs, but they must be well sung! Then you can use simpler songs from which the children can gradually learn what melody, rhythm and beat are, and so on; but first you must accustom the children to sing little songs as a whole, and to play a little too as far as that is possible. Unless there is clearly no bent at all in this direction every Waldorf child begins to learn some instrument on entering school; as I say, as far as circumstances allow, each child should learn to play an instrument. As early as possible the children should come to feel what it means for their own musical being to flow over into the objective instrument, for which purpose the piano, which should really only be a kind of memorising instrument, is of course the worst possible thing for the child. Another kind of instrument should be chosen, and if possible one that can be blown upon. Here one must of course have a great deal of artistic tact and, I was going to say, a great deal of authority too. If you can, you should choose a wind instrument, as the children will learn most from this and will thereby gradually come to understand music. Admittedly, it can be a hair-raising experience when the children begin to blow. But on the other hand it is a wonderful thing in the child's life when this whole configuration of the air, which otherwise he encloses and holds within him along the nerve-fibres, can now be extended and guided. The human being feels how his whole organism is being enlarged. Processes which are otherwise only within the organism are carried over into the outside world. A similar thing happens when the child learns the violin, when the actual processes, the music that is within him, is directly carried over and he feels how the music in him passes over into the strings through his bow.

But remember, you should begin giving these Music and Singing lessons as early as possible. For it is of very great importance that you not only make all your teaching artistic, but that you also begin teaching the more specifically artistic subjects, Painting, Modelling and Music, as soon as the child comes to school, and that you see to it that he really comes to possess all these things as an inward treasure.

The point of time in the life of the child which falls between the ninth and tenth year must be very specially borne in mind in the teaching of languages. I have characterised for you this turning point between the ninth and tenth year as the time when the child first learns to differentiate between himself and his environment. Up to this time they have been as one. I have already indicated the right method of teaching for the child entering school, but he ought not really to come to school before he begins to change his teeth; one might say that fundamentally any kind of school teaching before this time is wrong; if we are forced to it by law we must do it, but it is not the right thing from the point of view of artistic education. In a true art of education the child should not enter school until the change of teeth. Our first task, as I have shown you, is to begin with something artistic and work out the forms of the letters through art; you should begin with some independent form of art as I have explained to you, and treat everything that has to do with nature in the mood and fashion of fairy tales, legends and myths, in the way I have described. But for the teaching of languages it is specially important to consider this epoch between the ninth and tenth year.

Before this point of time is reached language teaching must under no circumstances be of an intellectual nature; that is to say it must not include any grammar or syntax. Up to the ninth or tenth year the child must learn to speak the foreign language just as he acquires any other habit; he must learn to speak as a matter of habit. It is only when he learns to differentiate himself from his environment that he may begin to examine what he himself is bringing forth in his speech. It is only now that one can begin to speak of noun, adjective, verb and so on, not before. Before this time the child should simply speak and be kept to this speaking.

We have a good opportunity for carrying this out in the Waldorf School, because as soon as the child comes to us at the beginning of his school life he learns two foreign languages besides his mother tongue.

The child comes to school and begins with Main Lessons in periods, as I have already described; he has the Main Lesson for the early part of the morning, and then directly after that the little ones have a lesson which for German children is either English or French. In these language lessons we try not to consider the relationship of one language to the other. Up till the point of time I have described to you between the ninth and tenth year, we disregard the fact that a table for instance is called “ Tisch” in German and “table” in English, that to eat is “ essen” in German and “eat” in English; we connect each language not with the words of another language, but directly with the objects. The child learns to call the ceiling, the lamp, the chair, by their names, whether it is in French or in English. Thus from the seventh to the ninth year we should not attach importance to translation, that is to say rendering a word in one language by a word in another, but the children simply learn to speak in the language, connecting their words with the external objects. So that the child does not need to know or rather does not need to think of the fact that when he says “table” in English it is called “ Tisch” in German, and so on; he does not concern himself with this at all. This does not occur to the children, for they have not been taught to compare the language in any way.

In this manner the child learns every language out of the element from which it stems, namely, the element of feeling. Now a language consists, of course, of sounds, and is either the expression of the soul from within, in which case there is a vowel, or else it is the expression of something external and then there is a consonant. But one must feel this first of all. You will not of course pass on to the children exactly what I am saying here, but in the course of your lesson the child should actually experience the vowel as something connected with feeling, and the consonant as a copy of something in the outside world. He will do this of himself because it lies in human nature, and we must not drive out this impulse but rather lead on from it.

For let us think, what is the vowel A [In these references to A and E the sounds of Ah and Eh should be considered, not the names of the letters.] (ah)? (This does not belong to the lesson, but is only something you ought to know!) What is A? When the sun rises I stand in admiration before it: Ah! A is always the expression of astonishment, wonder. Or again, a fly settles on my forehead; I say: E (Eh). That is the expression of warding off, doing away with: E. The English sounds are somewhat differently connected with our feelings, but in every language, English included, we find that the vowel A expresses astonishment and wonder.

Now let us take a characteristic word: roll—the rolling of a ball, for instance. Here you have the R. Who could help feeling that with the R and the L together, the ball rolls on (see drawing a.). R alone would be like this (see drawing b.):

R. L. goes on. L always implies a flowing on. Here you have an external process imitated in the consonant (see drawing c.).

So the whole language is built up in the vowels out of a feeling of inner astonishment, wonder, self-defence, self-assertion, etc., or out of a feeling of imitation in the case of the consonants. We must not drive these feelings out of the child. He should learn to develop the sound from the external objects and from the way in which his own feelings are related to them. Everything should be derived from the feeling for language. In the word “roll” the child should really fed: r, o, l, l. It is the same thing for every word.

This has been completely lost for modern civilised man. He thinks of the word simply as something written down or something abstract. Man can no longer really feel his way into language. Look how all primitive languages still have feeling within them; the most civilised languages make speech an abstract thing. Look at your own English language, how the second half of the word is simply cast aside, and one skips over the real feeling of the sounds. But the child must dwell in this feeling for language.

This must be cultivated by examining characteristic words in which such a feeling plays. Now in German we call what one has up here “Kopf.” In English it is called “head,” in Italian “testa.” With the abstract kind of relationship to language that people usually have today, what do they say about this? They say, in German the word is “Kopf,” in Italian “testa,” in English “head.” But all this is absolutely untrue. The whole thing is nonsense.

For let us think: “Kopf,” what is that? “Kopf” is what is formed, something that has a rounded form. Theform is expressed when you say “Kopf.” When you say “testa”—you have it in the word “testament” and “testify”—then you are expressing the fact that the head establishes or confirms something. Here you are expressing something quite different. You say of that organ that sits up there: that is the establisher, the testator— testa. Now in English one holds the opinion that the head is the most important part of man, (although you know of course that this opinion is not quite correct). So that in English you say “head,” that is, the most important thing, the goal of all things, the aim and meeting-place of all.

Thus different things are expressed in the different languages. If people wanted to designate the same thing, then the Englishman and the Italian too would say “Kopf.” But they do not designate the same thing. In the primeval human language the same thing was expressed everywhere, so that this primeval language was the same for all. Then people began to separate and to express things differently; that is how the different words came about. When you designate such different things as though they were the same you no longer feel what is contained in them, and it is very important not to drive out this feeling for language. It must be kept alive and for this reason you must not analyse language before the ninth or tenth year.

Only then can you pass on to what a noun, a verb or an adjective is and so on: this should not be done before the ninth or tenth year, otherwise you will be speaking of things which are connected with the child's own being, and this he cannot yet understand because he cannot yet distinguish himself from his environment. It is most important to bear in mind that we must not allow any Grammar or comparison of languages before the ninth or tenth year. Then what the child gets from speaking will be similar to what he gets in his singing.

I have tried to illustrate this inner joy in singing by picturing to you the inner feeling of pleasure that rises up out of the digestive organs of the cows in the meadow when they are digesting their food. There must be present an inner feeling of joy of this kind, or at least some feeling for the thing itself, so that the children feel what is really contained in a word, that they feel the inward “rolling.” Language must be inwardly experienced and not only thought out with the head. Today you mostly find that people only “think” language with their head. Therefore when they want to find the right word in translating from one language into another they take a dictionary. Here the words are so put together that you find “testa” or “Kopf” and people imagine that that is all the same. But it is not all the same. A different conception is expressed in each word, something that can only be expressed out of feeling. We must take this into account in language teaching. And another element comes in here, something which belongs to the spirit. When the human being dies, or before he comes down to earth, he has no possibility of understanding the so-called substantives, for example. Those whom we call the dead know nothing about substantives; they know nothing of the naming of objects, but they still have some knowledge of qualities, and it is therefore possible to communicate with the dead as regards qualities. But in the further course of the life after death that soon ceases also. What lasts longest is an understanding of verbs, words of action, active and passive expressions, and longest of all the expression of sensations: Oh! Ah! I (ee), E (eh); these interjectional expressions are preserved longest of all by the dead.

From this you can see how vital it is that if the human soul is not to become entirely un-spiritual it should have a living experience of interjections. All interjections are actually vowels. And the consonants, which as such are in any case very soon lost after death, and were not present before the descent to earth, are copies of the external world. This we should really experience in our feeling, be aware of it in the child, and see that we do not drive it out by giving lessons on nouns, adjectives and so on too early, but wait with these until the ninth or tenth year is reached.

From the first class of the Waldorf School upwards we have introduced Eurythmy, this visible speech in which, by carrying out certain movements either alone or in groups, man actually reveals himself just as he reveals himself through speech. Now if there is the right treatment in the language lessons, that is to say if the teacher does not ruin the child's feeling for language but rather cherishes it, then the child will feel the transition to Eurythmy to be a perfectly natural one, just as the very little child feels that learning to speak is also a perfectly natural process. You will not have the slightest difficulty in bringing Eurythmy to the children. If they are healthily developed children they will want it. You will always discover something that is pathologically wrong with children who do not wish to do Eurythmy. They want it as a matter of course, just as when they were quite little children they wanted to learn to speak, if all their organs were sound. That is because the child feels a very strong impulse to express his inward experiences as activities of will in his own body. This can be seen in the very early years when he begins to laugh and cry, and in the various ways in which feelings are expressed in the face.

It would have to be a very metaphorical way of speaking if you were to say that a dog or any other animal laughs. In any case it does not laugh in the same way as the human being does, neither does it cry in the same way. Indeed in the animal all gestures and movements which carry over inward experience into the element of will are quite different. There is a great difference between animal and man in this respect.

What is expressed in Eurythmy rests upon laws just as language does. Speaking is not an arbitrary thing. With a word like “water” for instance, you cannot put another vowel in place of the “a,” you cannot say “wuter,” or anything like that. Speech has laws, and so has Eurythmy. In the ordinary movements of the body man is in a sense free, although he also does many things out of a certain instinct. When he is cogitating about something, he puts his finger to his forehead; when he wants to show that something is not true, he shakes his head and his hand, extinguishing it, as it were. But Eurythmy leads inward and outward experiences over into ordered movements, just as speech leads an inward experience over into the sound: this is what Eurythmy is, and the child wants to learn it. For this reason the fact that Eurythmy is not yet taught in modern education proves that there is no thought of drawing forth the human faculties out of the very nature of man himself, for if you do that then you must come to Eurythmy in the natural course of things.

This will not mean any interference with Gymnastics, the teaching of physical exercises. This is something quite different, and the teacher and educator must recognise the difference. Gymnastics as taught today and all kinds of sport are something quite different from Eurythmy. You can quite well have both together. For the conception of space is very often considered in quite an abstract way, and people do not take into account that space is something concrete. For people have become so accustomed to think of the earth as round that when someone who lives in this part of the world makes a jump he says he jumps “up.” But when someone in the Antipodes, who has his legs down here and his head up there, jumps, he jumps “down”—or so we imagine. But this is not anything we can experience. I once read a book on Natural Philosophy where the author tried to ridicule the idea that the sky is above us by saying: Down there in the Antipodes the sky must be below! But the truth is far richer than that. We do not make judgments about the world and about space in such a way that we leave ourselves out of it altogether and simply consider space by itself as something abstract. There are certain philosophers who do this—Hume and Mill and Kant. But this is all untrue. It is really all nonsense. Space is something concrete of which man is sensible. He feels himself within space and he feels the necessity of finding his place in it; when he thus finds his way into the balance of space, into the different conditions of space, then Sport and Gymnastics arise. In these man is trying to find his own relationship to space.

If you do this gymnastic movement (arms outstretched), you have the feeling that you are bringing your two arms into a horizontal direction. If you jump you have the feeling that you are moving your body upwards by its own force. These are gymnastic exercises. But if you feel you are holding within you something which you are experiencing inwardly—the sound EE—and you reflect upon it, then you may make perhaps a similar movement, but in this case, the inner soul quality is expressed in the movement. Man reveals his inward self. That is what he does in Eurythmy, which is thus the revelation of the inner self. In Eurythmy there is expressed what man can experience in breathing and in the circulation of the blood, when they come into the realm of soul. In Gymnastics and in Sport man feels as though space were a framework filled with all sorts of lines and directions into which he springs and which he follows, and he makes his apparatus accordingly. He climbs a ladder or pulls himself up on a rope. Here man is acting in accordance with external space.

That is the difference between Gymnastics and Eurythmy. Eurythmy lets the soul life flow outwards and thereby becomes a real expression of the human being, like language; Eurythmy is visible speech.

By means of Gymnastics and Sport man fits himself into external space, adapts himself to the world, experiments to see whether he fits in with the world in this way or in that. That is not language, that is not a revelation of man, but rather a demand the world makes upon him that he should be fit for the world and be able to find his way into it. This difference must be noticed. It expresses itself in the fact that the Gymnastics teacher makes the children do movements whereby they may adapt themselves to the outside world. The Eurythmy teacher expresses what is in the inner being of man. We must feel this, we must be sensible of it. Then Eurythmy, Gymnastics, and Games too, if you like, will all take their right place in our teaching.

We will speak further of this tomorrow.

Held before physicians

The wish has been expressed for me to expound somewhat further upon curative eurythmy. Basically, the empiric material related to curative eurythmy was developed and presented in the last course for physicians in Dornach, and it is hardly necessary to go beyond what was given at that time. Used in the proper manner, it will be of far-reaching importance. Today I would like to speak to you about the whole purpose and meaning of curative eurythmy.

Curative eurythmy took shape out of something purely artistic, out of what was first developed as an artistic impulse; and in certain connections a basis for the correct understanding of curative eurythmy must be taken from artistic eurythmy. Now perhaps I will be most clearly understood if at first I attempt to indicate the difference between artistic and curative eurythmy. Eurythmy in general is based on the possibility of transforming in a certain direction what takes place in the human organism in speech. For this reason eurythmy is, artistically, really a sort of visible speech. We must recognize that two components work together in human speech. One component originates through a particular use of the formative apparatus—of which I may speak on the basis of the preceding lectures—from a layer of the nervous system which lies further inward. What is related to the mental image plays in here. Esentially the apparatus of mental representation in the speech apparatus extends itself, to be sure in a somewhat complicated way, even into the construction of the nervous system, and it is exactly this which then produces in the further radiation one of the components at work in speech. The other component comes up out of the human being's metabolism. In a way we have a meeting of two dynamic systems, one coming out of the human metabolism and another arising from the nerve-sensory system. The two encounter each other in such a way that the metabolic system is transformed first into the circulatory processes; and that which has to do with mental representation, coming from the nerve-sensory system is metamorphosed into the respiratory system. In the respiratory and circulatory systems these two dynamic systems converge, and, since the whole is carried over into the air by means of the speech-system, it is possible for the human astral organism to stream into what is created there as movement of air. If we consider the outermost periphery of the human organism, we see that speech comes into being through an embodiment on the one hand of what has to do with mental picturing and on the other, of the metabolic nature which, when expressed in terms of the soul, is actually the will-nature. Thus we have what finds its expression in the soul as will, and bodily its expression in the metabolic system, that is, to the extent in which the nervous system has a part in the will (which it in fact has, insofar as metabolism takes place—not as nervesensory activity—in the nervous system). Thus, what is of a volitional nature and finds its bodily expression in the metabolic system, and that which is of the nature of mental representation which finds its expression in what I would like to call a section or stratum of the nerve-sensory system, conjoin to form what results. They then find physical expression in what manifests as ordinary speech or singing. In the case of song it is something different but nonetheless similar. In eurythmy one blocks out what is of the nature of mental representation to the greatest possible degree and brings volition into force. In this way ordinary speech is metamorphosed into movements of the entire human organism: one strengthens one component, the will or the metabolism, one weakens the mental representation or the nerve-sensory, and one has as a result eurythmy. In this way one is really in the position to create correlatives in human movement for the individual sounds, whether they be vowels or consonants. Just as a certain formation and movement of air can correspond to an A or an L, so can an outwardly visible form in movement correspond to an A or an L. Here we have a movement, or movement structure, as I would like to call it, derived from the human organism through sensible-super-sensible vision; which proceeds from the human organism with the same lawfulness as speech in sounds and which, although more volitionally-oriented, is only a metamorphosis of this speech. One can compose the entire alphabet in this speech; one can bring everything linguistic to expression through this eurythmy. When artistic eurythmy is performed, the attention of the human being and all the processes in the human physical, etheric and astral organisms which mediate this alertfulness, are directed to the corresponding sound, to the formation of the word or the artistic formation of the sentence, to the metric form, the poetic form and so on. When active in artistic eurythmy, one is completely absorbed in the possibilities of artistic formation and portrayal of the elements of speech. The human being surrenders to the outer world when he is artistically active in eurythmy, since in eurythmy one naturally follows the structure (“Gestaltung”) that is also common to speech. And since one does not stop at an A or an L in the middle of a word, but carries on further, in artistic eurythmy we have to do with something that may quite possibly take place in the normally functioning human organism. Ordinary artistic eurythmy has no other physiological consequences for the human organism other than that this artistic eurythmy calls forth in an energetic manner an inner harmony in the human functions, insofar as these functions form a totality in the human organism.

Thus one can say that when one refrains in the right manner from exaggeration in eurythmic artistic activity, it is conducive to health. But just as everything conducive to health can also make one sick if exaggerated, the artistic practice of eurythmy can be overdone. Professor Benedikt, the famous criminal psychologist, emphasized repeatedly—because he could not endure the anti-alcohol movement—that more people die from water than from alcohol. Even the statistics must concede this: over-indulgence in water leads to numerous sorts of illness. Eurythmy, in general, as long as it remains within the appropriate limits, can only be conducive to health; a certain artistic feeling of satisfaction or dissatisfaction will arise in any case.

That which lives in the devotion to the sound-, word- and sentence-formation in artistic eurythmy is reflected inwards in curative eurythmy. It is reflected inwards simply through the fact that in curative eurythmy the sound A, for example, must be repeated a number of times in succession. By this means, something entirely different is achieved than when I pass over from the sound A to an I or something else in an artistic presentation. Now it will be a question of gaining insight into the actual therapeutic process which can take place through eurythmy. I cannot avoid expressing concern about something which lies close at hand here: amateurs and dilettants appropriate such things very easily. From the beginning I have emphasized that curative eurythmy should be practised by the doctor himself or herself, or at the very least should only be practised in the most intimate collaboration with a doctor. The attitude which spiritual science takes in relation to such offshoots will be taken as indicative of spiritual science's position in regard to medicine as a whole.

Spiritual science does not operate in the field of medicine in such a manner as I once encountered twenty years ago. People who called themselves nature-therapy doctors were present at an anthroposophical convention and presented me with a treatise in which it was repeatedly stated in a variety of ways: all healing is based upon bringing into harmony what is inharmonious in the organism. This sentence was repeated for six pages in the most manifold variations: one should harmonize the disharmonious. There is nothing at all that one can object to in this sentence, it is only that one must be able to do it in a specific manner in a particular case. That is where it becomes unpleasant for people who hold an opinion such as was expressed in their final sentence: everything which has been said above proves that one can leave the unbelievably complicated medicine behind and restrict oneself to harmonizing the disharmonious. That would be, in their own words, “intoxicatingly simple.” Something so intoxicatingly simple I can't offer you. Medicine cannot be driven into intoxicating simplicity by spiritual science, but rather to greater complexity, as you will have gathered by now from various instances. Through spiritual science you will not have less to learn, but more, but there is a snag attached to learning less anyway, because through learning more everything will become clearer and more ordered and the learning thereby more interesting. Whoever had the idea that healing would be made easier through spiritual science will already have been convinced by the expositions that I have made here that this is not the case.

And so it is with curative eurythmy. It is definitely the case that curative eurythmy should not be applied without a thorough diagnosis and that it should only be practised in agreement with professional medical science, for the reason that one has to do here with the application of an exceedingly intimate knowledge of the human organism.

Because of the fact that in normal speech the metabolic activity and the plastic activity of the nerve-sensory system collide with one another, the result of this collision, is unloaded in the movement of the air (This is something which takes place in relative isolation from the human organism so that as a result speech is released from the organism.) all of what is shaped through curative eurythmy is thrown back into the organism, and one has thus to do with the following. Imagine that you place an A-movement together with an L-movement. First of all you have the movements repeated, so that the whole affair is not discharged outside, but rather that the repetition pours into the inner processes of the human organism. By allowing the vowel and consonantal elements, let us say in the A-movement and the L-movement, to work together, you will always induce a functioning in the human organism that implies a mutual activity of the metabolic-man and the nerve-sensory-man. To be sure, the activity of the nerve-sensory system is in any case weakened in eurythmy, but the two components, the dampened nerve-sensory activity and the heightened metabolic activity brought about by the eurythmic movement, work together in this exceptional proportion nevertheless. One has simply, a driving of the metabolic-man against the nerve-sensory-man, when one does the L-movement repeatedly, and when the L-movement is associated with an A-form. Thus one can say: the entire functioning of the human organism is carried along with the instigation of the forms and movements necessary. When, for example, you let someone carry out a consonantal movement, it works, to begin with, in such a way that it in essence unloads its whole power, its inner dynamic, on the process of inhalation; the whole procedure of inhalation actually lies in your control. According to the consonants you induce, you have the entire process of in-breathing in your hands. You strengthen the process of inhalation through each consonantal activity.

You perhaps know, from what has already been told about curative eurythmy, that movements of artistic eurythmy are somewhat modified for curative eurythmy. One can say that when an A- or an L-movement is carried out, it is always associated with a strengthening or weakening of the thrust initiated by inhalation. You must take inhalation into consideration here in its entirety. In examining the in-breath, we must to begin with follow its path into the middle part of the human organism, and then, however, through the medial canal, vertebral (“Rückenmarkscanal”) canal into the brain. The activity of the brain is in essence the harmonising of the breathing activity, in its refinement within the brain, with the nerve-sensory activity. There is no activity of the brain which may be considered alone; every such activity results from the nerve-sensory activity and the breathing activity. All the activities of the brain must be studied in such a way that respiration is taken into consideration. By inducing certain consonants, various consonants, you can, by way of the breath, influence the plastic activity of man, the sculptural activity, in the most striking manner. In the case of a child who is getting his second teeth, for example, you have only to know from a certain artistic grasp of the human organism how the upper teeth will be built up out of plastic activity which works from above downwards. In the case of the upper teeth, the plastic activity that forms them is active from the front backwards. How will the lower teeth be formed? In the teeth of the lower jaw the plastic activity works from the back to the front. If I were to express schematically the activity going on in teething, it would be as follows: the upper teeth are built up from front to back; thus, the back surfaces are shaped and the front surfaces are deposited. The lower teeth are built up from back to front. This is the manner in which the forces work together.

If you notice that a child is having difficulties in teething, you can assist the process in the maxilla, for example, simply by having the child do the movement for A. You can support the same process in the lower jaw with the O-movement. You can in fact gain control over the fictile powers through specific instigation. In order to give this plastic activity nourishment, so to speak, you must direct your attention principally to supporting the thrust that accompanies the inhalation; you must add to the plastic activity accomplished in this way by the A- and O-movements what you observe resulting from the entire human constitution. Let us say we have a person with weak peristalsis, who is somewhat inclined to constipation. In the period of life in which teething takes place, the intestinal activity is related to the building up of the teeth, and one must focus one's attention there, where irregularities in teething have their origin. If you wish to come to the assistance of the thrust of breath which travels through the vertebral canal into the brain and expedites from there the formative forces, which one has in one's power through the movements for vowels, you will be able to do this, if you have precisely such a case before you by having the child carry out the movmeent for L. If you simply study curative eurythmy, the way in which you should apply it will become clear to you through the diagnosis. Without a diagnosis it should not be practised, because in certain circumstances one can do entirely the wrong thing. However, it is indeed a fact that one must awaken in oneself a feeling for the artistic in the dynamics of the human being as a whole. One must develop an intuitive glance for the artistic. Let us assume that the child is observed to have certain difficulties at the time it begins to teethe; it has certain disorders which shouldn't be present. One discovers that the intestinal movement is irregular and insufficient. With the L-movement one is properly prepared. After one has done the L-movement for a time, one comes to the assistance of what one has conducted to the formative centre with the movement for A or O. The vowel movements affect the exhalation and begin to work already in the brain. The stream of breath works in the brain. Everything associated with inhalation, in its most extensive, inclusive sense, expresses itself in the consonantal element. That can be reinforced and promoted through consonantal eurythmy. Everything having to do with exhalation can be rein-forced by doing the vowels in eurythmy. When you do the vowels in eurythmy, the plastic element works directly together with the radiating element. You must judge, by how much strength must be applied, how many times the sound must be repeated. Let us say, for example, we have to do with a kidney disturbance of one sort or another. You may say to yourself that the kidney disturbance is in one stage or another, let us say in the beginning stage. The moment that I have certain movements performed—S-movements, for example¹—I will have a beneficial effect on the kidney disturbance in its early stages. If the kidney distrubance has been present a considerable length of time, and the insufficient function has led already to deformation, I must then first prepare the ground with consonantal eurythmy and follow with the vowels; in order to work on formation through the vowels as opposed to the deformation which has already taken place. In short, one must approach the matter as untheoretically as possible; one must discover, solely out of knowledge of the human organism in its healthy and diseased states, what was given in the rules I set out in Dornach that have been passed on to you.

Now if, for example, it should be a case of suppressed heart-lung function which in turn affects the kidneys, one will make progress in the beginning stages with the movement for B or P. From this you will see that one has the entire functioning within one's grasp here, and that everything depends upon one's understanding that a sort of centrifugal dynamic is present in each separate human organ which is rounded-off plastically by another dynamic working from without inwards—a dynamic which is not exactly centripetal, but which could be designated as a similar-to-centripetal dynamic that works into every human organ. One will only be able to pursue the study of physiology properly when one is able to contemplate each separate human organ in its polarity. These polarities lie within, a centrifugal and a centripetal, in each human organ. For everything that is of a sculptural nature, the distribution and differentiation of the relative warmth and the organization of the air-conditions play a great role. For everything which is centrifugal, radiating, a great role is played by what in the human organism comes from the dynamic of the substances of the world themselves and what is developed in surmounting the vitality proper to external nature (“der äusseren Wesenheit”) in the human organism. These two dynamics must be regulated reciprocally, and one can hope that curative eurythmists come forth who will cultivate a fine feeling for what can be achieved in different instances. Precisely here will extraordinarily much depend upon the artistic disposition of the soul.

Now when you take into consideration that the whole system of curative eurythmy can be reinforced by actual therapeutic methods, you find you have two factors which work together. One can say to oneself, such and such affects the heart in particular in this or that way; one can reinforce that effect with a curative eurythmy exercise: then one thing will promote the other in a complementary manner. That is something which opens up truly great vistas, which can have an extraordinarily great future. Just think of the effect of massage, in some instances. I do not want to say anything against it or to criticise it; I acknowledge its importance. Yet this outward scratching about on the human being is inconsequential in comparison to the massage that you apply when you induce entire systems of organs which work together to move inwardly in a different manner, through the elements of curative eurythmy. That is the most inward kneading of the whole organism, linked with effects in the etheric, the astral, the ego organisms. Thus it is possible to say that what one recognizes as correct in massage is, in an unendingly powerful way, made inward through curative eurythmy. One will in fact first gain an insight into the curative effects of gymnastics as well when one examines the resemblance between gymnastic exercises and eurythmic exercises. What is therapeutic in gymnastics is only of secondary importance to what is of significance in curative eurythmy. As I said at that time in Domach, if one has the E-movement carried out in a rhythmic sequence in the manner that was then demonstrated, one does a great deal to help weak-looking children—children who only feebly carry through their bodily functions—to become healthier and to begin to become stronger, as one would wish to see them. It is, however, necessary that one takes the whole human being into consideration in such matters. Again and again it happens that the entire human being is taken too little into consideration. I know that that is a triviality, for you will say: “We know that, of course.” Indeed, but again and again in practice it is not taken into consideration. How often one hears: this person has an irregularly functioning heart, something must be done for it. Yes, but if one were to take the total human being into consideration one would have to say: thank God that he has such a heart; his organism couldn't tolerate a normal one. Similarly, for example, under certain circumstances one would have to say of a person who had broken his nose, that he had suffered a favourable stroke of fate: if he breathed in air through completely developed channels, he would have too much air for his organism to process. What has its foundations in the organism as a whole must everywhere be taken into consideration.

When the movements for “I” are carried out in a certain manner, they tend to harmonize the association of the right and the left sides of the human organism. With “I” one can be of help in all asymmetries that appear in the human organism.. Through the cautious use of “I”-movements one can have excellent results with curative eurythmy, even in the case of squinting. With squinting I would only advise that one does not proceed as one would with a person who walks asymmetrically, for example, or who can use the right and left arms too asymmetrically. For squinting I would apply the usual I-movements but would carry them out only with the index finger, and in this way I would have them repeated as often as possible during the day. When the person is still growing this can bring good results, especially if the “I” is carried out with the big toe as well. The best results will be achieved, however, when one can bring the patient to do it with the little toe as well. On the asymmetries affecting the sight these eurythmic exercises performed at the periphery will have a most beneficial effect. On the other hand, when it is a question of evening-out an indexterity in the manner in which a person walks, it could even bring good results to have him do the reverse: that is, to carry out the I-movement with the line of vision, as when sighting. Provided, of course, it does him no harm. In fact, one can really establish a sort of law: everything which is abnormal in the lower human being tends to be normalized by what is created as a compensation in the upper man, and vice versa.

When you find insecurities in standing, which may, of course, arise in the most varied manners, the forms of “U” will be of especial importance. However, you must see that the U-form is brought to completion so that the limbs concerned are really contiguous. This being in direct contact with one another, so that one limb feels the other, is of particular importance. Only then is the U-form complete. In artistic eurythmy it is only necessary to indicate that this is so; in curative eurythmy, however, it must be carried out: one limb is brought up against the other so that one stands as when “at attention”—with the legs pressed against one another. That is an extraordinarily curative exercise for people who are affected with a compulsive twitching in the head. When it is fitting to treat corpulent children by means of curative eurythmy, the O-forms serve the purpose well. All these forms, however, if they are intended to bring results as curative eurythmy, must be combined with a distinct perception of the muscle system involved. If you simply make the O-form as many eurythmists do, it will suffice as an outward indication. It will not have a curative effect, however, unless in the process of doing the exercise you feel the muscles throughout the arm. The slack swinging form has no effect; the sensation of the whole muscle system in its details, however, will bring the respective curative eurythmic result. It is particularly important to take heed that the curative eurythmic exercise is strengthened by ex-tending it into the consciousness. When you do the O-movement as I just did it, it is associated with a strong projection into the consciousness. Tell the obese person whom you treat with the O-form: “think of your obesity, of your own girth, when doing the ‘O’!” In this way the consciousness centres on exactly that which is to be remedied. You thereby rein-force in its innermost nature what is intended, namely, that the element of consciousness is not in the least to be underestimated in healing.

In this connection I have reason to believe that when these things become known, a battle with the orthopedists will take place. Despite the fact that they are experiencing a great deal of success in their field at the present time, they are quite intent on treating the human being as a sort of mechanism. In the case of appliances used therapeutically in such a way that the person in question should continually feel them, that they enter his awareness, this consciousness is an excellent curative factor. Let us say, for example, that I find it would be advantageous for someone to straighten his shoulders; and I give him bandages which bring to his awareness that the shoulders should be held hack—in other words, so that the treatment isn't carried out unconsciously. It is exactly the same in curative eurythmy: these matters are brought to consciousness, in order that, as I have already said, this concentration vitally reinforce the curative eurythmic element itself.

Let us go on to something of particular importance which I want to tell you. Everything that is an E-form has a regulatory effect where the astral organism affects the etheric organism either too strongly or too weakly. Thus in all those cases where one determines that either an exaggerated or an insufficient activity of the astral organism is present, one will under circumstances be able to achieve a great deal with the E-forms, with the repetition of the E-forms. E-forms could have a curative effect upon both complexes of symptoms which I described in the previous hour. What I have just said is particularly true when the astral organism is under the influence of the etheric, when it is too weak, when it permits itself to be influenced by the etheric, which itself is too strong as the result of an irregularity in the astral organism of the head. The opposite condition in which the etheric is too strongly affected by the astral may also arise. That would be the case when the astral comes very forcefully to expression in the intestine: when one gets diarrhoea on every occasion when one is a bit afraid. The U-forms will have an especially advantageous effect here.

Yesterday a question arose which I would like to discuss briefly here, in closing: can one allow persons who are pregnant or who have gynaecological complaints to do certain eurythmic movements? Just examine what was given as a rule in Dornach. You should be able to adhere to it even though in the case of pregnant women and gynaecological patients you must make certain that the abdomen is left in peace. It must be left undisturbed. It must not be irritated by curative eurythmic exercises. Although the abdomen itself is left in peace, exercises may nevertheless definitely be done with the arms while sitting, or while lying down, with the head; and while that which must have quiet is in complete repose. You will still find enough in the indications given to be able to take measures through curative eurythmy. Naturally when the person cannot move at all, eurythmy would he quite the most beneficial for him, as in the case of paralytic symptoms; but under the circumstances the person cannot carry them out. They would definitely be the most wholesome. Such paralytic symptoms are of course in essence an abnormal functioning of the astral body, which does not engage itself in the etheric and physical organisation. Here one will be able to achieve a great deal with E-movements. An E-movement that is very beneficial for disturbances of the abdomen is the carefully performed, not exaggerated, artificial crossing of the eyes. It is in fact true that the somewhat decadent yogis who do certain exercises in which they focus their eyes on the tip of the nose, really intend to evoke the most harmonic activity of the abdomen possible, since they know the significance of abdominal activity for what such people call spiritual activity. Thus one can say: matters are such that one can simply replace, with a lighter eurythmy of the arms, the fingers, or even the eyes when it is necessary, certain things that a person with a healthy abdomen would do with jumps. A pregnant woman should never be induced to do curative eurythmy exercises with jumps. That, of course, won't do.

As you see, it was not intended to produce a panacea that could be learnt in half a day. Curative eurythmy too must be acquired through earnest labour, and it is necessary in fact that it is acquired through practice. For practically every time you put the curative eurythmy exercises into practice, with the help of your curative exercises, you will be able to make better use of them. It is indeed so: through practice one will make exceptionally good progress, most particularly in curative eurythmy.

Now it was my intention to present you with this more theoretical discussion of curative eurythmy, because everything else having to do with it, to the extent curative eurythmy exists today, was given earlier in Dornach and will be handed on by our physician friends and thus be available to you; and because I wanted to give you the possibility of understanding the whole physiological and therapeutic meaning of eurythmy. Of course, on the other hand, one must not overestimate something like curative eurythmy. In many cases it will be an extraordinarily important resource, but one should not overestimate it. One must make clear to oneself that really nothing can be achieved with intoxicating simplicity; one can no more heal a broken leg or broken arm through curative exercises alone, than one can heal a carcinoma through the intoxicating simplicity of harmonizing the disharmonious. One must be entirely clear that it is not an increase in dilettantism and medical amateurism which is to be found on the path of spiritual science, but rather a definite enrichment of professional medical ability. Excuse me for emphasizing it so often; in order to prevent misunderstandings, however, I particularly want to stress again that the methods are not brought forward in amateurish opposition to official medicine, as is often the case in fanatical movements. They take into account the state of medical science at present, and desire only to lead it along the path along which it must be led, for the simple reason that it is not true that the human being is only that which the physiology and anatomy of today maintain he is. He is that, to be sure, but he is something more as well: he must be recognized from the aspect of his soul and spirit. Then those peculiar mental pictures that constantly show up nowadays, in which the brain for example is seen as a sort of central telegraphic apparatus to which the so-called sensory nerves run, and from which the motor nerves lead, will disappear. The whole matter has no relation to reality, as will have become clear to you through today's lecture. In the nerve-sensory system one has rather to do with a sort of modelling dynamic, from which something is wrung which then accommodates itself to the activity of the soul. There is a great deal to be done in order to give back to a healthy physiology what has been taken from it through the correlations incorrectly established between the physical organism and the functions of the soul. Something physical is indeed present for every function of the soul during the course of man's life on earth, but, on the other hand, nothing is used for the soul which has not a much greater importance for the bodily organization in its reciprocal action with the other organs. Nothing which is used for the soul is used merely as an organ of the soul. Our entire soul and spiritual make-up is wrested from the bodily nature, is taken out of the bodily. We may not permit ourselves to indicate certain organs as belonging to the soul. We could only say that the soul-functions are such that they are disengaged from the organic functions and are particularly adapted to the activity of the soul. Only when we become earnest about what is at work in the human organism, when we no longer proceed in so outward a fashion, that we picture the whole nervous system as an insertion serving the life of the soul can we hope to perceive the human organization as it is. Only when the human organism is so perceived can it provide the basis for a physiology and therapy which work in the Iight, not grope in the dark. I make this last remark to you, so that you yourselves do not leave here under a misunderstanding, and to enable you to counter misunderstandings which arise again and again.

Our carcinoma medication, for example, has been criticized with the “intoxicating simplicity” that arises from having no idea whatever about the knowledge through which one has arrived at the medication. People have constructed instead some simple analogy or another and believe that in disposing of the analogy, one can have done with the matter itself. A proviso for the development and growth of the spiritual-scientific side of medicine is that one confront the misunderstandings at least to a degree. People will soon notice that when they cannot spread misunderstandings, they will have very little at all to say, for the principal concern of the opponents is the broadcasting of misconceptions about the whole of Anthroposophy. Count how many adversaries have something other than misconceptions to relate. I must say that I often read antagonistic articles or essays and could connect them with something else entirely, were my name not present. It has no relation to what is nurtured here; it deals with something entirely different. Sometimes I am very much surprised and would like to go and search out where that which is being refuted has been expounded; in any case not here. In medicine the same thing is done as in theology; there one encounters it as well. One can, for example, say to a theologian at the pinnacle of science: we have the same to say about the Christ as you, only somewhat more. He is, however, not content when one says what he himself says, and then something in addition. He maintains one should not add anything to it. He does not criticize what is contrary to his assertions, he criticizes what he says nothing at all about. He criticizes what is said, simply because one speaks about something he knows nothing about. He considers it a mistake to know something about what he knows nothing about. Medicine must not fall into this error. We must observe accurately, and, rather than contradicting, we must add a great deal, out of an extremely well-founded knowledge of the healthy and diseased human being.

References to books related to passages in the text

Page 2 “... metamorphic variation ... Goetheanistic contemplation ...” see: Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, edited by Rudolf Steiner, Kurschner's “Deutsche National-Literature”, Vol. 1, Troxler-Verlag Bern 1949

Page 65 The lecture which appears here as number seven (April 18, 1921) was given in connection with the so-called second course for physicians and is printed in the book Geisteswissenschaftliche Gesichtspunkte zur Therapie, Dornach 1963, as well. Rudolf Steiner refers to this lecture at the end of the foregoing with the words: “After a short pause we will proceed with greater reference to eurythmy.”

Page 79 The eighth lecture was given in connection with the “Medical Week” held in Stuttgart from the 26th to the 28th of October 1922 (see Physiologisch-Therapeutisches auf Grundlage der Geisteswissenschaft, Dornach 1965.) This lecture is printed only here.

Page 92 “E-forms could have a curative effect upon both complexes of symptoms which I described in the previous hour.” See the fourth lecture in the series: Anthroposophische Grundlagen für die Arzneikunst, in Physiologisch-Therapeutisches auf Grundlage der Geisteswissenschaft. Dornach 1965, page 140

• 1. In another transcript A appears here rather than S.—German editor.

One of the great men whose busts stand before you here, the German philosopher Hegel, summarized his conviction of the essence of human development in the words: this development is a progress of humanity in the consciousness of freedom. And with this he wanted to imply that the development of humanity is not a repetition, a succession of the same facts, the same events, but a constant and continuous progress; that from epoch to epoch humanity rises to ever higher and higher levels.

Those who look at human evolution from a spiritual point of view will find a deep truth in Hegel's saying. This is not to say that there are not also temporary epochs of decline within the ascending course of human development; but it means that the great development of our race is viewed from a small point of view if one does not see the continuing ascent on a large scale in the face of temporary epochs of decline. Only those who are unable to see into the depths of the process of development have the idea, which is so frequently encountered today, when we look further back in time or even look ahead into the future, as if everything, man himself in his form or the natural kingdoms around him, were still roughly similar to what they are today. Even when we speak of development, the spirit, which lives only on the physical plane, usually has no conception of the tremendous differences that exist between the individual epochs of the human spirit and advancing culture. It often seems grotesque to the spirit when the great differences between the nature kingdoms in the past epochs are described to it or when one prophetically points to the future epochs.

Only when we observe the differentiated development of humanity does it present us with the configuration of the higher worlds on the physical plane. Only he recognizes his epoch who knows where he stands in the development of humanity. We have to look around a little to see where we stand – which level our present human development corresponds to. What is called occult wisdom teaches us that on a descending path of development, what we call the spirit in the German language is not the other parts of the human being. It is the spirit that has descended the furthest onto the physical plane in our epoch. Since the last third of the 19th century, it has been, as it were, on the way up again, and anyone who recognizes the configuration can only express it by saying that within this epoch the deepest entanglement of spirit with matter has been the characteristic; now it is striving to ascend again. And all who strive spiritually strive to escape from this entanglement.

For a long time such an important crossroads of human development has been in preparation. If one examines occultly how long this has been in preparation for what emerged as an important turning point in the spiritual development of humanity in the 19th century, one comes back to the time when the human spirit descended from those insights that were still more or less born of the astral plane, and one comes to a special mission in the evolution of humanity for the last four to five centuries. We can pinpoint the most important point at which human evolution moved down from the astral to the physical plane and spiritual knowledge passed into the material realm as the time when the old Ptolemaic worldview, which is not nonsense but a projection of astral knowledge onto the physical plane, was brought down to the physical plane by Copernicus. This realization then penetrated more and more into the later stages of development, until in the 19th century it was taken even lower, when people even wanted to grasp the spirit materially. Those who understand the theosophical movement in the right sense do not criticize what has brought humanity so low. That would not be an active theosophical life. The active theosophical life rather asks: How do we get out of the bonds of the physical plan? — and it tries to recognize what purpose this descent into the physical plan served.

We look back to Egyptian wisdom, to the wonderful Chaldean-Babylonian wisdom and ask ourselves: What is the difference between what the Egyptian priest, the servant of Hermes, saw when he looked up at the starry sky, or what the Chaldean astronomer saw in the stars, and what today's science sees? One does not get a proper idea of what was going on in those wise men when they looked up at the vault of heaven through materialistic science, but one does get it through an analogy when one looks at a human being.

We do not look at a person just by looking at the physiognomy of his face. When we see the tears rolling down, we do not just observe how they move downward under the force of gravity – in fact, if an angel were to come from heaven today, we would first calculate its rate of fall – no, through the rolling tears we see the suffering and pain of his soul. And when he smiles, we see in his smiling countenance what lives in his mind as joy. We know that original elementary sensations take place in man.

This seeing through from the material to the spiritual-soul content of the soul is what the Hermes servants meant when they said: “Down below, everything is like up above!” No material thing that is not the outer expression of a spiritual-soul! Just as ice is only water in a different form, so all matter is only spirit in a different form. If someone came and showed us a piece of ice and we said, “This is condensed water,” but he denied it, we would say to him, “You are naive, you are wrong, this ice is only condensed water. It is just something else, new, when we look at the form. So matter is just the transformed, condensed spirit. But it is not enough just to know that; we must absorb all knowledge into our soul. And spiritual life demands that everything that lives in our soul comes into activity; it is not enough what lives in our soul as ordinary thoughts, feelings, and will impulses. But if we awaken an inner life in us, then we can feel how the Egyptian Hermes servant or the Chaldean astronomer looked up at the starry sky: Mars, Venus, the Moon or Mercury, all were only the expression of the spirit living in the star. In times of spiritual life, one did not describe what today's astronomer understands by the stars, but by the name Mercury, for example, the old wise man, who lived in the spiritual life, imagined the soul, the spirit that lives through Mercury, just as the soul lives in your body. And so he taught everyone who listened to his word. Now imagine vividly how a person looks out into space and sees the stars. It is not an abstract but an intimate spiritual life that connects him to the world. It is spirit that he saw, and in the spiritual realm he himself floated and felt that he was a part of the world, just as a finger is only a part of my hand. If you separate his being from the universal spirituality, it dies and no longer exists, like the finger if you cut it off. Compare this with what today's astronomer sees. For him, physical globes fly around. He lacks the living feeling [for their spiritual essence]. But this living feeling is not so easy to achieve. Perhaps he is a spiritualist in theory; but it is more difficult to be a spiritualist of the whole soul, of the whole life, than to be a spiritualist in mere theoretical terms. Now man lives in a purely physical environment; he no longer finds the living harmony between the divine and the physical. But it is right and of great importance that it came to this.

Let us compare the achievements of people on the physical plane with the high spiritual wisdom of the priests. In ancient times, primitive culture prevailed. When we see the endless labor and effort that has gone into making every single object around us a spiritual creature of the last four centuries, let us not forget that this is thanks to the human spirit of the last centuries. But even that could not be there if the spirit had not descended to the physical plane. Thus, each epoch has its task. And because this was particularly the case for the last epoch of world history, those sources from which spiritual life always flows had to send the spirit down to the last epoch of humanity, to those who wanted to receive it in devotional spiritual work.

If we go back four or five centuries before the descent [of the spirit on the physical plane], and then another two centuries for the preparation, we find a current that, despite the descent, has ensured that the spirit can find its way back; to give the spirit, which necessarily had to descend to the physical plane, means to rise again. This current is called the Rosicrucian current. And just as in ancient times people had to be led up to the eternal, so it is that today man must seek the way to the modern, to the Rosicrucian initiation. It is not to be asserted here that there are different truths in the course of human development. Truth is one, like the sun that illuminates the whole of the physical orbit of the earth; but the paths to truth are different. Imagine, for a moment, comparing the point of view you would have attained with the summit of a mountain; at the top, one would have an unobstructed view in all directions, however one came up. But would you not call it foolish if someone were standing down below on the left side of the mountain and could find a way up on the left side of the mountain, and then would go around the mountain to find a way up on the other side that is not on the side where he is standing? So it is with the evolution of humanity. The starting points of the civilizations are like the paths on the mountain; the different peoples have to move up the different paths. The truth - spiritual realization - is one and the same. Only those who believe that the same thing is repeated in different races can claim that the paths of initiation were the same. But just as the human body that is born fifteen centuries from now is different from the human body that is born today, so must the treatment for the student who wants to go up the path be different. And in certain periods, there must be a renewal of methods, an adaptation to the peoples - to what man has become - even if the structural conditions elude the ordinary eye. But occult physiology and anatomy know that the structural conditions of the physical brain had to change if man was to conquer the physical plane. The physical structures are only the lower facts of what is spiritual above. And so today there is a Rose Cross initiation.

Among the various types of initiation, we need only mention the three most prominent ones. People know what is meant when the Yoga path, the Christian Gnostic path and the Rosicrucian path are mentioned. You all know the Yoga path from literature. The Christian-Gnostic path is the one taught in Christian esotericism - in the early days when Christianity was spreading - by Dionysius Arcopagita. Scholarship speaks of him as a pseudo-Dionysius, who is said to have lived in the 6th century and written all the great books. Christian tradition dates this back to the time of the Apostle Paul. Scholarship only asks: When were these scrolls written?, but Christian esotericism knows that this Dionysius Areopagita was a disciple of the Apostle Paul and was specially commissioned by his master to found the esoteric school of Christianity. For countless people, this Christian esotericism has become truth. Today it is hard to imagine the sources from which some of the words of a Christian teacher came to us. This source was the Christian Initiation. To the materialistically-minded, this Christian Initiation appears to be a figment of the imagination. But for people at that time, it was direct and immediate life. We distinguish seven stages in it, which everyone who wanted to achieve the Christian Initiation had to go through. I will only mention the seven names for them:

the washing of the feet
the scourging
the crowning with thorns
the crucifixion
the mystical death
the burial and resurrection
the ascension of the soul.

These are the seven true stages that had to be gone through in the Lehtrstätten, where the Christian initiation was at home. At least two of these stations, the first and the fourth, I will characterize for you to understand.

When the Christian disciple had reached the point where what is called morality in ordinary life had been purified and raised to a higher level, when one could take it for granted that he would no longer stray from this higher morality, then he was received by his master of the Christian initiation, and he should now experience something within himself that I can only describe to you in the form of a dialogue, although it never took place in a dialogue.

After the student had been disciplined in this way, he was told by the teacher:

Take a look at the plant world. It grows out of the mineral kingdom. If it were not for the mineral kingdom, the plant could not flourish, even though it is at a higher level. If the plant could think, it would have to say: You may be lower in the hierarchy of the natural kingdoms than I am, but I could not be without you. In humility I bow down before you!” And then the disciple was led to recognize this humility in all the kingdoms of nature. The animal would have to bow down humbly to the plant and man in turn to the animal and say: Without you I could not be! And man, who stands on a higher level, would have to bow down in humility before those who are not yet so far; for no one can stand higher without the others. When man understands this ladder, he looks down with humility on those below. In this way the disciple learned to understand what it means in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John that the Highest, although the twelve are lower than He, bows down in humility before them and washes their feet. Those who have been educated in this way [to higher morals] in the sense of esoteric Christianity, only then understand the inner meaning of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is a book of initiation about the methods of initiation, the apocalypse about the content of initiation.

When the student had progressed so far that this humility had become second nature to him, the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John became truth for his soul. Then the teacher could lead him to experience very specific feelings. The student could feel and recognize that he now had the opportunity to ascend to a higher level. He felt - and this was a common feeling of all who had received the Christian initiation - as if his feet were standing in the water, as if the waters of the spirit were lapping at him. And the inner symptom that arose as an image each time was that the disciple, when he was ready, had the image before him, from within, through an inner power, which is presented in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John. This is not just an external-historical, but a spiritual image that anyone can have: on the astral plane, he sees the image of the washing of the feet spread out before him.

Just to make ourselves understood, I will also mention the fourth stage - the crucifixion. When the third stage was over, it was made clear to the disciple that he no longer had to count his body as part of himself. He had to feel his body as an object, as something outside of himself. The ordinary person thinks that his body is his ego. But anyone who wants to reach the fourth stage of Christian initiation must be able to make his body no more precious to him than any chair or table around him. The ordinary person says: I enter through the door. But it is natural for the initiate to say: I carry my body to the door. Then two more symptoms arise: the arbitrary production of the so-called blood sample is the symptomatic expression of the fourth stage of initiation. Exactly at the points of his body called the stigmata, he is able to produce redness of the skin through the inner power of his spirituality. The stigmata appear on the palms of the hands, on the feet and on the right side of the chest. This is accompanied by the inner symptom that the disciple on the astral plane sees himself as on the cross.

One does not speak of the dangers of this development. What matters is the degree of inner development, and then one no longer speaks of dangers in it. But anyone who wants to do this without the advice of a teacher is certainly in danger. But he who patiently and humbly surrenders himself to the leadership will, only by undergoing his martyrdom, be all the more a useful member of human evolution. However, he should not take this upon himself until he feels the obligation within.

Christian initiation was also the foundation and source of the outer Christian life. This Christian initiation had to be passed over into the somewhat different form of the Rose Cross initiation about two hundred years before the descent of the Spirit upon the material plane.

The Rose Cross initiation is not an un-Christian one. It is a further development of the Christian initiation. But the one who receives it does not step out of the physical environment, as the purely Christian initiation demands - at least for a time. Whoever wants to live as a worthy member of human evolution today must take part in the work on the physical plane. It would be sinful to withdraw from the physical world. We must only understand it and be equal to it. If the Christian initiation had retained its earlier form, man would have risen high spiritually and soul-wise, but would have remained weak on the physical plane. Think of the conquest of the physical plane, of the great inventions, the art of printing and so on. What is flooding in from the other planes... [gap in the transcript]. For this, a completely different inner configuration is required. This requires the ability to develop other strong impulses within oneself in order to channel what comes from material development in the right way. The Rose Cross initiation is one that enables people to use all the means of modern culture. It teaches the spirit to grasp in matter, in that man recognizes the connection of even the most material with the spiritual, so that he can let the spiritual flow out into the material.

The Rose Cross initiation is born out of the necessity of the time. It also has seven levels.

The first is what is broadly called study; the second, the acquisition of imaginative knowledge; the third, the acquisition of occult writing; the fourth, the production of the philosopher's stone - that is the technical word for it -; the fifth, the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm; the sixth, the absorption in the macrocosm; the seventh, beatitude. You must not imagine that each pupil has to pass through these stages in succession, so to speak; but the teacher must select from each chapter that which is suitable for each pupil according to his individuality. First each pupil must study, but then the material must often be organized in quite different ways. And now we will discuss it in detail.

Study in the sense of the Rosicrucians is not what is called study in ordinary life. In the sense of the Rosicrucians it is what should really be called: living in pure thought. What this means is not at all easy to grasp at the outset. Hegel, on the other hand, spent his whole life trying to teach the Germans what it means to live in pure thought. And ten years after his death, what Hegel contributed to the Germans' deepening had been completely forgotten. Today we have not yet reached the point where Hegel would be understood again. And yet his works would be a good means of showing what it means to live in pure, sensuality-free thought. The more recent philosophers, for example Eduard von Hartmann, deny altogether that we can form a thought that is not influenced by sensuality. They swore that nothing is in the intellect that was not in the senses. What is not of the senses is not real. If these words were true, there would be no mathematics. The Gnostics called the life of the spirit a “mathesis,” not because they imagined it to be mathematics, but because on the higher planes there is pure thinking and knowing, as there is in mathematics, in terms of forms, a thinking free of sensuality. This pure thinking does not proceed from objects, but flows from thought to thought. For those who want to immerse themselves in a completely sensuality-free thinking, I tried to write a book like my “Philosophy of Freedom”. It is not a personal work. It has come into being like an organism: it is a thought organism, and a guide to what is called study in the Rosicrucian sense. Certainly, many do not go through something like that. For most people who cannot undergo something like this, the simple Theosophical teaching is enough. It is sensual thought; no one can hear or see it. If you study Theosophy, it corresponds to the first stage of the Rosicrucian training. Theosophy is itself Rosicrucian study if you pursue it in the right way. There is no need to lose yourself in philosophical heights. The humblest soul can immerse itself in it.

Imaginative knowledge is the second step in the Rose Cross initiation. It is achieved when a person learns to transform thought into image. This is a real fact. A man who knew about Rosicrucianism once uttered the words, “All that is transitory is but a parable!” Then one comes away from the physical plane. I would like to show you how this can be achieved by means of two examples. Take the three Logoi. Everything that has been mentioned so far as a study relates solely and exclusively to the physical plane. Only imaginative knowledge lifts us higher. If you describe the three logos schematically, if you speak of projections, then one can form an idea for the physical mind, even if you say that the second logo vibrates differently from the first. But all this is only for the consciousness of the mind. We cannot take with us to the higher planes anything that relates to three-dimensional space, but only that which is not conceived spatially. A “tone or color quality is indeed built into the space, but it is not spatial. The astral space is a flowing sea of color and light. There you will encounter on the astral plane what you have perceived here as a color quality and a tone quality. What is physical here in color and tone, you lift up to the higher planes; only we must purify and cleanse it in order to lift it up. Therefore, the teacher says: Take away the sensual quality for everything you want to see directly; imagine how a color stands out. Then that is the method for developing the imagination. And anyone who wants to achieve this level confronts the outside world in such a way that these isolated images present themselves in such a way that when one speaks, for example, of the three Logoi, one no longer perceives them as quantity but as quality. Then he feels the third Logos as something that resounds through the world – he feels it as sound; the second, insofar as it appears as an astral projection, as flooding light; and the first Logos as the aroma of the world, as an aroma flying through the world, purified to the most perfect purity. This is how the Rosicrucians felt everywhere. These are images, imaginations, not descriptions, for these come from the physical plane.

Another image, which presents us with a more mundane phenomenon, has been preserved in a wonderful myth, the myth of the Holy Grail. This is also an experience for the Rosicrucian disciple, which he perceives as a real fact of his inner soul life. The Master says to the disciple: “Take a look at the plant; it lives with the root in the ground, sends the stem upwards and has its calyx - that which produces a plant again - turned towards the sun. Even the more recent materialistic scholarship has again pointed out that if we compare the plant with the human being, we must compare the root with the head. The plant is, as it were, a human being turned upside down. Evolution consists in the image being reversed: what the plant opens up chastely before the world, is directed downwards in the human being. What the root is in the plant, striving towards the center of the earth, is directed upwards in the human being. In the human being, the head reaches out into the space of the sun. Between the two, on the inside, is the animal world, whose backbone is directed horizontally. Now the pupil was told: Imagine the plant, the animal and the human being and you have the world cross. The cross was the image of the evolution of the world beings up to the human being. The plant only produces when it is touched by the sunbeam, which was called the “holy lance of love”. When it is touched by this, it fulfills its task. Now imagine the human being with the Kama that has seized him; the lower organs must be purified and cleansed and must appear again at a higher level, so that in the course of evolution this chalice opens. When man has transformed himself, when he has purified this chalice, which the plant has at a primitive level, then he will have it in his hand again, that he will be touched by the holy lance of love – then he will have the purification of man in his hand – not only astral or etheric, but even physical. Thus evolution is imaginatively presented. Those who live in this way will have the astral plane revealed to them.

The third is the attainment of occult writing. It is not a writing like our present-day abstract writing. One appropriates the harmony of the qualities. The teacher says to the disciple: “If you ascend higher, until you attain knowledge of occult writing, you will hear what was called the harmony of the spheres in the Pythagorean school. This is a reality for the initiate, not a mere allegory. What today's science has to offer when it speaks of number systems is often as far removed from the harmony of the spheres as if one wanted to describe a symphony as a wave motion in the air. The occult disciple learns to hear the sounds in the spiritual world. Goethe also knew about this when he said: “The sun resounds in the ancient manner in the brother spheres of song.” And in another place: “The new day is born sounding for spiritual ears.” What happens, what is audible to spiritual, not physical ears, are the events of the spiritual plan, are the harmonies of the spheres. And the signs of occult writing are real cosmic forces, and he who knows them feels the stream of cosmic forces in his organism down to the physical organism. I will give you only one example: four numbers. When I tell you, they are somewhat abstract; but if you were to perceive the music spiritually, you would perceive the relationship of the four lower human limbs. These numbers are: 1, 3, 7, 12. This is how the four lower limbs of human nature sound together harmoniously in the spiritual world. This is the secret of Pythagorean number theory: that it can be transformed into spiritual music.

The fourth is the creation of the philosopher's stone. Modern scholarship has turned it into a fairy tale. But in a way it is right, because if it were really as science imagines it, it would be a childish thing. But it is the highest goal to which man aspires. At the end of the eighteenth century, some of the Rosicrucian secrets were revealed. We find something there that we could say: People have heard something ringing there. We find a remarkable passage in a German newspaper! It says about the philosopher's stone: It exists. If you can recognize it in its full value, you possess the secret of immortality. Actually, the vast majority of people know it. Many have it in their hands every day. The man who wrote this had no idea what it was about, but he had received a message that contained something true. We need to consider nothing other than the process that maintains human beings cosmically in this present epoch: the breathing process. We breathe in and out. We breathe in the oxygen of the air and give back to the surrounding world the carbonic acid, a poisonous gas in which we could not live. The plant absorbs it continually, retains the coal from the carbonic acid and builds up its own body from it. But it gives the oxygen back to animals and humans. Thus, plant, animal and human form a whole, as far as we look at the breathing process. Today, humans need plants. The corpse of the plant as black coal, when you dig it out of the earth, or as a transparent diamond, is something we have within us; but we cannot use it. We have to give it to the plants as air for life. The plant builds its body out of carbonic acid itself. It can do something that man cannot yet do today, but will be able to do later. Imagine this process: the plant taking in carbonic acid and emitting oxygen – transferred to the inside of the human being... [gap in the text] Thus, by merging with the plant world and taking it into human nature, we build up within ourselves a pure, chaste body, as the plant does today. Man is on the way to becoming a being who can consciously carry this out; and then he will be able to develop within himself the chalice of the Holy Grail. The breathing process is not a closed one; it is in the process of becoming more perfect and of performing within man that which today takes place outside of man, and of transforming the human substance, which is permeated by Kama, into pure, chaste substance. This is real alchemy. Then man will have mastered alchemy, by means of which he will also learn to transform the cosmos. The symbol for this is the Holy Grail. We must not reject the lofty ideal because it is still millions of years away from us, but must be attained according to the principle: constant dripping wears away the stone. Thus, he who rhythmizes the breathing process will gradually achieve his goal. The philosopher's stone is coal, it is the substance for building the human body in the future. This process of transformation is alchemy in the Rosicrucian sense. Of course, the intimate instructions are given only from teacher to student.

The fifth, the correspondence of microcosm and macrocosm, is the learning of the correspondence of what we have within ourselves with the outer macrocosm. Paracelsus once said: “Let us look at the animals, plants and minerals - everything is in some way also in the human body. Man is like a confluence of everything that is also in nature outside. Nature is, as it were, the dismembered human being. Nature is like the letters, but the human being is the word that is composed of these letters. When this realization dawns on the consciousness, the student sees how the eye was formed from the light. The eye is formed by the light. Our organism emerged from another that did not yet have eyes; but the light brought forth the eye. This state of consciousness has long since ceased to exist. Man today knows nothing more about it, but the seer on the astral plane sees it. There you get to know again what is weaving within the cosmos as in your own nature. Then you get to know the cosmos through your individual limbs: from the eye the light, from the ears the sound, and the other as it can only be given from the teacher to the disciple.

When a person has come so far that he has learned the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, then he can ascend to the sixth: to merging with the macrocosm. Then you have a relationship of friendship with every thing in nature. There is then something like a loving relationship with every being in nature, something like what remains in the love between man and woman. The sunflower appears different, the violet different, the lion and the tiger different, this and that different. The whole cosmos appears as differentiated as love between man and woman. Our inner being flows from the inside out, and this is connected with a transformation of the heart: the etheric and astral bodies transform the heart so that it becomes an arbitrary muscle. Here, the occult teaching, if it perfects itself even more, will spread light. Today, the heart is a crux for physiologists. It is an involuntary muscle, but in terms of its striation it is an arbitrary muscle; for it is transversely striated. All voluntary muscles are transversely striated, while the involuntary muscles are longitudinally striated. The heart is transversely striated because it is on the way to becoming an arbitrary muscle. Today it is endowed with the potential to become one. If in the future man is able to create from the spirituality of the cosmos, he will be able to move the heart as he is able to move the hand today. And so I could give you a hundred and a hundred examples where occult science sheds light on what physical science cannot unravel.

When man gradually attains this personal, intimate relationship with the whole of his environment, when he no longer has to use the physical powers of the brain, then, the teacher says, he can only understand what the Rosicrucian calls divinity, where the independence of man is preserved, but the highest is felt.

I have only been able to sketch out a few ideas today; but the Rosicrucian training has much to give here. Much can also be objected to; one can point out the dangers that can arise in the process. Only one thing can be pointed out: if a person does not strive towards the ideal out of egoism, but feels integrated, if he does not feel the urge for development as a desire but as a duty, if he wants to be a servant of evolution, if he purifies everything that needs to be purified, then there is no danger at all. And the Rosicrucian training in particular will also bring about a moral purification. The disciple must have the intention of merging his soul completely in the pure thought, for the pure thought is a mighty moral purification. Then he is prepared for the six steps.

All striving for occult development must proceed under the principle of conquest, which Goethe also expressed in one place. Only when we have conquered ourselves may we develop higher. This must become our fundamental ideal, for conquest is the fundamental ideal of the Rosicrucians:

From the fetters that bind all beings,
The man who overcomes himself is free!

To-day it is my intention to describe those sounds which have not yet been considered. To begin with I shall take s and z, for the nature of these sounds is such that they may almost be said to be in a category by themselves. Later, as opportunity arises, I can deal with any of the sounds which up to now have been omitted.

S was always felt, at a time when such things had not yet been lost, as a sound penetrating specially deeply into the very essence of language. The experience of the s-sound is connected with the feelings and experiences which, in the earliest times of human evolution, were bound up with the symbol of the serpent, and also, from a certain point of view, with the symbol of the Staff of Mercury,—not with the symbol of Mercury itself, but with the symbol of the staff of Mercury. We must look for the Mercury symbol itself in the sound e. On the other hand the symbol of the staff of Mercury, which plays so great a part in certain Eastern writings, is very closely connected with the sound s; and the s-form which we still preserve to-day in our written letter reminds us strongly of the symbol of the serpent. The feeling lying behind the curved and sinuous line of s is really extraordinarily complicated, but primarily it may perhaps be said to consist of a peace-bringing element. Behind s there lies a power capable of bringing calm and peace into that which is in a state of unrest, and this force carries with it the feeling of certainty, the feeling of being able to penetrate into the hidden nature of some—: thing and in so doing to bring about a state of calmness and rest.

The S-symbol, and the z which is closely related to it, were always referred to in the Mysteries with great solemnity. Such things, as we saw yesterday when studying the sound t, Tao, were always spoken of with a fitting ceremony and reverence. S, on the other hand,—and here I am bound to express myself very inadequately,—s always produced an element of fear in, those who were being instructed in the nature of this symbol. There was a feeling of fear; it was felt as something before which one had to protect oneself, but which was nevertheless essential to life, something which could not be dispensed with. The s-symbol is so complicated that I cannot easily tell you how it was spoken of in the Mysteries. The most I can do is to try and describe it for you in other words.

People to-day would be astonished if they could know how entirely free from sentimentality the true pupils of the old Mysteries really were. They had a sense of humour and although none knew better than they how to pay reverence where reverence was due, they knew also how to clothe such things in humoristic form. Thus, when a pupil of the Mysteries was once asked by one not initiated about the nature of the sound s—(naturally such questions were often asked, for people of those earlier times were not without curiosity any more than they are now)—when this question was put, the pupil replied somewhat humorously: Well, you know, when one understands the secret of the s-sound, then one can perceive the hidden qualities in the hearts of men and one can fathom the hearts of women: such a one can bring calm to the restlessness of the human heart, and can at the same time penetrate into its hidden depths.—That was, as I said, a very exoteric explanation, but it nevertheless gives some indication of what lies in the sound s. S —a bringing of calm into that which is agitated, and the certainty that the means employed will have the desired effect.

When all that I have just described is carried over into gesture, then we get the eurhythmic movement for the sound s. We have still to consider the sound z, and the feeling, the experience, that it expresses. The movement for z is naturally somewhat similar to the movement for c (ts), but with more of an attack behind it. You will be able to feel for yourselves, if you try to do so with the necessary earnestness and enthusiasm, that this sound induces a certain feeling of gaiety, for the very reason that it is not heavy and can be taken lightly; it is, however, gay with a certain intention.

We ought now to have realized to some extent the meaning of most of the sounds, and to have reached a point at which it should be possible for each individual sound to call up in our souls a corresponding experience. I said earlier that these first lectures were to be in the nature of a recapitulation in order to establish a tradition which may be regarded as permanent. Now once again let us call up in our minds each separate sound in its eurhythmic significance.

It is above all things important that everything I have said about the nature of the various sounds should be experienced artistically as gesture.

There is one thing about which we must be quite clear: the human being is formed out of those cosmic elements which I have mentioned in connection with the sounds of speech. If you take all that we have connected with these sounds, you will get, roughly speaking, in a perfectly natural way, those impulses which lead the human being out of the pre-earthly existence into, earthly existence, and which guide him further until he reaches mature age, that is to say until about his thirty-fifth year.

This whole process, with the forces which separate one human being from another, which urge him forward and bring him to the point he finally reaches as an adult human being,—all this lies in the gestures expressing the sounds. That is why the Word, the spoken sound, must be felt as of such tremendous significance.

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Now let us begin by referring once more to that quality, which is most intimately bound up with the human being, and which was described by the Greeks when they said that it was experienced by man when he was confronted by the riddles of existence, when they said that Philosophy, love of wisdom, could only proceed from a feeling of wonder and amazement. Let us think of this and remind ourselves that the human feeling of wonder is something purely human and belongs to those qualities which raise man above the level of the animal. And when we ask ourselves: What faculty is it in the human being which raises him above the level of the animal?—then we must say: It is the possibility, inherent in the human being, of influencing matter, of bringing movement into certain substances whereas the same substances impose upon the animal its definite form. Man must therefore be looked upon as a centre towards which certain forces gravitate and in which they are finally merged. There would be a sense of monotony in the idea that the origin of man, which should call up in him a feeling of wonder and awe, must be looked for as proceeding from one single point of the universe,—which is indeed the case with the plants and, the animals. That which calls up in man the feeling of wonder with regard to his own being can only be felt by him as coming from different directions of cosmic space. And we only understand ourselves as men, in our true human dignity when we begin to realize that the Gods are radiating their forces into us, from the surrounding cosmos.

Let us make some sort of diagram of the cosmic sphere (see drawing) showing how forces are streaming from the circumstances towards the centre, towards the earth (arrows).

We can only feel our own dignity as human beings on the earth when we understand how these forces are flowing into us from out of the different directions of the cosmos.

Make the eurhythmic movement for a. The fundamental nature of this movement lies in the fact that you reach out, as it were, with your hands and arms into two different directions of space. A does not really consist in making a free, swinging movement, but one has to imagine oneself as man coming from two different directions of cosmic space,—nay, more, as being created, differentiated, determined, as it were, by forces proceeding from these two directions. In the movement for a one reaches out towards these two directions, and it is this reaching out and grasping at something which is the essential feature of the a as such.

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This feeling is inseparable from the true experience of a. The way in which one holds the arms is of no consequence; the point is that one should reach out into these two directions, at the same time stretching the muscles so that a certain tension is induced. One must have the feeling of going right out into these two directions. This feeling must be brought down into the muscles themselves, and the stretched movement of the arms must be made as soon as possible after the preceding sound. This is the a as such.

Thus the essential nature of the a-movement could be expressed somewhat as follows: O man, you have derived your being from two different points of universal space. You must stretch out your arms in order to lay hold of the forces streaming from these two directions, and in so doing you take into yourself that which gave you birth. You must feel how these forces are streaming through your arms, meeting together in your breast. This will give you a real experience of the sound a.

From this we see the nature of the eurhythmic movement for a. And taking all I have said into account, it will not be difficult to feel that in this movement we have embodied the sound a in its relationship to man.

We have already said that e may be explained somewhat in this way: Something has been done to me, but I hold myself erect and confront it.—What lies in this experience? In this experience we really have the polar opposite of the a-experience. Man feels a as coming to him from out of the cosmos. A totally different experience lies behind the e. With e we feel that something has happened, and the effects of this happening we experience in the eurhythmic movement. One can only experience the e when something has happened and one feels its effect. This experience is shown in the movement when one part of the organism is brought into direct contact with another part.

Now this cannot be done in very many ways. Man is differently built from the elephant, for instance, and is therefore not able to make his nose so long and flexible that with its tip he could touch his own back. Were he able to do this it would be a most excellent example of the movement for e. He cannot do it, however. And so the movement for e, as it occurs in our eurhythmy, can only be made by one limb actually touching the other, laying a certain emphasis on this contact. This at the same time expresses the feeling of confronting something and resisting it. The touching indicates the feeling that something has happened to one; the holding the position which must be in the nature of two crossed lines, corresponds to the feeling of resistance. With e one arm is laid upon the other; or one finger can be laid upon the other; or the possibility exists, if one is able to manage it, of so using the eyes that the direction of the gaze of one eye crosses the direction of the gaze of the other. Any movement, therefore, in which this experience of touching one part of the organism with another is really present, may be said to be the eurhythmic expression for the sound e. When, however, the gesture is held fast, thus showing that something has been done to one and one gathers one’s forces together in order to withstand it, then the complete experience is brought to visible expression. Just consider what an immense difference there is between the a and the e-sounds as these are expressed in the movements of eurhythmy.

The a-experience carries with it the necessity of a conscious stretching of the muscles. It is essential that you really feel this tension. The e-experience carries with it the necessity of resting one arm upon the other; and here the consciousness should mainly be centred at the point where the arms cross.

Thus it is not the stretching of the muscles which is the chief thing about the experience of the e-sound, but the resting, the pressing of one arm upon the other. Of course it is also possible to form the e by crossing the right leg over the left, at the same time pressing one against the other. In this way we experience the e, we feel the movement for e.

Now, in our modern civilization one may easily get the impression that the world is always ‘doing something’ to people, is always affecting them, for they usually sit with crossed legs, and by so doing are of course continually making the movement for e! This attitude betrays the fact that the great majority of people believe that the world has indeed done something to them and that they must stand up against it. It is in such ways as this that one may learn to understand the artistic nature of the movements.

When we now pass on to the movement for o, to the gesture for o, we shall feel what a world of experience is contained in this sound. A is the absolute expression of wonder and amazement. O expresses the feeling which we have when we, place ourselves in an intelligent relationship to something which at the same time calls forth our wonder. And indeed, if we are human beings in the true sense, everything which enters into our field of vision must call up in us a feeling of wonder. But o brings us into a more intimate relationship with our perceptions. So that the essential nature of o can be shown in eurhythmy when the human being does not only feel himself, but, going out from himself, feels some other being or object which he wishes to embrace.

You can most clearly get a picture of this when, out of love for another person, you put your arms around him. You get the absolutely natural movement for the sound o when, in embracing another person, the arms are rounded and bent, each taking on the form of a half-circle.

Thus, in the movement for a, we feel that we receive something. We reach out towards those regions of the cosmos from which man derives his being. In the e we have an indication of a direct experience. The human being experiences something coming from the outer world. In o we have the movement whereby the world experiences something through man himself, for in this movement man lays hold of something belonging to the outer world. You must try to make the movement for o in such a way that, from the very beginning, and right through to the very end, the arms are really rounded. The arms must be very flexible; they must really be rounded. This is the true movement for o. We have to feel the rounded form from the very beginning.

Now we come to that sound which makes a still more direct impression on man than does the sound e,—we come to that around which is the absolute expression of the assertion of self, that is to say the i-sound. I is self-assertion pure and simple, I have often drawn attention to the fact that in the every day speech of educated people we find the word ‘ich’ (I). In this word we have the feeling of self-assertion as expressed in the i, and to this is added a breath-sound (eh) whereby an indication is given that we, as human beings, live in the breathing. But in certain districts where the simple people speak in dialect things are not carried as far as this. Such people remain satisfied with plain, straight-forward self-assertion. For this reason, in the place where I was brought up, people said, for instance, not ‘ich’, but ‘i’. There it would have occurred to nobody to say ‘Ich haue dich durch’ (I will give you a jolly good thrashing);—this expression occurs to me because in the place where I grew up one heard it on all sides, and because, with certain people, it really sums up their conception of the ego:—in my birth-place people do not say ‘Ich haue dich durch’, but ‘I hau di durch’! Pure self-assertion! This is a real example of pure self-assertion. Now, as we know, with a, forces stream from two points of the circumference inwards; with i they stream from the centre outwards. With the i-sound we do not feel as if we are grasping at something, but we feel the stretching, we feel that the stream has its source in us, starting, as it were, from the heart and flowing through the arm, or through both arms, or through the: legs. We can also feel i with the eyes, when we consciously look more through one eye, leaving the other passive. This gives us a very definite feeling of i.

There is nothing of the a-character about i, but both the arms should as a rule be used in such a way that one is the continuation of the other, although of course we can also make use of one arm only. The chief thing to remember is that with i the main feeling must be that of stretching, whereas with a there is more the feeling of grasping at something. These nuances are of importance if we are to get the right inner attitude towards the individual sounds.

It is only when such shades of feeling are brought into the abounds of speech,—and indeed into the tones of music also, as I made clear in the course of lectures on tone-eurhythmy which I gave here recently,—it is only then that eurhythmy becomes truly artistic. The point is not so much, my dear friends, that you merely imitate the form, but that you inwardly experience the form; that is to say you must really get the feeling In both your arms that a is the taking hold of something which comes towards you, while you must feel i as a stretched movement, as a stretching out away from yourself.

Then again we have the u-sound about which I have already spoken. U is not the assertion of self; on the contrary, behind u there is the feeling of becoming smaller, of being chilled and stiffened with cold. There is the feeling of drawing back into, oneself, of holding fast to oneself. Whereas with the sound e the principal thing is that one limb touches another quite precisely, with u the principal feeling is one of holding back.

The u is most clearly expressed by holding the arms as near together as possible, but this need only be indicated. There need only be an indication of this pressing together of the arms. When we stand with our legs together, touching one another we are also expressing the sound u. And, as we have already, seen, all the movements can be made backwards as well as forwards.

Ei,—the ei-sound can best be felt—and this will also throw light on what I said yesterday—when one realizes that behind this sound there lies the same caressing, affectionate feeling that one has for a very little child: ei, ei,—it is as if one were stroking something, as if one were becoming intimate with something through one’s feeling. (Frau L....will show us a beautiful e-i.) Hold the body quite still; do not move the body in any way, but hold it quite still. You will notice at once that in this gesture there is expressed the feeling of becoming intimate with something, but you will notice at the same time that our manner of writing, the way in which (in the German language) we form the ei out of the e-i, does not naturally lie in the ei-sound itself. On the contrary the ei-sound must be felt as a unity. We enter into the nature of ei when we join together e and i, but in fact lies midway between the two, and the connection between them is not really organic. I shall speak later about the more subtle nuances of feeling lying in this sound.

Let us now proceed to the consonants, and let us try to feel the consonantal element as this comes to expression in movements. You will remember that I said: b is the sound which represents everything of an enveloping nature, it expresses the wrapping round of something and its corresponding movement is one of protection. Naturally the gesture as such does not express this fully; there must also be the actual experience of which the movement is the copy, is the imitation. (We ask Frau F... to show us the movement.) Now we have the true movement for b; let us hold it fast.

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Thus we have the true movement for b, and in this movement we feel what really lies behind the position of each arm. Anyone experiencing what is contained in this movement might well say: I will picture to myself that I have something before me, something that I wish to take hold of,—let us say a little child. I will imagine that I have such a little child sitting before me and that I wish to take it up. I shall be able to do this most easily when I take hold of it so, drawing it to me with a protecting gesture (movement for b).—What then must one really feel here if one would have the true experience? One must really feel that one holds something—here, in the space enclosed by the arms. If at this juncture I may introduce a point of educational interest, I would say that the best way to make the sound b comprehensible to small children in the eurhythmy lesson is to take something or other and let the child clasp it in its arms. In this way you can teach the little child to understand that it should feel that its arms are the protecting shelter for the animal or object which it holds, and in this way it will learn fully to comprehend the nature of the b-movement.

All this is really essential to eurhythmy. The forms, the movements, must not be imitated in a purely abstract manner, but the corresponding experiences must be felt; the experience is inseparable from the movement.

Now, I told you yesterday that c (ts) is a specially interesting sound. C, as it were, raises matter into the realm of the spirit. I said that it contains within it a feeling of lightness; it indicates that matter can be conquered by spirit and raised to a higher level. Fundamentally speaking we may say that c can best be experienced when one observes a child who is learning to stand, to raise itself from the crawling to the upright position. One could wish always to connect this wonderful experience—(for it is indeed a wonderful experience)—with the sound c. In this sound one approaches very nearly to what takes place in the child when it lifts itself from the crawling into the upright position, c, c, c: this lightening process, this raising of matters by means of spirit,—how beautifully it is expressed here! Try to feel all this in the sound c; feel that it has a lightness that matter is raised up by means of spirit. You will most easily have the right feeling for the movement c when you imagine that in some inexplicable way something is lying on the surface of your arms and in making the movement you toss it upwards. When you have the feeling that something is lying on the surface of your arms, and that it flies up into the air when you make the movement for c, then you have something which can lead you to a more or less true experience of the c-movement.

D, as I told you, is a pointing downwards, or indeed a pointing in any direction: d; if one now adds to this sound the sound a, so that wonder is aroused by that towards which one points, then, one gets the word da.

Now imagine for a moment that we wished to express the nature of the Oriental teacher. The Oriental teacher—particularly the older Oriental teacher—is indeed quite different from the European teacher. To-day, in the case of the European one always has the feeling that his whole educational system is based on the idea of pumping his pupils, of drawing all manner of things out of them. He meddles with them. To-day people talk about the necessity of ‘developing’ the pupil, although this idle talk for the most part. When one hears these mode educators expounding their pedagogic theories, one gets the feeling that one is, to use an Austrian expression, a Zmirnskhauer (a ball of thread), and that one is being unwound. Indeed when education is spoken of to-day one feels as if one were being absolutely torn to pieces. One is driven, crammed, in short, there is no end to what is being done to those who are being educated. The European educator feels that he must make the human being into something utterly different from what he really is. If it were possible to carry out all that one hears talked about on all sides by those interested in the art of education, then the human being who finally emerged from the hand would indeed be a strange being! The attitude of Oriental towards the teacher is different. He feels that the teacher, the educator, is one who points things out to his pupils, who draws their attention to things and says: ‘Das ist das’ (That is that). The Oriental teacher leaves his pupils unmolested because he assumes that they develop out of their own being and may, therefore, safely be let alone. Things are only pointed out to them. For this reason the Oriental teacher is one who, whatever he is doing, always says, as it were, ‘da’; da-da—der Dada. And this is what he is called. The oriental teacher is called the ‘Dada’. It is his mission to point everything out: da-da!

Now looking at modern civilization,—which, from a certain point of view, is progressing in a way that I can only describe as opposite to Darwinism,—we see that humanity, having satisfactorily arrived at the theory of man’s descent from the ape, desires to return to the ape once more, thus progressing quite clearly in a contrary direction to Darwinism. The tendency is to return once again to the primitive, to the primeval. In consequence there has arisen a sort of ‘Dada-ism’. Some years ago, when I was in Berlin, I received a letter in which the writer signed himself ‘Der Ober-Dada’ (the Head Dada). This is a retrogression, a principle of imitation, such as is found in this inverse Darwinism, this returning once more to the ape. You see how it is; one just imitates. And so, in founding this sort of ‘Dada-ism’ in Europe one is really imitating the more primitive methods of the Oriental.

In the word ‘dada’, however, there does actually lie some expression of this educating gesture, of this drawing attention to something, pointing to something. (Frl. S.... will you show us the movement for d? Try to enter right into the nature of the d-sound.) What is really the nature of the d-sound? In it there lies the indicating movement. Thus you must have the feeling: There is something; there is some-thing else; d,—when you finally land on it.—For this reason you must carry out the movement in such a way that there is a certain harmony between the two arms. One arm must reach a definite point just a moment before the other. The arm that starts later, however, must follow on quickly as though being drawn by the arm which started earlier. The direction of the movement may be either towards the left or towards the right. It is very necessary to study these things in detail, and you must learn really to feel this indicating, this pointing towards something. But first, in order to express the d-sound successfully, you must accustom yourselves to this pointing; you must introduce this pointing. The hands must be held in this way; (pointing with the finger).

I told you yesterday that f is really Isis. In f there is the consciousness of being permeated with wisdom. When one first feels one’s own inner being and then experiences this inner being in the process of out-breathing, in the out-going breath stream,— f,—then one has the true f. Man experiences the wisdom of his own being, that is to say, of his own etheric body in the out-breathing process. This feeling must be present in the movement which represents the f-sound. (Frau P.... will you make an f.) This movement corresponds exactly to the movement which the utterance of the f-sound produces in the air as it is breathed outwards. You must make the movement: for f in such a way that there is a break in it; then only will you feel what I have indicated with regard to the nature of f. You must show that there is, as it were, a second attack in the sound. But do not make the movement so quickly; it must be gentler. That is the f. In the movement for f we have a very exact imitation of this conscious out-breathing process which is of such great significance.

Now I have already told you that in the l we have the sound, which actually forms something, the sound in which we feel the form-giving process with the tongue. l-l-l. In order to make this clear I took the word leim (putty) as an example; I pointed out the adhesive quality of this substance, its formative quality in the capacity it has for imitating form, in other words, the way in which it strives to represent the fundamental nature of the: l-sound. L was looked upon in the Mysteries as a sound possessing special magical qualities, for when one gives form to something it follows that one has power over it. And it was just this aspect of l, this quality of mastering something, of gaining power over something which, in the Mysteries, caused this sound to be looked upon as one containing demonic forces. All this must be embodied in the movement for l. And when added to this, you feel as if your arms are quite supple, flexible in themselves; when you feel that something takes place in the arms which is similar to the movement of your tongue when, you say l,—then you will experience l in the right way, and you will discover that there is something truly fascinating in this movement.

Then we have the sound m. I said yesterday that m signifies the understanding of something, the capacity for entering into something with intelligence. I told you that in the place where I was brought up it was customary to say mhn; hn, when one had heard something said and wished to emphasize the fact that one had understood it. Mhn; hn—we will discuss this further; it expresses the feeling of joy and satisfaction aroused by having understood something. And one really has the feeling of being absolutely devoured by the intelligence and understanding of the person to whom one is speaking when he says mhn. Hence, in the m of the sacred Indian word Aum, m, we have a marvellous expression of the understanding of the universe. Thus m may be said to signify the grasp of a thing: first there is the feeling of grasping something, then there is the penetration into it and lastly there follows the understanding of it. The position should be held for a moment so that this intelligent comprehension which comes about as a matter of course is shown by the movement. (The arms should be held slightly in front of the body.)

It would indeed be wonderful if this movement could also be taught to the elephant. The elephant could make a wonderful m by stretching its trunk outwards and then turning it under. One could not have a more perfect example of an m. An m carried out in this way would really be the best m one could possibly imagine. I mention all these things as they may help you really to experience the sounds.

The uneasy sort of feeling which one has when meeting a person with a nose like an eagle’s beak will not be unknown to you. You will realize that a nose of this type really is the unconscious expression of the m-movement. The nose takes on the form of m. People with such a nose often cause a certain embarrassment to their fellows, because they give the impression of an absolute understanding of those with whom they come in contact, and it is not always pleasant to feel that one is being so completely understood. We get this feeling with people having an eagle-like nose for the simple reason that such a nose is really the m-movement held fast and frozen into a set form.

But there is another kind of understanding, an understanding mingled with a feeling of repulsion, an understanding tinged with irony. Here one comprehends the matter in question, at the same time, however, revealing this attitude of mind: Why make such a fuss about it? Of course, it is absolutely obvious!—n. If you should happen to be in Berlin you could not fail to notice this. The impression that one has in Berlin is that people are not altogether pleased with one’s affairs, but that they understand them perfectly! They immediately put everything on one side: ne. Indeed, the people of Berlin, if they know you well, say precious little besides ne! They really have not much else to say. This expression gives some indication of the attitude of mind of those who have a tendency to despise anything and everything which they feel they can understand as a matter of course.

One feels at once, when seeing this movement: The thing is of no importance. I understand it perfectly. And the eurhythmist also must have this feeling. In order to get into the right mood for the n-movement, you should imagine that you are dealing with someone who is quite stupid, someone who in his conversation keeps laying great emphasis upon the most ordinary things. You want to make him realize that he really is too stupid, that you can understand the matter very quickly and wish to get away from the whole thing as soon as possible. That is the experience.

I have already told you that r is the sound which expresses the complete turning over of something; it is the expression of something which is not itself round, but which takes on a rounded form. One always has the feeling that this is difficult, to imitate, because the most natural way to make the movement for r would be to turn a complete somersault, and this, of course, we cannot do! Frl. S... will you show us the movement for r? That is a very strenuous r. It is one way of doing it. Now Frl. S.... will you show us another r? That is another way of doing it. So you see there are various ways of expressing the movement very beautifully; it is a turning, revolving movement, which takes place in the breath-process also, for there is indeed a rolling movement when the sound r is uttered.

Such, then, are the things which I believe may show you to some extent, and in an introductory way, how the feelings and experiences lying behind the gestures may through eurhythmy be carried over into plastic movements, into movements which really have form and shape.

My dear Friends,

In the lecture this afternoon the life between death and a new birth was pictured as a journey, and we considered the sense in which the positions of certain stars in the heavens can be taken as viewpoints whence we may behold this journey of man through certain spiritual regions. Before proceeding further, we will study in a little more detail how we must picture this journey through regions indicated for us by certain heavenly bodies.

It might seem that the super-sensible existence of man between two earthly lives has been adequately presented in such a book as Theosophy. For the early stages of study, that is quite true, but you will surely agree that knowledge must also progress and expand. As we go further in our study we have constantly to bear in mind the oneness of the Universe, we have to remember that there is an unbroken, harmonious interplay between the super-sensible and the sensible worlds. The conditions of existence in the different regions through which man passes between death and a new birth express themselves outwardly in the relationships of space and of time that exist between the heavenly bodies concerned. When, therefore, we speak of these spiritual regions in terms of heavenly bodies, we are using a correct picture. There is a connection between the place of a visible star in the heavens and some particular region of super-sensible life. As an objection to this it could be said that the life which stretches between death and a new birth cannot be conceived in terms of space or at most only to a very limited degree. That is perfectly true, but super-sensible existence is nevertheless reflected into space. The world that is beyond space and beyond time, plays into space and into time; and as man's thinking and ideation have necessarily to be in terms of space and time, the imagery of the stars in the heavens is an excellent one for giving a picture of the super-sensible. One thing, however, we must not omit to make clear. We are taught in physics that the processes we have in the physical world—processes that are subject to the force of gravity—undergo a change, when we go out into space. Physical science tells us the exact proportion in which the force of gravity decreases. We are taught that the force of gravity (and also the intensity of light) decreases in proportion to the square of the distance. Science will not, however, admit that the same is true in relation to all knowledge of material things which has been acquired here on Earth. Science has derived this knowledge from the Earth; and if the figures which apply to gravity and light in the immediate environment of the Earth have to be modified as we go out into space, it is not unreasonable to suppose that only so long as we remain in the actual environment of the Earth are we justified in applying the scientific knowledge of to-day. Just as the power of gravity decreases in proportion to the square of the distance, so does the truth of our conclusions decrease, the further we are away from the Earth. When the astronomer or astro-physicist tries with ordinary thinking to determine, for instance, what is happening in some nebula out in cosmic space, it is just the same as if one set out to calculate, according to the conditions prevailing on the Earth, the weight of a stone in that nebula far away in the heavens. It ought not therefore to surprise us when Spiritual Science says: Here on Earth things present such and such an aspect, but out in the cosmos they are in reality quite different. On Earth we see the Moon as it appears in the sky. In reality the Moon is a cosmic colony of many Beings—I described it to you in the last lecture. It is the same with all the stars and constellations. This fact must be borne in mind throughout our present study.

The lectures so far have brought us to the point where, during his life between death and a new birth, man passes into the Sun sphere. In this region the spirit-form of the lower part of the human being is transformed into the head of the next earthly life. It must of course be remembered that man's path between death and new birth is such that he passes through all these planetary spheres twice. After death he passes, first of all, into the Moon sphere, then he goes on into the Mercury sphere, the Venus sphere and the Sun sphere. That is as far as we came in our description. In the Sun sphere the lower man begins to be transformed into the upper man. The limb structures are transformed—spiritually, of course, at this stage—into the future head-system. This work of metamorphosis is a work of infinite grandeur and sublimity. Those who study the human head merely as a physical structure have no notion of all the manifold work that has to be performed in the Cosmos in order to bring into being the spirit-germ of the human head,—which later on will unite with the physical embryo. After this work has been begun in the Sun sphere, man passes into the Mars sphere, then into the Jupiter sphere and into the Saturn sphere. The Saturn sphere is really the last, for Uranus and Neptune do not come into consideration here. During all this time, work is proceeding upon the spirit-germ of the head. Man's path then leads him still further out into the cosmic expanse, out into the wide ocean of the cosmos, where the work of metamorphosis continues, until the time comes for him to take the path of return. Then, going back through the regions of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars to the region of the Sun, he comes again at length to the sphere of the Moon. Of the path of return we shall hear later on; at this point we will consider the experiences through which the human being passes, after his time in the region of the Sun is over.

Before he reaches the Sun sphere, man's experiences are for the most part closely connected with himself. In the last lecture I told you how man wears a physiognomy which expresses his good and bad qualities and how this enables him to see other beings similar in nature to himself. I told you how he gradually changes his spirit-form and comes to resemble the beings who belong to the super-sensible world, and how then he is able to behold the Beings of the Third Hierarchy and the Beings also of the second Hierarchy. If we want to describe the human being up to the stage of the Sun existence we must fix our attention on his spirit-form or figure, and describe that. But having entered the Sun region man undergoes an experience which I called living his way into the Cosmic Music, the Music of the Spheres. He hears, in cosmic harmony and cosmic melody, the meaning, as it were, of all the interworking of the starry worlds. For this working together of the stars, which is at the same time an expression of the working together of the Spiritual Beings that are in these regions—this it is, ultimately, that comes to revelation in cosmic harmony and cosmic melody. It is chiefly the life of feeling in its spiritual metamorphosis that is quickened and stimulated in the Sun existence. Every experience man has is like cosmic melody and cosmic harmony vibrating through his entire being. What we need at this stage of life between death and a new birth is not anything of the nature of theory, nor indeed anything that lends itself at all to expression in words. What we need is to feel—with a universal feeling that fills our being through and through—the harmonies and melodies born from the inter-workings of the different orders of Beings in the Cosmos.

Then a further experience comes to us, an experience which reveals unmistakably the connection between the physical world of sense and the super-sensible, superphysical world. When we pass into the Sun existence where the melodies and harmonies of the spheres—the whole Music of the Spheres—sound to us from every direction of the Cosmos, we are still aware of the last remnants of one of the spiritual faculties we possessed during earthly existence, we can still feel the last remnants of speech. At this stage of existence between death and a new birth, our spirit-form has already fallen away and we have come to resemble in form the cosmic sphere itself; our form has undergone metamorphosis into what will become head in the next incarnation. Everything about it that was still reminiscent of the form we bore in earthly existence has by this time fallen right away. But the faculty of soul that enabled us to speak, to make our thought articulate in words, follows us, and being present with us in memory brings a kind of discord into the Music of the Spheres. Yes, discord is introduced into the Music of the Spheres, by reason of the fact that man carries right up into Sun existence the remnants of his faculty of speech. And this discordant element that is brought by man into the Sun existence becomes the basis for the work of certain higher Spirits whose task it is to help forward Earth existence from the Cosmos. For it is when they see what comes to expression in human speech and language as it is to-day, that they take knowledge of how things have degenerated on the Earth and grown corrupt. In none of its European or American forms to-day is speech a faculty that emerges from the being of man with elemental power. It may be that what speech once was will be able to come again on Earth in the following way. Some of us are learning Eurythmy. What happens when one learns Eurythmy? To-day we lightly utter words without the faintest inkling of how the configuration of the words is connected with the inner life and experience of the soul. To speak words to-day is really nothing but an acquiescence in convention. It never occurs to people that when they say “a” (ah)—as a sound, by itself—they are expressing something which as pure sound springs from astonishment or wonder in the soul. When we utter the sound “b,” we mean that we are covering something, enveloping it, wrapping it round. Consonantal sounds invariably signify forms; vowel sounds express feelings, the inner life and being of the soul. The “b” sound is primordially connected with an act of covering. “B” is really the “house.” If I say “a” (ah), this is an expression of a wonder that is felt in the very depths of the soul. The consonantal sound of “t” expresses a settling oneself down, making a halt, staying there. “D” is the same, but has a gentler shade of meaning, less abrupt. Suppose I utter the (German) word “Bad.”* [* English “bath.”] If I were to go back to the origin of the word, to the time when it was still felt and seen, I would have to say: The water is around me like an enveloping sheath: “b.” It is comfortably warm: ah! (Now I am at the sound “a.”) I shall stay in it: “d.” The whole experience is contained in the word itself. To speak in such a way seems to us almost absurd, for nowadays no actual experience is any longer connected with words. If we wanted to experience the word “B-a-d” we should have to say: “The house in which I feel wonder, in which I sit.” In reality speech is filled through and through with soul; man's inner experience of soul streams into and permeates it.

In days of yore this was felt and known. In the original, primitive tongues, speech was born from perception of feeling and of form—feeling in the vowel, form in the consonant. To-day these elements are no longer associated with speech; it has become a mere matter of convention. In Eurythmy, however, the sounds—“b,” “a,” “d”—are changed back again into the gestures that correspond to them. In making the gestures, the Eurythmist begins again to experience speech. One may cherish the hope that if love for Eurythmy is born in ever widening circles, humanity will be able to find its way back to what was contained in primitive tongues,—to a speech that is felt and seen. So will Eurythmy in the future be something more than it is to-day; it will be man's guide and show him how the life of soul and spirit can be borne along on the surging waves of speech. To-day we have come to the point when speech is so little articulated—let alone, ensouled—that numbers of people cannot really be said to “speak” at all. They “spit” the words out! Speech as it is to-day is certainly not born from the life of soul! It is enough to make one despair, when one has to listen to words that have no longer any soul in them, any life,—nay, are not even articulated.

So it comes about that in our day a shrill discord sounds up from Earth into the Cosmic Music when man enters the Sun existence after death. And this quality that has crept into speech makes manifest to certain Spiritual Beings the degeneration that earthly existence has suffered, showing them too at the same time how the right forces and impulses can be found that will lead once again to an ascent.

Man continues his wandering and comes into the Mars existence. What do we mean when we say: Man conies into the Mars existence? It is now no longer possible, you must remember, to speak of man in his spirit-form, for by this time he is wholly changed; he has become a spiritual image of the great cosmic sphere. On and on leads the path, through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, out into the surging waves of the Cosmos. In the Mars region the human being lives among the “population” of Mars—if I may so express myself. The inhabitants of Mars are discovered to be either discarnate human souls or Beings of the Hierarchies, but above all those of the Hierarchies from whose entire being Cosmic Speech sounds forth into universal space. For man is now in the region where Cosmic Music becomes Cosmic Speech. At first he hears it; then he is himself interwoven into the Cosmic Speech. Instead of the imitative speech of humanity, he hearkens to a speech that is creative, a speech out of which things are born and have their being. During man's passage through the sphere of Mars he acquires conscious knowledge of the Beings who people this region. The spiritual population of Mars consists of Beings who are the Knowers of the Cosmic Speech. There are other Beings too,—for example. Beings who are warlike in nature. But so far as man is concerned, the most important Beings in the Mars sphere are those who in their whole nature are Cosmic Word. They are the Guardians of the Cosmic Speech.

Man's journey then leads him into the region of Jupiter where dwell the Beings who are the guardians of the Cosmic Thoughts. These Beings radiate thought-beings into our planetary system and its environment. Through this region also man must pass, and he is involved there in a process of metamorphosis which I can only describe in a rather prosaic way.

Picture to yourselves that man becomes a kind of image of the cosmic sphere; that is to say, his whole being is really the spirit-germ of the head as it will be in his next life on Earth. In the Sun existence, having experienced the shrill discord set up by earthly speech, he learns to lay aside this earthly speech. During his passage through Mars he becomes part of the Cosmic Speech, he grows one with it, and begins also to lay the foundation for an understanding of Cosmic Speech. For it is like this. The metamorphosis of the lower man has begun—the legs into the lower jaw, the arms into the upper jaw, and so on. In community with the Beings of the Hierarchies the human being builds the spirit-germ of his future head. But, to begin with, this head is built for understanding the Cosmos—not the Earth! It learns first to understand Cosmic Speech, Cosmic Thoughts. Cosmic Thoughts and Cosmic Speech find a home in the human head; just as here on Earth man knows of minerals, plants and animals, so, during his journey through the spheres of Mars and Jupiter, he is made acquainted with the mysteries of the spiritual Universe. We shall never have a true feeling or perception of the nature of man until we realise in clear consciousness that between death and rebirth the human being has learned to know the names of the wonderful and majestic Beings of the higher Hierarchies, has learned to understand the work and creative activities of these Beings in the Cosmos, has learned to follow in his thought—not little everyday problems of personal life, such as, How am I to get back to Amsterdam?—but such a question as: How is one world-epoch born out of another through the workings of the higher Hierarchies? So much for man's experience in his passage through Jupiter.

Now comes the passage through the Saturn existence. Saturn bestows upon the human being what I will call Cosmic Memory—for in the Saturn sphere dwell those Spiritual Beings who preserve the memory of everything that has ever come to pass in our planetary system. Saturn is the mighty bearer of the memory of all the happenings of our planetary system. Just as in the Mars sphere man learns the speech of the Gods, and in the Jupiter sphere the thoughts of the Gods, so in his first passage through the Saturn existence he learns to know all that lives in the memory of the Gods of our planetary system. Hence it comes about that man's head in the spiritual spheres—which is the spirit-germ of his future earthly head—receives incorporated into it everything that enables him to be a citizen of the Cosmos and to live in the Cosmos among the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, even as he lives on earth among the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms.

Then, having been so deeply enriched in his spirit-existence that he has learned to understand the speech of the great world, the speech of the Macrocosm in the widest sense of the word, man passes out of the spheres of planetary activity and enters the sphere of activity of the Fixed Stars. Here the work upon the primal germ of the human head, the pre-figuring and shaping of it, is brought to completion by influences pouring in from infinitudes of spiritual worlds.

The time has now come for man to take the path of return. He comes again, first, into the Saturn sphere. The fact that during his earlier sojourn in the Saturn sphere he received into himself the planetary memories, enables the foundation to be laid now in his head for the faculty of memory that will be necessary in his life on Earth. The cosmic memory implanted into his being is, as it were, made “earthly.” Cosmic memory is transformed again into the germ of the faculty of human memory. And in the Jupiter sphere, all that man acquired through having perceived the thoughts of the Gods, is transformed on the path of return into the faculty to conceive human thoughts which can then be reflected in ordinary consciousness when the germ of the head unites with the physical embryo.

On the return path through the Saturn sphere the detailed elaboration of the metamorphosis of the lower man into the various parts of the head-organisation can also begin. This is a wonderful work,—one human being working upon another, in accord too with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. Verily, the work that is wrought here for the forming of the human head is like the creation of a whole world. For in the sphere of existence between death and rebirth of which I am now speaking, each single human head is seen to be a wonderful world,—a world of infinite variety and detail; and the work upon it calls for the devotion of human beings who are linked together by destiny, with the co-operation also of Beings of the Hierarchies who, knowing the mysteries of the Cosmos, understand how such a human head must be built and formed.

Wonderful it is beyond all telling, to come in this way to a knowledge of what is in man. Nor can such knowledge ever lead to pride or conceit. Yonder, between death and a new birth, the world in which we live sees to it that we do not succumb to pride! It would be, my dear friends, an absurdity to fall victim to human pride and arrogance among the Beings of the Hierarchies, among Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones! The human being must remain for ever little in comparison with the Beings among whom he works. And when in this earthly existence a man comes to learn of what he is in the great Macrocosm between death and a new birth, he has good reason to say to himself: “You have not brought very much with you into earthly existence! You have no great cause to pride yourself upon your present condition; nor have you any occasion to be particularly proud of what you were among the Gods!” What can grow within us as the result of looking upon the life of man between death and a new birth is a sense of responsibility which makes us say: “We must strive with all our might to be worthy even here on earth, of being ‘man.’” For this is indeed what we feel, when we measure the significance of being “man” by the work performed upon the human being by the Gods in the period that lies between death and a new birth.

Going now further on his path of return, man comes again into the Mars existence, where the work upon his being continues. It is here that the spirit-germs for the new body are added—for the breast system and for the limb structures, as they will be in the next earthly life. For it is really so, that the foundations of the limbs of the previous earthly life come forth as the foundations of the head in the new incarnation, and so now during man's passage through the planetary world on the way to his next earthly life the germs for breast system and limb structures have to be laid anew. It must of course always be remembered that these germs are spiritual; the whole process is a spiritual process. As man passes again through Mars existence, the lofty spirituality with which he was imbued during his first passage through the Mars sphere, and which enabled him to experience the cosmic Word, is now transformed into spiritual substance of a somewhat lower order—into that spiritual substance from out of which, later on, the human Ego manifests itself. It is also during this return journey through the Mars sphere that the spirit-germ of the larynx and lung formations are added.

Man comes then again to the Sun. The second passage through the Sun sphere is significant in the highest degree. Since he completed his first sojourn in the Sun existence, man has passed through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, to the world of the Stars, and then made the return journey through Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. All this time his whole being has been given over to the Cosmos; he has become one with the Cosmos, one with the World-All. He has been living in the Cosmos; he has learned cosmic speech, he has learned to weave cosmic thoughts into his being, he has been living, not within his own life of memory—that only dawns for him later—but within the memory of the whole planetary system. He has felt himself one with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies in his memory of the cosmic thoughts and of the cosmic speech. Now however, when he returns once again to the Sun, he begins to shut himself off more as an individual being. Very faintly the feeling dawns that he is becoming separate from the Cosmos. This is connected with the fact that the first foundations of the heart are now being laid within him. The return journey continues. For the second time man passes through the Venus sphere and the Mercury sphere, where the spirit-germs of the other organs have to be implanted within him.

At the moment of entrance for the second time into the Sun existence—all these happenings and processes take a very long time, and long before man enters upon earthly existence he experiences, as we shall see, what is for him a very significant turn of destiny—at the moment when, out in the Cosmos, the spirit-germ of the heart is laid within our being on the return journey to the earth, there is of course not yet a physical heart. True, there is already an indication of a physical heart form, but it is surrounded and inter-woven with all that constitutes the worth of the human being as the outcome of his previous earthly lives. The fact that we receive into ourselves in the Sun sphere the first germ of the physical heart is less important than the fact that in this germ of the heart is concentrated all that we are morally, all our qualities of soul and spirit. Before the spirit-germ of the heart unites with the embryonic germ of the future body, the heart in man is a spiritual being, a moral being of soul and spirit out in the Cosmos; only later does this moral being of spirit and soul—which man now feels living within him, which man has, as it were, acquired in the course of his return journey to Earth—unite with the embryo. This concentration, in the germ of the heart, of his whole soul-and-spirit being is experienced by man in communion with the sublime Sun Beings—those Sun Beings who rule over the creative forces of the planetary system and therewith of earthly existence. Let me try to describe it to you in a picture. The expressions may sound strange but they are really appropriate.

At the time when this cosmic heart is bestowed upon man, he is living among those Spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies in whose hand lies the leadership of the whole planetary system in its connection with earthly existence. The experience is one of infinite grandeur and splendour. It is difficult to find words to describe what the human being experiences in this phase of existence. In a certain respect his feeling resembles a feeling he can have in physical existence. For just as in physical existence he feels that he is bound up with his heart-beat, with the whole activity of the heart, so, out in the Macrocosm, through his macrocosmic spiritual heart, he feels himself at one with his whole being of soul and spirit. The moral being of soul and spirit which he has become at this moment of his experience is, as it were, a spiritual heart-beat within him. His whole being seems now to be in the Cosmos, in the same way as his heartbeat is in him; he becomes aware also of a kind of circulation in connection with this heart-beat. Just as on Earth we feel in the heart-beat the blood circulation and breathing which give rise to it, so, when on the return journey through the Sun existence we begin to be aware of the beating of our spiritual, macrocosmic heart, it feels to us as though streams or currents were uniting this spiritual heart-beat with the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. Even as the blood flows to the heart from the veins in the physical organism, so into our being of spirit-and-soul pour the words of the Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis,—what they have to say concerning the World and the World's judgement upon man. The words and sounds of the spirit of the World-All are the circulation that now centres itself in this spiritual, macrocosmic heart, in this human being of soul and spirit. There, at the centre, beats the spiritual heart of man. And the beat of the spiritual heart of man is the heart-beat of the world in which he is living. The blood-stream of this world is the deeds of the creative Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the forces which stream out from them. And just as the blood-stream on Earth centres itself in the heart where it is unconsciously experienced by man, so at this point of time between death and a new birth it is given to man, as a grace bestowed, to hold and cherish within him a cosmic heart—one of the organs of perception, one of the cosmic hearts, created out of the pulse-beat of the Macrocosm, even the deeds of the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. For let it be remembered that the physical heart is a sense organ, which perceives the movement of the blood, not a “pump” as the physiologists imagine. The spirituality and vitality of the human being—these it is that cause the movement of the blood.

The return journey continues—through the Mercury and the Venus spheres. But before this, indeed in that cosmic moment when the human being feels himself living in very truth within the spiritual heart of the Cosmos, his gaze has already fallen upon the hue of generations, at the end of which stand the parents who will give him birth. The connection with the line of generations is, as you see, made relatively soon. We are born of father and mother, our parents again have each of them father and mother, and these too have their father and mother. This takes us back about a hundred years. But we must go further back, through many centuries; for long before a human being is born on Earth, he has united himself with the line of generations which culminates in the family into which he is born. It is quite early that the connection with the line of generations is determined, namely, when man is passing through the Sun existence for the second time. And in his passage through the cosmic colonies of Venus and Mercury he can, so to speak, arrange for his destiny to be brought as closely as possible into line with the outer experiences that must come to him through being born into a particular family and a particular nation.

After this, man comes again into the sphere of the Moon. Let me remind you how during his first passage through the Moon sphere man's thoughts were directed, for good and also for ill, to the primeval Teachers of the human race, to the starting-point of earthly existence, when superhuman Teachers imparted superhuman wisdom to the men of Earth. When he comes down into the Moon existence for the second time, there is less inducement for him to turn his attention to what was on Earth long ago. For now the period of time that man spends—above, in the Cosmos—in this Moon existence, is the same period of time as takes its course on Earth below between conception and birth. Man's embryonic life runs hand in hand with a particular cosmic development. Up there in the Moon sphere he is passing through a definite phase of evolution while below, stage by stage, the physical embryo is being prepared—the physical embryo with which he then gradually unites.

How does this macrocosmic life of the human being take its course during this second period of evolution in the Moon sphere? What does man accomplish there?

In all the experiences I have been describing, man's consciousness is far clearer and more awake than the ordinary consciousness of his life on Earth. It is most important to distinguish the various degrees of human consciousness. Consciousness during dream-life is dull, consciousness during waking life is clear, consciousness after death still clearer. As a dream is to reality, so is all our life on Earth in comparison with the clarity of our consciousness in the life after death. Moreover, at each new stage in the life after death, consciousness becomes still clearer, still more alert.

When we pass through the Moon existence on the upward journey, consciousness grows clearer owing to the fact that in the Moon sphere we come into the environment of the wise, primeval Teachers of humanity. Clearer and ever clearer grows our consciousness as we pass on through the spheres of Mercury and Venus; and its clarity continues to be intensified every time we enter a new sphere of the heavens. But when we are returning again and approaching a new life on Earth, consciousness is dimmed and darkened stage by stage. During the phase of Mercury existence on the return journey, we still have a consciousness that is clearer than any consciousness can be in ordinary earthly existence. But when we come to the Moon sphere, and are in an environment that reveals to us what man was at the beginning of earthly evolution, then our consciousness begins to be obliterated. In the same sphere where, on the upward journey, the super-sensible world first lit up for us in a clearer consciousness than was possible on Earth, consciousness is now dimmed. We are returning to the Earth and consciousness becomes ever dimmer and dimmer, until it remains in us only as growth-force—the power of growth that is present in the little child, the dreaming little child. Consciousness has dimmed into dream! This is the moment when the being of soul-and-spirit can unite with the physical embryo. In order that this momentous event may come to pass, in order that the human being at a certain point of his development make connection with the physical embryo, he must pass through a Moon evolution in communion with the primeval Teachers of humanity, while the physical embryo down below is passing through its ten lunar months in the body of the mother. And the Moon evolution that he has to undergo consists in this—that a whole host of the Teachers of mankind are engaged in the task of dimming down the cosmic consciousness which the human being still possessed during his Mercury existence, toning it down to the dream consciousness in which he lives at the beginning of his life on Earth.

Physical man, with all that we can see of him here on Earth, is, in truth, only to be understood in the light of a knowledge of super-sensible man. And super-sensible man can never be explained by the facts of Earth, but only by the facts of the great World, the Macrocosm. My object in these lectures has been to show you how earthly man is born as Spirit-man out of the Spiritual Cosmos.

It remains for us in the lecture tomorrow to study in this connection the significance of earthly life itself, in so far as the being who is spiritual and superhuman passes over into this earthly life. We shall come to understand the significance of the fact that when he passes through the gate of death the human being carries out again into the spiritual world what remains to him of all he has acquired and experienced in earthly life. Having, therefore, learned to understand, in some of its aspects, the spirit nature of man, his super-sensible being, we will return tomorrow to the study of the connection between super-sensible man and physical man.

There are many questions still pending from those asked recently, but I will tie in some of these with the recent subject of dreams. We shall start with a question that seems to have broken many scholars' heads, and that is the question of the lizard's tail.

As you know, if we see one of these large lizards and grab it by the tail, the tail breaks. In fact, it is very difficult to catch such lizards because, when the tail breaks, the lizard runs away quite happily without its tail. The tail seems brittle and scientists attempt to establish whether the tail is really torn away or if it is somehow left behind by the animal. Contemporary science proceeds in a materialistic way and therefore tends to assume that the animal simply has weak muscles in that part of its tail and that these muscles just cannot hold together under the strain of being caught.

But there is a little-noticed fact that is undervalued, which is that when the lizard is caught and kept in captivity for a long time it loses the ability to let go of its tail. It is as if the tail becomes stronger and therefore increasingly difficult to pull off. The peculiar thing is that when the lizard is in the wild he loosens his tail easily, and when he is in captivity he holds onto it. What is really going on here?

You see, people direct their thoughts toward the musculature around the tail, instead of looking at all the facts, facts that would very easily give the answer to why the lizard in captivity does not lose its tail. The missing evidence is that the animal in the wild is scared when one tries to catch it, because it is very unusual for it to be caught and may actually be the first time this has happened to it. The first time a man comes into its vicinity the lizard is scared and becomes so brittle that it lets go of its tail. Once the lizard becomes used to the proximity of people—when people are constantly near it—the lizard loses its fear and likewise stops losing its tail.

Even a superficial observation of all the facts in this situation leads us to conclude that fear plays a very important role in the case of the lizard. But we must examine this fear more carefully and say: The fear that this lizard has when people come near it to catch it—this somehow comes out of the animal when it is caught, though normally it remains inside. It is this fear that holds the matter in the tail together and makes it strong!

Let me introduce here a remarkable phenomenon of human life. As you know, when people who are very dependent on their soul life become scared they get diarrhea. The fear causes diarrhea. How can we understand the meaning of this? This means that whatever is normally held in their intestines is no longer held together as it was. What was it that held things together in the intestines? When fear rises up in the soul it stops holding things together in the intestines, but when fear remains in the intestines it holds things together.

The same thing is true of the lizard. If one looks at a lizard, it is like one's own lower body: it is completely filled throughout with the soul quality of fear.

It is especially true of the tail that it is completely filled with fear; and when this fear is pressed out or expressed, the tail breaks. The fear, however, normally remains within the animal. The animal does not feel the fear while in captivity because it is used to people, and because of this the fear can remain in the tail and hold it together. Here we see a very important quality of soul that has a certain significance for the bodily constitution.

Human beings also contain fear. We have fear in our big toe, in our legs, in our belly—there is fear everywhere. This is not everywhere the case however. Fear does not normally rise above the diaphragm—it does so only when we have nightmares. Nevertheless, fear does have a role to play: it holds our organism together. It is in our bones that fear lives most strongly. The bones are strong and hard because a terrible fear lives in them. It is fear that holds the bones together. When we feel our bones too much, our bones get soft. Those children who were fearful at the time when their bones were not yet completely hardened, develop weak bones—a condition called rickets. It is possible to cure children with rickets by reducing their fear through some soul work. But it would be quite false to say that this fear in us is something of the soul: that we need only approach the fear in a somewhat higher manner in order to have an experience of a higher kind of knowledge. To enter this subject in the wrong way would not be good, for we would make ourselves sick in body and soul at the same time. We must do something entirely different.

In order to gain knowledge of the spiritual world—I have already given you various other means—we must learn to live correctly in the outer world. How do people really live in the outer world these days? As we said recently, we freeze terribly, and often we sweat a lot, and this is how most people normally experience living in the world. First they sweat, then they freeze. This is not the only way one can live into the outer world, however. Rather one should try to cultivate a certain capacity, so that when it is cold one isn't just cold but rather one becomes aware of a kind of qualitative experience that goes with it, namely that of fear. When one is aware of fear, one easily notices that with the return of warmth fear disappears. When a person cultivates a certain awareness of fear connected with the coming of snow; when the warm rays of the sun bring a certain pleasant comforting feeling—that person is in fact living into the outer world in a way that leads to higher knowledge. This belongs with the other requirements I have tried to describe to you. It is really true that whoever wants to gain higher knowledge must feel something when he comes close to a glowing piece of iron, and he must feel something different when he approaches a piece of flint. When he approaches the glowing iron, the feeling should arise: here is something that is related to my own warmth and is good. But when he picks up a piece of flint he should feel a sense of strangeness and a somewhat fearful mood. (You can see immediately that whoever wants to gain higher knowledge cannot be nervous, as we say these days, or else he would drop the piece of flint the minute he takes it into his hand, because he is afraid of it!) One must be brave and conquer the fear. At the same time we cannot be like a moth that takes so much pleasure in the light that it flies right into it, to its death

The example of the insect flying into the flame gives you a good idea of the relationship of a flame to the spiritual world. We really must acquire a sensitivity to the inner feeling for whatever is at hand out there in nature. What will this produce? Let us examine things as they are now. Materialists assert above all that the earth has a crust of hard stone—they believe in this hard rock of the earth because they can walk on it and when they touch it, it is hard. Materialists believe in this hard rock, but whoever wants to gain higher knowledge should experience a certain fearfulness of this same hard rock. This fear is totally absent when a man finds himself in the warm air. I will draw the warmed air above the hard rock. (He draws on the blackboard.)

When one considers the warm air, fear is totally absent. (To show the warmth of the air I will color it red.) Yet it is possible to enter a condition such that even the warm air would make one afraid. This is the case when one attempts to get closer and closer to the feeling that one gets from the warm air. In a person who feels more and more comfortable living in the quality of the warm air, the warmth too will eventually cause fear. It seems strange, but the better one feels, the more fearful one becomes! When one gets used to feeling completely at ease in warmed air, when one becomes more and more used to the warmth and is fully at ease inside all of nature, then one can find spiritual knowledge. At this point something quite remarkable happens—I will try to make it clearer for you. Most people try to keep cool, to cool off when they get warm—all they know is that it is very pleasant to get cooled off. But if, instead of this, one were to remain warm, if one were to soak up the good feeling of the warmth—then whatever it is that I have drawn here schematically (yellow) would start to fill itself with all kinds of images (upper light) and the spiritual world would literally arise: the spiritual world which is contained in the air, which one does not normally feel and is not conscious of, because in most cases one cannot tolerate the warmth in the air. When one becomes accustomed to seeing those beings in the air, one gradually reaches the point where one can tell oneself: when I take a stone in my hand, it is very hard; but when I become more and more aware of the spiritual, when I am able to penetrate into the spiritual, when there is more and more activity around me—not just the sensory world but also the spiritual world—I can do something more. I cannot slip into the hard ground with my physical body of flesh and blood, but with my astral body I can actually slip into the earth (lower red). This is very interesting—at the moment that one starts to perceive the spiritual world in the realm of the air, at that moment one slips so far out of one's body that stones are no longer perceived as obstacles—and one can actually dive into the hard earth the way a swimmer dives into water. What is interesting is that we cannot penetrate into the air as spirits, for there are already other spirits there, but in the earth, which is empty of spirit, it is very easy to gain entrance—one can dive under as a swimmer does.

In between the solid and the gaseous elements we have the watery element (blue). This rises and falls as rain. Up above, as I am sure you have seen, there are sometimes formations of lightning (upper red). The water is between the hard earth and the air; it is thinner than earth and denser than air. What is the meaning here? This is something that is easiest to understand if we consider lightning.

According to the scientists, lightning is an electric spark. Let us examine why, according to them, it is an electric spark. You probably know all this but I will repeat it. If we take a sealing-wax rod and we rub it with a leather strap, it becomes electric; and if we have little pieces of paper, they are attracted by the rod; and so it is possible to electrify all kinds of objects by rubbing them. This is often shown to children in school. But there is also the specific need for something else. If you do this experiment in a very humid room, you will not be able to electrify a rod or anything else. First you have to dry everything thoroughly with a dry cloth; then, and only then, can you produce some electricity, for water does not produce electricity.

Now, according to the scientists there are clouds up above that rub against each other and somehow produce electric sparks. Even the child can tell you that in order to produce electricity you must remove all water, for if there is anything wet in the apparatus you will not be able to produce any electricity—even a child can tell you this. This is the kind of nonsense we are being told: it is clearly impossible to produce lightning by clouds rubbing against one another.

Think for a moment whither the water evaporates—it rises and reaches higher and higher into the region of the spiritual; it moves away from matter empty of spirits here-below and rises into the spiritual world above. It is actually spirit that produces what looks like our electric spark. For, as we rise, we move higher and higher into the regions of the spiritual. Matter is present only in proximity to the earth. Higher up, it is surrounded by the spirit. Therefore, at the moment when the water vapor rises and reaches the region of the spiritual, the flash is produced. The water First becomes more spiritualized and then it falls down again, "densified".

If one observes nature correctly, one is forced to come to spiritual subjects; but if one absolutely refuses to take the spiritual into consideration, one is then left with no alternative but to make all kinds of absurd statements like the ones you heard about the flying dreams or the lizard's tail or the cause of lightning. Everywhere we can look, it is clear that it is impossible to explain nature if one does not bring in the spiritual.

We will now try to proceed further. When one stands on the earth, starting from the feet and moving up, one is always related to the lower spiritual beings, and one can dive in like a swimmer. When we move out of our physical body with our astral body, we can actually penetrate into our solid surroundings and find ourselves within solid matter. (We cannot however do this with the surrounding air.) We can actually wander around, but this wandering around in the solid element has very important aspects. When we conduct ourselves correctly in relation to warmth then we come to the point of seeing spiritual beings in the air. But when we go out of our body at night and unite ourselves with the earthly in a spiritual form, then it can happen, when we awake, that we can still sense something around us of what we experienced when we were in the hard matter of the earth. Something remains in the soul.

Some of you may have noticed on awakening that it is easy to hear very soft sounds; and if, as you wake, you are really attentive you may have an experience similar to hearing someone knocking at the door. It is quite remarkable that when we live into the air with our soul there arise images, and when we live into the solid earth—into matter—with our soul, as a swimmer does who dives into water, then we experience tones.

It is very important to know that all hard matter continuously produces sounds that of course we cannot hear if we are not inside of it. All solid matter continuously contains tones and we can hear them on waking up only because we are still half in our surroundings. These sounds can have a very special meaning in certain cases. It is completely true, for example, that it sometimes happens, when a person dies at some distance, that someone else may hear on waking what sounds like a knocking at the door. This knocking sound is related to the dead.

Now of course it is very difficult for one to understand these things properly. But just think: You would all be unable to read, that is, to make sense of signs or letters on paper, if you had not first learned to read. In the same way one cannot immediately understand the wonders at work when one hears tones on waking up. You do not of course have to believe that there is actually a dead person standing at the door knocking with his fingers. But the dead do reside on earth in the first days after death, and they do live in the solid material of the earth. The fact that tones arise in connection with solid bodies does not necessarily have to seem very remarkable. It was quite widely known in the past when people paid attention to such things. People can have a premonition when someone at a distance dies. This means that someone has died and is still bound in his soul to the solid earth. Tones arise out of the dead when they abandon the earthly realm. It is just as easy to hear the sounds that are made at a distance as it is to read a telegraph message from someone who has transmitted from America. These kinds of long distance effects transmitted through matter are present on earth and are always there, and in days when people paid attention to these things the connection of the spiritual with the earthly was well known. This is not some fairy tale it is actually something that was perceived in earlier times.

As you can see, we are now entering an area that is described nowadays as superstition. But it is actually possible to explain these things scientifically, just as other scientific things are explained only you must know how to do this accurately.

One could come to the point of perceiving the spiritual world in the air: that is, if men were not so "poor me" as they so often are today. (The more civilized men become, the more depressed and plaintive they become in a certain way.) Those whose daily work forces them to live in great heat have no time during work hours to perceive the spiritual world and so they lose the opportunity to perceive the spiritual world contained in the air. The fact that one can see spiritual beings in the air is not in itself a dangerous thing; everybody could perceive those beings without further delay and without it in any way being dangerous.

However, in the case of hearing, if that seizes a person too strongly, and one enters a condition where one hears all kinds of things—that is a danger. The reason is that there are people who can come gradually to the point where they hear all kinds of things—they hear all kinds of things told to them. Such people are on the road to madness. There is a simple reason why there is never a danger in seeing the spiritual beings that are in the air. I will make it clear by using a comparison. If you were in a boat and you fell into the water you could drown but then, if someone pulled you up, you could have all kinds of experiences, except that of drowning: you would not actually drown. In the same way, if the human soul goes out and up it can see all kinds of things; however if it sinks into solid matter, it does in a way drown spiritually. This spiritual drowning happens when people lose their own consciousness in that they give it up to all kinds of things that are told to them inwardly. It is not a very serious danger when a man sees the spiritual outwardly. This is the same as walking around in the world, and just as a man is not afraid of a chair that is in front of him, so gradually he stops being afraid of spiritual beings and actually enjoys what he sees. But when things are heard inwardly, then we sink into the solid earth with our whole spiritual life, with our whole soul life, and it is possible to drown in that—one stops being truly human. Therefore one must always look with some caution and wakefulness at those people who say that all kinds of things have been told to them inwardly. That is always dangerous. Only the human being who is firmly rooted in the spiritual world and knows his way about can understand what is really being said, which amounts to this: it can never be higher beings speaking in a case like this it can only be spiritual beings of a lower nature.

I have told you these things in great detail so that you can see that as human beings we must come to a completely different conception of the outer world if we want to penetrate into the spiritual world. Of course there are people who can say: Why have the spirits made it so difficult for us to get to know them? But gentlemen, just think what kind of being a human would be if one didn't really have to make an effort to penetrate to the spiritual world—if one was always within it. One would be a purely spiritual automaton. A human being only comes to a proper relationship to the spiritual world, to the degree that he or she has really worked at it. It does indeed take the hardest inner effort in order to research and explore the spiritual world. It is not difficult to take one's ease at a laboratory bench and to make all kinds of experiments. It is quite easy to cut up corpses and thereby learn all manner of things but it takes inner work to really penetrate into the spiritual world, and for this kind of work the contemporary, educated world is too lazy. Because of this laziness people say: I have made these exercises on how to reach knowledge of the higher worlds—but I didn't see anything. The problem is that such people believe that these things have to be given to them outwardly, not that they have to work and conquer them inwardly. This indeed is in keeping with what people nowadays want—they want everything to be ready-made for them. As I have mentioned to you already, human beings these days want to put everything on film. They want to make a film of everything so that they can look at everything from the outside.

If we want to make progress—real progress, spiritually—we must make sure that no matter what we take up from the world, we will work it through. Therefore, in the future, those people will penetrate most deeply into the spiritual world who will as much as possible avoid having everything on film for their comfort. Rather they should choose to think everything through for themselves, to think along, so that when people tell them things about the world they will be participants in the thinking. As you can see, I have not shown you a film! Even if we had time for it, I would not attempt to present things to you with a film. I have done a few drawings, but these were done at the time and you could see them being made, so you could see what I was trying to do with every stroke and were able to think along with me.

This is also what needs to be introduced in the education of children. As few finished drawings or pictures as possible should be given, and as many as possible that are done in an impromptu manner, because in this way the child works inwardly with the teacher. In this way people become awakened to an inwardness that leads to a deeper living into the spiritual and thus enhances their understanding of the spiritual. Also one should not give children finished theories this makes them dogmatic. What really matters in all cases is that they are brought into autonomous activity this in turn will make the whole body freer.

I want to mention one other subject which arises from the questions I received from you. Many of you have read that potatoes were introduced into Europe at a particular time in history, for the people of Europe were not always potato-eaters. In fact a rather interesting story is related to this. There is an encyclopedia, in which I myself collaborated—but not in the article in question, for in this there is something comical, namely: According to the article, it is universally said that Drake introduced the potato into Europe. There is in Offenburg, which is now occupied by the French, a Drake monument. I looked it up in a conversational dictionary,⁸ and there it stood: The monument was erected to Drake in Offenburg, for it is rumored (wrongly) that he brought potatoes to Europe. One can say if anything is even attributed to a person, people in Europe will build a monument to him. But this is not what I wanted to talk about rather, that at a particular time potatoes were introduced.

Let us now take a closer look at potatoes. When we eat potatoes we are not really eating a root the roots are the little things dangling off the potatoes, and these are removed along with the peel when one cleans them. The potato itself is actually a thickened stem. An ordinary plant grows and it has a root and then a stem—and if the stem becomes thicker, as is the case with the potato, there arises a kind of knot or tuber, which is really a thickened stem. You should remember this when you are eating a potato—you are eating a thickened stem. We should ask, what does it mean for us that with the introduction of the potato into Europe we learned to like the taste of thickened stems?

If you look at a whole plant, it is made up of root, stem, leaves, and flower. (This is drawn.) A plant is something quite remarkable. The roots down there become very similar to the soil insofar as they contain many salts; and the flower up here is very similar to the warm air, so that it is as if through the heat of the sun the flower were continuously cooked. As a result the flower contains many oils and fats. In other words, when we look at the plant we find roots at the bottom, and the root is rich in salts, whereas the flower is rich in oils. Therefore when we eat roots we introduce many salts into our intestines these salts in turn make their way to the brain and stimulate it. If for instance someone suffers not from migraine headaches but from ordinary headaches—the type that seem to fill your head—it is very good for that person to eat roots. One can see how a certain salty sharpness is present in those roots, and this can already be established by the taste. If you eat a flower, the plant is in fact already half-cooked; the oils are already on the outside and this is what primarily fattens the stomach and the intestines and, in turn, affects the lower body. These are the kinds of things doctors have to take into account when they prescribe teas. There will never be a very strong influence on the head if someone cooks flowers in the tea on the other hand, if you cook the roots, they will have a strong effect on the sick person's head.

So you can see that when considering the human being we pass from the stomach to the head or from the bottom to the top. With plants, we must do the opposite. To find the correspondence, we must proceed from the flower to the root. Remember—this may enlighten you as to the meaning of potatoes—that the root is connected with the head. The potato has a tuber, which is something that is not entirely turned into a root. Thus when you eat potatoes you are eating, by preference, plants that have not quite become roots. If one limits one's self to the eating of potatoes—too many potatoes—it is not possible to pay a proper amount of attention to the brain, so that all these potatoes stay down below in the digestive tract.

This is why we say that potato-eaters neglect their heads or brains. You will only perceive this connection if you are an adept of spiritual science. But one can say that ever since the habit of eating potatoes has become firmly established, the head has become less capable, and it is the tongue and throat that have been particularly stimulated. This is why the potato is particularly appreciated as a side dish for people, because it stimulates the body below the head, leaving the head itself unburdened.

If, on the other hand, we eat red beets, we develop a great craving for the activity of thinking. This happens unconsciously. Potatoes only make one crave the next meal. Potatoes make one hungry because they don't quite reach the head. In contrast to this, the red beet satisfies so quickly because it actually reaches all the way to the head, and that is the most important thing. Of course it is very unpleasant for people to disturb their ease with thinking. Therefore they will very often eat potatoes more readily than red beets just for this reason: that to do so does not stimulate their thinking. They become lazy and their thinking becomes lazy. The red beet on the other hand stimulates thinking—it is a true root—insofar as it actually makes one want to think, and anyone who does not want to think does not like red beets. If you need to have your thinking stimulated, the salty stimulation of radishes, for instance, might be necessary. Anyone who is not quick in the head will get good results eating radishes—because the addition of radishes to his meals will set his thoughts into movement.

So we can now see a remarkable thing: the radishes stimulate thinking, and it is not necessary to be really active oneself thoughts come naturally as a result of eating radishes thoughts so strong that they also stimulate very powerful dreams. On the other hand, one who eats a lot of potatoes will not have strong thoughts, and his dreams will make him heavier. If you habitually eat potatoes, you will find yourself constantly tired and always wanting to sleep and dream. You can see that there is enormous cultural and historical meaning in what foods people actually have access to.

One could say from what I have shown you: The way things really are we live completely in matter, from matter, and yet this is not true. I have often told you that human beings have a totally new body every seven years it is constantly being renewed. Whatever matter was in our body eight to ten years ago is nowhere to be found now: it has been expelled. We have cut it away in the form of our nails and with our hair it has run out of us with our sweat—it all goes out. Some of it goes out more quickly and some more slowly, but eventually it all passes out. So what is the true story? Well, this is more or less the way it goes. I will start by giving you a schematic drawing. Let us say this is the human being, who is constantly producing tissue, and expelling it, and always absorbing new matter and of course it is easy to think: Well, it comes in through the mouth and it goes out in feces and urine. In this way the human body is seen as a kind of tube. The matter enters while we are eating, and then is expelled after we have held onto it for awhile: this is more or less the way digestion is presently thought of. But in the real human being nothing at all of earthly matter naturally goes in—this is an illusion. What really happens is the following: Let's say we eat potatoes. This does not mean that we actually absorb anything from the potatoes. Something in the potatoes stimulates us, it stimulates our throat, it stimulates our larynx etc.—everywhere the potatoes go to work, and the result of this is that we receive the strength to expel the potatoes again. In this process of expulsion, something from the earth comes into us, but it comes from the ether, not from solid matter, and it is this that builds us up in the course of the seven years. We are really not built up from earthly matter. When we eat, we do so in order that we may be stimulated. In reality we are built from what is above us, so that all the ideas and conceptions people have of food coming in and food going out again, with the side effect of leaving some material inside, do not at all fit the situation. To repeat: what is really happening is that a stimulation occurs and in response to this stimulation a counter-force enters from the ether, and our whole body is built up from the ether. Nothing that we have in us is built from earthly matter. It is like this: when we push at something and there is a counter-push and a kind of reflexive push coming back to us, we must not confuse the pushing with the reflex action. We must not be confused by the fact we need food. The actual purpose of food is that we do not become lazy in the reconstitution of our bodies. We must not confuse this stimulating activity with the fact we happen to be taking in material food.

Now of course there can be all kinds of irregularities that enter the normal situation—such as, if we eat too much, the food stays in us too long, and we accumulate matter that should not be there—fat. And if we take in too little, then we are not stimulated enough and we absorb too little of what we need from the spiritual world, from the etheric world, which is so necessary for we do not build ourselves from the earth and its matter but rather we actually build ourselves up from what is outside the earth.

If it is the case that within around seven years the body is renewed, the heart is also renewed. The heart that I carried in me eight years ago is not there anymore. It has been completely renewed by what surrounds the earth—by light. Your heart is actually compressed sunlight, and what we have taken in as nourishment has only given us the necessary strength to concentrate the sunlight. All our organs are built from our light-surroundings. All that we eat, that we take in by way of nutrition, affords only stimulation.

The only thing that food does give us is that it builds a kind of inner chair, in which we feel ourselves, as we would feel the pressure against us of a chair. In ordinary life, as a result of this resistance we have the feeling of our self, our ego, and this is related to the physical material we have in us. You feel your body as you are constantly pressing upon what you have made out of the cosmos. When you sleep, you do not feel it, because you are constantly outside yourself. You feel your body, for it is like a kind of resting bed that is made for you. In some cases it can be hard and bony and in others it can be softer, but it is really like a bed in which one goes to sleep. Of course you know the difference between a soft feather bed and a wooden bench—we feel a difference as a result of which one we have. However, we also feel in the one condition as in the other that this does not concern the real, essential human being. The real human being is what sits inside of it all. I will explain to you next time how all this is related to higher knowledge.

When people nowadays want to reach knowledge, they do not deal directly with human activity rather, they concern themselves with whatever it is that their 'chair' offers them.

• 8. Pierers Konversation-Lexicon, Seventh Edition, in twelve volumes, Berlin and Stuttgart, 1888-1893.

Yesterday we spoke of the relation of the spiritual world to the physical world, as expressed by the actual facts which, in a sense work from one world into the other, in so far as the relation between them means something to life in the physical world, in so far as the filling of the soul with feelings and emotions gained through spiritual knowledge is essential and of significance for human life. Something of a general nature must now be added. Here in the physical world we acquire our ideas through our sense perceptions, through the feelings and emotions experienced when events of physical life touch us. Our conscious life in the physical world arises from all these things, and when we observe that life in the physical world, it seems to the vision of the spiritual investigator that in the main, the more this consciousness serves the physical plane the less are its chances of spiritual experiences in the spiritual world ever surrounding us. We may say: the more a man limits himself to his life of ideas and feelings, allowing these to be aroused by the physical plane alone, the less inner strength and power he possesses for gaining a real relationship with the spiritual world. Of course at first a person does not notice that reliance on merely physical ideas is a hindrance to the gaining of a relationship with the spiritual world; but he is compelled to notice it when he has passed through the gates of death; for if during earth-life a man has gained no conceptions beyond the excitements and requirements of the physical plane, his soul is too weak to adapt itself to the experiences of the spiritual world. This can easily be seen when we remember that all that excites us on the physical plane really storms in upon us and so approaches us that we allow ourselves to be captivated by it. Because we allow ourselves to be thus captivated, because we more or less yield ourselves to its influence, we develop too little power in our souls for the spiritual world to mean more to us than a weak dreamy world in which we can neither stir nor move. In order to be able to move freely in that world, something else is needed: viz., that the soul should be inwardly alive, that it should have evolved within itself, by its own efforts, forces to which it had not been incited externally and in which it does not merely remain passive. Out of the depths of our souls such conceptions, such feelings must arise without any incitement from the external world,—however beautiful we may consider that world to be. I may say: Conceptions and feelings arising freely in the soul can alone make it strong enough to establish its own relationship with the spiritual world—a relationship which it needs.

In order that you may properly understand this, I should like to refer to something which is correct though a seeming paradox. Think of a person yielding entirely to the allurements of the physical plane. He thinks and feels only that which is aroused by the physical plane. Such a person is weak in the spiritual world; when he enters the spiritual world after death he can through his own powers only look upon the richness of spiritual life around him, he cannot bring the beings near to him, though he greatly needs them. Spiritual intercourse with them eludes him. Not that the spiritual world is absent, but he cannot find the clues which would bring him into direct relationship with it. Speaking paradoxically, a person who only fantastically arouses ideas and feelings in his soul which, though they are not aroused from outside, yet do not rise above the sense world—this person, who thinks out ideas in a fanciful way thereby produces forces in his soul, which give a free ascending development, and he in a certain sense, finds life in the spiritual world easier than one who will not think at all about spiritual things. It is very significant that we have to grant that visionaries who form conceptions that have nothing to do with outer sense realities, and are only fanciful; nevertheless stand firmer in the spiritual world than those who will not think about it at all. Naturally such fantastic ideas, though they help a man to stand firmly in the spiritual world, only lead him to strange spiritual conditions and relations such as a man would experience in the physical world if his senses were not functioning properly. All the grotesque, lower beings, useless for spiritual life, would come to the person who formed such fantastic concepts; while all that is progressive and helpful in spirit-life would appear before his soul in distorted shape, if it had only been prepared for spirit life by fantastic conceptions. In olden times, before the Mystery of Golgotha took its place in human evolution, conditions were such that human beings could only have conceptions aroused in them from the physical plane; even those ideas which appeared as clairvoyant conceptions were aroused in the physical body. This is the curious part of humanity's ancient clairvoyance; this clairvoyance, these symbolic plastic ideas, although wholly relating to the spiritual world, were aroused through the influences of the physical plane. So that if people had only devoted themselves to the kind of conceptions which reached the level of ancient clairvoyance, they would be in the position of human beings, who look into the spiritual world by means of fantastic conceptions. In order that humanity might have a sound healthy insight into the spiritual world and develop the right relations with it, the various founders of religions appeared in antiquity, Laotze, Zarathustra, Krishna, Buddha, etc. these were very great benefactors of humanity. They appeared to their age and to their peoples, speaking to them of these secrets of the spiritual worlds, and so speaking of these secrets that the manner of their speaking was inspired by immediate impulses which came to them as Initiates and founders of religion out of the spiritual world itself. Through their mighty authority they influenced the people to whom they had a spiritual mission. Thus the people did not receive into their souls merely what came to them and stirred them on the physical plane, but also what was sent as a message from the spiritual worlds. These ancient peoples had the capacity of sensing and feeling when such a founder of religion appeared to them—or when one of his successors and disciples appeared; they perceived the breath of spiritual life which streamed through the soul of such a founder, flowing down from spiritual heights into the evolution of the people and the epoch. Thus to the people of antiquity were given thoughts and feelings which were put into their souls by the founders of religion, but which had to be re-awakened by each human being himself (because each was under the influence of the teacher's authority), each had to bring them to active life in his own soul. In this way arose healthy conditions and relationships for human beings in the spiritual worlds, and also the possibility of knowing where they were after they had passed through the gates of death; of possessing the forces which cannot be found in the external physical world, but must be awakened in the soul of the individual himself; of possessing those forces which enable a man to live in the spiritual world, just as by his physical forces he is able to live in the physical world. Since the Mystery of Golgotha many changes have taken place for humanity in this respect. This is precisely the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha; it closes the old epoch of human evolution and begins the new. We can say the old evolution had to be built on authority, as we have just described; on the authority of the religion-founders. But because these souls (our own souls) have in earlier incarnations been through the school of authority, they have become responsible or have come of age let us say; so that now, in the incarnations which have run their course since the Mystery of Golgotha, those impulses which formerly had to be received on authority are now received inwardly. Not only are conceptions now formed inwardly but also our impulses come from within. This is what St. Paul's words mean: ‘Not I, but Christ in me’; that is the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ-Impulse has flowed into the spiritual substance of the earth, and lives in each soul. Souls must learn to understand this Christ-Impulse, which is to be found in the human soul. Humanity has come ‘of age.’ Impulses which formerly had to come from without, must now spring up within. For this reason Christ came to earth. Greater and greater must our understanding of this Christ become. What we gather from our anthroposophical knowledge, what we try to understand about the evolution of the world and of humanity, about the higher worlds and the Hierarchies in those worlds, really brings us at the last to understand more and more the Christ-Impulse which is within us, but which may also remain hidden within us, as do many other things which we do not attempt to understand or to experience. In a certain respect Spiritual Science is a means of attaining what must be reached—of really finding in our souls that which is the Light of Life, the Inner Warmth of life; that Light and Warmth which will lead humanity to its spiritual home, and which is revealed in the soul. In future evolution, human souls will gradually realize that it is simply an abstract idea to speak of ‘the God within,’ if the soul is too easy-going to concern itself with the understanding of the teachings of Spiritual Science. How do we to-day regard the spiritual world in its reality? All that has been written about Spiritual Science, about Saturn, Sun, and Moon, the evolutionary epochs of earth, about the heavenly Hierarchies and all that the spiritual investigator knows and says about the spiritual world, all this he ultimately realizes is a gift to him through the Christ-Impulse which has entered earth evolution. He realizes this Christ-Impulse in such a way that he sees the truth of Christ's words, ‘I am with you always, even to the end of the earth-period.’ Not only at the beginning of our epoch did Christ say this; if we noisy open our souls to Him He is saying it now, here, and in our Spiritual Science, which we must try to spread all over the world. Therefore it is so very necessary that present-day souls should understand that Spiritual Science is the suitable way and the right path into the spiritual worlds for our time. Humanity having come ‘of age’ must consciously develop thoughts and feelings, must seek step by step, of its own powers and not by external authority, to enter the spiritual worlds. Christ has come into the world that humanity may be able to do this. Even though many assert to-day that Spiritual Science must be believed because it is taught by the spiritual investigator—this is not true. If anyone thinks he must believe what Spiritual Science says, without understanding it by the efforts of his own soul-faculties, these only shows that he has not laid aside the prejudices of his materialistic thinking. Anyone who, with a truly open mind, approaches the most daring teachings of Anthroposophy can understand and grasp them. Souls have not passed through their former incarnations in vain; they can find within their souls the inward spiritual language wherewith to understand what the spiritual investigators say. Of course if these souls allow their minds to become clouded, as they are to-day, not by a true Natural Science but by a mistaken outlook on nature, if they allow mist upon mist to accumulate before their spiritual eyes and then say: ‘We do not understand Anthroposophy, we must only believe its statements,’ this does not mean that Anthroposophy cannot really be understood, for it happens that in such a case people create their own hindrances to it. We live in an age when most people never notice how many hindrances there are and how these hindrances can block their path; but we also are living in a century which unconsciously, from its as yet chaotic soul-force, rises in revolt against these hindrances, when longings are arising in the souls of men for an understanding of the spiritual worlds.

Truly of tremendous importance is the work accomplished by Natural Science during the last few centuries, and our friends know how often I emphasize the great significance of the triumphs of Natural Science, and how I compare the present and future work of Anthroposophy with what Natural Science has discovered, especially during the nineteenth century; but we must bear in mind that this Natural Science has become much more dogmatic than the old religions. To-day, people—and mostly those who take up Natural Science as amateurs—stick to dogmas more rigidly and seriously than was the case with the old religious dogmas. Truly the Copernican views represented a great swing of the pendulum; they had to come, they were a step towards the truth, as I have often said; but, they too are in many respects one-sided and must be completed by a spiritual conception of the Universe. If they are held as dogmatically as they are being expressed if it is said that they are absolutely true, they will then force concepts into men's souls which will prevent them from understanding and grasping Spiritual Science. We can even now see the effects of these dogmatic assertions. In our present age of compulsory education children are taught from their earliest years to imagine the sun with the earth revolving around it, also the planets, just as one forms an imagination, if one has in front of one a model. But no one has any right to picture it thus, as if these things were absolute certainties; as though one were able to place a chair in Cosmic space, set oneself down, and from it watch the movements of Sun, earth, and planets as one looks at a model which one sets up in the schoolroom. In these children's souls a consciousness is awakened that the facts really are such. People are amazed when we speak of these matters. Other things are also experienced today, which are false when looked at in another light. During the last few days an apparently very aspiring man sent me a pamphlet. Nothing shall be said here as to whether its contents were right or wrong, but this pamphlet is one proof among many others, of the way in which the human soul revolts against the dogmatism of the Natural Science of the last century; for this writer tries to prove mathematically that the earth is flat, not round. Of course this assertion seems very absurd in our age, and you will naturally say: ‘But a man can easily sail right round the world, therefore the man who says the earth is flat and not round must be a fool.’ The man who wrote the pamphlet knew this however. We need not agree with him, but he knew this and many another valid objections, I assure you. By all this I am only trying to show that in our day souls are already beginning to rise in revolt against all the dogmatic Natural Science stuff which has been piled up in their souls from earliest childhood and which hinders them from exercising the free, judgment which is necessary for the recognition of anthroposophical truths. When humanity has set itself free from dogma, then—yes then, the time will come when we can speak of spiritual scientific knowledge and it will be said; I see that it could not be otherwise. You see, much that is paradoxical must be said now in speaking of the relation of Spiritual Science to our age. Spiritual Science, however, has gradually to flow into human souls, so that they may become ever greater and greater factors in the spiritual civilization of humanity as it progresses into the future. Anthroposophy itself will be able to strengthen them, so that these souls will be enabled to find their links with the spiritual world. Spiritual Science will be welcomed by human beings, will be gradually received by the youngest and they will know: ‘Around me are not only mountains, rivers, clouds, stars, sun, moon, planets, animals and minerals, but also spiritual beings, beings of the higher Hierarchies, and spiritual events, even -as we have around us physical events and processes. I have relationship with both spiritual and physical processes.’

Let me picture a few things which will gradually be more understood by human souls when Spiritual Science becomes a living factor in the soul of man.

In speaking of these things we must start with concrete facts of spiritual research, for they best show man's relation to the spiritual world.

I know a man who, in his twenty-third or twenty-fourth year, had a kind of vision. He wrote about this vision in a clumsy way, we may even say stupidly. The vision was this: He placed into a sort of scene, very awkwardly, the more important spirits of the German intellectual period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; he did not know why he arranged it so-everything that Goethe, Lessing, Schiller, Herder were doing—but they were doing it after they had already passed to the world to which a human enters after death. Thus he had a vision of these great men living in the spiritual world he saw in his vision what they were now doing. As Spiritual Scientists we must ask: ‘What does such a vision signify? What does it show us?’ It shows the soul as having been greatly permeated by certain influences from the spiritual world, they press into it and become as it were a great dream, which expresses itself in such a way that the soul sees in vision, though indistinctly, its own inner feelings and impressions. Influences work into the soul from the spiritual world. How do they work? What is the actual relationship of the human soul to the beings of the spiritual world, for even the dead are beings in the spiritual world during the period between death and a new birth? What is this relationship? Well, we see an object in the physical world if we look at it—that is the right expression to use; I see the rose, I see the table. It is, however, not right to speak in the same way when referring to spiritual beings. It is not correct. The expression is not quite accurate if we say: I see a being belonging to the ranks of the Angels or Archangels. The expression is not correct; it must be put in a different way. As soon as a human being enters the spiritual world and there has feelings and experiences, instead of his seeing the beings there, they look at him; he is aware of them. He feels the quiet soothing influence of their spiritual senses and forces, which illuminate and resound in his own soul. And we must actually say of the spiritual world, ‘It is not I who see or perceive, but I know that I am seen, that I am perceived.’ Can you feel the change of experience indicated here? When, instead of using the words as in the physical world: ‘I perceive something,’ the other words receive a meaning: ‘Placed as I am in the spiritual world, I am perceived from all sides, that is now my life.’ The ‘Ego’ knows of this ‘being perceived,’ of this ‘being carried away by the experiences which other beings have with me.’ When this change takes place, you have an inkling of what a different relation the soul has to its environment when it rises from the physical into the spiritual world. It will then dawn upon you that a soul's experience is actually different when it passes from the physical to the spiritual world. A part of the task given to the dead is, to turn their glances earthwards, towards those still living; that they may, with their spiritual forces observe them; that those still living on earth may be perceived by the souls of the dead. Humanity will learn through Spiritual Science the meaning of the words: ‘Those who have passed through the gates of death see me; they send their forces down to me.’ Human beings will thus learn to speak of the dead as alive, as spiritually living. The one who had the vision described, realized this relation, though very dimly—for truly Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Herder are not inactive after death; in the spiritual they occupy themselves with those who are still on earth; they watch them, perceive them, stimulate them, according to the measure of the forces they receive from the higher Hierarchies. Thus the man who had this vision felt, without being conscious of the feeling, that he was watched by the spirits who had been sent to aid the evolution of humanity. This may not have been clear, but it expressed itself in the vision which he then put into awkward words, saying that Lessing ‘like a marshal in the spirit world went first,’ followed by Goethe, Schiller and Herder, leading and guiding their successors living on earth.

When such a vision, arising chaotically and as if in a dream, presents itself clearly to the soul, it may mean something for the dreamer; it may mean for instance that his consciousness is directly stirred from the spiritual world so that he can rise to the thought: ‘What I say and do, I will so say and do that I can endure the dead looking down upon me.’ It may also happen that a person living on earth, who is inwardly aroused by a similar vision, feels some task to lie before him, whether small or great, and his power, courage, and energy will be strengthened, his conscience will become easier when he has come to the right conclusion and imagines: ‘The dead are helping me, by watching me.’

Thus can the dead help the living? Through anthroposophy, we learn to feel the responsibility of our actions towards the dead and we may also have the happy feeling: ‘While I am doing this or that, my dead friend with his active power is watching me, and his force is added to mine.’ Not that he gives us the strength—which we must develop ourselves; he does not give us our faculties, those we must already possess; but he is a real help as if he were standing just behind us. He really does stand there. I shall give you a concrete example: for after we have for so long carried on together this anthroposophical work, we may bring forward such examples; perhaps they may sound personal, but they are meant quite impersonally, they set forth only facts and may on that account be mentioned as examples.

In Munich we tried for many years to perform the Mystery Plays, and so arrange the scenes that spiritual force might stream through them into this side of our movement. I am conscious that at any rate the really essential things which were done, those which really mattered, were in complete accord with the spiritual world. Over and over again I went to my work in those days, when the plays were being prepared for the stage, with a definite consciousness. At the commencement of our anthroposophical activity, when we were quite a small society, there was a person among us who was very enthusiastic about Spiritual Science; a person who besides working with quiet enthusiasm in all that could be done in the beginning as regards anthroposophy, introduced into its whole management a wonderfully beautiful and artistic understanding and interest. She was a person who united great kindliness of personal action with great seriousness in her spiritual views. She was soon taken from us, from the physical plane. Not only does she remain what is usually called ‘never to be forgotten’ by us, but she became what a human individual can become, who, by dint of circumstances, is able only in the spiritual world to build up what in physical life has been so beautifully prepared and begun here with many latent powers that she is able to develop in the spiritual world. Many years can be thus spent and many years passed in this case, until the possibility was unfolded, as it were out of a sort of chrysalis condition, for this person to link herself with what was germinating here in the physical world. As if through destiny, it happened that she entered upon a free spiritual life in the spiritual world, a life which had acquired this wonderful power of working, just when we had to undertake our staging, when Karma had led us to that point. Of course we had to bring our own powers and spiritual faculties to the work, but, just as no matter how strong the spiritual powers at our disposal, we must bring our physical abilities to bear when we have physical tasks to accomplish, so must certain forces intervene from the spiritual world, when we have spiritual work to do. Spiritual help, spiritual support must come to us; it comes also to those who cannot see into spiritual worlds, although they are unconscious of it, for we are always being influenced and helped by the spiritual world. In the case of which I speak, it is a fact that I always had the consciousness that the individual to whom I refer was watching over and helping us. We felt this watching as a strengthening force; as a kindling of warmth in our souls, enabling us to carry out our task.

Thus must we describe the way in which the spiritual worlds and the beings living in them—among whom are our dead—work with us in the physical world, and how true is the saying: ‘We are perceived by those in the spiritual world who have developed connections with us.’

There will come a time when human life will be enriched through such events as we have indicated when we shall not merely possess memory pictures in our minds of our dead friends, but shall feel them as real helpers in our undertakings. The souls of our dead will then live on in our consciousness, the consciousness of the human being on earth; although it may seem that the relationship is cut off by death. We can quite understand that this is now only possible for the few, and can understand why. It is because spiritual scientific development is only at its beginning; it has not yet produced in souls the capacities and powers that can act freely.

The road to such conceptions as I have mentioned may be the following: it certainly will be so for many souls in the future. We may think of the dead, while at our daily work here on earth. We may awaken in our souls all the love we had for them, and one day the moment will certainly come, it need not be in a vision—truly it need not be in a vision—when an impression comes to us: ‘Yes the one who died is helping me, as if he were working through my hands and fingers, as if he kindled my ardor for the work. I feel his force within me.’ This clear feeling that spiritual influences work down from spiritual worlds is a fruit, a real living fruit, which comes to souls through Spiritual Science.

Now let us think of the great enrichment that will come to human lives when they are not only aware of what is revealed to their senses, but also have the consciousness impressed upon them (not necessarily in vision) in all their physical work and undertakings: ‘While you are busy and at work, this or that dear one who had been your helper or your protector in life, shields you, helps you still, through powers he did not possess in his physical life, but for which he could only prepare here to be able to exercise them in the spirit world.’ Truly, even as our physical health is refreshed when we inhale the fresh morning air, so will human souls feel refreshed for their spiritual life by breathing in the protecting help they will then be able to perceive and feel coming to them, or even from the gaze directed towards them by the beings in the spiritual worlds. We are looking into a future of humanity which is to be prepared by the culture of Spiritual Science, and which will be much richer than the present life of man. Man will, however, need this enrichment from the spiritual world—for have we not said the old dreamy clairvoyance of antiquity was stimulated in the physical body—but the physical body has changed. It is now only suited for giving to human beings their physical thoughts, thoughts aroused on the physical plane. We must acquire thoughts about the spiritual world through Spiritual Science. Ever less will be the knowledge of spiritual worlds which can be gained by man from the physical plane, the physical body will become more powerless; and as all that is physical originates in the spiritual, and the longing of the soul for a real connection with the spiritual world will become greater and greater.

In olden times something was given to man by his physical nature which flashed into his soul as it were from the workings of his physical body, so that he became clairvoyant. Now we may say: the time has come when human beings will gradually know more of spiritual things, and these must be ever more and more brought down from the spiritual worlds, but the transition must not pass unnoticed. We must gain knowledge of the path which leads into the spiritual world through Anthroposophy. We must not evade the difficulties and inconveniences which a soul may feel when it seeks step by step for knowledge of what happens in the spiritual worlds. It is perhaps very uncomfortable to strain our intellect, our powers of reason, our sense of truth, sufficiently; but we must face this inconvenience. The anthroposophical movement, to which we belong, exists for this. Anthroposophy must gradually cause us to see: By their repeated earth-lives human souls are moving forward, they are being changed; and we are living in the age when human beings must go into the spiritual worlds with understanding. It would not be right if in our Society in particular there were not a growing understanding for the fact, that a man who, without having experienced Spiritual Science, still has the old clairvoyant powers arising out of his body, cannot stand higher than one who with intellectual ideas and understanding learns of what can be communicated about spiritual worlds. Human beings are so easily deceived, led away by their sense of ease not to try to exert their soul's activity, not to strain their powers of perception and observation. Naturally these must be exerted if we wish to live in the spirit of Anthroposophy, but humanity is tempted not to make these efforts. Therefore people are gradually forced to value more highly the mental and psychic forces arising as if out of the body, stimulated by the hidden bodily forces. Indeed we may actually hear people say: ‘What you are trying to make comprehensible about the spiritual worlds is not what we are really seeking, we are not impressed by it; we want to experience the incomprehensible.’ People are much more inclined to accept what cannot be understood than to exert themselves to seek what can be grasped spiritually. This then leads to the fact that there exists what we may call a complete misunderstanding of the true spiritual task of the present; if any one comes forward possessing natural psychic powers without anthroposophical training, people say he is very wonderful, and they put a special halo round his head. Because, they say, we do not know whence his powers come, because he has not been trained through Spiritual Science, and has not made efforts, therefore his powers are so very valuable; another world makes itself evident in our world through him. Truly our Movement would not reach its goal if it did not soon overcome this prejudice. We can often hear it said: This or that man must be the reincarnation of a great individual; he must have been so and so, because he possesses these forces, these chaotic psychic forces, without having worked for them in the present life by means of a really active struggling soul-life. Rather we ought to feel sure that the man who reveals such psychic forces within himself, is a backward soul; one who has remained behind at an earlier stage of evolution, and who must be raised and nurtured in the present age through Spiritual Science. Those who have had the most important incarnations in earlier times, appear to-day more like one of whom we shall be speaking tomorrow, the anniversary of Christian Morgenstern's death, as having powers which, unfortunately, are less valued perhaps by many than is a kind of chaotic psychism, but which are fruits of much higher spiritual forces, even though to-day they are represented as of little value, because they are not understood.

In these two lectures I have attempted partly from concrete facts to put before you a picture of the interpenetration of the spiritual world into the physical, and the working of the physical world into the spiritual. I have tried to show you how unjustifiable it is for people to say that it is useless to trouble about the spiritual world while living on the physical plane. I have tried to show how the very reason why our physical life cannot be understood is that we are not conscious of the concrete inter-working of the spiritual world into our physical world. Not that we receive our knowledge from the spiritual world alone—that is not the point; this knowledge has to be there, we must make it our own because it is truth revealed to us from spiritual worlds and is the key to the understanding and experiencing of the world. This knowledge must, however, lead us to an inner mood, an inner feeling, a kind of ‘knowing oneself to be within the spiritual world.’ Then through the new Spiritual Science there comes into our souls what such an important spirit as Fichte said, and which I have mentioned in a public lecture and shall repeat here. There comes into our souls that at which Fichte could do no more than hint. I know that I speak in the same sense as he did when I add a few words to his, for the understanding of which he still works, from out the spiritual worlds. Thus said the great philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, during his earth life:

The super-earthly will not come to me only when I have lost my connection with earth life. Even now I live in the supersensible world, in it I live a truer life than I do in the sense-world, it is my only firm standpoint; and in that I possess the supersensible world, I possess that for the sake of which alone I would like to continue my life on earth.

‘What you call heaven,’ says Fichte ‘does not only lie on the other side of the grave. It is everywhere around us in Nature, and springs up in every loving heart.’ ‘Now,’ we understand Fichte to mean, as he speaks to us from the spiritual world.

Anthroposophy, as it blossoms in this age and is to become a germ within humanity, shall be the light which strengthens the feelings and emotions for the spiritual life which springs forth in every loving heart. The loving heart will increasingly beget longings for the spiritual world, and Anthroposophy will more and more have to demand this light from the spiritual world for its own possession.

In saying this we are certainly speaking in agreement with those who have died before us, who longed for the spiritual world. While lifting ourselves up into this world, we are truly in harmony with the Cosmic Wisdom which governs human evolution, in so far as we can understand and recognize it with our human powers.