The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends! Today, we will first continue our reflections from yesterday and then see how we can further develop the matters touched on yesterday. Yesterday, I wanted to talk to you about the inner side of community building in the religious field. I would now like to move on to the second area, which you yourselves have identified as particularly important to you: to the cult.

It is absolutely true that without the inauguration of a certain cult with its so-called symbolism, the religious deepening of humanity cannot be brought about, and I would like to explain this to you with a few words, because one can only work within a field if one understands the conditions and forces involved.

You see, in more recent times, the whole process of human development in the civilized part of humanity has basically taken on an intellectual form, a form that makes mere concepts in their abstractness the content of consciousness. And such a thorough feeling has arisen from it that one can only gain real insights in this abstractness, that this feeling has passed over to actually only appreciate the abstract content of consciousness in a certain way. Now one can understand that this abstract content of consciousness had to be appreciated at a time when the assertion of the individual emerging from the whole human being was increasingly emerging as a human demand. After all, abstract content of consciousness presents us with something completely universal. One has the feeling that through abstract world comprehension one can bring all understanding of the world into the individual human being.

Where should our concepts reach? They should initially suffice to comment on that which presents itself to us in the sense world as perception, in the most diverse ways, and to find laws there, the so-called laws of nature or historical laws. But then this intellectual content also sets about forming hypotheses about that which is not perceived, partly such hypotheses that extend to that which is not perceptible in time and space, partly to that which is not perceptible for reasons of principle. The beginning and end of the earth, for example, is not perceptible in time and space. From the intellectualism of modern times we have received hypotheses about the origin of the earth and about the end of the earth arising out of physical and geological connections. We have hypotheses regarding the spatial, let us say, about the inner nature of the sun or other world bodies, such as the world nebula, as they are called, and so on. One usually does not consider that when one says that the sun is so or so constituted, that this is nothing more than a hypothesis, and one even believes that one has a physical result in this hypothesis. The physicists would be very astonished if they could perceive, could see, what really is at that point in space, where they put a kind of very thin gas out into space as a solar ball. In reality, there is not something comparable to our gases, not even to our ether, at that point; it is not just empty space at that point, but something that we describe as negative in comparison to the intensity of our empty space; it is a recess in space at the point where we speak of the sun. There is not only space emptied of matter, there is not even the intensity of the void that we usually call space in the abstract. There is less present at the point than space, and in this way we move from the physical to the spiritual. One can only speak of the sun in a spiritual sense.

I only mention this today to draw your attention to the way in which intellectualism, which is perfectly justified in the field of natural science, has taken hold of all fields in recent times. It then extends to the imperceptible, to the world of molecules and atoms, which, in principle, cannot be perceived for the simple reason that heat, light and sound are said to arise from the movements of these molecular and atomic structures, so that nothing perceptible is introduced into the atomic world. Something is hypothetically introduced that is supposed to be present.

Thus, intellectualism has spread over the temporal and spatial of the external world of space and time and over the unperceivable in principle; but it has also spread over everything that is historical and over everything that is religiously historical. If you follow the entire literature and scholarship of the Gospels, and indeed all of 19th-century biblical scholarship, it will become clear how this entire biblical scholarship gradually moved from a completely different kind of soul content to an intellectualistic grasp of the Bible and the Gospels. It can be said that by the end of the 19th century, so much intellectualism had been applied to the Gospel that there was actually nothing left of the Gospel even for theologians. It must be characteristic that this intellectualism has taken on those forms that it shows, for example, in the theologian Schmiedel, where we see that the personality of Christ is no longer inferred from what is in the Gospels, but a number of passages in the Gospel are sought where something detrimental is said about Christ Jesus, where, for example, it is said that he did not care about his mother and siblings. And from this small number of defamations, which are compiled about the personality of Christ Jesus in the Gospels, it is concluded that they must refer to something true, because one would not, if one wanted to invent something, have added such a defamation, but one would have invented hymns of praise.

Now you can see the depths to which the intellectual approach has sunk in its attempts to get at the Gospels at all. I mention this because it has emerged from the theological side, for what has been achieved by the non-theological side in terms of extravagance has, after all, reached the point of the monstrous. You only need to remember that there is extensive psychiatric research on the Gospels today, that we have literary works today that clearly express the view that one cannot understand what the Gospels actually contain and that describe the messages [in the Gospels] as abnormal things, as one would view things from a psychiatric point of view. It is even the case that the origin of Christianity is assumed to be a mental illness of Christ Jesus, which has had an infectious effect on all Christians. Thus, the origin of Christianity is derived from the mental illness of Christ Jesus, which he fell prey to.

It would be an understatement to say that any description is too strong when one wants to point out that the entire so-called intellectual life of the present, which moves in intellectualisms, must actually lead to the undermining of precisely the Christian-religious element, and with the greatest speed. The fact that this fact is not sufficiently examined is one of the great damages of our time. If one were to look at it, one would come to the conclusion that, above all, those who take religious life seriously must ensure that this religious life is wrested from intellectualism.

I do not want to dwell critically on the fact that in the last four centuries, through Protestantism itself, a great deal has been done to achieve this intellectualism in the religious sphere as well. More and more, perhaps unconsciously, one finds a pagan element in the cult and the symbolism. Now, what has prevented us from adhering more to the cult and to the symbolism does not lie in the feeling that we have something pagan in it, but rather it lies in the fact that we no longer have any sense for those forms of expression that lie in the cult and in the symbolism. Consider this: through intellectual comprehension of the world, man is led to believe that he can make sense of the whole world with the content of his soul, that he can bring everything into intellectual concepts. Therefore, the intellectual man feels in possession of the whole world when he has his intellectual concepts. It is precisely because man deceives himself into believing that he has grasped the entire content of the world, it is precisely through this universal element that man feels intellectually satisfied and believes that he no longer needs any other element to comprehend the world, to feel the world. It is understandable that intellectualism has been able to gain the upper hand in our time, because man believes that he can understand the world in intellectual terms. But because man is satisfied in this way, in that he seemingly gets the whole world into his ego, he loses the social connection with the rest of the world, and that which should live as a social being is atomized, atomized right down to the individual. We have already seen this in the youth movement in modern times, that simply by the prevalence of the intellectualist, people fall apart into individual atoms, so that everyone wants only their own religious belief. They are absorbed in saying that religion is a thing that cannot go beyond the human skin. That is what indicates the reasons why the universalistic intellectual life in particular fragments and atomizes religious life, so that the particular form of modern science must undermine religious life. And the strongest force for the destruction of religious life is actually present in those university and other educational theologians who have adopted the scientific thinking of our time in order to understand the religious, the facts of religion as such.

Not as much is being done to undermine religious life through the laity of today as through modern theology; and it is a pity that such efforts have not made more progress than those of Overbeck, which were set out in the extraordinarily significant book “On the Christianity of Our Present-Day Theology,” in which the case is made that the modern theologian is unchristian. Overbeck, the Basel church historian, who was a friend of Nietzsche and on whom he had a very deep influence, wanted to prove that modern theology is the most un-Christian, has completely thrown off Christianity and contributes most to the undermining of Christianity because it has become purely intellectualistic through the universal suggestion that intellectualism has exerted on the modern educated world. Until you realize that modern theology, as it is taught at the modern faculties, leads to the undermining of Christianity, you will not get the right impulse into your endeavors.

Now, what is at stake is that we learn again to progress to a form of experiencing the world other than the purely intellectual one, and the other form consists precisely in the pictorial, in that which can pass over into cult and into symbolism.

You see, when we set up the Waldorf School here – I would like to show you things from the perspective of the here and now – when we set up the Waldorf School here, the first thing that had to be done was to act more in line with the spirit of the times and to make it clear to the world that our aim in setting up this Waldorf School was not to found a school of world view. It is the worst slander against the Waldorf School when people outside say, and this is already being repeated as far away as America, that it exists to teach anthroposophy to children. That is not its purpose! It is not a school of world-view. What can be gained through anthroposophy can be incorporated into pedagogy and didactics. Only that which can be fathomed by anthroposophy should lie in the pedagogical treatment itself. Therefore, from the very beginning — because it cannot be any different as long as you have not yet worked — we have had a Catholic priest teach religious education to Catholic children and a Protestant priest teach religious education to Protestant children. Now, the Waldorf School was initially created for the children of the Waldorf-Astoria workers; they were the foundation. Many children of Social Democrats and dissidents came along. The question arose: should these children grow up without any religion? There was a certain kind of concern. But there were also parents who did not want their children to grow up without religion. So we were obliged to give some kind of anthroposophical religious education, just as we had Catholic instruction given to Catholic children and Protestant instruction given to Protestant children. And most children found it useful, at least I think so, isn't that right?

Ernst Uehli: By far the majority.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, by far the most children. On the other hand, there are a relatively large number of children who are taught Catholic religion, and the children taught Protestant religion are in the minority. Well, we couldn't help it, we certainly didn't want to take business away from the Protestant religion teacher, and at first we even thought it was unfortunate for our school when the Protestant religion teacher once said that he couldn't really make any progress because the children were gradually moving over to the Anthroposophical religion lessons. It was up to him to keep them. We couldn't help it if they ran over. We don't have anthroposophy as just any subject in the school curriculum, but just as the Catholic and Protestant religious education is brought in from outside. We have tried to get a methodology for it and so on. All this is, of course, in its infancy, because things that work with reality cannot be created overnight; it is something that can only come from practical, extensive experience, but it must be started with that. From an unbiased observation, the need arose – and this is important for our consideration yesterday – to add a cult to religious instruction, namely our Sunday activity, which two of your colleagues observed last Sunday. Of course, this is also something that is just beginning. So far, we have a ritual for such a Sunday activity — every Sunday — and a ritual for children who have reached the age of fourteen, the completion of elementary school, and who in this ritual first experience what is thought to be experienced through confirmation. But you have to look at it all as being at the beginning, but the necessity to move on to a kind of cult, to a kind of working through ritual, that has arisen entirely from the matter. And if you follow your matter with real inner participation, you will have no choice but to say to yourself: cult, ritual, symbolism must be added.

Because, you see, it is the case that all religious life must disappear if it cannot represent reality, if religious life is only supposed to be something that can be spoken of in such a way that everything can be expressed in intellectualized thought. Then this religious life cannot be cultivated at all. Something must be able to happen through religious experience; there must be processes that, as such, as processes, have not only an eternal significance [for man], but are something in world events.

And here we must admit that everything we intellectually grasp in our soul, everything that modern science recognizes as a scientific achievement – not what we form in our soul as living concepts , we gradually acquire during our childhood, and this then transforms itself in the course of our lifetime – but the intellectualized content, even if it extends to the most complex natural laws, is mortal with us.

Do not take this sentence lightly. That which is the intellectual content of the soul is, at best, only an image of the spiritual; it is mortal like the human body. For it is precisely the intellectual that is completely mediated by the body. All soul experiences that are mediated intellectually arise after birth and perish at death. That which is eternal in the soul comes only after the intellectual. So, no abstract concept goes through the gate of death with us, but only what we have experienced in life beyond abstract concepts. That is why many souls from the present population have to lead a long 'sleeping life' after death, because they were only involved in intellectuality and because intellectuality fades away after death and it takes a long time for a person to acquire a super-intellectual content, which he can then process for the next life on earth. It is a fact that much of the present life is lost to man in his overall development through intellectual life.

This is regarded as foolishness by our contemporaries today, at least by our theologians; but it is a proven spiritual-scientific result. The fact that our entire education today is based only on intellectualism, the fact that we are so proud of this intellectualism, means that we deprive the human being of immortal content to the same extent that we instill this mortal intellectualism into him from the most diverse points of view. You must take this to heart.

My dear friends, it is absolutely right to statistically count how many of a population are non-literate, how many can read and write in relatively early childhood. But if education is built only on intellectualism, as it is in today's schools, then this means killing the soul-spiritual and not awakening the soul-spiritual. This is how it must be for the earth. But on the other hand, a counterweight must also be provided. That is why we do not have an intellectual approach to teaching reading and writing in our pedagogy and didactics at the Waldorf School. Here, too, the child learns from the pictorial, from the artistic, precisely in order not to kill everything immortal. It learns by being given the letter out of the pictorial, the abstract out of the concrete pictorial, which is our letter today, in order at least not to take from the child what is still a real soul life. This pedagogy and didactics of the Waldorf school always emerges from the anthroposophical understanding of the whole of human life. And the strong hatred that is shown towards it shows how much people feel that here, once again, something is being addressed that has been extinguished in the outside world over the last three to four centuries – albeit to the detriment of the life of modern humanity. We should hardly be surprised that religious life has been dampened, because we have a science that simply can no longer talk about the immortal. And the further culture that has emerged shows even more clearly that science has become nothing but a bauble; a froth of thinking has shown itself in the general culture of humanity.

We have a word for “immortal” in the newer languages; but man has only done so out of his egoism, out of his desire to be eternal. We have a word for “immortal,” but we have no word for “to be unborn.” We do not have a word for “to be unborn” that can be used in everyday speech. But we would have to have that, as well as the word “immortal.” We see only one end of life when we speak of the eternal in the soul. And with this goes hand in hand the atomization, the fragmentation, the weaving of the intellectual into the individual life, where today it is even sought in the subconscious, as in the James School in America and so on. If we are serious about cultivating the religious, we must confront this with the power of the image, of action, of ritual in the best sense of the word. Just consider – I will show it with an example – what this ritual as such means.

I certainly do not want to do the opposite of the iconoclasts who wanted to eradicate images and the cultic stormers who wanted to eradicate cult, and I do not want to express the opposite of that here today. But I would like to use an example to show what the cult means.

Take the Mass offering. The Mass offering cannot, strictly speaking, be considered a Roman Catholic institution. It must not be, because the Mass offering goes back to ancient, pre-Christian times. It can be said, however, that the Mass offering was shrouded in the mysteries of the ancient cultic rites in the mysteries, that it has been greatly transformed over time; but as we see the Mass offering today in Roman Catholicism, it is just something that has been partially transformed from the Egyptian and Near Eastern mysteries.

And what was it then? What was that ritual that eventually developed into the Mass Sacrifice, the meaning of which only the most initiated Catholics really know, while the broad masses of Catholics have some idea of it? What was it that underlies the Mass Sacrifice?

It was an outward image of what is called initiation or ordination. It is absolutely so. If one follows the Mass sacrifice and disregards what has been added to the basic components – partly quite rightly, partly through misunderstanding – if one looks only at these basic components, then the Mass sacrifice is an outward pictorial expression of initiation or ordination.

The four parts are: the reading of the Gospel, the offertory, the consecration – transubstantiation – and communion. The essence of the Mass lies in these four parts.

What does the reading of the Gospels mean? It means the resounding, the revelation of the word into the community. This is clearly based on the awareness that the word only has real content when it is not discovered by man through intellectual work, but when man experiences the inspired word that comes from the spiritual world. Without this consciousness, without the awareness that the supersensible world is embodied in the word, the reading of the Gospel would not be a real reading. Thus, in the first part of the Mass Sacrifice we have the divinely glorified proclamation of the teaching. What the supersensible world gives to man in the sensual world, we have in the Gospel reading.

What the human being can give of himself to the supersensible world, what is attempted of him in the offering of the sacrifice, so to speak as a counter-gift, the real prayer, that comes before us figuratively in the offertory. The offertory, the sacrifice, symbolically expresses what a person can feel in his soul as a sense of consecration to the supersensible. This is said through the symbolic action of the offertory, in a sense in response to the gospel reading. This is the second part.

The third part, transubstantiation, the change, consists in the fact that it is symbolically represented that consciousness which develops in man when he feels the divine substance within him, when he feels the divine substance in his own soul. For the Christian, this transformation is nothing other than the expression of the Pauline saying: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. He does not just sacrifice himself, he becomes aware that the supersensible lives in himself. This is what is meant by the image of transubstantiation. And it is always a beautiful and significant side effect of transubstantiation that, while the Holy Sacrament is being raised up over the chalice, the faithful are actually supposed to close their eyes and turn inward, so that they experience transubstantiation not through outward looking but through their innermost consciousness. It is also significant that the Holy Sacrament actually consists of the bread and the bread holder, which has a moon-shaped form, so that in the Sacrament Symbol, which envelops the Holy Sacrament (see drawing $.100), sun and moon are present in the picture, which clearly indicates that in the times when the sacrifice of the Mass was being developed in its original form, there was an awareness of the connection between Christ and the sun and between Yahweh and the moon. What the world has received in Christianity and what has been built on the lunar religion of Yahweh is fully expressed in this placement of the host on the lunar form, and it is truly a symbol of the confluence of the mortal in man with the immortal.

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And the fourth part of the Mass is Communion, which is meant to express nothing other than this: after the human being has grown together with the supersensible, he allows his entire earthly being to be poured into union with the supersensible. This fourth part pictorially represents what the person to be initiated, the one to be initiated, also had to experience in the older and newer mysteries.

The first main section consists of learning to transform what one receives as knowledge and feeling for the world into an abstract form, so that one can say with inner honesty: In the beginning was the Word, and through the Word everything came into being. — I ask you, my dear friends, to consider how far modern Christianity has strayed from an understanding of the Gospel of John. Consider that today, in general, there is only the awareness that the Creator of the world is found in the Father God. God the Father, who is also confused with the Jewish god Yahweh, is regarded as the Creator God, whereas the Gospel says: “In the beginning was the Word, and all things came into being through Him; and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. — That which we have within us as something created is the creative, the word in the truest sense of the word, and one should actually have the idea of the Father God that he subsists in everything, and in the Son of God he has given the world that which signifies the creative of the world.

I only want to say this because the understanding of the person to be initiated has to advance to the fact that the word that is proclaimed sounds entirely from the supersensible, while our word that is currently in vogue sounds from the intellectual, from the transitory. That is the first act of initiation: that the content of the soul is formed into a word as a supersensible revelation, as a real event, an event that emerges from the Angelion All, from the sum of the spiritual world. What is raised up out of the spiritual world and takes on the form of a word in us is the first act of the sacrifice of the Mass. In the conscious speaking through itself one should become aware that this is a proclamation of the supersensible, and that it does not represent a proclamation of the sense world.

The second thing is that through sacrifice man enters into a real relationship with the supersensible. If we can find a way to hint at the sacrifice, that is, to hint at the counter-gift to the divine, then we actually have before us in all its many-sidedness what must surely be there. You see, in modern times Catholicism has allowed itself to become obscured. Modern Catholicism actually wants to receive everything from the Godhead and give nothing back to the Godhead.

Now, we did not want to go against the prejudice of today's world too much in our ritual [the Sunday service at the Waldorf School]. But we were obliged, simply in the question of the one who performs the sacrificial act, to address the child, asking whether it wants to strive for the Spirit of God, and in response: “Yes, I will seek Him, I will seek for the Spirit of God,” to give at least a hint in words of the real relationship. Something should happen, something should be said, when each child is asked whether he wants to seek the Spirit of God. We had to at least hint at the Lord's Supper [in our Sunday service], and the rest just has to come later.

Now, you see, in the third act, it becomes clear that the supernatural is not merely present, but that the human soul can connect with it. And in the fourth act of the Mass, during Communion, the fourth act of initiation is then depicted, which consists of man completely permeating himself with the supersensible, so that he feels himself to be only an external sign, an external world symbol, that he makes the word true: Man is the image of the Godhead.

The awareness of these connections has been so lost that today one can only point them out with certain difficulties. One can therefore say that in the sacrifice of the Mass – which of course cannot simply be taken over from Catholicism, but must be developed in the sense of our present time – one has before one's eyes that which so often presents the profoundly significant spiritual path of the human being in the image. And so it should be that we accompany important stages in life with such ritualistic acts, such as the transition from school to life, but that we also work with adults through ritual, that is, through the image, because the image works not only on the intellectual, but on the whole human being. If I am to grasp something intellectually, then I grasp it entirely within myself. When I stand before a picture, it goes much deeper into the layers of my humanity than the intellectual aspect does. And when what happens through the ritual enters into the members of a community, they experience something supersensible together, and what is atomized by the teaching material is synthesized in the act of worship. What is reproduced in the teaching material, if you put it in abstract terms, from intellectual forms of ideas, which leads to fragmentation, to analysis in the individual, is reunited, synthesized, when one tries to speak in images.

You see, in modern times only one community has actually learned to speak in images, but that is a community that abuses this symbolic, imaginatively inspired speech, namely Jesuitism. And you see, I must keep pointing out how, in Jesuit educational institutions, but precisely to the detriment of humanity, it is taught quite methodically to always summarize something when you have taught something.

I will give you a very vivid example, because I myself once experienced the tremendous significance, theoretically I might say, since I wanted to see for myself how the thing works. It was about a famous Jesuit pulpit speaker – it was ten years ago – he preached about the institution of Easter confession. He wanted to reduce to absurdity what the opponents of Catholicism say: that Easter confession, the demand for Easter confession, is a papal and not a supernatural institution. He wanted to reduce this to absurdity before his faithful. I also looked at it. If Klinckowström, that was the name of the Jesuit preacher, had wanted to teach his former audience in the abstract form in which one otherwise preaches, in this way, as one is accustomed to preaching in the Protestant area, he would not have achieved anything; he would not have achieved the slightest thing. He did it in the following way, by saying in summary: “Yes, my dear Christians, you see, when we say that the Pope has instituted the Easter confession, it is really as if we were saying the following: Imagine a cannon, and at the cannon stands the gunner; the gunner holds the fuse in his hand, and then the officer stands a little further away. What happens? The gunner holds the fuse, the officer gives the command; and at the moment when the officer gives the command, when the word of command sounds, the gunner pulls the fuse, the gun goes off, and through the powder in the gun, everything that happens when the gun is fired is produced.” “This whole congregation was like one soul when this image was vividly presented to them.” ‘Now,’ he continued, ”imagine that someone came and said that the gunner did everything, that everything actually happened through him. But he only pulled the fuse at the officer's command, and the officer could not have ordered the shot without the powder. Those who say that the Pope introduced the Easter confession go much further, because that would be the same as if someone claimed that the gunner, if he only pulls the fuse at the officer's command, invented the powder! It is just as wrong when people say that the Pope introduced the Easter confession. He was only present, he, as the representative of the transcendental world, pulled the fuse."

Everything was imbued with the truth of what Father Klinckowström proclaimed. It is not that this was due to the particularly happy disposition of this priest. You can see for yourselves that it is part of the Jesuit method of teaching to express everything in such images. There is even a work of literature today – why it has been published? I have not checked it; the Catholic Church will also have some kind of intention there, because it always has intentions -, in which it is described in detail how to move the index finger when speaking this or that word, how to move the hand when saying this or that. There are even drawings for this; there is a methodical work down to the smallest detail, a work that is incorporated into the picture. And one must just say: Why is no attempt made to develop that which is developed for the harm of people on the one hand, also for the good of people? Because it can also be developed for the good, it can and must also be developed for the good, the strength must come from the earnest spiritual intentions to transform the abstract into the pictorial, and this pictorial must be experienced with the community. In this way the soul of the community is uplifted, and only in this way is the sense of community truly established. The cultic service is what holds the community together; without it the community can only disintegrate. To oppose this on theoretical grounds is to start from prejudice.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that a friend of our cause, an Old Catholic pastor – as such, he reads the mass in German, in the national language, and performs other rituals in the national language – did not want to perform the rituals in the strange translation that one reads in many cases today. He prompted me to bring some of the practicable Catholic rituals into the form that was actually originally in them. Only through this does one see how the spiritual world in these things comes to life in many ways, and one sees what has been distorted since the time of Jerome.

Now, you need not think, as has often been said, that I am somehow tainted by Catholicism when I talk about the Catholic Church's worship. I just want to see things objectively and draw your attention to the fact that it is quite impossible to truly cultivate religious life without making the transition to worship, to speaking in the symbolum. No matter how well you know how to convince, how to work through intellectual presentation, in the religious field you will only achieve something if you can let the theoretically presented in your speech fade away into the symbolum in the appropriate places. You must experience the symbolum yourself as a truth, so you should only think of such symbolic representations that are really connected with what is real in the world.

But there are still many difficulties to be faced, and I want to draw your attention to them. Take for instance the following case: someone is supposed to imagine the physical becoming of a human being on earth. Yes, if you turn to science today with all the things it gives you about the female ovum, the male fertilizing cell, the growing out, the growing in of the fertilized ovum and so on, then despite the scientific achievements, despite the fact that one must admire what has been achieved through purely scientific thinking about such things, you do not get ideas that help you to grasp the being, but you get ideas that directly cover the truth piece by piece. You see, the most important component of the human, the animal, the organic in general, is protein. Compare the constitution of albumen with the constitution of any mineral substance in the world. It is so different that today, of course, the scientist says – and he is right to say so – the constitution of albumen is an extraordinarily complicated one, we cannot get at it, and we cannot find a bridge between any crystallized, inorganically constituted matter and what is present in albumen as a constitution. But, you see, today's science does not know that if we have any — I will draw it symbolically — inorganic form, which we can simply follow in this way (a), and we compare it with the protein constitution (b), then we initially have something that appears to be tremendously complicated; in all the substances of our food, everywhere in the organic, this seemingly complicated constitution fits in. We then say: the inorganic is more intricately constituted in the organic, and only then is the human body, for example, built up from this intricately constituted organic substance; this happens through cell division, through a certain configuration of the tissue, and so on. But the whole thing is, isn't it, nothing but nonsense. Because what really happens is the complete annihilation of all inorganic forms. The complexity of the protein consists in the fact that everything inorganic comes into chaos. The protein is always on the way to chaos, in order to dissolve the form corresponding to the inorganic and to transfer matter into chaos; and the matter that is most strongly transferred into chaos is that which is present in the fertilized egg cell. This is simply matter driven into chaos. The entire earthly natural law can no longer do anything with this chaos; it is eliminated. To have become albumen at any level means to be eliminated from the earthly natural law. And what is the consequence? That the extra-earthly natural law, the constellation of the planets, the whole extra-earthly world begins to act on this chaos in order to give this chaos a constitution again. Through the transmutation into protein, the matter enters into chaos, and thus becomes ready to receive again; not only to receive from the earthly, but to receive its constitution from the whole universe, from the cosmic. And in this consists the reproduction of the human head, which after all reproduces the vault of heaven.

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Of course, we will only have a true natural science when we go beyond these earthly things. The whole of natural science has become accustomed to deriving everything purely from the inorganic. Today, natural science is something that leads to everything dying, because natural science only accepts as valid for the intellect what can be researched in abstracto. At the moment when you have to think about the transition from that which can only be investigated in intellectual form to chaos, you have to stop thinking and start looking, and move on to a different kind of knowledge. And that is where the difficulty lies. For you see, intellectualism not only makes us into people who reject the pictorial, it even prevents us from getting out of the intellect and forming pictures ourselves. Once you have become completely intellectualized and abstract, you simply cannot do it!

The fact is that this intellectualistic culture of modern times has such great power over people that they all seem like someone who, as a little girl or even as a little boy, wants to learn to embroider in a Waldorf school and only manages to let the different threads run from top to bottom and from bottom to top; he can embroider, but he cannot create real pictures. He cannot do that. The soul activity of our modern culture, in which we have harnessed ourselves, presses so hard that no one has the spirit to be flexible enough to realize that in the egg white, everything is simply erased by these scientific results, and that matter is opened up to conception from the cosmos. This is what then points to the necessity of seeking religious renewal through anthroposophy. That is why I emphasized yesterday: Of course it is the case that we must also draw on those from today's preaching stand who come with an honest heart as so-called Protestants and who therefore reject what I have just discussed today. But the effective core on which everything should be built must actually be anthroposophists. For anthroposophy seeks to achieve what is sought in vain everywhere else: it seeks to lead to a true grasp of reality. Without having gone through this process ourselves, this coming out of the natural scientific comprehension of the world, which has already taken hold of theologians today, we will not be able to find symbolic images with which we can truly express ourselves before the believing community. And if one can approach this anthroposophical grasp of the world — you can follow it everywhere in my cycles —, at certain points one simply has to let it run out into the picture. And if you read my “Geheimwissenschaft” (Occult Science), in which I described the preliminary stages of the earth as the sun and moon, I was speaking only in images. When I say that something looks like a taste sensation, then a whole dozen of scientists like Dessoir, Oesterreich and so on cannot understand it, cannot do anything with it.

In the practical exercise of the ministry, anthroposophy is what is meant by inspiration, so that one can actually enter into the handling of the symbolic, the ritual and the cultic, and thereby have the possibility of forming a community. Otherwise one will only have the opportunity to speak to individuals. The formation of communities will never be achieved through the abstract in life.

I would like to present the matter so far and then continue it tomorrow and move on to the actual content of the sermon. We will be back tomorrow at 11 a.m., and I suggest that we also continue our discussion today about the other areas today at 7 p.m.

Now I would just like to say: Yesterday I suggested to the gentlemen from “Der Kommende Tag” that a kind of bridge should be created through “Der Kommende Tag” to what is to take place in your circle here. I have emphasized the most important thing, namely that this matter be financed, so to speak. However we think of our matter, it must be financed. It must lead immediately to the free formation of communities, even if this must be won primarily from the present church. I must say that I believe that if we work in a truly appropriate way, it could be possible to get so far in three months that the financing work will pay for itself. In other words, I think that there will at least be enough to pay for the financing work and to fill a position with someone who will start this work. “Der Kommende Tag” will agree to take care of these three months; and I believe that you have agreed to ask Dr. Heisler to take on this financing work. Initially, the matter will be on firm ground if Dr. Heisler takes it on. I am thoroughly convinced that when one has come as far as we have with such a matter, one cannot afford to wait long, because circumstances are pressing, and one often does not notice how strong the forces of decline are today, and how easy it can be to miss the boat altogether if one waits too long.

We would be much further along with the threefold order today if the matter had been properly grasped back in the spring of 1919. At that time, a cultural council was established on the basis of my cultural appeal. It was rightly imagined that people in office and dignity would also make the matter their own. They even took people in office and authority into consideration, and they worded the matter in such a way that they did not get too many goose bumps, because they wanted to appear realistic. But of course the people could not be kept in line. It is true that they could not be kept in line and that nothing helped. They will therefore be forced to turn to young people, to the younger generation, who have realized that the older generation has simply grown old and can no longer keep up. We must try not to lose any time. That is why I would like to say to you that we should try to build a bridge across, because I believe it is a legitimate feeling that, for this in particular, the financing, if it is done properly, cannot be too difficult. You will find people who are sympathetic to this, and I believe that Dr. Heisler's eloquence will find open doors if he limits himself in the next few months to persuading individuals to open the stock exchange or write the bills. Of course, you can't win people over with lectures. People won't give anything away there. You have to go to the individuals. He will have to see his task as spending all his time going to the individuals. The only unpleasant thing is that you are dismissed with words – but only with words, other cases have not yet occurred. There is no other way, you just have to accept it, and in the majority of cases you are not dismissed with words. For example, in the collection of the Swiss “Futurum AG,” I heard from all the gentlemen who were commissioned with the collection that a single instance of being thrown out with words had taken place; otherwise, people limited themselves to being extremely friendly and amiable and finding the matter extremely interesting, but just not opening the stock market. Some people then write a letter afterwards; of course, there is no need to answer that. Of course you have to realize that you will only achieve something in a small percentage of cases, but you just have to try. It's no different than having to work only towards selections, having to try a lot to have success in a few cases.

Would it perhaps be possible to discuss something else, or to pursue this further? Perhaps some of you have something to say about this. We will then extend the discussion this evening to include all three main topics that you mentioned yesterday.

Gottfried Husemann: I think we would like to talk about the extent to which we now have to prepare ourselves for the preaching profession, for speaking in a pictorial way. We cannot expect the university to prepare us for this.

Rudolf Steiner: Are you saying that something can be done in this direction? Positives, right? In these lessons I can only give the guidelines; of course I cannot go into individual points. To go into details requires at least a fortnightly course. So, one could certainly think along these lines, that if our circle has grown in the next few months, we will organize such a course, which will then give in a fortnight what is taught in the teaching institutions under the title 'symbolism', but which is actually nothing. Only in the Catholic Church faculty does symbolism still mean something. You may not yet see its inner structure quite clearly.

You can see this inner structure best from the facts. I have experienced that a large number of Catholic priests who held a position as a high school teacher - which was still quite common in Austria at the time - or who had read as a university lecturer not only at the theological faculty, but also at the philosophical and other faculties, that such Catholic priests - they were mostly religious who were later called modernists - have been reprimanded by Rome. Now I once spoke with a man who was tremendously significant in exegesis, and I asked how it was that he had been reprimanded by Rome for the content of his speech, which actually did not deserve a reprimand at all, while – if if one starts from the point of view from which the reprimand was issued, one had to say that Professor Bickell, who belonged to the Jesuits, went much further than just being an extreme liberal, but was persona grata in Rome. I told him that, and he replied: I am a Cistercian, and [in Rome] one expects of the Cistercians that the moment they no longer say what the content established by Rome is, they might then follow their convictions and gradually depart from Catholicism. — This is assumed with Cistercians. With the Jesuits, as with Professor Bickell, one knows that, however liberally they speak, they are loyal sons of Rome; they do not stray [from Rome]; one is quite certain about them, they are allowed liberalism, they may base their teachings on completely different things than on the doctrinal material.

The Catholic Church does not have this lack [of flexibility], so it is much more viable in its approach. For example, about forty years ago I once got into a conversation with a Catholic theologian who was a professor at the Vienna Theological Faculty and so learned that people said of him that he knew the whole world and three more villages into the bargain. He was a profoundly learned Cistercian. Even a Cistercian was able to discuss the subject matter in the following way. During the conversation, we came to speak about the [dogma of the] conceptio immaculata, and I said to him: Yes, you see, if you remain within Catholic logic, you can admit the immaculate conception, the conceptio immaculata Mariae. That is not the dogma of the immaculate conception of Jesus, which has always been there in the Church. But the immaculate conception, as it is claimed by Catholics on the part of St. Anne, that is, the ascent from the immaculate conception of Mary to the immaculate conception of St. Anne? If you use the same logic, you have to go further up through all the following generations. – Yes, he said, that doesn't exist, we can't do that, logic doesn't demand that. We have to stop at St. Anna; if we went further, we would end up with “Davidl,” and with Davidl we would have a bad time with the conceptio immaculata. –

Such words do not express a pure sense of truth. When the man speaks outside the Church, a completely different formulation of the truth impulse speaks, and that is present everywhere [in the Catholic Church]. The concepts are formed in such a way that they can be assimilated by the broad masses – they are not formed according to any kind of logic – that is what makes Catholicism so great. This cannot be approved of in any way, but it must be recognized. You have to know who you are dealing with.

It is the case, for example, that a real engagement with the world – in the sense of thinking, not only in an intellectualist sense, but in the sense of pure thinking, is engaged with the world – is sometimes present in Catholic priests to a certain extent. I have met many Catholic priests through the circumstances of my life. Among them was the church historian at the University of Vienna. The man was an extraordinarily interesting person, but very traditionally Catholic, so Catholic that he even admitted that he no longer goes out on the street when it is dark in the evening and the lanterns are not yet fully lit. When I asked him why he no longer walked on the streets, he said: “There you only see people in vague outlines, and in Vienna you also encounter Freemasons, and you can only see a Freemason in sharp outline because you can only pass him if you can clearly distinguish yourself from him.” You can be absolutely learned and steeped in all of theology and still have the opinion that it means something in the real world when you walk past a Freemason without rejecting him through the sharp outline. The auras merge, and it is not possible to have such a mishmash of Catholic priest and Freemason.

Ernst Uehli: The Catholic Church has worked very much with legends; and I think it is true that the Catholic movement has been very much supported by the legend. It is easy to imagine that a future church community could lead to a new formation of legends.

Rudolf Steiner: That is how it is. And if you read some of my lectures that I gave in Dornach, you will even find the attempt to express certain things that can now be expressed in legend form. I gave whole lectures in legend form; and I draw your attention to one thing. I once tried to characterize the essence of the arts. You cannot get into the essence of the arts with concepts; everything that is built up in the abstract remains external. If you want to depict such a thing, you have to resort to images. The booklet 'The Essence of the Arts' is presented entirely in images. And here again one is misunderstood. When I had spoken these words entirely out of my imagination, an old theosophist stepped forward and said, “Yes, so you have transformed the nine muses.” – Wasn't it? It was as far from my mind as anything could be to think of the nine muses; it all resulted from the necessity of the case. It was far from my mind to reheat old stories, but one could think of nothing else but that it was an abstract procedure.

So it must be said that the need to resort to images is definitely there again. For example, we still don't have an image for a very important thing. Consider the abundance of bull legends, bull narratives at the beginning of the 3rd millennium at the transition of the vernal point into the constellation of Taurus. Consider the legends of the Argonauts' journey when, in the pre-Christian 8th century, the sun entered the constellation of Aries. Now it is in the constellation of Pisces. This legend still has to be made up. We need a pictorial legend. Although the matter is already alive, we still have no legend for it. This imaginative element still needs to be developed. And so there are numerous other things that today only live in the abstract, that should be transformed into images from world events. This needs to be worked on. It is through this that we must find our way back to the world. Today, the world is actually only that which can be grasped intellectually. What is the world for today's human being? One could almost say: for the intellectual man of today the whole cosmos is nothing but rigid mathematics and mechanics. And we must again come to go beyond mere mathematics and mechanics, we must come to the imaginative, to the pictorial and also to the legendary.

We just have to realize that research such as that presented by my late friend Ludwig Laistner in his book 'The Riddle of the Sphinx', which is about sagas, myths and the formation of legends, can be of great help. I would like to emphasize that Ludwig Laistner knew nothing about spiritual science. I would just like to say that the book can help with research, although Laistner traces all myths and legends back to dreams. But it is interesting to follow how he does not seek the formation of legends in the insane way in which today's Protestant and Catholic researchers seek them, by saying to themselves: the ancient peoples made things up, they imagined the gods in a thunderstorm, and in the struggle of winter with summer. As if people had never known a peasant mind; the peasant mind never writes poetry. These people, to whom the poetry is attributed, are as far from poetry as the peasants are. It was all imaginative. Ludwig Laistner traces everything back to dreams; nevertheless, it is interesting [to read how he sees a connection between a person's inner experiences in the Slavic legend of the Lady of Noon and the legend of the] Sphinx in Greece. That is why the book is called “The Riddle of the Sphinx”. Legends must flow out of life, now in full consciousness. This is extremely important.

Rudolf Steiner: I think this should be a kind of discussion hour again, and I think you will have a lot on your minds. Please feel free to express yourselves in all directions!

Emil Bock: The question of worship is close to our hearts because we cannot create the new form of worship on our own.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, it will of course be necessary to develop some symbolism in this direction, that is to say that in the cultus we have spoken of, we develop individual examples of cultic forms, so to speak. The shaping of the cultus is actually such that one comes to it when one has the prerequisites for it. Of course, it is definitely a matter of becoming accustomed to the pictorial shaping of what one is so accustomed to today, to look at it intellectually. And Mr. Uehli, I believe, said something today, didn't he, about something cult-like, as it is practiced in the Waldorf School. That it is difficult to shape the cultic aspect may be clear to you from the fact that for a long time all cults have been limited to adopting the traditional. All the cultic forms that exist today are actually very old, only somewhat transformed in one way or another. And in the time when humanity lost the ability to create pictorially, in that time, cult was also fought against in a sense. Perhaps it can help you to understand cult if we add a few words to what we said this morning about a very different form of cult.

You know that wherever real community is sought, inner community, that cultus plays a certain role. I only remind you that when the somewhat questionable Salvation Army movement spread, even this Salvation Army movement sought a certain cultus; and it is also known that even the temperance movement has very few cultic surrogates. Wherever the aim is to achieve a true community movement, there the striving for some form of cult is everywhere.

Now, as you know, the Freemasonry movement in modern times is a very extensive community. Isn't it true that this freemasonry movement also seeks to achieve the cultivation of community through cult, and one can say that the freemasonry movement shows how cult must become when it turns into a purely materialistic movement. For actually the freemasonry movement is the materialistic form of a spiritual movement.

You see, the secret of the human essence is essentially part of the rituals and symbols of the Masonic movement. If you want to look at the human being and study the actual essence of the human being in its connection with the world, then today the materialistically minded researcher will tell you: the human being actually only has the same muscle forms, the same bone forms as the higher animals, even the same number of these organic forms – he is a higher developed animal, a transformed animal. That is, after all, what more or less clearly expressed underlies our current knowledge. This realization is immediately dispelled when one considers how humans integrate into the cosmos quite differently [than animals]. The essence of the animal – if one disregards the individual forms of deviation, which are everywhere, after all – the essence of the animal is that its backbone is built on the horizontal. Please do not misunderstand what I mean by this. Of course, an animal can sit up like a kangaroo, and that can seemingly make its spinal column form an angle with the horizontal. But that is not actually required by the organic constitution. Similarly, certain birds, parrots, can have a more or less upright posture; but the animal's plastic structure is not designed to lift the spinal column out of the horizontal. In contrast to this, the essential thing about man is the formation of his spinal column in a vertical direction. Man has thus formed the spinal column in a vertical direction. This gives one of the essential characteristics for distinguishing man from the animal world. You just have to bear in mind that you cannot consider a being in the world in isolation.

You see, when someone looks at a compass needle, it does not occur to him to say that the compass needle takes on a certain direction through that which is only in it, but he says quite naturally that the earth has a magnetic north and south pole, and the compass needle is directed by the whole earth. Only when it comes to the organic does man prefer to explain everything that is in the organism only from the organism itself, and not to relate the human being at all to the whole universe. But the person who sees through things also relates the organism to the whole universe. The fact of the matter is that systems of forces run through the whole universe; some circle the earth horizontally, while others act in such a way that these horizontal forces are interspersed with forces that run in a radial direction, so that the human being aligns his spine with the radial forces. In this way he is integrated into the universe quite differently from the animal, which has its backbone, the most important bodily line, integrated horizontally, that is, parallel to the earth's surface. Now, many other things depend on this.

You see, the human brain, which weighs 1300 to 1400 grams, would, if it were to exert its full weight, immediately crush all the blood vessels underneath the brain. The brain is quite capable of crushing the blood vessels with its weight. Why doesn't the brain crush them? Because the brain is embedded in the cerebral fluid. The cerebral fluid oscillates through the arachnoid space, which is formed by the spinal column on the inside; the cerebral fluid flows up and down under the influence of breathing. The entire brain floats in cerebral fluid. From physics, you may know that a body loses as much weight as the displaced fluid volume weighs, so that instead of weighing 1300 to 1400 grams, the brain exerts a maximum of 20 grams of pressure on the blood vessels. So you see, the human brain is designed not to insist on its heaviness, but to have an uplift, to escape heaviness. This is only possible if the human spine is vertical. In animals, the whole heaviness of the brain presses, and that is because the arachnoid space goes horizontally into the brain. The circulation that is caused takes place in a completely different way.

One must not only look at the structure of the human being, but also at the position in the universe. So that one can say: If one considers the outstanding position of man in the universe, several important lines arise above all. (It is drawn on the board).

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Firstly, the line parallel to the earth's surface, the horizontal. Secondly, the thing that distinguishes humans from animals: the fact that the backbone is vertical to the horizontal. You have drawn two shapes with this: firstly, the horizontal, and secondly, the right angle. If you are aware of the significance of the horizontal line, which basically creates animality, and the significance of the right angle for the placement of man in the universe, then you associate certain ideas with the horizontal line and with the right angle, which can thus become symbols.

Freemasonry, which seeks to characterize the essence of man, has the spirit level and the right angle among its symbols. The other symbols are also modeled on the forces of the universe. How they are modeled on the forces of the universe will become clear from the following consideration.

If we imagine the earth here; man moves on the earth, let us say so, so I will draw it radially, then it is the case that man here has his direction in the vertical and that the way he connects to the center of the earth is a triangle. You have the triangle again as a symbol in the Freemasons' cult. Everything in this Freemasonry is — in the first degree — taken from the configuration of the human being. There you see the formation of symbolism. Symbolism is there where it occurs in its reality, not arbitrarily invented. You only come to the symbolism when you study it in reality. Symbolism is grounded in the universe, it is there somewhere. It is the same with the cult.

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You see, in his temporal life between birth and death, man is constituted in such a way that he has within him the forces that continually kill him. These are the forces that solidify him, that are effective in the formation of the bone system, and that, in their morbid development, can lead to sclerosis, gout, diabetes, and so on. I would say that these forces are found in every human being, as forces of solidification. That is one system of forces. The other system of forces that a person has within them is what continually rejuvenates them. This system of forces is particularly evident when one falls prey to pleurisy, feverish illnesses, in fact, anything that burns a person internally. In the anthroposophical world view, I have called the solidifying forces Ahrimanic forces, and the forces that lead to fever, which are therefore warming forces, I have called Luciferic forces. Both forces must be kept in perpetual equilibrium in the human being. If they are not kept in balance, they will lead the human being to some pernicious extreme, physically, mentally or spiritually. If the feverish and solidifying forces, the salt-forming forces, were not kept in constant physiological balance, then man would necessarily end up either in a state of sclerosis or in a feverish state. If man develops only the powers of understanding, if he is inclined only towards intellectualism, he falls prey to the Ahrimanic; if he develops only the fiery elements, passion, the emotional, then he falls prey to the Luciferic. And so man is always caught between two polarities and must maintain his balance. But think how difficult it is to maintain balance. The pendulum that should be in balance always tends towards a deflection. These three tendencies: the tendency towards balance, the tendency towards warmth and the tendency towards solidification are in man. He must maintain himself upright, so that man can be seen symbolically as a being who continually seeks to maintain himself upright against the forces that continually endanger his life.

This is represented by the third degree of Freemasonry. The Mason who is initiated into the third degree is symbolically shown how man is threatened by three unruly powers that approach him and endanger his life. This is done in different ways. The simplest form is this: a man is presented in a coffin and three assassins creep up who want to kill him. In the contemplation of this threefold danger in which man is immersed, he is taught an awareness that he is in danger of death at every moment and must rise up.

Thus, in this symbolic clothing, man experiences a kind of real cultic action; he experiences something really important in a ceremonial way that is connected with life. And so it is indeed that one must try to get to know life, because then the symbols arise out of life. The dark side of Freemasonry is that although these symbols are used, although rituals are performed – in the first three degrees of Blue Masonry, in high-grade Freemasonry there are many other things – and that this ceremonial is drawn from ancient traditions, but that they are no longer understood. There is no longer any connection with the origins, which I wanted to present to you in a brief sketch. People only look at the ceremony and - and this is the dangerous thing - they get stuck on the ceremony; they are not introduced to the ceremony in such a way as to gain access to the spiritual through the ceremony.

You see, another way in which, relatively late, even as late as the 18th century, one still had a very vivid sense of the pictorial visualization of the secrets of the world, is for example this: If you open some books with pictures that were still in circulation in the 18th century – they were in circulation to make people aware of things that cannot be grasped by the intellect – you will see a picture that keeps recurring: a man with a bull's head and a woman with a lion's head. The man with the bull's head and the woman with the lion's head stand side by side. At first glance, the image is shocking for anyone who does not look at it more closely. But it is indeed the case that we human beings are actually constituted in such a way that we are most perfectly shaped in our physical body. That is where we are actually human. The physical body, as you will find described in my 'Occult Science', is the one that goes back to the oldest foundations; it is the most perfect. The human ether body is shaped like the physical body. If the physical body could be removed from the ether body, it would only adapt to the astral body, then this ether body would probably take on an animal form to the annoyance of many people, because then it becomes the expression of the emotional, the passionate. It is shaped in different ways in different people.

If we regard the male head, the etheric head, as an expression of what lives in the emotional nature, then, taken as a type, as an average, there is something bull-like in the male head. In the female head, as soon as one looks at the ether head, there is something lion-like. These are average forms. One can also feel this morally if one opens oneself to what the nature of woman encompasses, how she is the type of the lion-like. One can feel the bull in the man and feel the lion in the woman.

These are things that seem to be merely figuratively spoken, but they are taken from the supersensible nature [of man]. When the astral body [is considered] taken out of the physical body, it takes on complicated plant forms, and the human ego is a purely mineral, crystal-like being, it is completely geometrically shaped. So that one can say: In form, man is human in the physical body, in the etheric body he is actually animal-like, in the astral he is plant-like and in the I he is mineral-like. When one knows all these things, then one comes to realize how, in an earlier clairvoyant state, people really knew about higher worlds and formed these images from these higher worlds.

Now, this is just to indicate how symbols came into being and how they then traditionally propagated themselves. In our time, it is only possible to arrive at symbols if one delves lovingly into the secrets of the world; and only out of anthroposophy can a cult or a symbolism actually arise today.

You see, it is necessary to start from the elements. The first thing is that one grows into the genius of the language itself. Our language, especially where civilization is at its highest, has taken on a terribly external, abstract form. We speak today without feeling in our speech. You see, our way of speaking today is actually something terribly inhuman, because we no longer live in our language. Take the German word “Kopf”. When we feel it, we also feel how it is completely connected with the round form, with the rounded. On the other hand, the Romance word 'testa' is related to the idea of making a will, bearing witness, establishing something. It comes from a completely different background. And if you feel what is in the two words, you also feel the difference between the Romance and the Germanic element. The Germanic element forms the word from the plastic, the Romance, the Latin element forms it from the soul's manifestations. Take the word 'foot', which is related to 'furrow'; 'pied' is related to 'to set up'. This can be seen throughout the language, and you can feel it everywhere, how the special world feeling actually comes to light in the genius of the language. Consider how strongly the pictorial quality of language was still felt in the time when Goethe was writing. Do you remember the scene where the poodle appears on the stage, following Faust and Wagner, and where Wagner talks about the poodle and says, “he doubts” — by that he means that he moves his tail; with the word “doubt” he expresses the movement of the tail. If you look at what is still alive in the picture and compare it with our abstractions today, you can really feel your way into the pictorial way in which the genius of language has worked, by observing how the word “doubt” contains this wagging, this to and fro.

This is the first element of the pictorial soul life when one lives into the pictorial language. It is really the case that one grows into the pictorial language if one only wants to; and that is already a good education of the soul, to grow into the pictorial language. Today we speak in abstracto, the words no longer mean anything to us. You see, in my homeland a certain kind of lightning that you see in a special way is called “Himmlatzer”. I would like to know how one should not feel the image of lightning in “Himmlatzer”, the word paints it. And so it is also quite possible, if you go more into the dialect-like, into the dialects, to grow even more into the pictorial. One should educate oneself to have the pictorial in language. Today it is sometimes almost impossible to express something that one has because the pictorial quality of language has been lost. Of course, one must disregard all artificially induced things. Anyone who is in any way eccentric will experience what happened to the Falb. He was walking with a friend and speaking animatedly – and stepped into a pool, and thought – pool? — temple! — Of course, one must not be eccentric by seeking external similarities. One must delve inwardly into the imagery of language. Then one will really understand the word “two.” Originally, the “two” was not thought of in terms of adding one and one, but rather the “two” was thought of in terms of dividing one in two. The older way of forming numbers is based on analysis, not synthesis. You can still see this if you take, for example, Arabic arithmetic in the 12th century AD.

An interesting booklet has now been published by our friend Ernst Müller about Abraham Ibn Ezra – I will give you the exact title tomorrow – which deals with numbers and is extremely interesting for understanding the earlier way of forming numbers. If you follow this, you will find, without making any crazy claims, the similarity of the word “two” with the word “doubt”; you will also be led to the suffix “el”. In this way you can find your way into the imagery of language. This is the alphabet of pictorial imagination.

Furthermore, it is about finding your way into the whole complicated way in which, for example, a human being is constructed. I have given some examples today. As I said, if you arrive at real knowledge in this way, the images first arise for the symbolism, and then you come to really understand historical life. Then you also come to be able to imagine cultic acts.

Take the following example. You see, the Greeks did not yet have the possibility of having the concepts completely separate from the things. Just as we perceive colors, the Greeks perceived the concepts in the things; for them, they were perceptions. If we start from this, we really come to understand how humanity has changed since the time of the Greeks. If, for example, one wanted to depict a type of altar that would be more suitable for the Greeks, one would depict it in bright colors. If one wanted to depict an altar that would be suitable for a person who lives more in the modern world, who is not attuned to bright colors (the Greeks did not perceive colors in the way we do), one would have to build it in a more blue color today.

If you want to approach a community with a cult today, you would have to make it extraordinarily simple. A complicated cult would not satisfy people today, so you have to make it extraordinarily simple. Above all, we need an expression of the inner transformation of the human being in the cult everywhere. This inner transformation of the human being, which one could call the pervasion of the human being with Christ, for man is actually not born at all in a state in which he is already permeated with Christ from the outset, as a result of heredity; he must find Christ within himself. This could now be expressed symbolically in the most diverse ways through simple but effective cultic acts.

Let me give you an example: if someone were to formulate a saying, it would consist of seven lines. In the first three lines one would express essentially how the human being still stands under the influence of the conditions of heredity, how he is born out of the father principle of the world. The fourth line, the middle one, would then show how these principles of heredity are overcome by the principles of the soul. And the last three lines would show how, through this, the human being becomes a seer of the spiritual. Now, one could read such seven lines to a community in such a way that one presents the first three lines with a somewhat more abstract, rougher language, then in the middle, the fourth, one transitions to a somewhat warmer language, and the last three lines are presented in elevated language, with a raised tone. And one would have in it a simple cultic act that would represent the becoming-Christed and becoming-spiritualized of the human being.

It is not important that something like this is explained afterwards – that is precisely what should not be done – but it should be made tangible. The image should be felt, and one should act accordingly. So you see how it is possible, after all, to ascend to the cultural. Then one must get a feeling for how everything that relates to the thinking is similar to light, and how everything that relates to love is similar to warmth. Now think what a means of expression you have in language when you can, wherever you wish to express something tending towards the thinking, associate it with light. When you say, “Let wisdom illuminate the human being,” you have said something real. You will feel how the thinking is actually the captured light that becomes a thought. Likewise, when speaking of love, we everywhere use images taken from warmth relationships. If one says, “A common idea spreads warmly over a community of people,” then you have the image of warmth in it, but you have spoken in real terms. Thus, when you feel the inner wisdom of language, you enter into the pictorial realm.

This is one such path, and I will give you very detailed examples later when we meet again. One can even develop modern culture on the basis of these things. Today I just wanted to hint to you at the practical way in which one is actually led. But it is always about our — forgive the harsh expression — emaciated souls. We are not human at all, we have become so dead through materialistic education. Today man feels everything separately. He does not feel at all that his nerves are the receptacle of light, that his nerves are glowing with light. He believes that vibrations are at work. But it is from light that the thought is formed. It is not just an image, but reality, when it is said: “Man is permeated by thoughts”.

This is far too little known, which is why it is not possible to visualize it. But I believe that if you read my book “Die Geheimwissenschaft” (The Secret Science), for example, and immerse yourself in how I present the three metamorphoses of Moon, Sun and Saturn, in order to visualize how it all unfolds in pictures, then you will be able to visualize it all by yourself. If you do not stop at the abstraction or even believe that I have constructed or invented something, but if you feel the necessity that it must be presented in this way, then you already have a school for pictorial imagination. And there is every reason to move on to cultic actions. From what I have presented, one must also acquire a feeling for the inner numerical structure of the universe.

Today, of course, people often laugh when you talk about the number seven or the number three. But these numbers can easily be empirically derived from the universe. I would like to know how anyone can avoid thinking of the number three when they think of a human being. Man is, after all, a threefold being, and if you think about it properly, you come across the number three everywhere. If, for example, you are speaking to a group of children, or to older children, “May the light of your thinking shine through you,” you have not finished speaking until you also say, “May the life of your feeling stir you,” or “permeate you”; and “May the fire of your will empower you.” The elements combine of their own accord, and this then flows over into the form of the ritual. You have to get a feeling for the fact that something is incomplete if you just say, “May the light, your thinking, illuminate you.” It is just like putting up a human head alone. That cannot be, I cannot imagine that someone just puts up the human head, it cannot be like that, something else is needed. So I must also have the feeling when I say: “The light, your thinking, illuminates you,” that is not complete, I must also say: “The life, your feeling, permeates you” and “The fire, your will, empowers you.” If I take only one, I have just as much as if I only have the human head. So you come to think of the other. Then one enters into the self-creative aspect of the world's numerical organization, and so the cultic form arises out of the thing itself:

May the light of your thinking permeate you. May the life of your feeling imbue you. May the fire of your will empower you.

This is, after all, the basis of what Mr. Uehli will have told you today [about the Sunday lesson in the Waldorf school]. It is all there in the formula; it is formed in this way everywhere. It is so difficult to understand when it occurs in life.

You see, if you were to take a piece out of my Philosophy of Freedom, a chapter, it would be almost like cutting off a limb of the human being. It is only intended to be read as a whole, because it is a special form of thinking. It is not a combination of individual parts, it has been allowed to grow. And that can be further developed.

Paul Baumann: Doctor, could you tell us something about the musical element in the cult?

Rudolf Steiner: The situation is as follows: we human beings are placed in the world in such a way that — if I may use a pictorial image (diagram 2 is drawn on the board) — on the one hand we are organized in our heads. This organization of the head is essentially conditioned by the fact that the external world penetrates into it and is inhibited everywhere. Everything that penetrates from the world into the head is actually reflected in the head, and what we perceive outside is the reflection, that is, what we usually have inside in our waking consciousness. And if you take the human body, especially what is made of the eye, but also of the other sense organs, then you find that it all tends to be defined at the back; something is mirrored. On the other hand, the human being develops the bone system, the muscle system and so on. In the case of the head, we actually have the round, closed skull capsule. Then we have the tubular bones, the muscles and so on (see plate 2). The head is actually quite impenetrable for what affects it, just as the mirror is impenetrable for light; that is why it reflects. This is different in what is broadly termed the limb-metabolic-organism; here the world reaches into the tubular bones and muscles, so that one can say: In the head organization everything is repelled, but the limbs absorb, so that actually the processes of the limb-metabolic organism are brought about from outside through the way in which I am integrated into the world organism. Nothing is repelled; it is, as it were, organized through, it is taken in. And that then accumulates, especially in the lungs. The lungs are such an accumulation organ where the external world takes shape. And a second, already sieved accumulation is in the organ of hearing. The organ of hearing is actually a lung at a higher level. Anyone with an eye for it can see even in the structure of the outer ear how it is not formed like the eye. The eye is formed from the outside in. The ear is closed and encloses what is the actual sensory organ. So everything that is visible on the ear is formed in such a way that the human being is formed from two vortices. One of these is thrown back, reflected, and actually returns to itself; the other forms an organism, develops the form, and meets the first, and they then come together here (see plate 2), so that everything that comes from the outside inwards is reflected here and gives the ordinary memory, for example the memory for the images seen. On the other hand, that which builds up the human being is movement, it is movement throughout, it is forms of vibration that run within him. I have told you about the brain water, haven't I? Man is 92% water and only 8% solid; what is solid is only incorporated. The whole is all movement. What organizes the human being out of movement, that organizes him out of the word. Man is truly the Word made flesh in the most literal sense, and this Word made flesh comes together with that which is reflected in it, so that we can say: We are built first of all for the visual, but this is organized entirely for being reflected back; and then we are built for the auditory, for that which forms the human being, for sound formed into words, which then accumulates in listening, which becomes heard sound.

The human being becomes aware of the external world through the direct or the transformed visible. Through that which becomes sound in himself, which becomes musical, the human being is the being who rises from the sphere of the musical and is fertilized by the sphere of the optical, of the visible, so that the musical is indeed that which continues to work in us from the world. We are built through music; our body is an embodied music. This is the case in the fullest sense. And light plays a role here (see Chart 2) and is reflected. This also accounts for the great difference between ordinary memory, which we have in relation to the outside world, where we retain the visual, and musical memory. Musical memory is something quite different – it will also seem wonderful to you – musical memory arises in the opposite way, it arises from the accumulation of the sound that flows through; in this way, the human being throws back his own nature within himself. It is therefore that which works musically in the human being, his very innermost nature.

Now you may think that we place images in some way, whether we place them visibly before people in worship, or whether we evoke the images by speaking, and then we imbue these images with the musical, whether with instrumental music or song. It is nothing other than the fact that, fundamentally, the two main principles of the world are juxtaposed. What the human being is as a creature of light is brought into connection with what the human being is as a creature of sound. And through this, the cult [...] becomes a polarity. Admittedly, this is already the case with the word, and the older cults did not use abstract speech for this reason either, but rather the recitative, which already has something song-like about it. And this recitative, which played such an important role in the ancient sacrifice of the Mass because the Mass was sung, was intended to represent the interpenetration of the luminous with the tonal, so that in the cult the musical that which most essentially internalizes man, that which furthers the mystical element, while the rest furthers that which furthers the pantheistic, the outpouring of man to the universe.

We thus have the possibility, on the one hand, of driving man into expansion through everything luminous and conceptual, and on the other hand, of leading him into contraction, into the absorption of the supersensible through the musical. And while, for example, the non-musical, the luminous in cult is suited to teaching us a sense of the world, the musical is suited to deepening our sense of the I to the point of the divine. The ideal would be to take the luminous to a certain degree and then let it merge into the musical, letting it merge quite organically into the musical. In this way, one would actually have recreated the human being in his constitution through cult.

Gottfried Husemann asks whether the church music of the past, for example Bach, is still needed. Would the new cult not also need a new kind of music?

Rudolf Steiner: It is true that if one is obliged to do something quickly today, then one will revive these older musical things. But it is certainly the case that people can no longer develop an entirely inward relationship to these older forms, just as an adult cannot develop the same life forms as a child. It is absolutely necessary that musical forms be created out of today's feeling. Naturally, one must begin where one has the possibility to do so. You will have noticed that where we do eurythmy and work with music, our friends have already found quite good musical forms out of the musical feeling of today. This will be based on the fact that more and more people will relearn in the musical sphere, just as in the pictorial sphere. There are indeed tentative attempts, which need not be condemned, but one must know that they are just tentative attempts, and the same applies to the musical sphere, for example with Debussy, who lives in the individual note, who lives in the individual tone. But it must not become tone painting. It is the case that more and more will be experienced of what arises in the individual tone as a secret, and then one will seek to analyze the individual tone. Perhaps one will have to expand the scale, insert some tones, but mainly one will enrich by experiencing the character of the individual tone. And thereby special musical possibilities will arise. [To Mr. Baumann:] You also hope that one will then experience melodies in the individual tone? — It is actually the case that you can. There is then a training opportunity. There the anthroposophical musicians will have to meet the others halfway. I am absolutely convinced that anthroposophical musicians will still have a great deal to do, that anthroposophical musicians in particular will have a great mission. Before Wagner, old music was actually at an impasse. But Wagner did not really advance music. He broadened music by bringing a side-current into it. One can see this as great and ingenious, but it is still a side-current. One will have to take up the development of music before Wagner and find there precisely that which can give much to culture. Until then it will, of course, be very good to use older works. There are actually some truly wonderful things there, both in Protestant and Catholic church music. For the modern person, the relationship will no longer be a completely inward one; one will have to try to delve into the musical itself.

Emil Bock asks a question concerning the Quaker movement.

Rudolf Steiner: I have always had the feeling with the Quakers that this is actually a movement that comes specifically from the Anglo-American element. I have not been able to find any significant predispositions in Central Europe for the kind of community building that comes to light in Quakerism. I am not familiar with this endeavour from my own experience and therefore cannot know whether anything fruitful can come of it or not, but I doubt that something similar to Quakerism can arise out of the Central European spirit. You see, the Anglo-American element actually experiences religion in a completely different way than the Central European can experience it. The Central European experiences religion first and foremost in thinking. That is the archetypal phenomenon. It is a mysticism thoroughly illuminated by the intellectual light. This is everywhere, even where very radical religious forms and sectarian aspirations arise. In Central Europe you will find everywhere mysticism illuminated by the light of thinking, while the Anglo-Americans let the religious element be immersed in the instinctive part of man. Of course this appears in different ways, and it would be interesting to investigate somehow from which blood mixtures the Quakers recruit themselves. One must go to the instinctive, blood-related, and there one will find the subsoil. You will see that one will surely find something like an instinctive disposition there, but the Central European never founds anything community-building on instinctive dispositions.

This is really a clear difference between the West, the Center and the East. The West seeks the higher more or less in the subconscious, in the center one seeks it in consciousness, and in the East one seeks it in the superconscious, there one is always looking up. The American especially looks to the earth and expects everything from the earth, the Russian - even more the Asian - actually always looks up. The Central European looks straight ahead. It is already the case that we could end up on dangerous ground in the religious field in particular if we were to imitate the actually Western element. We must not do that in any field. It has caused us great damage in science and leads to rigidity in the religious field in particular. We have to work more with the soul than with the body.

Emil Bock: We have heard that there are already rituals that have been handed out on occasion: a baptismal ritual, a funeral ritual, and an adapted version of a mass. I would like to ask whether there is a possibility that we could get to know such pieces in order to live into them.

Rudolf Steiner: Certainly, these things would be considered as starting points. The funeral ritual came about because a member of our movement wanted such a funeral ritual. Of course, we had to tie in with the usual funeral rituals, but by translating the usual ritual, not lexicographically, of course, but correctly, something essentially different emerged. I would ask for these things back some time and would very much like to use them as a basis for our course consideration. I will simply ask our friend to transcribe them and then perhaps send them here; that is quite possible. In the case of the Mass offering, I initially only gave a translation of the [Catholic] Mass offering, but something new actually emerged. But I only got as far as the offertory with the translation, it is not finished yet. In the Old Catholic service, the Mass is read in the local language. Our friend went so far as to read the Mass in this translation up to the offertory in the Old Catholic service.

Things take time, and we have little time. But all of this can really be made available to you. Of course, it would be necessary to create a new baptismal ritual in particular, because the old baptismal ritual is not entirely suitable because it was always aimed at baptizing adults, and then it was transferred to the child. If you want to baptize children today, a [new] ritual must first be found. Elements for this already exist, which I can also make available to you. The baptismal rituals have grown out of baptisms for adults. When you baptize a child, you are speaking to an unconscious person, and it must be a corresponding action. The child knows nothing about it. We must not go so far as to rebel against infant baptism itself, but many things need to be renewed in the ritual. If you take the St. John's baptism, it is based on the fact that the person was submerged in the water, the adult was submerged. You know that a person can be brought to the point where his earthly life appears to him in a mere tableau. His life appears to him in a kind of tableau, and through this he experiences unconditionally that he belongs to a spiritual world. He has an experience of belonging to a spiritual world. This is actually also expressed in the baptismal ritual. We cannot do that with children. We need a ritual for children that expresses how the child is accepted into our community, and the communal religious supersensible substance that lives in the community must flow over to the child. We must express this in the baptismal rite, and it can indeed be done.

You see, there has been no reason in the anthroposophical movement to develop these things in a concrete way for the simple reason that we wanted to avoid them. There have been more than a few cases where people wanted to introduce such things. I always rejected it for the reason that, of course, it would have killed the anthroposophical movement stone dead from the start. We just had to stick with what was more or less allowed.

Twenty years ago it was more, today it is less the case that the Catholic Church regarded the ritual as its monopoly. We would have been killed on the spot, and so there was little reason to develop the ritual in that direction. The other thing, where the form of a ritual was developed, was interrupted by the war, where one could no longer continue; because as soon as these things would have been continued, one would have been treated as a secret society.

These are the reasons why the ritual side has not been developed within the anthroposophical movement. But it will be possible to develop it in your movement, because it can be regarded as something quite natural for ritual to be developed in a religious movement. Even though Protestantism has a certain horror of the cultic, I still believe that [the necessity of ritual] could be felt again.

A participant: To begin with, Catholics have more sacraments than Protestants. What is the basis for this and what is the actual significance of the ritual of Holy Communion?

Rudolf Steiner: What is contained in Catholic dogma goes back to certain forms of older knowledge. It is imagined that between birth and death, the human being passes through seven stages. First, birth itself, then what is called maturing, puberty, then what is called the realization of one's inner self around the age of 20, then the feeling of not corresponding to the world, not being fully human, that is the fourth. And then, isn't it, the gradual growth into the spiritual. These things have then become somewhat blurred, but one imagined the whole human life, including the social one, in seven stages, and one imagined that the human being grows out of the spirit between birth and death. The Catholic Church does not recognize pre-existence in more recent times. There is only one thought of God, and this growing out of the thought of God is presented in seven stages. These seven stages must be counteracted by other forces. Birth is an evolution, maturing is an evolution, and each form of evolution is counteracted by a form of involution: baptism for birth, confirmation for puberty. Every sacrament is the inverse of a natural stage in evolution. One can say that Catholic doctrine presents seven stages of evolution, to which it juxtaposes seven stages of involution, and these are the seven sacraments, four of which are earthly, namely baptism, confirmation, the sacrament of the altar, and penance. These four are as universal as the physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I. As you go higher, you come to the spirit self, the spirit of life and spiritual people. Just as the shining in from the spiritual world, the last three sacraments are those that go into the social: marriage, ordination and extreme unction. The penetration of the spiritual world is expressed in ordination. So these are the seven sacraments, of which the last are extreme unction, ordination and marriage. They are simply the sacraments of the inverse processes for the natural processes that take place for humans, and the corresponding cultic acts are also set up accordingly.

The concept of the seven sacraments is certainly not arbitrary. What is arbitrary is to limit these seven sacraments to two. This happened at a time when people no longer had a feeling for the inner numerical constitution of the world. It is these things, of course, that make truly serious Catholic priests, especially those in religious orders, such opponents of Protestantism. They all consider it to be a form of rationalism, something that knows nothing. There are genuine spiritualized natures among the clergy – the Jesuits, aren't they, they are prepared – I found one among the clergy of Monte Cassino, Father Storkeman, with whom I also spoke about Dionysius the Areopagite, who showed me the altar where he usually says mass. He spoke to me about his feelings at mass, and you could see that it had nothing to do with the usual confession of the Catholic Church.

And another time, in Venice, there was a patriarch who was a terrible fellow. Another, a younger cleric, preached, and I could see occultly that the one who had preached was truly spiritualized. The sermon was also really very fine. It is precisely through the ceremonial that individuals who stand out show themselves. I also saw one read the mass on the lower ground floor [of a church] in Naples, where I could really see the transubstantiation that underlies the Catholic transformation. It is actually the case that when transubstantiation is performed by a real priest, the host acquires an aura. Now, you may believe that or not, I can only relate it.

There is no need to hold back [saying this]: there is an inner reality to the cult, that is undoubtedly the case. You can see the damage in Catholicism when you see what it has been, and what was lost in the rationalist period. It makes no sense that [Protestantism] took two out of seven sacraments; there is no reason for that.

Emil Bock: May we also ask what the significance of laying on of hands was in the early days of Christianity?

Rudolf Steiner: You must be clear about the fact that humanity has undergone a development and that certain spiritual forces that were present in prehistory are increasingly receding as humanity becomes more intellectual and develops freedom. Certain powers in relation to natural life have definitely declined, and that is why we do not understand many things that are told in biblical history and that mean something quite different from what man associates with them today. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in modern times, something like Socrates' relationship with his students is viewed in a mean and disgustingly mean way. People talk about a kind of homosexuality, whereas it points to a side of the powers of the soul where something was achieved not only through the word, but also through the presence of Socrates with his students. The human presence meant something to them. It is a disgusting slander of things when today the concepts of homosexuality are applied to these things in Greek culture. And so it is with the touch of the laying on of hands. The hand of a person essentially not only has a feeling meaning, but it also has an emanation, and in earlier times the emanation was stronger, it could have a healing effect. I have often expressed this in lectures in a certain formula: human life is a whole, and childhood belongs together with later life. No person attains the power to bless in later life who is not able to pray in childhood. Anyone who has never folded their hands in prayer as a youth can never hold their hands in blessing. The laying on of hands was simply an initiation process [.. gap in the postscript], what is involved there, is involved in the laying on of hands. That was something that was trained earlier, and the healing effect of laying on hands should definitely be considered. Isn't it true that today's people are no longer in the same situation, they are not encouraged to develop something like that in their youth. Such things were taught in the past, they were a reality once. But it is not out of the question that in a more spiritualized future these things will be taught again. Would you not consider that desirable? — The folding of the hands is a preparation for blessing. Likewise, for example, in older Catholicism it was taught that If you learn to kneel, you will learn to say the 'Dominus vobiscum' in the right way. Do you find that strange? You know how to say the 'Dominus vobiscum', don't you? You learn to say it by kneeling, otherwise it is not as powerful.

A participant: It has been said that the priests in ancient Egypt had an extraordinary position of leadership. We have heard that initiates have led humanity, that they have worked through real thoughts. The question is how this would have to be modified today by the new.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, it must become new in so far as we must no longer return to this strongly unconscious, atavistic element, but we must go through the much more conscious element, taking more account of the fact that every human being must develop into a personality. Even today in Catholicism, the personality of the priest is completely suppressed. When the stole is crossed, the priest is only a figurant of the church, he is no longer a human being. We must not cultivate this. In the Egyptian priesthood, in particular, much was based on the fact that, as long as the highest priest lived, the others were only allowed to be figurants. Only when he died could another enter. There was always only one. We must exclude all this today.

A participant: What about the priest's vestments?

Rudolf Steiner: The liturgical vestment came about in such a way that one imagined the coloration of a personal feeling in relation to the real, so, for example, one imagined the blessing priest. This naturally gives a very definite coloration of the astral body, and the liturgical vestment is formed accordingly. Isn't it so? When blessing, one's own personality is absorbed into the supersensible world and the blessing is allowed to flow over to the congregation; this gives a blue undergarment and a red outer garment. One simply models the astral body. The same is true for the other acts, for praying and so on. For example, they imagine that one has an outpouring of the spiritual. This can be followed quite precisely: the coloring of the astral body – the priestly robe. The liturgical robe is simply the coloring of the astral body. This could certainly be recreated, and the only question is to what extent humanity is ready to accept something like that again.

I had an excellent Protestant clergyman as a friend who had a great ideal, that is, he had many very beautiful ideals, but among others he had one, and that was the abolition of the Luther skirt. He wanted to go like an ordinary dandy. It embarrassed him that he could not go like a dandy when he was a pastor. Therefore, it was very painful for him not to be able to walk around in this modern, aesthetic man's garment, where one is clamped in two stovepipes. This monstrosity is, of course, regarded today as the only possible garment, and anything else that may arise is considered to be something foolish. The greatest folly is our man's suit. A human race that puts on a tailcoat and a top hat – it is obvious that such a human race cannot have any understanding for cultic vestments. This must be cultivated again in humanity. Perhaps when women can also take up this profession, when female preachers come along, there will be a way to arrive at cultic vestments sooner. Because women will have to do something to get to the pulpit. But today men want to do it like a Swiss speaker. He thought it was right, for example, not to give sermons, but to give speeches while walking back and forth on the lectern with a cigarette in his mouth. That's how he gave his lectures.

That's right. You know that cult robes were not limited to the church, because judges also had cult robes – and if you asked a judge today to put on the old cult robes, he would also remonstrate against it – yes, even the court ceremonial went hand in hand with a kind of cult robe. And finally, at the universities, you still have the rector's robes, which always pass from one rector to the next. In this respect, we just need to change our aesthetic ideas, and that's that.

Yesterday we tried to place ourselves in the position of the developing process of conceptualization and idealization, of the development of concepts about the world and of ideas, and we saw that a certain development can be observed here as well: that, so to speak, from a kind of clairvoyant experience of the concepts, what the Platonic ideas were arises, and that gradually developed that abstract way of thinking which still extends into our own day; but that time is pressing, so that, as it were in a conscious way, living life in concepts is to be achieved again, in order to enter into living spirituality in general, so that what was left behind as dream-like clairvoyance in concepts may be achieved again in a conscious way.

Now we have to look more closely at how, in a very different way, all the highest matters of world existence can be grasped in a time when there was still something of the resonance of the old, clairvoyantly grasped concepts, and how quite differently the highest matters of humanity had to be grasped when conceptual thinking had already become intellectual-rational and abstract. For the questions we spoke of again yesterday, which arose so significantly in medieval scholasticism, these questions could actually only develop naturally in an age in which one was uncertain about the relationship between the world of concepts and the true world of reality. In a time that had preceded Greek philosophy, something like what we have considered the doctrine of universals in re, post rem, ante rem could not have been conceived at all, because the vividly possessed concept leads into reality. One knows that one stands in reality with it, and then one cannot raise the questions that were discussed yesterday. They do not arise at all as riddle questions.

Now, in the early days of Christian development, there was still something of an echo of the old clairvoyant conceptual world, and one can say: when the Mystery of Golgotha went through the development of European and Near Eastern humanity , there were still many people who were really able to absorb the things that relate to the Mystery of Golgotha in echoes of clairvoyantly grasped concepts, which can actually only be understood spiritually. Only in this way can we understand that much of what was developed in the first centuries of Christianity to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha must have been incomprehensible in later times. When the older Christian teachers still used the echoes of the old clairvoyant concepts to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha, then, of course, these clairvoyant concepts remained incomprehensible to the later centuries in their actual essence. Basically, what is called gnosis is usually nothing more than the echo of old clairvoyant concepts. They tried to understand the Mystery of Golgotha with old clairvoyant concepts, and clairvoyant concepts were no longer understood later, only abstract concepts. Therefore, what Gnosis actually wanted was misunderstood. However, it would be very one-sided to simply say: There was a Gnosis that still had old clairvoyant concepts that went back to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, and then came the unwise people who were unable to understand the Gnostics. It would be very one-sided to think in such a way. To work in a certain perfect sense with clairvoyant concepts belongs to a much older time than the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, to a much older time. And these clairvoyantly grasped concepts were already infected with Lucifer, that is to say, the old clairvoyant-conceptual grasping was already permeated with Lucifer, and this Luciferic permeation of the old clairvoyant conceptual system is Gnosticism. Therefore, a kind of reaction against Gnosticism had to arise, because Gnosticism was the dying old clairvoyant conceptual world, the old clairvoyant conceptual world already infected by Lucifer. This must also be borne in mind.

Now I will start with a man who, in the first centuries of Christianity, tried to stem the currents that came from Gnosticism, which had become Luciferian, and wanted to understand the Mystery of Golgotha from this point of view. That is Tertullian. He came from North Africa, was well-versed in the wisdom of the pagans. Towards the end of the second century, after the Mystery of Golgotha, he converted to Christianity and became one of the most learned theologians of his time. It is particularly interesting to take a closer look at him, because, on the one hand, he still had some inner understanding of the old clairvoyant conceptual world from his study of ancient pagan wisdom, and, on the other hand, because, as his conversion story shows, he had the full Christian impulse within him and wanted to unite both in such a way that Christianity could fully exist. To do this, he had to suppress what he perceived as the Gnosticism with a touch of Luciferism in Basilides, Marcion and others. And now certain questions arose for him. These questions arose for Tertullian for a very specific reason. You see, when we begin with spiritual science today, we very often speak of the structure of human nature, of the way in which man first has his dense physical body, which the eyes can see and the hands can grasp; then how there is an etheric body, how there is an astral body, a sentient soul and so on. That is to say, we seek above all to recognize the constitution of human nature. But if you follow the historical development of spiritual life in the centuries since the Mystery of Golgotha, you will find nowhere that the human constitution has been observed in such a way as we do today. This was lost and had already been lost when the Mystery of Golgotha occurred. Those who were touched by the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha no longer knew anything about this structure of the human being. But this presented a very definite difficulty for them. In order to recognize this difficulty, my dear friends, try to connect with your own heart, with your own soul, in order to ask yourself a question. You know that we have tried in many different ways to make clear to you the way in which the Christ, through Jesus, has intervened in the evolution of the earth. But try to understand how the Christ has penetrated the members in Jesus, if you knew nothing of the whole constitution, of the essence of man! Only this made it possible to understand how the Christ, as a kind of cosmic ego, permeates the bodies, so that you first knew something about these bodies. For those who in the future will seek an understanding of the Christ, knowledge of the structure of the human being must be the essential preparation.

In ancient times, when there were still dream-like, clairvoyant concepts, something was known about the structure of the human being; and something had been handed down to the Gnostics, even if it was distorted. Therefore, these Gnostics had tried to penetrate the coming of the Christ into Jesus of Nazareth with the last remnants of the concepts of the human constitution. But the others, to whom Christianity was now to come, and who were taught by their church teachers, knew nothing of this structure of the human being, nor did their church teachers. And so the big, extensive question arose: What is the actual situation regarding the interaction of the Christ nature and the Jesus nature? How is it possible that this Christ, as a divine being, takes hold in Jesus, as a human being? And it is this question that occupies people like Tertullian. Because they lack the prerequisite for understanding the matter, the problem arises for them again posthumously, as it were — but in the case of Christ Jesus it makes them wonder: how are the spiritual, physical and soul actually connected? They did not know how they are connected in people in general, but they had to find out something about how they were connected in the case of Christ Jesus. Because the Gnosticism of that time had a Luciferian bent, it naturally did not arrive at the right answer either. If you recall certain lectures that I have given here recently, you will find that I said that people, on the one hand, come to materialism and, on the other hand, to a one-sided spiritualism. One-sided materialism is Ahrimanic, one-sided spiritualism has a Luciferic touch. The materialists do not come to the spirit, and the Luciferic spiritists do not come to matter.

This was the case with the Gnostics: they did not come to physical existence, to material existence. And if you now look at a person like Marcion, you see: for him there is a clear, a more or less clear concept of Christ, but he is absolutely unable to grasp how this Christ was contained in Jesus. Therefore, the whole process became etherealized for him. He managed to grasp the Christ as a spirit, as an ethereal being that seemingly took on a body. But he could not grasp the correct way in which the Christ was in Jesus. Marcion came to say, in the end, that Christ did indeed descend to earth, but that everything that Jesus experienced was only seemingly experienced; the physical events are only seemingly experienced; the Christ did not actually participate, but was only there like an ethereal entity, which, however, remained quite separate. That is why Tertullian had to turn against Marcion and against the others who thought similarly, Basilides for example. And for him the great riddle arose: How was the divine nature of Christ connected with the human nature of Jesus? What exactly was the God-man? What was the Son of God? What was the Son of Man? — Above all, he sought to clarify these concepts. And so he first formed a concept that was very important and is still important today, which one must understand if one wants to see how manifold the possibilities of error are for man.

Tertullian developed a certain way of thinking. He had to break out of the old, clairvoyant way of thinking and come to a clear understanding of concepts and their relationship to realities, including higher, spiritual realities. I would like to insert an episode here that will help you to see not what Tertullian became aware of, but what dominated his thinking. I will insert a purely intellectual episode, but I ask you to take it very much to heart. I do the following. I write the number 1 and then its double 2, 2 - 4, 3 - 6, etc. And now imagine: I do not stop at all, I keep writing, that is, I write to infinity. How many such numbers would I have written then? Infinitely many, aren't they! But how many have I written here? Have I written a number on the right for every number on the left? Without a doubt, I have written exactly as many numbers on the right as I have written on the left, and if I continue into infinity, there would always be a number on the right for every number on the left. But now imagine: every number on the right is also on the left. But that means nothing other than: I have as many numbers on the right as I have on the left, but at the same time I have only half as many numbers on the right as on the left. Because it is quite obvious that there must always be one in between two numbers that are double, I must have only half as many numbers on the right as on the left. One is always left out, that is obvious, so I can only have half as many on the right as on the left. That is obvious. But consider that one is always missing, that 1, 3, 5, 7 and so on are missing, so half the numbers are missing on the right! So I only have half as many on the right as on the left. Nevertheless, I have exactly the same number of numbers as on the left. That is to say: as soon as I enter infinity, half is equal to the whole. That is quite clear: as soon as I enter infinity, half is equal to the whole – you cannot escape it. As soon as you enter infinity with your concepts from the finite, something like that comes out by itself, that half is equal to the whole. You can write all the numbers on the left and all the square numbers on the right: 1 - 1, 2 - 4, 3 - 9, 4 - 16, 5 - 25. Certainly there is a square number for every number, but as true as many numbers are missing here, it can only be a part. Think about it: after all, it is always only the square numbers.

You can visualize the same thing in another way: I draw two parallel lines here – I have shown this before. How large is the space between these two parallel lines? Infinitely, of course! In mathematics, as you know, this is indicated by this sign: 00. But if I now draw a perpendicular to it, and a parallel at exactly the same distance, then the current space is exactly twice as large as the previous one, but still infinite. That is, the new infinity is twice the previous infinity. You can see this very clearly here: you can see here, by the simplest means of thought, that thinking is only valid in the finite. It is unfounded and without result as soon as it goes beyond the finite. It cannot begin with the laws that it has within itself when it goes out of the finite into the infinite. But you must think of this infinity not only in terms of the very large or the very small, but also within the world of qualities.

This is a triangle, this is a square, this is a pentagon (see drawing), I could make a hexagon, heptagon, octagon and so on, and if I keep going, it will become more and more similar to a circle. If I then draw a circle, how many corners does it have? It has an infinite number of corners. But if I draw a circle that is twice as large, it also has an infinite number of corners, but twice as many corners! So even in the finite, the concepts of infinity are everywhere, so that our thinking can fail everywhere, even where it can encounter the finite, because of infinity, because of the intense infinity. This means that thinking must always realize that it is at a loss and without support when it wants to go out of the finite sphere, which is given to it first, into the infinite.

We must draw a practical conclusion from this. We must really draw the practical conclusion that we must not simply think in this way, that we can go terribly wrong if we think in this way. And among the many negative achievements that can be attributed to Kant, the positive one is that he once gave people a good rap on the knuckles with regard to this nonsense: thinking in this way, going at everything. If you think about it, you can prove that space must have a boundary somewhere, that the world is finite; but equally that it is infinite, because thought becomes unfounded as soon as you go beyond a certain sphere. And so Kant put together the so-called antinomies: how one can prove one thing just as well as the opposite, because thinking is unstable, has only a relative value. One can think quite correctly with regard to one point; but if one is not able to extend it to the other, which is perhaps next to it, one goes wrong if one simply thinks or even just observes at random. In this area, one can really see how little people are aware that one cannot just lash out, neither with thinking nor with observing and with some taking in of what is out there.

Apparently, I am now linking something very metaphysical and epistemological with something very mundane. But it is exactly the same puzzle; it's just a shame that we don't have the time to discuss epistemologically how it is the same puzzle. Mr. Bauer drew my attention to something very beautiful in this direction a few days ago. You know that Pastor R., in his lecture in which he killed off our spiritual science, pointed out that if someone were to go up to our building after it, they would be reminded of old Matthias Claudius by all the incomprehensible people depicted there. And Pastor R. wanted to say that the good old Claudius would have to stand there and say: “Up there, these anthroposophists rule and want to recognize that which can never be recognized!” It is simply not recognizable to people. — And then he quoted Matthias Claudius:

We proud men of the earth
Are vain and poor sinners
And know not much at all;
We spin airy-fairy
And seek many arts
And get further from the goal.

So there we are, because old Matthias Claudius tells us that all people are poor sinners and should not turn their gaze to the incomprehensible and inscrutable. Well, and then good old Matthias Claudius also says, in a nutshell, that Pastor R. is such an intelligent person that he knows that people are poor sinners and know nothing of that which cannot be seen with the outer eye. Mr. Bauer, who was not content with simply listening to these words from Pastor R., opened Matthias Claudius and read the “Evening Song” by Matthias Claudius, which goes like this:

The moon has risen
The golden stars are shining
Bright and clear in the sky;
The forest stands black and silent,
And from the meadows rises
A wonderful white mist.

How still the world is, And in the dawn's embrace, So cozy and so mild! As a quiet chamber,Where you the day's misery Sleepily and forgetfully shall.

Do you see the moon standing there? —
It is only half visible,
And yet it is round and beautiful!
Some things are probably like that,
Which we confidently laugh at,
Because our eyes do not see them.

We proud human children
are vain poor sinners
And know not much at all;
We spin airy-fairy
and seek many arts
And get further from the goal.

And so, poor sinner, Pastor R. is the one who is getting further and further away from the goal! He has simply forgotten that the fourth verse is connected to the third!

As you can see, it is important to try to be comprehensive in your thinking. Of course, if the fourth verse refers to Pastor R. – if Pastor R. identifies with all humble human beings – then the exact opposite can be concluded than if the third verse is added. This latter, trivial example is not completely unrelated to the more metaphysical-theoretical example I have given. It is necessary for people to realize that if they look at something and then think about what they have seen, they may come to the exact opposite of what is really true. And that is what particularly comes to the fore when the transition is to be made from the finite to the infinite or from the material to the spiritual or the like.

Now, someone like Marcion, from his Lucifer-infected gnosis, said: A god cannot undergo the process of becoming human and so forth that takes place here on earth, because a god must be subject to different laws that belong to the spiritual world. He did not find the connection between the spiritual and the material, the sensual. Now there was a debate about this, which no longer existed – Marcion is only externally, physically, recognizable from his opponents, for example from Tertullian – that the whole external physical story of Jesus of Nazareth would not be appropriate for the divine world order; how God could be on earth, that could only be appearance, that could all be without meaning. The Christ would have to be understood purely spiritually. Tertullian said: “You are right, Marcion” — this is now in Tertullian's writings — “you are right when you make your concepts as you make them; these are quite understandable, transparent concepts, but then you must also apply them only to the finite, to the things that happen in nature; you must not apply them to the divine. For the divine, one must have other concepts. And what is the rule, the law, for the workings of the divine, may appear absurd to the finite mind.

Tertullian was thus confronted, not consciously, I will not say, but intuitively and unconsciously, with the great riddle of how far thinking, which is adapted to nature, to natural phenomena, applies. And he countered Marcion: If one applies only that thinking which appears plausible to man, then one can assert what Marcion says. But with the Mystery of Golgotha, something has entered into world evolution to which this thinking is not applicable, for which one needs other concepts. — Hence he formed the word: These higher concepts, which refer to the divine, compel us to believe what is absurd for the finite. In order not to do injustice to Tertullian, one must not just quote the sentence: “I believe what is absurd, what cannot be proved” – but one must quote this sentence in the context in which it appears and which I wanted to make somewhat understandable. That was the main problem that now occupied Tertullian: How is the divine nature of Christ connected with the human nature of Jesus? And here he was clear about one thing: human concepts are not suitable for grasping what happened with the mystery of Golgotha. Human concepts always lead to the inability to connect the spiritual that one has grasped from the Christ with what one must grasp as earthly history in relation to Jesus. But, as I said, Tertullian lacked the possibility of grasping the problem from the constitution of man, as we are trying to understand it again today. As a result, he initially only managed, for the first time, to find, I would say, the surrogate for the concept that we develop when we want to clarify something in a particular place in our spiritual scientific knowledge.

Do you remember a place in our spiritual knowledge that you can find, for example, in my 'Theosophy'? There you will see: first there is the physical body, etheric body, astral body, then: sentient soul, mind or feeling soul, consciousness soul, and finally the individual connections with the spirit self. There are various discussions about how the spirit self works its way into the consciousness soul. But this is exactly the point to consider if you want to look into the abiding of Christ in the man Jesus, if you want to understand this. It is a prerequisite to know how the spirit self enters the consciousness soul in general humanity; it is a prerequisite to understand how the nature of Christ, as a special cosmic spirit self, entered the consciousness soul nature of Jesus of Nazareth. Tertullian only found a substitute for this, and what he formulated as a concept can be understood as saying today: According to Tertullian, there is no mixing between the Christ, corresponding to the spirit self, and the Jesus, corresponding to the consciousness soul and all the lower aspects of being that belong to it. And humanity will only get to know such a connection when the spirit self is properly present. Now we live in the age of the consciousness soul. Each person will have a much looser connection when the spirit self is regularly developed in the sixth post-Atlantic period. Then people will also better understand how differently, for example, the Christ nature was bound to the Jesus nature than, let us say, the consciousness soul was bound to the mind soul. The consciousness soul is, of course, always mixed with the mind soul. But the spirit soul is connected to the consciousness soul, not mixed with it. And this is the concept that Tertullian really developed. He says: Christ is not mixed with Jesus, but connected. The one God-man, Christ Jesus, presented Himself to him in order to illustrate to him once again in the age in which this old conceptual clairvoyance was no longer present how the divine and the physical soul were connected in human nature. The Christ appears before Tertullian as the representative of all humanity. Through the Christ, he studied the constitution of man in order to understand Christ Jesus. The Christ became the center of his entire thinking, which could no longer be applied to the one human nature. And because Tertullian had realized that Christ is not mixed with Jesus, but connected - he could not say as we would say: like the spirit self with the consciousness soul - but he said: not mixed, but connected - through this it emerged for him, that he said: everything that Christ has connected with, also comes from the spirit of the world; that is the father principle in the world. For Tertullian, the Father principle became that which, so to speak, belonged to the earthly manifestation of Jesus. There lies the father principle, the creative principle in nature, that which brings forth everything in nature. The Christ principle united with this, the son principle. Thus it became for Tertullian, and through the father and the son, through the purification of the external, the natural, through the Christ, the spirit arises again, which he calls the Holy Spirit.

Thus, in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, that which stands as the Christ Jesus, as Jesus emerging from the Father-Principle, as everything in the world emerges from the Father-Principle. Thus, this Christ Jesus, by virtue of the fact that he carried the Christ within him, was the Son emerging from the Father-Principle, who had simply come later, the Bringer of the Spirit — the Spirit, which then in turn comes from him. Thus Tertullian sought to find the way out from the individual human being to the cosmos: to the principles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Jesus, Father
Christ, Son
Holy Spirit

Now the great difficulty arose for him in making it understandable how three could be one and one three. In ancient times, when there were still clairvoyant concepts, it was not particularly difficult to imagine this. But for the time when everything falls apart through concepts and nothing can be properly connected anymore, the difficulty arose. Tertullian used a nice comparison to make it clear how one can be three and three one. He said: Take the source. From the source comes the brook, from the brook comes the river. If we ask about the river, we say: It comes from the spring through the brook; from the spring through the brook. Or take, he said, for comparison the roots, the shoots, the fruit: the fruit comes from the root through the shoot. — Tertullian needed a third comparison, saying: The little flame of light comes from the sun, carried through the cosmos. Thus, he said, one must imagine that the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son. And just as this trinity – source, brook, river – does not contradict the unity that the river is in reality, so the fact that the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son does not contradict the unified development of Father, Son and Spirit.

So he tried to make clear to himself how the three can be one: like roots, shoots and fruit, like source, stream and river. And he also tried to arrive at a certain formula. By thinking in terms of the father principle – that is, in terms of that which is always the source from which the spirit principle comes through the son principle: the natural, the externally created, the externally revealed; in terms of the son principle, that which permeates the penetrates the externally revealed; and with the spirit principle, that which is brought about for earthly development by both together, he formed a doctrine for himself, but which was basically only a single symptomatic expression of what was developing in general in these first centuries of Christianity among people who, on the one hand, still had something of Gnosticism in them, and at the same time were suffering all the pains and afflictions because Gnosticism was bound to be lost. These people were now trying to come to terms with what Christ Jesus was, and what He had to be in order to fulfill the goal of the Mystery of Golgotha. Tertullian is only one particularly ingenious representative of those who, in the early days of Christianity, tried to penetrate spiritually to what had happened.

Then, out of Christianity, there emerged what you know as the Credo, as the Apostolicum, which was established in the third and fourth centuries and was then also established by the councils. If you study this, as it was in those days, then you will find out: it is basically a defense against Gnosticism, a rejection of Gnosticism, because one sensed the Luciferic factor in Gnosticism. Gnosis tends towards Lucifer, that is, towards a one-sided spiritual conception. It cannot, therefore, come to the Father Principle at all, cannot properly appreciate it. It regards the material world with contempt, as something it cannot use. It must be stated: I believe in God the Father, the Almighty Father – the first part of the Creed. This first part of the Creed is formulated against the contempt for the material, so that even the external, that which is seen with the eyes, is also understood as a divine, and precisely a divine, that emerges from the Father principle.

The second thing was to declare, in opposition to Gnosticism, that there was not only an ethereal Christ in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, but that this Christ was really connected, not mixed, with the man Jesus of Nazareth. It had therefore to be established on the one hand that the Christ was connected with the spiritual, and on the other hand that the Christ was connected with Jesus of Nazareth, the natural evolution on earth, and that when suffering, dying, rising and all that death, resurrection and all that has yet to take place in imitation of the Mystery of Golgotha, is not something in which the Christ does not participate, but that He really suffers in the flesh. The Gnostics had to deny that the Christ suffered in the body because He was not connected to the body; for the Gnostics, at least for certain Gnostics, it was only an apparent suffering. In contrast to this, it should be stated that the Christ was really connected to the body in such a way that He suffered in the body. So all the events that had taken place on the external physical plane were to be connected with the Christ. Therefore: I believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Holy Ghost and Mary the Virgin, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, died, rose again on the third day, and ascended into heaven – that is, became spiritual again – and is seated at the right hand of the Father, judging the living and the dead.

One can now say: The Gnostics came closest to the spirit, which is to be regarded as a mere spiritual. But it is spiritual in so far as it now represents a spiritual essence, but must gradually be realized in human coexistence in the social structure that is emerging during the Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan period, where the Holy Spirit is embodied, not now in an individual human being, but in all humanity, in the configuration of society. But it is only at the beginning. However, the Gnostics were the ones who could best understand that something that is only spiritual does not intervene in the material. Therefore, the God of the Gnostics was basically the closest thing to the Holy Spirit. But this Christianity, which wanted to be transferred to earth, which did not want the spirit to be lost to Lucifer, to be seen only as something spiritual in it, this Christianity now also had to define faith in the spirit as something that was connected to the material: I believe in the Holy Spirit, in the Holy Church. — That is now in the Apostolicum, that is, the church as a great physical body of the Holy Spirit. This Christianity was not allowed to regard life in the spirit as something merely inward either, but had to have realized the spirit outwardly through the remission of sins, in that the Church itself took over the ministry of the remission of sins and, in addition, the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh: “I believe in the Holy Ghost, in the Holy Church, in the remission of sins, in the resurrection of the flesh.

So the Credo is in about the 4th century. So there were nothing but barricades against Gnosticism, and the way these three parts of the Apostolicum are formulated is closely related, as is something like this: the river has arisen from the source through the stream, or: the fruit has arisen from the root through the sprout. During that time there was an enormous striving to grasp how the spirit is connected to the material that spreads throughout the world, how one can think the spiritual together with the material, how one can think the Trinity together with that which spreads outwardly in the material. That is what is sought; it is sought intensively. But when one considers all that lives in the Apostolicum, which today has become completely incomprehensible, one must say: the echo of the old clairvoyant concepts still lives in it, only to die away, and therefore the not the old living forms that it could have gained if one had been able to understand the Trinity and the Apostolicum with earlier clairvoyant concepts, but it is a beginning to grasp the material and the spiritual at the same time.

Today there are very many people who say: Why concern oneself with this old dogmatics? There people have only ruminated with all sorts of crazy ideas, but no one can make sense of it, it is all vain dreaming. If we look more closely, however, we find that behind this vain dreaming there is a tremendous struggle to grasp what had just become relevant for the world through the Mystery of Golgotha on the one hand, and through the loss of the old clairvoyant knowledge, the gradual fading away of the old clairvoyant knowledge, on the other.

Now the development continues, and something similar is happening as has already happened in older times, when out of the one root of the mysteries, where art and religion and science were still one, the three have developed out of each other. Now again that which is in that common root, which one tried to grasp through the Apostolicum, strives apart into the trinity. I will now attempt to describe this further development in such a way as can be presented today without causing too much offence. For if I were to communicate what needs to be said without further ado, many a head would be turned by it.

What started out as a unity developed within Western culture in three separate currents. That is to say, one current was particularly suited to grasp the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, one current more the Son, the Christ, and one current more the Father. And the curious thing is that more and more in separate courses of development the Holy Spirit current, the Christ current, and the Father current are emerging, but one-sidedly. For naturally, it can only be penetrated in its entirety when all three are present. If one develops what is to be understood as a trinity so one-sidedly, then difficulties of development arise; then some things are left out, and others degenerate. Now the following developed: The common development gradually separated in such a way that one developmental stream clearly continued, which was directed primarily towards the Holy Spirit – not as the first in time; the first in time is, of course, the coming together – and this is the one that is still essentially embodied today in the Russian Orthodox Church. However strange it may seem, the essential feature of the Russian Orthodox Church is that it primarily honors only the Holy Spirit. And you will recognize from the way, for example, Solowjew speaks about Christ, that he is primarily well-versed in grasping Christianity from the side of the Holy Spirit. It does not depend on whether he consciously speaks about Christ or not, but on which spirit rules in him, which meaning he connects with the things. What matters is the inner aspect, especially the way in which he inseparably regards the external social order of the church in relation to what is taught and is cult. This is entirely out of the nature of the Holy Spirit. The early Church, however, wanted to avoid this mere knowledge of the Holy Spirit by setting up the Trinity in the Creed and adding the Christ and the Father to the Holy Spirit. But these three must – which is also Solowjew's ideal – come together again in a kind of synthesis.

The second current was the one that was more oriented towards cultivating the Christ; it may have taught all kinds of things about the Holy Spirit, but essentially it cultivates the Christ. It is the church that spread from Rome in the Occident and had the tendency to cultivate the Christ. Think of it: in all areas where this church was active, it basically wanted to cultivate the Christ; wherever you look, there is the Christ. Wherever you look, this church is significant in the one-sided cultivation of the middle article of faith in the Creed. Only in recent times has this church tried to penetrate the Father principle as well. But because they do not know the actual inner connection, they cannot establish the right relationship between Christ and the Father. And this incorrect recognition of the relationship between Christ and the Father is what causes all the discussions in modern Protestantism. It pushes from Christ towards the Father. This can be observed again in our time. The sad events of the present have also brought about the fact that individual souls, rather numerous souls, have been imbued with religious consciousness by these events; this can be proven. But Christ reigns very little in this manifestation of the new religious consciousness; much more the father principle, the general principle of God, by which is meant the father principle. Anyone who is able to observe correctly in the world can see this everywhere. I would like to describe just one small symptom to you. During our last stay in Berlin, a dear member died and was cremated in Berlin. I set the condition – due to the prevailing circumstances it was necessary – that a minister speak. He was a very dear man and very much in agreement with me speaking afterwards. But lo and behold, he now gave a truly soul-stirring speech, and one had the feeling, as he spoke of God the Father, that he spoke deeply inwardly from the soul. And the whole time I listened to him and realized: This is actually a confirmation of what spiritual science in general must show: The Christ has been cultivated, now people have gone astray; when one speaks of religious life, one only comes to the father principle. — Many letters that come from the field, whose writers have deepened religiously, speak little of Christ, everywhere of the principle that must be seen as the father principle. — Anyone who studies this can see this. And then, at the end, because Christmas was just around the corner, the pastor mentioned Christ. This was so far-fetched because, as a Christian, he now thought it might be advisable to speak of Christ. You couldn't find any appeal or meaning in it. — And such phenomena are now increasing every moment.

There is also a third current that cultivates the Father principle one-sidedly. And now you can imagine: the two fundamental pillars that were erected against the one-sided cultivation of the Father principle by the Apostolicum, the Christ and the Holy Spirit, must be left out if only the Father principle is cultivated one-sidedly. On the other hand, the father principle was introduced into the Apostolicum to indicate that the material world is also a divine one. The one-sided father principle is cultivated in the school of thought that ties in with Darwin, Haeckel and so on. That is the one-sided development of the father principle. And no matter how much Haeckel may have resisted it, he was born out of religion. He was born out of religion through the one-sided development of the Father principle, just as other religious currents were born through the one-sided development of the Holy Spirit or the Christ principle.

And basically, it seems rather superficial when people say that the first councils only dealt with dogmatic concepts. These dogmatic terms are not just dogmatic terms, but they are the outward symbol for deep contradictions that live in European humanity, for those contradictions that live in those who are predisposed as Holy Spirit people, predisposed as Christ people, predisposed as Father people. This differentiation is also deeply rooted in the nature of the European world. And to the extent that in the first centuries of the Christian proclamation, people looked at the whole of Europe, they established a creed that encompasses the Trinity. Of course, each one-sidedness can bring the other side with it, but it does not have to. But humanity must pass through many trials, must pass through many one-sidedness in order to find its way out of one-sidedness to totality, to wholeness. And then one must also have the good will to study things in their deeper content, in their deeper essence.

If we study the three layers, the three currents of European intellectual life, which can be characterized as I have just done, in their deeper essence, then we will see that the differentiation has gone deep into the very fiber of people's souls, and we will learn to understand much that, if we do not understand, can only stand before us like a painful enigma. One would like to say: just as unity was presented in the Trinity before Tertullian, so three main European human needs lived in the way the One expressed itself symptomatically in Three, insofar as they were guided by religious life, and something like the formation of the schism between the Western Roman and the Eastern Roman Church, the Roman and the Greek, the Orthodox Church, is only the outer expression of the necessity that lies in the impulse that must branch out in different directions.

In this sense, spiritual science will make many things in human life understandable. In this way, by trying to shine ever deeper light into human interrelationships, into the interrelationships within the whole development of humanity, it is of course quite misunderstood today. For more and more clearly, the time is emerging in the outer world that wants nothing to do with spiritual science, a time in which a deeper understanding of history is no longer sought; in which everyone pursues only what they want to believe to be true according to their subjective beliefs, their personal sympathies or antipathies. Of course, spiritual science is needed precisely in such a time, because the pendulum of development must swing in the other direction. But it is equally obvious that spiritual science will be misunderstood in such a time. And we really must be clear about how much of our time lives in such a way that man does not seek objectivity, the overview, but judges rashly out of his inclinations. It is really the case that, on the one hand, there is a profound necessity to say an extraordinary amount from the spiritual world, but that it is extraordinarily difficult to make oneself understood in our immediate present. Never as strongly as in our immediate present did people live, so to speak, in the general aura, of which they are not even aware. I am deeply convinced, if I may say so, that much in our time must remain unsaid. Many will find it self-evident that they are now suited to hear, perhaps in a smaller circle, what otherwise cannot be said. But this opinion is quite erroneous. Many people may indeed long to hear now something that can perhaps only be said to humanity in years to come. But we must realize that we are living in a time when the judgment is not made only when a word with its meaning approaches our soul, but when the judgment has already been made before the word approaches our soul. In our time, the way in which the word is received is already largely determined by the time the word reaches the ear, and has not yet been received by the soul. There is no longer time to ask about the meaning, so stirred up are people's passions and emotions by the oppressive events we have been plunged into, and many a word could only be tolerated by being spoken in our presence.

We can do nothing else in our presence than to make this clear to ourselves again and again, that it is essential that a number of people are found who stand firmly on the ground of what we have already attained; who stand firmly and faithfully on this ground and can cherish the hope that this firm and loyal standing on the ground of spiritual science can become important and essential for the development of humanity in a certain period of time. The time will surely come when — since many passions have already been stirred up — something like a great question will permeate the atmosphere in which our spiritual-scientific movement lives. This question will not be clearly heard, but perhaps the effects will be clear. Nor will the answers be given clearly in words, but in relation to external events they will perhaps be very clear. Something will be whispered through the spiritual-scientific current without being expressed in words, such as: Should I go with them or should I not go with them? And the answer will also speak of what has driven people out of sensationalism, out of sympathy with the general feelings that arise from spiritual science. It will arise from many secondary feelings, which will push towards an answer that will not be clearly formulated, that will not simply express itself by saying: I liked spiritual science, now other feelings have mixed in, now I no longer like it. Instead, people will appear in masks and seek all kinds of reasons, which they may discuss from many sides. The essential thing will be that one used to like spiritual science, but no longer likes it, which has a lot to do with enthusiasm, sensation, all kinds of sensual lustful feelings and so on. In a sense, precisely out of the emotions of the present, something will arise more and more, such as: I go with - and: I do not go with. - Alone in the inner being, our spiritual science is invincible, completely invincible. And what we have to look for is that at least some are found in whose hearts it is firmly anchored, but anchored not out of sympathy and preference, out of favor and sensation, out of vanity and enthusiasm, but because the soul is connected with it as with its truth, and because the soul does not shy away from difficulties in entering the core of truth in the world. Much will fall away completely; but perhaps what remains afterwards will be all the more significant and certain. This must be borne in mind when it is necessary to emphasize again and again that, until more peaceful times come to our civilized countries, we must renounce much that might be very useful precisely for understanding our present time, but which, because of the nature of our time, really cannot be brought before humanity at this time.

I would like to say these words to explain why some things have only been hinted at, especially in the last lectures. But I would like to add one more thing. Precisely when it is true – and it is true – that we live in a time when the word has already led to judgment before it has even reached the soul, then many can learn a great deal from the events of the present with the tools of what spiritual science already gives them. Much can be learned from what is happening around us, if we look at it more deeply, if we see how today outer humanity has almost completely lost the ability to judge according to any kind of objectivity, how judgments flow only from the emotions, permeating everything in the cultural world. And if you look for the reason why this is so, if you see this reason buzzing in the human aura of the present and then know how the word is already a judgment before it enters the soul, then you can also learn a lot from the events of the present with the instrument of spiritual science. And we should learn if we are to be able to become a tool in reality - as a society for this spiritual science. The example that was given today, how a person who wants to meet our society quotes a fourth verse and omits the third, yes, my dear friends, when you look for the reasons for the opposition that arises against us: they can be found everywhere. They must be sought everywhere in superficiality, in the most enormous superficiality. Everywhere, so to speak, a fourth verse has been seen and a third verse overlooked, figuratively speaking. Only many of us still do not believe that. Many of us still believe that they are doing well when they go to this or that person and tell him: I have become so spiritual through our spiritual science that I even read to my husband fighting out there in the field, and I know that it helps him. – Then, of course, people come and use that against us. Or when people are told what we had to hear, what was passed on as the 'Nathanael story' and so on. That such things should happen at all, that these things should really be passed on from our midst, seems at first to be done with the best of intentions, but with a good will that is connected with a certain naivety, but a naivety that is boundlessly arrogant because it does not recognize and does not want to recognize, but takes himself as a person so seriously that he considers it the most necessary thing in the world to want to convert this or that person – whom, if he were not so naive, he would know cannot be converted. This is so infinitely important that one can understand how, at times, naivety can feel endowed with boundless arrogance and a sense of mission. And as a rule, no one resents the naive person more than the naive person himself, who believes he is doing the very best when, out of a certain enthusiasm, he does the absurd.

And it is indeed necessary, if you take the matter, that we at least gain from spiritual science the ability to think modestly. If thinking can really go so wrong, as I have tried to make clear today, why should we always, when we have drilled this or that into our brains, why should we believe that it is an incontrovertible truth? And why should we then immediately trumpet it out into the world as if we were on a mission? Why shouldn't we decide to learn something real first and to get a certain inner impulse of aliveness from spiritual science, rather than just the one we get when we sip at it? Therefore, the seriousness, the deep seriousness that must permeate us cannot be emphasized enough, and it must always tell us: And no matter how much you believe in your judgment in any given direction, you have to test it, because it could be wrong. If we take all this into account, along with many other things (not everything can be said after all), then, little by little, we will truly be a number of people in whose inner lives what is so impersonal lives, just as the most important impulses must be impersonal in the present, if they are to prevail against the purely personal impulses that permeate and have permeated the world today.

I wanted to speak to you about your souls, since we will not meet for a few weeks now. I wanted to give you a broader perspective in the last hours before these weeks when we cannot speak to each other, by unrolling a page in the original development of Christianity and in its divergence into different currents. I am convinced that no matter how much you study the development of Christianity in past centuries, what has been said today will provide you with a thread that will clarify an infinite number of things for you in outward appearances. And in the outward appearances, if you really look at them seriously, you will find confirmation everywhere of what I could only hint at today. It would be good if we could use something like meditation material that could present us with problems and puzzles for our souls, the solution of which we could each try according to our ability. Of course, some will only be able to do this with fleeting thoughts, for a few minutes, while others will be more inclined to familiarize themselves with something that can provide enlightenment about what has been hinted at. But everyone can be stimulated if they try to develop, as I would say, the surging thoughts that go back through the centuries and yet are essentially involved in what is happening in the present, so that there is a need to understand it. I know that in reality no one understands our painful present without becoming familiar with all the contradictions that have arisen in a completely natural way in the course of European development. But when one compares what is being judged today about the world situation with what is objectively correct and can only be recognized if one knows all the forces that have intervened in the development, and which only the study of history can reveal, including in a spiritual sense, when one compares today's judgments with what leads to real judgment, then one is deeply, deeply pained. Not only do we feel pain, my dear friends, at what is happening today, but also at the difficulties that arise in order to get beyond what is happening today. And we must get out of it! And the better you will realize that a deep spiritual-scientific understanding of the developmental forces of humanity is necessary in all areas, without letting our personal emotions interfere, the more such an understanding of the developmental impulses through spiritual science is striven for, the more you recognize how important it is to recognize these impulses through spiritual science and to awaken them in your soul, the better you will be among those souls who can stand firm on the ground on which one must stand today if what is actually necessary according to the inner demands of human development is to be achieved.

I would like to speak to you about your feelings and emotions, so that spiritual science may enter into them and become firmly anchored in them, and so that there may be people, as there should be and as there must be, if we want to make progress in the evolution of humanity. In all modesty we must think this, but in this modesty we must do it, because it is not suitable to educate us to megalomania, but only to create in us the need to apply as much strength and as much intensity as possible to penetrating what wants to realize itself spiritually in the developmental history of humanity.

Emil Bock asks for questions.

Constantin Neuhaus: Yesterday we heard that we must redeem ourselves from personal sin. How does that relate to karma? What place do forgiveness, sacramental penance have according to these premises?

Rudolf Steiner: Yesterday I distinguished the whole process that lies in redemption and in original sin. Now, in the case of forgiveness, it is not a matter of our receiving forgiveness for something. What we receive forgiveness for and what we experience in the forgiveness is, of course, included in karma if one absolutely wants to refer back to karma. I think that the two things, the deed and the forgiveness for it, are karmically connected. Of course, you would hardly assume that it can be a matter of forgiveness for which one does nothing at all. However, as soon as we talk about the church as a serious community, it can certainly be said, even with the inclusion of the karma current, that the church as such takes on certain things that the individual does in his actions, whereby the church would thus assume a kind of collective karma. Of course, in return, one belongs to the church.

It is always a little difficult to take karma as such so abstractly, because karma is something very complicated. For example, you can say that if you draw a line somewhere in life under the positive and negative deeds, that is, under the good and evil deeds, you get a certain life balance. But this life balance can be changed again immediately by one item or another. It is not at all a matter of this being a rigid balance, but rather a matter of the fact that one actually has a life balance at every moment of life. But there can certainly be items on one side or the other that simply exist because one belongs to some community that then takes them on. In the Catholic Church, it should be the case that if it claims to forgive sins, then it should take on this burden of sin collectively as a church. That is also the original meaning of the forgiveness of sins, the taking over of the burden from the individual and its collective assumption; of course, a strong sense of such responsibility is usually lacking, at least within the Roman Catholic Church.

Constantin Neuhaus: So evil is made good again?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes.

Constantin Neuhaus: Is that repentance, when I have been immoderate and then make amends through temperance, through abstinence?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, that is possible.

Constantin Neuhaus: And to do good, I receive the strength from Christ for that?

Rudolf Steiner: I receive the strength from Christ to ensure that the general human original sin does not prevent me from having the strength [to do good]. I have no strength at all to do good in our time after the Mystery of Golgotha if I do not have this strength from Christ in relation to the original sin. I have no strength without the redemption of the original sin.

Constantin Neuhaus: And the mere weaknesses, are they not diminished?

Rudolf Steiner: If the mere weaknesses and the like were diminished, we would be disturbed in our personal development. Perhaps this will be most vividly illustrated by the following. Please do not be shocked by it. It can be examined what impression it makes on the dead - that is, on the human being who has passed through the gate of death - when he, as it then is, bears in his characteristics the consequences of his deeds on earth. This is something that, according to the Roman Catholic Church's doctrine, even extends into eternity, because Catholic clergy do indeed talk about the fact that a person has to look at his sins forever, or rather, has to suffer because of his sins.

Now this does not agree with the observation that can be made. The soul that has passed through death is indeed in this state. But when someone asks: Does the soul suffer from this? — then one is at a certain loss to answer. Suffering is there, but the soul desires the suffering, because strength comes from overcoming suffering. In this case, one is at a loss for words. One cannot say that the soul suffers, but the soul would be unhappy if it did not carry the consequences of its transgressions within it after death, and then as qualities. That which is action in life, or rather the character of action, is transformed into qualities, and these qualities are transformed in the life between death and new birth into powers, abilities, and so on, which are then inherited by the next birth. And these are transformed into unconscious desires, which then condition karma [in the next life] between birth and death. Therefore, it is also the case – and this has been asserted by a great many people who knew nothing at all about any repeated lives on earth – that if one examines one's early life from birth onwards from a certain point in life, one finds that the events [in life] are connected in such a way that one comes to one's unimportant and important acts in life through unconscious desires. One cannot overlook the fact that the power that brings one to experience this or that is identical with the unconscious desires that bring one to this or that.

A participant: I would like to ask whether original sin was necessary for the development of humanity or whether humanity could also develop freedom without original sin. Another question is whether there are beings, primeval men, who did not fall into this original sin?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the question must actually be answered like this: You see, supersensible knowledge can never actually be pure teleology, but it is observational, and therefore the questions of the purpose of anything actually fall away in supersensible knowledge. This is something that was implied in your question: Can human beings [attain freedom without original sin], or did human beings incur original sin in order to attain freedom? — It is simply a fact that we, as the human race, have been living in the development of freedom from the 15th century onwards. This life in freedom is only possible under the influence, the inner influence of mere intellectuality, which actually has no content. Descartes' sentence “Cogito, ergo sum” is actually wrong. The sentence should actually read: Cogito, ergo non sum, I think, therefore I am not, because thinking never illuminates a reality, but on the contrary, it is the destruction of reality. Only when one can approach the I through imagination, inspiration and intuition, is there real certainty of the I. When we have become accustomed to applying the criteria of being to our environment, we must say: I think, therefore I am not. It is precisely in this non-being that the possibility of taking in something new lies. That is what lies in intellectuality. Intellectual concepts are actually empty in the face of reality; they are holes in the universe, and this is necessary for the development of freedom. You can see how intellectualism gradually emerges. It comes up through such thinkers who were still contemporaries of Nicolaus Cusanus. Then it goes further, but in particular Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton are the real intellectualists.

Now, this state of consciousness, which brings about freedom, could not be there if man were inwardly filled with a content, because this content would have to be a divine one. This divine content, which was to some extent strongest in the beginning, had to decrease first and reach its zero point here (it is being drawn), and now the intellectualistic development occurs here. This gives man freedom and, as we become more aware of it, will in turn give our soul a content. So passing through [the zero point], being thrown down into matter, which certain occultists call the 'fall into procreation', for example, was absolutely necessary for freedom. You can only say it afterwards: because human beings fell into original sin, they gained freedom. It would be quite wrong for me to hold back these things from you, even if they are slightly shocking for a present-day consciousness.

Beings who know nothing of original sin do not partake of freedom either. Such beings are, for example, those who belong to the stages immediately above human beings. These beings have greater wisdom than human beings, and also have greater power, but they do not attain freedom, their will is always actually the divine will. Only under certain conditions, which have not yet occurred in the development of the world, but which may still occur during the development of the earth - they lie in a certain future - will these entities, which Catholicism calls angels and archangels, have the possibility of straying from their inner soul necessity, not in probability, but they would have the possibility of doing so. But nothing can be said about it because it will depend on what the whole world constellation is like. So we have beings that have nothing to do with original sin. Even those entities, which were the actual tempters of men in the course of the development of the earth, which are represented by the snake in paradise, these entities also have nothing to do with original sin, but with a sin freely committed by them. Only in man does it become original sin. It is that which is called original sin and then again freedom, that which is actually specific to man. We find that the establishment of each level of existence in the entire universe has its good meaning, so that nothing is repeated in a vertical direction. So what is in the animals is not in the human beings, and what is in the human beings is not in the angels, and so on.

A participant: I wanted to ask to what extent the Mass can be justified by the Gospel?

Rudolf Steiner: To what extent can the mass be justified by the Golgotha mystery? I have said something about this. The point is that, for anthroposophical knowledge too, the Golgotha mystery is not a single historical fact in a limited time. The beginning of the event of Golgotha lies, of course, in Golgotha, but then, in a sense, the effect is an ongoing one. This continued effectiveness of the Mystery of Golgotha has also been depicted in many different ways, I would even say in mythical ways. I am reminded of the legend of the Holy Grail, in which the blood of Christ was caught and carried on to Europe, and this suggests that the Mystery of Golgotha continues to have an effect. Now, in the sense that I explained yesterday as the development, the continuing effect of the Mystery of Golgotha is such that we actually have the possibility of gaining a real connection to the power that emanates from Golgotha as a counterweight against original sin. This is the continuing power of the Mystery of Golgotha.

As I have explained, the Catholic Church has now established the external act as that through which the efficacy of the Mystery of Golgotha is to pass. So it is simply through the successive sacrificial masses that the power of the Mystery of Golgotha is effective. If now the Mystery of Golgotha is a real power, that is, if a real power emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha, then we must indeed imagine the matter in this way: You see, if we are honest, then, according to the intellectualistic view, we would have to say to ourselves — because the intellectualistic view is the ultimate consequence of original sin —: We are facing the danger of the death of our morality in our earthly existence. For if the earth undergoes such a development as it would actually have to undergo in the scientific sense, if, that is, the earth has emerged from the Kant-Laplacean nebula and ends in heat death, then for anyone who wants to be honest, that is, who wants to accept this scientific view without reservation, the moral world ends with it. And for the person who accepts this, the fear that he will have to go through moral death, through the destruction of what he has acquired as morality, would have to arise with the scientific view. There would then be no further development of morality. That would mean approaching a great cemetery for everything moral. Therefore, we need not only the abstract power, which is often assumed by modern theology today, because it cannot save itself from the power with which science calculates. No one can merely predict that the moral power can take on what is really happening if the scientific view is right. According to the scientific view, the moral force is a force that lies purely in consciousness; that is to say, for the intellectualistic age and for the following ages, we need a force that works as a moral force and at the same time has the ability to take on physical forces. This power, which enters us through our elective affinity, as I said yesterday, with what has gone through Golgotha, with Christ as the spiritual ancestor, this power, which can take on [the physical powers], can be found by the individual human being, as I described yesterday. And it would never be found if the Mystery of Golgotha had not existed. So it is absolutely true what even individual theologians — they are white crows — have said, for example Martensen, a Dane: the Mystery of Golgotha will only be properly understood again when we are in a position to attach a real physical- earthly significance for the development of the earth, and all the dialectical arts that speak of the fact that despite all natural science, what has been attained in faith can assert itself, they are actually not true inwardly, they are only there to delude themselves. The power of the Mystery of Golgotha can only be effective when it works in man in such a way that it can take on the physical and earthly forces in man. And it can do that. And that is what is to be conveyed to Catholicism in the Sacrifice of the Mass. For the one who takes the rituals that I have discussed this morning, it is the case that in his consciousness, which develops through performing the action, in the knowledge of the processes, lies the power to encounter this Christ-power that emanates from Golgotha. That would then be the connection with the sacrifice of the Mass.

A participant: I wanted to ask whether we can find anything in the New Testament to justify the mass sacrifice.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, you see, there is actually no such justification for the sacrifice of the mass in the testament itself. No passage of the New Testament can be used to justify the sacrifice of the mass. But the primeval sacrifice of the mass, of which the Gospels speak, is precisely the Mystery of Golgotha, and so we can only speak of how we correctly understand the words that are spoken in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha: “This do in remembrance of me,” that is, in remembrance of what takes place through the Mystery of Golgotha, and in such a way that first of all the Lord's Supper, which is an important part of the Mass, is already instituted. The Lord's Supper, however, is found in the Gospels; but the other must be sought in the necessity that arises more and more for the developing human being. In order to perform transubstantiation in a worthy manner, knowledge of the Gospel is essential, as are the sacrifice and the subsequent communion, which, by the way, is an integral part of the Lord's Supper if you will.

Hermann Fackler: I would like to ask a theoretical and a practical question. The theoretical question would be: How do we actually conceive of the origin of evil in the anthroposophical sense? We heard yesterday that the term “original sin” is actually blasphemous; the question arises: must not evil actually fall back on divine power in its ultimate origin, since this divine power needs sin to lead human beings to freedom?

Rudolf Steiner: I can only refer you to the question, I would like to say, facts. If we imagine what underlies our intellect in us, so if we imagine that the sphere of sensory perception is here (it is drawn on the board, bottom left), we would then form the concepts that reminiscent concepts radiate back into our consciousness, so that there (see drawing) would be a mirror, so to speak – you will understand the image, we do not look behind our memory down – so there below, under the memory lies the sphere of destruction. Here all natural laws dissolve, all earthly laws of the world dissolve there in the human being. There is indeed a center of destruction here, and this center of destruction must be in us just as a coating must be behind the mirror. We need this, otherwise the memory would not be there. So there must be a center of destruction in us. For something to be in the world, spiritual forces must be there to bring it about. In my anthroposophical view, I call the spiritual forces underlying this focus of destruction ahrimanic forces.

Now look at this matter from two different points of view. First, look at it from the point of view of human beings. Human beings are protected by the threshold that exists in their memory mirror; they do not normally enter this focus of destruction without further ado. But this focus of destruction must be there. The Ahrimanic forces, which are connected with these destructive forces, that is to say with the forces of dissolution for what takes place in the physical world, these Ahrimanic forces are not actually evil when one looks at the world from their aspect. For what they do, the destroying, is not at all evil in the divine plan of the world. But if a person is so abstracted that he lets the destructive forces pass through his mirror of memory, then something happens here in the physical world that has a good meaning in the next higher world, something that is only out of place in the physical world. So that what we call evil in physical life is a necessity in a higher world. It is only possible for man to let that enter his sphere of experience which, if he wants to remain an innocent person, is, as it were, out of place in it. So evil is only evil within the earthly world; and for man only the consequences of this evil remain when he now goes through the gate of death, that is, the consequences of the actions. In this way we arrive at the conclusion, which I believe is correct, that the existence of evil in the physical world can be reconciled with the cosmic scheme of things, if we realize that even the Almighty God can exist only under certain conditions.

Now you can say: evil is also present in another aspect; it is present as imperfection, as badness, as pain. But then the question is: If you study a real physiology – not the university physiology that is official at the universities, but a real physiology – then you learn to recognize that, for example, the eyes are initially built out of pain. Everything that is built into the human organism is actually first built in through pain. The eyes are built in this way, which you can find confirmed in animals. So what is a later perfection must be built up out of pain. And in subjective development, anyone who is just beginning to have a little knowledge of the supersensible will tell you that he has acquired the experiences of life through pain. He will tell you: I thank my Creator for the joys of my life, I accept them, but I would not want to do without my pains, because without pains I could never have become a knowing human being. Just as you cannot demand a triangle with four corners from an almighty God, you cannot demand the creation of any perfect things without the foundation of pains. It would be a completely abstract, external thought, perhaps no more than a mere phrase. And just as little can you demand freedom in the world without building it on the foundation of evil.

Hermann Fackler: How should a practical theologian behave in office who wants to serve the anthroposophical movement and, in the course of time, also implement anthroposophical worship? To what extent does anthroposophy desire the cooperation of the church, and how is such cooperation conceivable in such a way that, on the one hand, the purity of the anthroposophical idea is preserved, but on the other hand, the present form of the Protestant church is not virtually blown up? Finally, is it conceivable and possible for anthroposophical communities to come into contact with independent communities?

Rudolf Steiner: I must say that there is hardly any such practical difficulty on the part of the Anthroposophical movement. For, in view of the present stage of human evolution, the Anthroposophical movement must now stand on the standpoint of gaining the knowledge that can be gained and spreading it among humanity. This is a self-contained activity that can be carried out without anyone other than its opponents bothering about it. It is not something that causes difficulties for anything else. Things will admittedly become somewhat more difficult when, in the future, in about the sixth or seventh millennium of the earth's development, human beings will take on a completely different form. You will be surprised that I say this. But it is actually the case that in the sixth or seventh millennium woman will become infertile, will no longer reach maturity but remain infertile. Man will then be in contact with the earth in a much more spiritual form, then there will be direct practical activity, and then a separation between religion and anthroposophy is no longer conceivable. For as long as there is no practical activity, but only the mere dissemination of impulses and so on – or at most the dissemination of impulses such as threefolding, which of course works entirely through the ordinary channels – as long as anthroposophy must work as it does today, there is no difficulty from this side. From the point of view of the denominations, from the point of view of the old denominations and perhaps also from the point of view of the new communities to be founded, I can indeed imagine that this relationship will develop in such a way that the communities will take up from anthroposophy what they can take up, according to their subjective ability and discretion, and according to what they consider acceptable or unacceptable in principle. I can well imagine that this movement, which is to begin here, will relate to the general anthroposophical movement as a self-contained entity. They are two distinct movements, but each movement can accept from the other what it can only give for itself. Since the anthroposophical movement will have research as its primary goal, the attainment of certain supersensible results will come from the anthroposophical side, and practical religious exercise will come from the other side; and thereby the same relationship, which existed at a naive stage, will be reestablished, only indirectly, as soon as we return to the time before the Mystery of Golgotha, where there was no antagonism between religion and science. Their representatives were the same people, at least essentially, and that which one should experience religiously was expressed in forms that resulted from the corresponding research. So I can imagine that absolutely harmonious cooperation is possible. I do not believe, for example, that the splitting of communities, to which you, I believe, have pointed out, could ever come from the anthroposophical movement. I would like to say that the anthroposophical movement will remain neutral on this.

It could, of course, come about through [something like that] that precisely from the ecclesiastical or theological side, there is dissatisfaction with the previous theology and religious development; but then the religious, the theological movement would lead to disruption. The Anthroposophical Movement as such cannot lead to disruption. I cannot imagine it being otherwise. I can only point out that the Anthroposophical Movement only wants to respond to the signs of the times.

Once, I gave a lecture in Colmar on the Bible and on wisdom. Those who were present in Stuttgart will know this. There were two Roman Catholic theologians in the audience. Now, in that lecture - that was many years ago, when the excommunication of the anthroposophical view had not yet been pronounced, which is there today, that is only since 1918, so it was not all that is there today, today it would no longer be able to happen - there were two Catholic theologians in it at the time. Now, if you give a lecture on alcohol, for example, in organic chemistry, you don't immediately give a lecture on all the carbon compounds, and so the two dear Catholic theologians found nothing in this lecture on the Bible and wisdom that they could contradict with their dogmas. They then came to me and said: In terms of content, we have no objections at all, but the way you present it is only for a select few who have acquired a certain education; but we speak for all people. I said, Reverend Sir, I want to hold you to your claim that you believe you speak for all people; that may be true from your subjective point of view. Everyone will have the right to say, from their subjective point of view, that they speak for all people. But it is of no importance to the world what our subjective point of view is. Standpoints – although today people always say, “I have a standpoint,” there are as many standpoints as there are people – standpoints are actually highly irrelevant to humanity, and one should, to put it radically, be fundamentally ashamed of constantly revealing one's subjective standpoint to the world. So it's not really a matter of points of view. But it is a matter of something else, of what the signs of the times objectively demand, and here I ask you: Do all people still go to church with you today? They couldn't say “yes” there, they had to say that some do stay away. I said, “I am speaking for those who stay away from church and who also want to find the way to Christ.” The facts suggest that it is not right for you to say that you speak for all people.

So let us listen to what lies in the facts. That is precisely what must underlie anthroposophical work, and here I can only say to you: there can actually be no collision with anything that develops in dependence on or alongside anthroposophical work. If you follow the whole polemic and the whole fight against anthroposophy, one might almost say that one could become a naughty boy when one looks at all this; one always wants to say: but I didn't start it, never. You can follow it: if someone has been attacked in some way, the attacks always came from outside; just follow it historically and you will see that it is so.

Emil Bock: The question was raised as to how we should think about the state of existing churches in the future.

Rudolf Steiner: The future of the existing churches? Yes, the future of the churches truly does not depend on anthroposophy, and, I am convinced, it does not depend on what is founded here either, but on their own crisis of disintegration. I cannot help it, it seems to me that way. I am absolutely clear about one thing: according to what is active today in the depths of human development, we will have no church at all within the present civilized world within a century, unless something like what is is intended here, because all the present church constitutions and church communities have the seed of their own destruction within them, and that is a continuous, I would say, yes, really, a continuous apologizing of the church. Some give up as much as possible in an intellectualistic way – Harnack, for example, gives up Christ, which means that the essence of Christianity, in the sense of Harnack's book, is actually pure Judaism; in principle it is, despite the recognition of the love of Jesus and so on, but in principle I mean. On the one hand, we have the intellectualist endeavor to reveal as much as possible, until we actually arrive at what Dr. Geyer so aptly called the day before yesterday: It is an X and the X is actually a Nix. But what is still an X today will become a Nix, the other things cannot change that. On the other hand, we have the violent maintenance of the institution and the dogmatic relationships, for example, of the Roman Catholic Church by external power. How can such power be pushed back? You can see that happening now in the Orthodox Church in Russia. Then we have, I would say, the intermediate churches, such as the Old Catholic Church. These are human reactions against the existing processes of disintegration, human reactions which, I believe, already contain within them the germ of transformation, even if this cannot be realized immediately in every single moment. But the existing churches – I can't say much about what they will look like, it's just going downhill on an incline, I don't have any other idea. But I think the main reasons why the majority of you are here or all are here are that the story is going downhill.

A participant: My question is intended to dispel certain concerns. It was said in yesterday afternoon's lecture that we actually only have one way to God, and that is the way of love, and that we actually cannot have the other ways, neither the way of power nor the way of wisdom. Now the question is: How can we walk this way of love? How do we get on this path of love? And here I turn to the Gospels and find there how people are won for God precisely through this pure divine love. We find that it is precisely through the experience of love that people come to God; we see this in the case of the prodigal son: it is simply love that leads him back.

Now I actually have a concern, which is of course perhaps evoked in me by my Protestant past, whether or not through this cult that we are introducing, through this externality, through these many external things, which are of course all essentially justified, we do not turn away from the essential, namely from a proclamation of the gospel, that is, from proclaiming to people the love of Jesus Christ, which has descended from heaven to earth. As far as I can see at present, there is a danger that people will focus on the outward form of this cult and be distracted from the one way of love, which is kindled only by proclaiming the gospel.

Rudolf Steiner: The situation is as follows: the point is not merely to discuss such a question in the sense of theoretical concerns or in the sense of objective belief, but rather, in the way of love, the question is the practical question of the innermost life, of course. The content of the Gospels, made into mere doctrine, runs the risk of having a strong effect on people's selfishness. For man has not only the possibility of leaning towards something in love, but love is at the same time something that also does man subjective good. There is always an elevation of egoism in the experience of love, even of the most spiritual kind, and this devotion in love in a merely abstract, even if soul-abstract, form, is something that very strongly leads to ego and this is lived out in our time in the fact that actually the objective sense of responsibility is no longer strongly present in people, but people tend very strongly to the mere subjective sense of responsibility.

You see, when a representative of a religious confession like Frohnmeyer claims quite strictly, like an absolutely ascertainable truth, that over there [at the Goetheanum] a figure of Christ is being set up, with Luciferic features at the top and animalistic features at the bottom, that is an objective untruth. One could hear from a university professor of theology from a neighboring university: Yes, Frohnmeyer said that to the best of his knowledge and belief. One wants to refrain from convincing oneself of the reality of what one claims. Just think how different the path of humanity would be if it had not taken this strong tendency towards subjectivity, which always invokes the best of knowledge and belief and spares itself the test.

We cannot accept what is invoked in the abstract as divine love if it does not have a counterweight in something like cult. But there are other dangers as well. It is not my intention to create a backwards history, but I just want to point this out. You see, if Protestantism, which is the defining consciousness of modern times, had not abolished worship, had not done away with everything cult-like – which it has – then we would not have materialism either. Materialism is the necessary corollary of the removal of all cultic forms. In religious matters, the human being lives in the community, and so this certainly has something to do with the modern Protestantism that has increasingly come to refer people to divine love, as it has been done, for the development of the human being, which is linked to strong egoism. And with something else. Isn't it true that nothing can be done about facts? So anyone who is grounded in anthroposophical spiritual science knows about preexistence as well as postexistence. And now I would like to point out that in our practical religious practice, even for advanced Protestants, only the post-mortal existence is actually present. The other has no practical significance anywhere. It has no significance for the practical religious practice of pastoral care. But now I ask you – perhaps this is sometimes necessary – to also look at how the matter then lies in the sermon in a great many cases. Try to visualize how much of the sermon is devoted to maintaining faith in immortality by counting on that selfishness that simply does not want the soul to perish at death. Of course, you have to take that very seriously, how much the sermons rely on this egoism of not wanting to die with death, on this egoism of people for the preservation of the belief in immortality. In this, there is practically such a one-sided tendency towards the abstract. The moment you go to the other side, you practically come to preexistence. You cannot base preexistence on egoism at all; you can only base it on selflessness. Egoism is absolutely indifferent to what came before birth. That is why, in our modern language, on the one hand we have a word for immortality, but on the other hand we have no word for being unborn, because the concept of immortality is inconceivable without the word immortality, just as the concept of being unborn is inconceivable without the word being unborn.

We have now arrived at such things through what you just called the Protestant past. We must get away from it. Man must again find the way to objectivity; but he can only find it spiritually and soulfully. He can find it spiritually only through cult. I can imagine that what I am saying in this way may offend Protestant minds very much. But I cannot help that. The point is that if there are difficulties, one overcomes them; many people everywhere have gone through these difficulties.

A participant: I wanted to look at the problem from a different angle, namely, you said, Doctor, in the lecture the other day that the proximity of Jesus was a cult for his disciples, and I believe that Protestantism places more emphasis on conveying a religious feeling than on the cult. And the eternal nearness that one feels is something that has the significance of cult for a Protestant, so that the outer form of a cult is the sacrament. And I wanted to ask how that which one might call inner cult, how that relates to each other.

Rudolf Steiner: It is not the case that the mediation between inner and outer cultus is precisely that the apostles had a different relationship to Christ than their successors. The inner cultus was at the same time an outer cultus. I have just tried to prove this in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”, where I have endeavored to show that what happened at Golgotha had previously taken place in the form of an image or tragic action in every true mystery, so that those leading the mysteries understood these things. We cannot say that we have only an inner cultus at Golgotha, but at Golgotha there is also an outer cultus. But naturally the distinction must arise just at the time when the Christ Jesus has become invisible; then, of course, the distinction arises. For everything that will arise from the supersensible in the immediate present, which would, so to speak, be the realized mystical fact, is actually comprehended in the outer cultus, that is, only in the sense that one sees the supersensible-living in the sensual. You place the cultus facts only as supersensibly effective facts in the midst of the other conditions of the sensually effective facts. —

But perhaps that is not quite in line with your question.

A participant: I would still like to ask one more thing: I believe that the essential opinion of Protestantism is that one should think more about the life of Jesus before the Mystery of Golgotha, that one should, I do not want to say imitate him, but emulate him, to shape one's activity in the way that Christ worked on earth. Rudolf Steiner: You think that the essence of Protestantism is that one's activity on earth should be shaped in such a way that it becomes a following of Jesus?

This is a factual error and, in addition, a terrible arrogance. It is not actually Protestant, but rather it has been more like this in a current such as the saints, which found the most beautiful expression - there was already something like this - in a figure like Francis; there we are dealing with emulation. But this emulation does not correspond to the facts. Because first of all, it is impossible to emulate Christ Jesus, because it is just not possible. It is presumptuous, basically. Besides, it has no real content, because, isn't it true, a life that takes place in a physical body is a whole. You cannot imagine one act without the other, it is a whole. Every single act, every single thought has its shading from the whole, and to the Christ Jesus life belongs precisely the death on Golgotha. I cannot grasp how one can come to a concrete concept of following. It is also no longer Christian, because in the Christian sense Christ is not the model, but the helper. I ask that this be clearly distinguished: Christ is the helper. We turn to him for help, we take him in so that he can become our helper. That is humble, that is what can be. The other, basically, includes a terrible arrogance, which is on the same path as the one who said: If there were a God, how could I stand not being a god. It is the same path. I know how tempting it is to see Christ as a role model. But He is the helper that we take within us. But I can never really connect the idea that we should become like Christ Jesus Himself; in any case, it is not Christian.

Gertrud Spörri: The question has been raised many times as to what extent women's activities will develop as independent activities, and whether it will already be possible for a woman today to found and independently lead a free community.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to answer this question in another context as well.

Constantin Neuhaus: One does not think that one could become perfect like Christ, but nevertheless Christ is also our model, and he is also presented to us as an ideal that we should imitate in the “Imitatio Christi”.

Rudolf Steiner: “Imitatio” is not the same as emulating. Imitatio is a concept that is one step lower. Imitatio Christi is certainly a possibility, but it is something else; imitatio is an emotional concept. In the sense of Francis of Assisi, you cannot understand imitatio Christi any differently, except as an emotion. It is not a mere concept. The concept of “imitatio” actually implies that we shape ourselves in our feelings so that our feelings become similar, our inner life becomes similar to the life of Christ. This is not actually the same as regarding him as a model. Of course, in abstract thinking, we do not have these sharp distinctions between becoming similar and emulating. Thus imitation of Christ is not excluded, although I would prefer to speak of imitation of Jesus rather than imitation of Christ. In this sense, one can say that one can naturally become similar to Jesus in one's human qualities. But this similarity comes to an end when the Mystery of Golgotha enters upon its final acts. How this similarity with the Mystery of Golgotha can be achieved is something I cannot understand. The Christian can become similar to Christ in that the Christ in the Pauline sense lives in him. That is the correct Christian concept, and it cannot be understood in any other way than that the Christ comes to life in him through his presence. When a person becomes similar to Christ, it is through the Pauline “Christ in me”. This is certainly the case with anthroposophy. But the anthroposophical idea, which seeks to correspond to the facts, is that we can only become similar to Christ [through] the Christ living in us. Without this idea, becoming similar would be nothing more than an illusion. You cannot form an [abstract] concept of becoming similar. The anthroposophical idea is quite certain; it also seems to me to be the correct Christian idea: if we can become similar to something, it can only be to Christ in ourselves.

One participant points out that in educating children, only the ethical example of Christ is ever shown to them and believes that it would be necessary to bring the religious personality of Christ more vividly to life for children. But the current trend of the times is to only illustrate the ethical side of Jesus' life.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, from my point of view, which is the anthroposophical one, I consider this to be a movement that leads away from real Christianity. I consider this movement to be the most dangerous one in the present day, which actually strays from Christianity, because these lessons have nothing to do with the complete history of Christ Jesus on earth. Weinel's Jesus is indeed the teacher of something, which Weinel regards as a form of Christianity, but Weinel's Jesus is not a Christ, because he has no Christ within him. So you can say, you can of course teach Weinelianism in schools, but you cannot work in the Christian sense if you take something like that as a basis.

A participant: Yes, but the central question is: What is ultimately the heart of religious education? Is it the ethical-ideal side or is it the religious? The clergy say: The heart of religious education is to place Christ at the center as the religious personality, while the teaching staff say that only this Jesus of Weinel is to be placed at the center and only the attitude of Jesus and his pure way of life.

Rudolf Steiner: Formally, there is no question that the clergy are right. The question is whether they are giving the right portrayal of Jesus if one wants to judge the matter as a whole. But that they are formally right in contrast to the materializing un-Christian nature of Weinel's Jesus, in my opinion, and also in my anthroposophical view, there can be absolutely no doubt about that.

A participant: I for one have no doubt about it, but it is a moot point.

Rudolf Steiner: The thing is, however, that I have to go back to what I have already said here. Let us assume that this ethical teaching were actually practised; we would then only address the abilities in man that come to an end with death, that do not pass through death, and as pastors we are not allowed to do that at all. Rather, we must concern ourselves with cultivating the eternal in man before all else, so that the ideal abilities can sprout. I say this as an anthroposophist. What can be given to man in an ethical way from the Weinel views is something that has to do only with man's temporal existence between birth and death; and I see nothing in this movement but an influence of our materialistic age. They wear the most diverse masks, these outgrowths of our materialistic age.

A participant: How should we understand the words: “If anyone loves me, let them take up their cross and follow me.” This passage causes me difficulties.

Rudolf Steiner: What difficulties?

A participant: That we should follow Jesus, emulate him.

Rudolf Steiner: But precisely when this saying causes you difficulties, then this difficulty is relatively not difficult to resolve, because it is pointed out immediately what this succession should consist of: Take up your cross and follow me - then you do what you do in my interest. It does not say: Live so that your life becomes like mine. It is not commanded to emulate, but it is said: Take up your cross – which in this context means everything that one has to bear in life – take up your cross and follow in all patience. That does not mean emulating, but regarding Christ as a guide. A leader is a helper in the right direction. These distinctions must be very delicately handled. The leader in the right direction is the one who helps you to go the right way. But one cannot say that Christ said: “Seek, by following me, the Way, the Truth and the Life,” but rather, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” And Paul was right to add: We find the Christ only when he is in us. He is a helper, not a role model in the sense that one could speak of a complete role model.

The difficulty is easily resolved, and the other words you quoted were also to be understood in the ancient age as nothing other than following the leader.

A participant: Perhaps the first question can be answered in the course of the lecture. It concerns ritual and sacrament. Does ritual not actually have a subconscious effect on people? And how can this be reconciled with our present-day aspirations and attitudes, which seek to raise everything more consciously? And the other question: In what way do sacraments differ from other ritual acts? Does something objective happen in the spiritual realm here, so that Paul's words could be understood: Whoever eats [the bread] and drinks [the cup] eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not distinguish the Lord's body from common food. Therefore many are weak and sickly among you (1 Cor. 11:29-30).

The first question is a single question, and the second question is asked from a very intellectual point of view: Doctor, you said that Harnack may be a very honest man, but he is no longer a Christian. There are so many people today who take Harnack's view and yet have a very strong inner religious life and also make a very strong religious impression. Now it is intellectually tempting to say: name is sound and smoke; can't people actually speak from an inner connection with Christ and just can't find the right word for him?

Rudolf Steiner: On the contrary, they use the wrong word. The wrong word in this case is “Christ”. They must, of course, address the real content of the matter. I have expressly said: where Harnack has the word “Christ”, simply put “God” in its place and you will get the right thing. This person has a strong religious life; I will never deny that such people can have a strong religious life and feeling, only they are not Christians. If one wants to be a Christian, one must profess Christ. And it is not true that Harnack says that Easter faith originated in the Garden of Gethsemane, but what really happened there is none of our business. That is not acceptable. What Harnack is doing is a misapplication of the word 'Christ'. That is what I said.

A participant: People do not have a differentiated sense.

Rudolf Steiner: They have no differentiated feeling. But one must be clear about that. One can say: Christianity is antiquated, we have no need to distinguish the Christ from the Father, we can go back to a mere monotheism that does not distinguish between Father and Son. Then one can hold the position, but then one must not make the claim in intellectualism to be a Christian.

A participant: We have a strong aversion to the view that says: a person can be whatever they want, as long as they are a believer.

Rudolf Steiner: Then we might just as well let go of Christianity; we don't need Christianity, we'll introduce Brahmanism or Buddhism. Christianity makes it necessary to have the differentiation between the Father and the Son. Go to the Russians in the East and you will have the strong experience that father and son are differentiated. It would never occur to a Russian to fall into Kant's error and speak about God from the point of view of ontology. Up to Scotus Eriugena, one still had this experience of the differentiation between Father and Son, then the whole history of the proofs of God's existence begins. The moment you start proving God's existence, you no longer have him. In the works of Scotus Eriugena, we still find [differentiated] views; there is no question at all – that is, in the period up to the 10th century – of there being any such undifferentiated perception of the Father and the Son. But today, what do people think of all this when they discuss whether or not the Son should be of the same essence as the Father? The real original concepts, the elementary concepts, they no longer seem to be there in Western or Central European civilization today. Read the philosophy...¹ there you have a sphere in which people have stopped at the point of Scotus Eriugena, there is still a differentiation there. But if you take the standpoint that you do not need differentiation, then, I want to say now, you can be a good Protestant, but not a Christian. I would like to discuss this in another context.

A participant: I think father and son are one?

Rudolf Steiner: You can indeed say that quite well about the relationship between yourself and your father, with relationship, let us say, to the whole family. If it is a matter of something being common in relation to the wider circle of your family, then you can say: I and my father are one, and what I do or what I bring to bear, my father also does. Therefore you cannot claim that you can lump together the two individualities, you and your father.

A participant: That is not meant substantially?

Rudolf Steiner: No, no.

A participant: I wanted to ask: What is the difference between a special experience of Christ and an experience of the Father? Because it seems to me that we can only experience Christ in the Mass; but how do we experience God the Father again?

Rudolf Steiner: This is something that should be mentioned in connection with sacramentalism. It is already contained in what I have said, but I will deal with it in context, because, as I said, the two, Father and Son, must exist specifically as two non-numerically identical perceptions. The perception of the Father must not be numerically identical to the perception of the Son.

Yes, then there would be the question of the woman's participation, but I would also ask to be allowed to answer that in the next few days, because, as I have already said personally, this question is really connected with a great many other individual questions, above all with the question: How does the woman participate? We must not only ask whether the woman participates, but how the woman participates best. And how do we get beyond the calamity that has occurred in the so-called women's issue when it comes to something as serious as this: the participation of women in male professions?

In the nineties, I had a discussion in Weimar with Gabriele Reuter that was along these lines, but for a completely different area than theology. I had to say that from a certain point of view, the whole approach to the women's issue is wrong, because women have not actually brought that into civilization and culture that they can bring in on their own, but have adopted the culture of men. They have become physicians, as medicine was established by men; they have become philologists, as philology was established by men. So women have not contributed what they can contribute in women's clothing, but they have put on trousers and thus carried out this emancipation. This is something that naturally belongs to a completely different area. We have to answer this in a broader sense; we have to be absolutely clear that women's participation must happen in such a way that women do not simply put on trousers, but that women really — you will of course understand that this is only an image — bring what can be brought in dresses, not in trousers. But I will also address this question; it is again a very profound question.

• 1. The stenographer's transcript has a gap here. In the reproduction of the Christian Community, the name “Solowjew” was inserted.

In our discussion of the Wrangell brochure, we have reached the chapter beginning on page 37, entitled “Materialism”. I will read this chapter first:

Materialism

As stated earlier, the materialistic view recognizes only that knowledge which can be gained through sense perceptions and logical conclusions based on them, and denies the reality of occult perceptions. The sense perceptions of most people do not provide direct evidence of the reality of spiritual forces and phenomena that are not bound to material bodies. From this the materialist concludes that the assumption of such forces and beings independent of matter is not justified, and declares the conclusions to be drawn from it to be worthless. According to him, world events are the necessary consequence of the forces and conditions present in matter from the very beginning, which only allow development, and according to the law of the dispersion of energy, must ultimately lead to a state of equilibrium, and consequently to eternal death. The intellectual task of man is to investigate the laws according to which the process of this world development takes place, in order to endure the least possible suffering and waste of energy by adapting to these laws.

If one fundamentally rejects the occult evidence for the existence of spiritual entities, then logically nothing can be said against the materialistic view.

We see here, in a few concise sentences, the essence of the materialistic train of thought. But in order to arrive at a clear understanding of the full significance of the materialistic world view in our time, we actually have to take various things into account.

It must be clear that those who have become honest materialists in our time have a hard time coming to a spiritualistic worldview. And when speaking of “honest” opponents of spiritualism, it is actually the theoretical materialists who should be considered first and foremost, because those people who from the outset, I would say “professionally”, believe they have to represent this or that world view, do not always need to be described as “honest” representatives of a world view. But Ludwig Büchner, for example, was an honest representative of materialism in the second half of the 19th century, more honest than many who, from what they consider a religious point of view, feel they have to make themselves opponents of a spiritual world view in the sense of spiritual science.

Now, I said that it is difficult for materialists to arrive at a spiritual conception of the world. For materialism, as it presents itself to us today in those who say: Yes, man has his senses and perceives the world through his senses, he observes the processes that the senses can follow and cannot, on the basis of what the senses present to him to the assumption of a spiritual being that is independent of the sense world – this materialism has emerged with a certain inevitability from the development of modern humanity, because it is based on something that had to emerge in the development of modern humanity.

Anyone who takes the trouble to study the older spiritual life of humanity will find that it reached an end with the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries among the actual civilized peoples. Today, one need only really deal with what the present can give to the consciousness of man and then pick up a book that, in terms of its conception, is still fully immersed in the way the world was viewed scientifically in the 13th, 14th, 15th century , 14th, 15th century, and one will find that the present man, if he takes things seriously and worthily, no longer has and can have a proper understanding of what is really said in the older literature up to the marked turning point.

Of course it does happen, but only with those who are dilettantes, or even those who have not yet become dilettantes, that they repeatedly dig out all kinds of tomes from this older literature that deal with natural science and then come to all kinds of conclusions about what is said in them in a profound way. But anyone who values true relationships with what they acquire will have to find that the modern human being cannot really have true relationships with this older way of looking at nature. It is different with the philosophical view. But today's man cannot really do anything with the view of nature of the older time, because all the concepts that he can form about nature are only a few centuries old, and with these one must approach nature today. Our physical concepts basically all go back to the Galilean world view and nothing earlier. One must already unfold a broad historical-scientific study when engaging with earlier scientific works, because the exact exploration of the material world, the external sense world, in whose current we find ourselves today, has actually only begun in the last few centuries.

Do you remember that we were just talking about measuring in reference to Wrangell's booklet? Weighing is also part of measuring, as we have seen. However, the introduction of weighing as an instrument into the methods of the natural sciences has only been common practice since Lzvozszer, so it is not yet 150 years old, and all the basic ideas of today's chemistry, for example, are based on this weighing.

On the other hand, if we want to form ideas today about the workings of electrical forces, for example, or even just thermal forces, then they must be based on the research from the last half of the 19th century. People today can no longer cope with the older ideas. The same could be said with regard to biological science. However, anyone who needs to know the development of science would also need to get to know the older literature; but we, who want to take spiritual science seriously, must get rid of what we so often encounter in so-called theosophists. I have often spoken of the fact that I got to know a theosophical community in Vienna in the 1880s, for example. There it was almost a kind of custom to pick out all kinds of old tomes and to read in them things that one really did not understand very well, because basically it takes a lot to read a scientific work, for example, from the 14th century. But people formed judgments. These judgments were always pretty much the same. Namely, when someone pretended to have read such a book – although they had only flicked through it – they said “abysmally deep”. These were the judgments that were made. At the end of the 1980s, I heard the word “abysmally deep” – relatively naturally – more often than any other. Of course, I also heard the word “shallows” often.

What must be borne in mind is the great importance of the views, concepts and ideas that have been gained under the influence of the views of recent centuries. When we consider the explanations of the basic concepts of mechanics, the wealth of physical, chemical and biological concepts, and also some of the things that have been brought together to see how the soul expresses itself in the external physical body, we have the result of the last few centuries, and especially of the second half of the last century, an enormously expanded research result before us. And this research result must necessarily be gained, not only because all external, technical, economic, material life is based on it, which humanity had to achieve at some point, but because a large part of our world view is also based on it. And one is actually - even if it does no harm in a certain limited field, but it is true - one is actually in such a field of world view as that of today's science a hay rabbit if one knows nothing of today's physics, biology and so on, as they have developed.

Of course, it must be emphasized again and again that the research results of spiritual science are obtained on the basis of those perceptual abilities that have often been mentioned. They cannot be obtained in the same way, although with the same certainty, as the scientific-materialistic results. And of course - if one surrenders to what was indicated yesterday - this spiritual science is a reality. But for our time today, for our present, much more is needed than just somehow having a spiritual relationship to the spiritual-scientific results, which can be fully grasped by common sense. It is much more necessary than somehow catching scraps of the spiritual world to familiarize oneself with the materialistic world view, at least with a section of it, in order to be able to really represent to the outside world today what spiritual science wants. For one cannot go before the world and truly represent spiritual science if one has no idea of the way in which the scientist researches today, how he must think and how he must handle research alongside clarification. And if one repeatedly refuses to pick up a book on natural science in order to familiarize oneself with modern natural science, then one will never be able to avoid committing gaffes when representing the spiritual-scientific worldview in the face of what is the dregs of the external worldview. Today it is also much less important to listen to the traditional religious systems than to the honestly gained venerable results of materialistic research. One must only be able to relate to these materialistic research results in the right way.

Let us take, just to show what is at stake at the present moment, any field; let us take the field of human anatomy and physiology. If you take any common book today – and I have always recommended such books over the course of the many cycles – you will get a picture of how today's physiologist builds his ideas about the structure of the human body, based on the bone system, the cartilage, tendon, muscle system, the nervous, blood, sensory, main system, and so on. And a picture will emerge of how people today, living in materialistic thought, imagine the interaction, say, of the heart and lungs, and again of the heart with the other vascular systems of the body. And then an answer can present itself to the question: How does a person who has acquired his concepts from materialistic research actually relate to these things? What ideas does he actually have in him? And here one must say: Significant ideas have indeed been gained; ideas that had to be gained in such a way that one really had to turn away from everything spiritual, from carrying spiritual thoughts into research. One had to enter into the material realm as it presents itself to the five senses, as they say in popular terms, and into the context that arises from the five senses. One had to see through the world in this way, and much remains to be done in this area, in all possible fields of scientific research.

But now suppose you have acquired a picture of the structure of the human body such as the anatomist and physiologist have today. Then you will find that the anatomist and physiologist say: Well, the human being is made up of various organs and organ systems, and these work together in a certain way.

You see, when an anatomist or a physiologist speaks today and summarizes his ideas into an overall picture of the human being, then, within this picture, the same thing remains based on sensory observation. From this, very specific ideas arise that can be taken up. But one must relate to them in the right way. Perhaps I can make this clear by means of a comparison. For example, someone might say: I want to get to know Raphael, how do I do that? - I would tell him: If you want to get to know Raphael, then try to immerse yourself in Raphael's paintings; study the Marriage of Joseph and Mary, one of the paintings in Milan, and then the various paintings up to the Sistine Madonna and the Ascension, and get an concept of how Raphael tried to distribute the figures in space, how he tried to distribute light and shadow, to enliven one place in the picture at the expense of the other, to emphasize one and withdraw the other, and so on, then you will know something about Raphael. Then you will have the preparation to get to know Raphael even better, then you will gradually get a picture of the configuration of Raphael's soul, of what he wanted, from which sources of his mind his creations emerged. One could imagine that someone comes and says: Oh, looking at the pictures does not suit me, I am a clairvoyant and look directly into Raphael's soul, see how Raphael created and then talk about Raphael. I can imagine someone coming and saying: I don't need to see anything of Raphael at all, but delve directly into the soul of Raphael. Of course, in Raphael research this would be considered nonsense, but in the field of spiritual science it is practiced a great deal, despite the many admonitions over the years in which we have been doing spiritual science. One could see how few felt compelled to use the literature mentioned in the course of the lecture cycles and to use it in such a way as to obtain images from what materialistic research has produced.

But just as one would err if one were to stop at the image and not want to progress to the soul that is expressed through the image, so the materialist stops. What one could say to the materialist is, for example, this: Yes, you are looking at an image, but you do not notice that you should consider what you are looking at as the outer revelation of a spiritual inner reality. But it is true that materialistic research has brought together an enormous amount of material. If one regards this as the external manifestation of a spiritual reality, then one is on the right path. The materialist only makes the mistake of having the material and not wanting to accept that it is the expression of a spiritual reality. But on the other hand, one must always be in the wrong when one asserts something spiritual and a materialist says things about which one has no idea. Of course one can have an overview of the rich field of research and still have no idea about a great deal; but one must have some idea about the way in which things are acquired. And if our School of Spiritual Science is to serve as a place where a number of people who have studied one field or another interpret the materialistic basic premises that one must have according to the present-day development, then our School of Spiritual Science will achieve a great deal.

We could do it today, saying that what is set out in our cycles of material could suffice; we could conclude with it and use the next time to show our friends the material basis of the conditions that must be there. One will then see, when one looks at today's physics, chemistry and biology in the appropriate way, that what is in our cycles will arise. Then one would have taken the right approach to materialism.

My dear friends, you are quite mistaken when you say that materialism is wrong. What nonsense! To say that materialism is wrong is just as if you wanted to say: the Sistine Madonna is blue here and red there, that's wrong, that's just matter. Materialism is right in its own field; and if you take what it has contributed to human knowledge, it is something tremendous. We do not need to fight materialism, but only to show by its development how materialism, if it understands itself, leads beyond itself, just as I have shown how anatomy and physiology lead beyond themselves and necessarily into the spiritual realm.

One can only ask: Why are there so many people who, instead of accepting materialism as a mere research method, stop at it as a world view? - The right thing would be to say that today it would indeed be something completely complicated and foolish to practice alchemy instead of chemistry; today one must practice chemistry and not alchemy as in the 12th century. That goes without saying. But it is necessary to rise up out of today's research into the spiritual life. If our friends would only take the trouble to study the little book Haeckel and His Opponents, they would find that all the thoughts on which it is based are governed by the biogenetic law. It is significant that we have not yet managed to get a second edition of this little book 'Haeckel and his Opponents'. And yet it is extremely important to be informed, if not about the latest research results - one does not necessarily need to know these in detail - then at least about the way the researcher proceeds and how he or she goes about their research. This is of the utmost importance.

If someone says: I don't need to study the book, why should I, the spiritual world is clear to me from the outset; I don't need to climb the whole ladder – if someone says that, then today he is an egoist who only considers himself and does not pay attention to what the times demand of us. But we must pay attention to this if we want to serve the spirit of the time. It is extremely important that we keep this in mind. Of course, one has the right to say, why do I need a scientific basis, the spiritual world is clear to me. That may be true. But if you want to learn something in the field of the spiritual world – you can of course do it in such a way that you interpret what is there – but if you want to learn something, you have to familiarize yourself with what is available in materialistic science.

On the other hand, one must ask: How is it that there are many anatomists, physiologists, physicists, chemists and so on today as natural scientists, and even those who call themselves experimental psychologists, that they do not want to hold materialism as a research method, but as a worldview? Here one must honestly have the courage to answer: To conduct research in a materialistic way, all that is required is to stare at the world with the five senses and to use external methods. One need only surrender to the world passively, then one stands firm. Plucking any old plant, counting the stamens, taking the microscope, staining a cross-section in order to study the structure, and so on – I could, of course, list many more things – that is what people do. You just have to stand there, be passive and let nature take effect on you. You let yourself be led by nature.

In the very first writings I published, I called this the dogmatism of experience. People hold on to the dogmatism of experience. You can read about it in my book “Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung” (Basic Principles of an Epistemology of the Goethean World View). I also later called it “fact fanaticism”. But to enter the spiritual world, one must work inwardly, and for that one needs inner activity. And that is where people run out of strength. One can see in our time that this strength has been exhausted. If you make comparisons in the field of anatomy, for example, you will find that one can almost point the finger to the point where the strength has been exhausted.

Take the anatomist Ayrt/, who was replaced on his chair by the anatomist Langer. Compare the writings of the two scientifically, and you will see how, in the succession of the two scholars, one is absolutely clear that there is something spiritual behind the external, and the other no longer cares. Why is that? Because, however meritorious materialism is as a research method and however much it has achieved, without which people could not live today, people were too lazy to bring what they had grasped into active life. Laziness, real indolence of mind, has made people persist in materialism. Because materialism became so dominant and presented itself as reality, people did not rise to the spiritual. It is laziness and inertia, and one must have the courage to recognize this reason.

Immerse yourself in the fields of scientific research and you will see that this scientific research is magnificent and admirable. Delve into everything that is fabricated by the monists and other associations as “world views” and you will see that they are based on laziness and inertia, on an ossification of thought. This is what we must clearly face, that we must distinguish - if we stand on the ground of true spiritual science - between the entirely justified materialistic research methods and research results and the so-called materialistic world view.

Most of the time, those who do materialistic research cannot even think, because it is easier to do materialistic research than to think spiritually. I will give you an example to illustrate that materialists simply stumble when they want to move from materialistic research methods to a worldview. So let us assume that I have tried to gain an atomistic world view. I will therefore say: bodies consist of atoms. These must be thought of in motion, so that when you have a material object in front of you, it consists of atoms. There are spaces between the atoms. The atoms are in motion, and according to the materialistic world view, heat is generated by this motion. If one were to say that heat is based on the movement of atoms, then one would be right, then one would only be stating a fact. However, one comes to the realization that it is impossible to speak of atoms as something that actually exists. Atoms are imagined – and they have to be imagined if they are to make sense – but what is perceived should first be brought about by the atoms. So you can't see an atom. You see that the so-called atomistic world view is composed of nothing visible, of nothing that can be perceived by the senses.

Now, however, you can reflect and say: the world consists of atoms and these are in motion. One wants to investigate the kind of movement that underlies heat, light, magnetism, electricity, and so on, and one comes to assume that certain atomic movements are the cause of sensory perception. So one comes to atoms. One divides what is given, and if one divides again and again, one must finally come to the indivisible, and that is the atom. Divisible atoms are meaningless. The last parts, that is, the atoms, must be indivisible. Now, however, people also want to explain movement from the atoms – I can only hint at this, but you can follow it up in the philosophical-scientific literature of recent times – they also want to explain movement from the nature of the atoms. But if you think about how one atom must push the other for motion to arise, which we see in heat, electricity and so on, then you cannot think of atoms as rigid; you have to think of them as elastic. It is necessary to think of them elastically, because rigid atoms would not give the movement that must come out during a collision if heat, electricity or magnetism is to come out.

So these atoms must be elastic. But what does that mean? It means that the atom can be compressed and then springs back to its former state. It must therefore be compressible and spring back again, otherwise one cannot even think of the pushing of the atoms. Now we have gained two things: first, the atom must be indivisible; second, it must be elastic. These two facts confront modern thinking, which pays homage to atomism. The atom must be conceived as indivisible, otherwise it is no longer an atom, and it must be conceived as elastic, because it would be a senseless idea to trace the movement of the atom back to rigid atoms. English thinkers in particular have emphasized these two sentences very sharply: firstly, the atom is indivisible, and secondly, the atom must be conceived as elastic. If I allow a body to be elastic, it is inconceivable that the parts push together and then spring back into the original position to create the elastic body. This is inconceivable without it being divisible and movable. But the atom must be indivisible on the one hand, and on the other hand it must be divisible, because otherwise it cannot be elastic. But what does that mean?

It means that if we want to imagine atoms, we come up with two contradictory basic assumptions. There is no way around this. There is an enormous amount of interesting literature about thinking the world picture together out of non-rigid atoms. But then the atom is no longer an atom, because it has to be thought of as divisible. That is to say, one comes to the conclusion that the idea of the atom is impossible as long as one assumes that the atom is material. In the moment when you do not think of the atom materially, when you think that the atom is not something material but something else, one can think of the atom as indivisible, just as the human ego is also thought of as indivisible. Suppose the atom is force, then you can also think of it as being put together. If you do not think in materialistic terms, you do not need to think that there are spaces in between. The two things are therefore perfectly compatible if we do not think of atoms materially. If we carefully consider what optics, the science of electricity, and so on, offers us, and draw the final consequences as to how the atom must be, then we come to the conclusion that the atom cannot be material. You are bound to touch on spiritual matters. But this step has to be taken. It makes no difference whether the atom is elastic or rigid; we are not concerned with such details. Materialism should not be fought, but understood. The great amount of work and good results should not be despised by spiritual science.

Let us now turn to the next chapter of the Wrangell treatise:

Doubts about the materialistic world view

But many people harbor doubts: could it really be that the whole world is not based on any rational, moral thought, and that the concepts of what is expedient and moral arise only in the human breast, but have no validity outside of it?

We feel within us the striving for good, and the concept of good is inseparable from the concept of freedom, because where absolute necessity reigns, there is no evil and no good. A stone must fall in a certain direction with a certain speed, and it would be senseless to call this fall evil or good.

Should that which we feel in our innermost being to be the true measure of life be only deception and delusion, and is this idea of good, that is, of morality chosen in freedom, not to be found in the whole of the world, of which man is only a tiny fraction? Should the small part, man, endowed with lofty feelings and thoughts, stand in this respect higher than the whole, which proceeds unconsciously, without purpose, like a dead wheelwork, to end in eternal death? Most people's minds resist such a solution and seek another.

It is all right to say that the intellect objects to this, but it is much more important in our time to say that thinking objects to it. If one wishes to stand only on the ground of materialism, then one must go to the atom and grasp it as matter. But one can also call it force, and then one arrives at the fact that where one finds matter, there is the cosmic world of thought. There then the moral world order has its full place in it.

Now, some have found it more convenient to say: Yes, if you rethink the world like that, scruples and doubts arise for sense knowledge everywhere and it is not right to accept this sense knowledge as the only valid knowledge; but man is so constituted that he cannot penetrate deeper. This results in the following situation: there stands the man, who is perhaps a very good researcher in the field of the external sense world and who, as a materialistic researcher, can produce something lasting, beautiful and magnificent, but he is not inclined to go further. And so he says: there must be all sorts of things behind matter; but we are not able to penetrate there with the human capacity for knowledge. He calls himself an agnostic. He does not realize that this talk, that man does not have the ability and so on, is inspired by Ahriman and he does not listen to what good spirits tell him; he does not listen to that. In truth, he is just a slacker. Slacker is what you call it when you say it honestly, agnosticism is what you call it in science.

The next chapter in Wrangell's book is now entitled:

Agnosticism

The answer to the question of the origin and purpose of the universe and the destiny of man, which presents the least difficulties to the mind, but leaves the demands of the heart completely unsatisfied, is the point of view of the agnostic (” “not-knowing"), when he says: these questions transcend the limits of human knowledge, and therefore, by their very nature, must remain unanswered, and it is more reasonable to devote one's time and energy to tasks where there is a prospect of overcoming them.

— One cannot object to saying, I will devote myself to a task that I can accomplish. That is within a person's freedom. But it is not within a person's freedom to say: What I do not know, no one else may know. All philosophizing about what man cannot know is actually, at bottom, a scientific infamy, and, furthermore, it is a scientific megalomania without parallel, because man sets himself up as the arbiter of what may and may not be researched, because he presents what he himself wants to accept as decisive for all other people. What impotence lies in the sentence: “There are limits to knowledge”! What arrogance and conceit lies in it, but should also be made clear. This should not be whispered in the ears, but blared. —

Without denying the existence of spiritual beings, the agnostic maintains that this area is not accessible to everyone, while everything based on sensory experience is within the realm of knowledge of the normal person, and he should be content with that. Those people in whom the intellect, trained to be critical, predominates, can remain at this point of view without being paralyzed in their actions; but for most people, this answer is no answer. If one takes the standpoint of a person without personal occult experiences and without knowledge of other people's reports of such perceptions that appear credible to him, then, logically speaking, he is free to speak out in favor of or against the existence of spiritual worlds. —

But one is not entitled to deny the scientific nature of the opposing view.

The degree of credibility of the reports of others cannot be measured with objective, i.e. universally valid rigor, and the judgment about it is inevitably influenced by subjective motives in each individual case.

- Yes, you can show that.

If the facts can be verified by any normal person, then in most cases there is no need to go to the trouble of verifying them personally, because the current organization of scientific research ensures that an erroneous observation or report is soon discovered, and this compels every observer and reporter, if only for the sake of his reputation, to be as careful and truthful as possible, and in any case an observation error does not remain undetected for long.

— Basically, that doesn't say much more than if someone were to say the following: With the way scientific work is organized today, if you go to Basel and buy a chemistry book, you can believe what's in it, because it contains chemical results, and it wouldn't occur to a chemist to lie. — But that would only legitimize the belief in authority. And if people would only admit this to themselves, they would realize how much they accept on trust today. I have often emphasized that spiritual science, although in its infancy, can be tested. Spiritual science is still young; when it is older, the spiritual scientist will be in the same position as the chemist is today: it will then be clear that one does not lie in spiritual science.

Occult perception, however, is different, and this essential difference has long led the men of exact science, who are accustomed to controllable facts, to treat occult communications not only critically, i.e. with scrutiny, but skeptically, i.e. with outright rejection.

- The real reason is that they are too lazy.

Now, however, this no longer seems possible, because the evidence for the immaterial existence of spiritual beings is so compelling that men of undoubted scientific training consider this question to be proven. It is enough to mention names such as Zöllner, Wallace, du Prel, Crookes, Butlerow, Rochas, Oliver Lodge, Flammarion, Morselli, Schiaparelli, Ochorowicz, James, among others.

— There Mr. von Wrangell relies on those who tie in with atavistic abilities, while we assume that every person can acquire the abilities that make it possible to test the spiritual as one tests the scientific.

These men not only find no contradiction between occult facts and established results of exact sensory research, but their habit of unprejudiced criticism leads them to reject the skepticism of the materialist and to devote themselves to the study of occult phenomena.

— But they do not do it in the right way. They drag everything down to the same field of experimentation as chemistry, even that which can only be attained through the free activity of thought. Instead of constructing inwardly, they go around, as it were, with a yardstick, measuring. —

These authorities may err in their judgment, but their point of view can serve as proof that we are justified in assuming the existence of spiritual entities without exposing ourselves to the accusation of scientific ignorance. Assuming that one has no occult abilities oneself, one is dependent on the reports of others and must examine them for their credibility.

— It would be better to try to engage with what is said in “How to Know Higher Worlds”. It is much easier than many assume. Most people just don't recognize it, but all sorts of complications are recognized. It would actually be relatively easy to experience at least enough of the spiritual world in a few years to recognize it in general. But people say: That is nothing; because they strive for what I have called gut-level clairvoyance. And if it does not come to gut-level clairvoyance, then none of it means anything to them.

The sources of error in occult perceptions lie both in the subject and in the object. Even a superficial knowledge of the perceptual material accumulated by spiritists and other occultists shows us that here, admittedly, the sources of error flow abundantly...

— They really do not. It is no different than saying: nature never lies! But it lies all the time. Take a glass of water and stick a stick in it, it will appear broken to you; but it is not. Take the path of the sun in the sky, compare the size in the morning and the size at noon: nature lies to you all day long. The spiritual world lies just as much and just as little. It is extraordinarily interesting, for example, to visualize the processes in the etheric body of a person when they have an intestinal disorder, or to observe what the etheric body does when the digestive processes take place. It is just as interesting as when one usually studies anatomy or physiology, even more interesting. But it is unjustified to regard what is nothing more than a process in the etheric body during digestion as a magnificent process of the cosmic world. The spiritual world itself does not lie; it must only be interpreted in the right way. There is no need to disdain what happens in our etheric body during digestion. It should not be misunderstood. The senses, too, do not deceive in reality. When you reach into the water, you find with the sense of touch... [gap in the transcription]. In the course of time, natural science has acquired good rules through study, while it is believed in the humanities that the less study one has undergone, the more suitable one is for it.

Thus: “Even a superficial acquaintance with the material of perception accumulated by spiritualists and other occultists shows us that here, admittedly, the sources of error flow abundantly... .”

because they not only lie, as in the material world, in the subject, but also in the object, in that numerous malicious entities are supposed to make it their business to mislead the person doing the research. If one could rightly say of ordinary sensory perceptions: nature never lies, only man sometimes misunderstands them - it is, according to the secret researchers, different in the spiritual world. Therefore, if the reality of spiritual phenomena that are independent of matter is admitted, it is a great and difficult task to separate the wheat from the chaff there. This is the task of spiritual science, which, if one wants to pursue it seriously, requires a person's full time and energy, as is the case with every other branch of knowledge, albeit perhaps to a lesser extent. For the majority of people, however, such study is neither possible nor necessary. Just as one can be a Christian and find consolation and uplift in the teachings of Jesus, and see in his person the realization of the moral ideal, without being a theologian, so one can recognize in the basic teachings of Theosophy an interpretation of the actual meaning and purpose of one's own life without being familiar with the comprehensive structure of esoteric science.

— This is a claim that cannot be readily accepted, for even if people are not chemists or biologists, they can still live today. But man must gradually come to know that which belongs to the world to which the human soul itself belongs. It is a kind of unjustified denial when people say that to be a Theosophist one needs no more familiarity with esoteric science than one needs to be a theologian to be a Christian.

The world view that best furthers a person's actions and feelings is the one that most satisfies both his intellect and his feelings.

The next chapter is entitled:

The Soul's Survival After Death

If we assume that the spiritual principle in man, that which is designated by the word soul, is an entity that continues to exist after the death of the body, then various ideas about its further fate are possible. Of these, we will only consider the Christian view and the doctrine of re-embodiment here, as they are currently in the foreground for us. The teachings of Christ have been a source of comfort and moral strength for millions, and will probably continue to be so in the future. However, it cannot be denied that for the scientifically educated European, the difficulties of an intellectual nature have increased and do not allow the conflict between faith and knowledge based on Christian teachings to be resolved. The existing contradiction demands a sacrifice, either of the intellect or of the mind. In addition to these intellectual difficulties, many people have serious moral reservations about the usual Christian view. All Christian denominations teach that after death, the soul of man endures a fate that is eternal in duration: eternal bliss or eternal damnation. Every person feels that this belief contradicts the demand for justice. The basis of all morality is justice.

- If only one knew a little more! Of course Wrangell is right when he says that one cannot speak of eternal bliss and eternal damnation in this way, since these contradict justice. For “eternal” is an absurdity if one believes that it is something infinite. “Eternal” is only an age, a world age, and actually one should not speak of “eternal” in the Christian sense either, but only of an age, and that roughly corresponds to the time between death and a new birth.

Deep within every human breast lies the unshakable desire for each person to receive what is deserved. The concept of merit may change, as may the value placed on what is experienced and felt. But there can be no doubt that people would be happier, better, more satisfied if they were convinced that the way the world works meets the demand for justice in every detail. In what we experience in the course of our physical life, we do not see justice prevailing in ourselves and others, regardless of whether we consider mental, spiritual or physical suffering and joy as a measure of the value of what we experience. According to the teachings of the Christian churches, this apparent injustice of earthly life is to be compensated for in the hereafter; but it is basically infinitely intensified by the eternal consequences of temporal transgressions or merits.

— It is self-evident that Wrangell only speaks of what the Christian churches say, which arose after Justinian had closed the Greek schools of philosophy. But he overlooks the fact that we have the task of making the blocked wisdom accessible to humanity again. One must look for the right reasons. One could also show that those who teach Christianity today do not teach true Christianity, but rather a form of it that has been adapted.

The next chapter is called:

Reincarnation and Karma

The doctrine of reincarnation and karma, on the other hand, offers us the possibility of resolving the visible injustice of a life's destiny by the fact that it was self-imposed in previous lives, and that there is the possibility of improving it for subsequent reincarnations.

Such a belief, when it has become an inner certainty, gives one the strength to bear one's fate, even the hardest, without inner revolt, and spurs one on to improve it for the future by following the voice we call “conscience”.

The sense of responsibility in our consciousness is strengthened, and the danger that humanity, in a frenzy and selfishness, seeks to exploit the short span of temporal life, would be eliminated. The doctrine of rebirth and karma makes man free, because it puts him on his own.

Of course, the great mystery of the “what for” of it all remains unsolved, but the purpose and task of the individual life are clear and certain.

The next chapter is the conclusion of Lessing's “Education of the Human Race”:

Lessing's view of the doctrine of reincarnation.

“Is this hypothesis (of reincarnation) so ridiculous because it is the oldest? Because the human mind, before it was dispersed and weakened by sophistry and school, immediately fell for it? Why should I not come back as often as I am able to gain new knowledge, new skills? Do I get so much out of it at once that it is not worth the effort to come back?”

According to the doctrine of reincarnation, it is our fate to live on this earth until we have reached our destiny: knowledge of God, which is knowledge of self. Death is not annihilation; our sense of self, our true nature, merely enters into another body. Even the suicide does not escape; he only cuts the thread of life, which, according to inexorable laws, must be reattached.

- So Lessing. These were strong words. But they were also the words of a man who had the education of his time within him and who was necessarily led to this doctrine of reincarnation by what this and Christianity could give him. At this point, one sees the eminent education, one sees the historical critic. But now people say, of course Lessing is a great man; he wrote Nathan and so on, that's good, but when he grew old he devoted himself to such fantastic dreams as the doctrine of reincarnation; you can't go along with that. Well, in that respect the court master has become much cleverer than Lessing was in his old age. Many a person believes that he is much cleverer than Lessing, who is otherwise even recognized as a great man. One should at least recognize the ridiculousness of such an acknowledgment; recognize that one must strive toward what Lessing had finally worked his way to. They should realize how ridiculous it is if they do not want to go along with this, the ripest fruit of Lessing's thinking, not to mention what has followed in the newer intellectual life. These people speak without going into the actual core, which was already at the basis of the new intellectual life, but which for many who interpret it is a closed book. Now Wrangell continues:

That Goethe also believed in reincarnation is known to us from Eckermann and Boisserau's notes. Kant says in his “Lectures on Psychology”: “The beginning of life is birth; but this is not the beginning of the life of the soul, but of the human being. Birth, life and death are therefore only states of the soul... Consequently, the substance remains, even though the body perishes, and so the substance must also have existed when the body came into being.

Now follows the last chapter:

A brief summary of the train of thought

Let us try to briefly summarize the train of thought set out above.

The concept of the law-governed, the necessary chain of cause and effect in events, is not an original insight. On the contrary, direct consciousness gives us the idea of conditional freedom.

The concept of lawfulness, on which all science is based, probably first came to man from observation of the temporally regular course of celestial phenomena. Then this concept was applied with ever-increasing success to the phenomena of the inanimate (physics, chemistry), then to the animate, and finally also to the spiritual. The concept of lawfulness can only be tested and irrevocably proven on the basis of phenomena that can be quantitatively determined, that can be measured. The extension of the idea of the necessity of the material to the spiritual is an assumption that, according to analogy with what happens in the material, can indeed be given a certain probability, but which cannot be proven because the touchstone of measurability is lacking here. Numerous facts, examined by discerning men of science, do not allow any truth-seeking person to deny the existence of spiritual beings without providing proof, which is why he rejects the facts in question and their probative value.

The basic tenets of Theosophy – reincarnation and karma – do not contradict any scientific fact, satisfy the intellect and, better than other teachings, meet the basic requirement of all morality – the demand for justice.

Belief in these basic assumptions must strengthen people to endure unwanted life destinies and promote the striving for good in them.

And so, my dear friends, this brochure stands before us as a document of our time, as the expression of a person who, after thoroughly studying scientific methods, stands firmly within them and wants to bear witness to the fact that one can be a good, fully conscious scientist and precisely because of this, not in spite of it, must arrive at a world view that honors the spirit.

You will have gathered from the last chapters of Mr. von Wrangell's brochure that he has not yet delved very deeply into spiritual science, that he has not approached the difference between what spiritual science wants and amateurish theosophy. And so it is all the more important to see how someone who is scientifically trained longs for what can only be truly given through spiritual science, so that one can say: through such a brochure one has come to know how an unprejudiced scientist can relate to a spiritual-acknowledging view.

We can pull other strings and we will do so occasionally. We will delve further into the matter in order not only to cultivate spiritual science in an egoistic way, but to really see it as a cultural ferment and to work through it on the developmental path of humanity. It is extremely important that we get into the habit of really going along with everything.

Sometimes, our ranks offer a particular experience. Please don't be offended when I talk about this experience, but it really can be had. You see, there are certain members in our ranks who say, “Public lectures aren't important to us,” and they say it in a way that shows they're not really involved. They say that the public lectures are not the most important thing; the branch lectures, yes, those are for us, but we have progressed beyond what the public lectures provide. And yet it is precisely the case that the public lectures are designed for those who have a connection to the outside world. And much more reference is made to contemporary science in the public lectures than in the private lectures, which show how often delicate consideration has to be given to the fact that one does not love to base strictly scientific questions. And this delicate consideration is often interpreted to mean that one says: the public lectures are not so important.

The truth of the matter is somewhat different. There is only one kind of selfishness at the root of these matters. I do not want to break a lance for the public lectures, I just want to challenge the unfounded opinions of many people. It may be easier to miss this or that intermediate link in the branch lectures here or there; but the public lectures must be shaped link by link. This is not popular with many people whose work is not part of the overall cultural process of our time. But it is precisely this process of engaging with the cultural process of the time, this not shutting ourselves off, that is important.

Of course, it is easier to talk about angels, Lucifer and Ahriman than about electrons, ions and so on. But it is true that we must also bring ourselves to the realization that we must pull the strings towards the present culture. But I ask you not to take the matter one-sidedly again, as if I wanted to urge you to buy the entire scientific collection of Göschen tomorrow and sit down to gradually concoct everything, as the students would say. I do not mean that at all. I only mean that where one wants to speak authoritatively about the position of spiritual science in our culture, one must also have an awareness of it and should not fall into the trap of saying: this outer science is a pipe dream. As an individual, one can say that one has no time to deal with it; but the whole institution, the whole enterprise, should be given a certain direction through what I have said. And it should not be surprising that the School of Spiritual Science aims to pursue individual branches of science in such a way that they will gradually lead to spiritual science. We still need the materialistic culture out there. And those anthroposophists are wrong who say: What do I care about materialistic culture, it is none of my business, it is for coarse materialists; I cultivate what one experiences when one dreams, when one is not quite right while being fully conscious; the rest is none of my business, I have the teachings of reincarnation and karma and so on. On the other hand, there is the world out there that says: We have real science, serious and dignified methods, and now the anthroposophists are coming along with their spiritual science; they are the purest fools.

This antagonism cannot remain unresolved, and we cannot expect mediation from the outside. It must come from within. We must understand and not lie back on the sickbed and say: if we first have to climb up into the spiritual world through science, that is far too arduous for us.

I wanted to speak about the significance of materialistic culture and draw your attention to it, because I have often emphasized that materialism comes from Ahriman, but Ahriman must be known, just as Lucifer must be known and reckoned with. And the Trinity, which we were able to see in the model yesterday, is the one with which humanity will have to become familiar.

I would like to repeat once more: try not to annoy the outside world by talking about a new religion. If we were to talk about the group as a “Christ statue,” it would be a big mistake. It is enough to say: there stands the representative of humanity. Everyone can see what is meant there. It is important that we always find the right words, that is, that we consider how we want to place ourselves in the whole cultural world and come to describe the matter with the right words. That is what must be said again and again. We do not want to speak to others: We have only just presented the real Christ. - We may know that and keep it to ourselves. For us it is important to understand the full blessing of materialistic culture, otherwise we make the same mistake as those who do not examine.

Let us ask ourselves whether we are not doing the same with others. We do not need to withhold the true judgment, but we must understand what is going on outside. Then we will also be able to counter what is going on outside in the right words. But, my dear friends, we will have a lot to do in this direction, because the laziness I have spoken of today is very, very widespread and we must find the courage to tell people: You are too lazy to engage in the activity of thinking.

If we understand what is going on outside, then we can also use strong words and take up an energetic fight. But we must familiarize ourselves with it and pull the strings of the outer culture. That is why I wanted to give an example of the very commendable Wrangell brochure, which shows how someone is strong as a scientist, but has not sufficiently studied the spiritual scientific world view, but through the whole direction of his soul tends towards spiritual science.

We have often shown the drawing of threads, mostly in relation to specific personalities, and I advise you, where there are branches, to do the same in collaboration. Of course, this cannot be the work of just one person; it would never be finished. Rather, there must be someone who takes on a brochure about Eucken's world view for my sake, and someone else takes a brochure that deals with the blood, muscle and nervous system and so on, and works through it with the others. This can be branch work. It can be arranged so that on one branch evening, work is done purely in terms of spiritual science, and then the next evening, a subject like this is covered. When one person has done it on one day, another can do it the next time. Everyone can take up something that is somehow close to them. And why should someone who has no scientific education not be able to take up this or that? There are questions of life that can also be linked to such things. It is much more useful to use the time for such studies than to extract all kinds of occult intricacies and material from dreams and tell people about them. This is not meant to be one-sided either. It is not meant to say that one can never speak of occult experiences; but it is a matter of drawing the right line of connection. It is not a matter of despising the science of the senses, but of mastering it. The science of the senses is not to be trampled or destroyed, but mastered.

The spiritual science of Anthroposophy, which I had the honor of speaking about here in The Hague last Tuesday and yesterday evening, does not just pursue cognitive goals, nor just the goal of deepening our knowledge of the human being in scientific, moral, and religious terms. It also has practical goals. And it was requested that I speak this evening about one of these practical goals, about the goal of education.

Since this spiritual science strives above all to achieve a true knowledge of the whole, the complete human being - the human being in relation to his physical, his soul and his spiritual being - it can also impart knowledge of human nature in practical life, knowledge of human nature in relation to all ages. And for the art of education, knowledge of human nature in relation to the child itself is, of course, essential.

The question of education is essentially a question of the teacher. It is a question of the teacher in so far as it concerns whether the teacher, whether the educator, is able to solve the human riddle in practice with the child. Perhaps it is in this riddle of childhood that we most clearly perceive the meaning of that ancient saying, which is written like a motto over human knowledge: the saying that the solution to the riddle of the world lies within man himself.

Many people are afraid that if a solution to the riddle of the world were pointed out, human knowledge would then have nothing more to do. But if one is of the opinion that man himself is the solution to all the countless secrets that the universe holds, so to speak, as the ultimate goal of this world development, then one knows that one has to seek the solution to the riddles of the world in man, but man himself, if one wants to get to know him, again requires immeasurable effort, immeasurable work, to gain insight into his nature.

If one is so inclined towards the human being in the world that an immortal is hidden in him, then one also comes to have the shy reverence for the child that one must have as a teacher and educator if one wants to approach this child in the right way.

Today, with regard to the knowledge of human nature, I will endeavor to refrain from the arguments that I have been making in recent days about the knowledge of the human spirit and the spirit of the world. I will try to express the spiritual-scientific content in the most popular terms possible, so that those of our honored listeners who were not present in the last few days can also follow the arguments.

The point is this: anyone who deepens their views on life through what can give them a real – not abstract – knowledge of the human soul and spirit sees, above all, major divisions in the life of the human being; they see that they have to structure the entire life of the human being into epochs. These epochs are not always regarded with the proper interest and deep insight that they deserve. But anyone who wants to have a truly human relationship with a child as an educator or teacher must have a thorough knowledge of these epochs.

We see such an epoch in the child's life coming to a close around the age of seven, when the child gets the second teeth. The person who is a judge of character regards these second teeth only as the external symbol of a significant change in the child's physical, mental and spiritual development. And anyone who is able to practise the art of education in a proper and professional manner will also see a change in the child's mental characteristics and spiritual abilities as the teeth change. Let us just consider the fact that a metabolic turnover also takes place in the human organism at a later age, that after eight or nine years we no longer have the same material composition, the same substances within us, that we had before. If we consider this, we must nevertheless say to ourselves: What happens in the seventh year during the change of teeth is a powerful development of strength that the organism does not repeat in later life and that is also not a one-off event or an event that occurs over a short period of time. Anyone who has an insight into the development of the human organism knows how everything is prepared in the most intimate metabolic processes during the first seven years of life, which then, so to speak, finds its conclusion, its end point, in the second teeth.

And with regard to the soul, we see how, for example, memory, but also imagination, works differently with these second teeth – above all in terms of its nature – than it did before. We see how memory previously developed to a high degree unconsciously, as if from the depths of the child's physical being, and how it later becomes more spiritual. These things must be delicately hinted at, for they hardly lend themselves to a rough approach.

But what is especially important for the educator above all is that the child in the first years of life, up to the change of teeth, is completely devoted to the outside world as an imitative being. The child's relationship to the outer world is based on the fact – I do not say this to express a paradox, but to describe something very real – that in the first seven years of life, almost in these seven years, the child is almost entirely a sensory organ, that it perceives the environment not only with its eyes and ears, but that its whole organism is given over to the environment, similar to the sensory organs in later life. And just as the images of external things and processes are prepared in the sense organs, which are then only mentally recreated within, so it is the case with the child's organism that the child, as an imitative being, wants to imitate inwardly everything it sees outside. It wants to give itself completely to the outside world. It wants to imitate within itself everything that presents itself outside. The child is a complete sensory organ. And if one were to look into a child's organism with the clairvoyant sense, with the exact clairvoyance of which I have spoken in recent days, one would perceive, for example, how taste, which for an adult is experienced on the tongue and palate, extends much further into the organism in a child. Thus, one does not err when one says: In the infant, for example, it is the case that he also experiences breast milk with his whole body according to the taste.

We must enter into such intimacies of the human physical life if we really want to gain the delicate knowledge necessary for the art of education.

And when we look at how the child is an imitator through and through, then we understand, I would say in every single aspect, how the child learns to speak. We can literally follow how the child is led to follow, step by step, through imitation, what is struck as a sound, and to make its own inner being similar to what is perceived externally. And we can look into all the details of the child and see everywhere how the child is completely a sensory organ, completely an imitator, completely devoted to the sensory world around it.

In this respect, we can understand the child in relation to certain things that should not be judged in the same way as in the older child or even in the adult. I will illustrate this with an example. A father once asked me - this really happened in real life -: “What should I do with my boy? He stole money from his mother.” I asked the father: How old is the child? The child was not yet six years old. I had to say to the father: He who really understands the child cannot speak of theft here; the child had – as it turned out in the conversation with the father – seen daily how the mother took money out of the drawer. The child is an imitator; it also took money because it saw her do it. The entire action is exhausted in imitation, because the child did not attach any importance to having some of the so-called stolen money himself. He bought sweets with it and even gave them to other children. Hundreds of such examples could be given.

The mental life of the child after the change of teeth presents itself differently. We see how the child begins to give itself not only to sensory impressions, but to live completely within these sensory impressions and to make itself inwardly similar to what it sees around it. The child now begins to listen to what is said to it in words. But what the child encounters in its environment is needed in such a way that it is carried by the human personality. Therefore, we may say: until the second dentition has changed, the child is an imitative being; from the second dentition onwards - and this essentially lasts until sexual maturity - it becomes a being that no longer imitates but follows what comes to it through the imaginations of the personalities around it. And the teacher and educator must above all ensure that what he says to the child actually becomes a norm and guiding principle for the child. With the change of teeth, the imitative life transitions into a life in which the child, through his natural sense of right and wrong, wants to follow self-evident authority.

All teaching and education in this second phase of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, must be geared towards this natural sense of authority. At this age, the child learns to recognize as true that which the beloved, authoritative personality presents as true. What is beautiful, what is good, is felt to be sympathetic by the child or followed in dependence, in authoritative dependence on the beloved educational personality. And if we want to teach a child something between the ages of seven and fourteen or fifteen that will be fruitful for the child throughout his or her life, then we must be able to clothe everything we teach the child during this time in this authoritative element.

My dear audience, anyone who, like me, was able to refer yesterday to his “Philosophy of Freedom”, written more than thirty years ago, will not assume that he wants to focus too much on the authoritarian principle. But anyone who loves freedom above all else, who sees in freedom the self-evident law of social life, must point out, based on a true understanding of the human being, that the period between the ages of seven and fourteen is the time when a child thrives solely by being able to draw strength and inspiration from a personality that it perceives as a self-evident authority. Thus we would like to say: in the first seven years of life – this is all approximate, more or less – the child is an imitative, intuitive creature; in the second seven years of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, the child is a being that listens to its human environment and naturally wants to be placed under an authority.

Anyone who, like the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here, follows the development of the human being in terms of body, soul and spirit, knows what an enormous significance it has for later life, and perhaps even for old age, if the human being was able to reverence, even if only in the form of a special education for a short time. For example, if one was able to hear about a personality highly revered in the family when one was eight or nine years old, and to really absorb some of that reverence through hearing about them. And then the day approaches when one is supposed to see them for the first time. That day when everything is clothed in shyness and reverence and one expectantly gets the door opened to see this personality for the first time. If one knows how such an experience works, when the soul, in relation to authority, is surrendered to the outer world, as in the first years of childhood the whole human being is surrendered as a sense being — then one knows what a benefit one does to the child during the sculptural age when one lets him experience a great deal of this shy reverence for the self-evident authority.

One must observe such things if one wants to become an educator or teacher out of knowledge of human nature. Then one will consider above all that the human being is not only a spatial organism, in which the individual limb of his body stands in spatial interaction with some other distant limb, but that the human being is also a temporal organism. Knowledge of human nature cannot be acquired without being oriented towards the human being as a time organism. If you take any limb of the right hand, it is in interaction with every other limb of this spatial organism in the human being through an inner overall organization. But if you look at what a person is first in childhood, then in later childhood, in the period of youth and maidenhood, in adulthood, in declining age, then in old age - then everything is intimately connected in time. And anyone who, as an educator and teacher, only looks at the child's present life, at the eight- to nine-year-old child, is not fully fulfilling their duty. Only those who know that what they do for the seven- to eight-year-old child continues to have an effect in the temporal organism, which is a unity - from the child, from the middle-aged person, from the elderly person - and that what that which is kindled in the soul during childhood continues to work, but becomes different, metamorphosed: only those who can form an idea of the way in which this changes, transforms, can educate in the true sense of the word.

I would like to give you an example. You see, it is considered so important that a child understand everything that is taught to him with his still-tender mind. This contradicts the principle of self-evident authority. But anyone who only wants to convey to the child what it can immediately grasp with its delicate mind does not consider the following example. It means a great deal if, in one's eighth or ninth year, one has accepted something as a matter of course and authority as true, beautiful, good, that an honored authority describes as beautiful, good, and true, and one has not yet fully understood it. In the thirty-fifth year, or perhaps even later, it comes up from the depths of the soul. One has become more mature in the meantime. Now one understands it, now one brings it up, now one illuminates it with mature life experience.

Something like this – when, at a later age, one understands out of maturity what one had previously accepted only out of love for authority, when one feels such a reminiscence coming up in later life and only now understands it – something like this signifies a flare-up of new life forces, an enormous principle in the soul, of which one is just not always fully aware.

In another way, I can make it even clearer what I actually mean by the principle that one should educate in such a way that what one brings up works for the whole of life. You know that there are people who enter into any environment where other people are and work like a blessing just by their presence. They do not need to exert themselves much in speaking, their words are breathed out, warmed through by something that has a blessing effect on other people. As a rule, these people will be of mature or advanced age, and will be able to exert such a blessing effect through their mere presence in a very special sense.

Those who study the human being not only in the present moment, but really throughout their entire life – which is a difficult study. In physiology, in the ordinary study of man, it is easier to study only the present moments or short periods of time. But those who whole human life, knows how such a blessing effect, which comes from later in life, is usually connected with the fact that the person in question was able to worship, to look, to look devoutly at another person as a child. And I would like to express it paradigmatically by saying that no one who has not learned to fold their hands as a child can effectively use them to bless in old age. Folded hands in children contain the spiritual seeds of hands that bless in old age. The human being is not only a spatial organism, but also a temporal one, and everything is connected in the temporal life, just as the individual limbs are connected in the spatial organism in interaction.

Anyone who fully understands this will also avoid teaching the child such concepts that cannot be changed in later life. It is so easy for the teacher or educator to be tempted to approach the child with the greatest possible certainty, to give him or her concepts and ideas with sharp contours. This would be just like putting the delicate hands of the child, which are still to grow and change, in brackets so that they cannot grow. Just as the child's physical organism must grow, so too must the forces of growth inherent in what the teacher, the educator, has taken into his soul. We can only bring this into the child if we also shape the education and teaching artistically during the compulsory school age.

By way of illustration, I would like to point out how we at the Waldorf School - which was founded a few years ago by Emil Molt in Stuttgart and which I run - incorporate this artistic principle into our teaching. I can only give you a brief sketch of it today.

For example, when teaching reading, we do not assume that we can directly teach the child what letters are. These letters are, after all, something quite alien to human nature. Just think of how, in earlier times, there was a pictographic writing, a pictographic writing that arose primarily from the fact that what had been perceived was imitated in the picture. In this way, writing was very close to what was perceived. Writing had something directly to do with the human being. In the course of the development of civilization, the forms of letters have become detached from the human being. There is no need to study history to such an extent that the old pictographic script is brought to life again in school. But it is good for the teacher to let their artistic imagination run free, to let the children draw and paint forms that reflect what the child feels, in which the child lives.

Thus, at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, we do not start with learning to read or learning to write in the usual way, but rather artistically, with painting and drawing. We develop the forms of the letters out of this drawing, and in fact we always develop out of the artistic realm first. We also let the children work with paints, even though this is more difficult and must be developed out of the dirty. We begin with the artistic realm and develop writing out of it, and only then reading. And in this way an artistic quality should permeate the entire lesson.

This can happen right up to the point when the children learn arithmetic, if the teachers are there for it, those teachers who have become experts through a real deepening of their own soul treasures by absorbing the guiding forces of a real anthroposophical spiritual science into their minds, into their knowledge, into their feelings, into their will. Those who have assimilated spiritual science in this living way can work from the spirit to transform all teaching into an artistic activity. But when the teacher of this childhood stage becomes completely artistic in his dealings with the child, then he works not so much through what he knows, but through the nature of his personality. He works through his individuality. And the child receives through this in his mind something that has the power of growth in it, just as the physical organism has the power of growth in it. Later on, in one's thirties or forties, one is then in a position not only to think back, as if remembering, to the fixed concepts one was taught at school and which one should recall. No, these concepts have grown with one, have changed. This is how we must work as teachers; we must be able to treat the child as an educator.

In this way we exercise authority, but at the same time we work in the truest sense of the word for the freedom of the child; for we must always be clear in our own minds that we are true educators only when we can also guide in the right way those people who will one day be more capable than we are as teachers. It could well be that we find ourselves teaching in a school, let us say in a class with two geniuses. And if we as teachers are not geniuses ourselves, we must educate the children in such a way that we do not hinder the development of their genius. If we educate in the sense and spirit that I have just mentioned, that we artistically bring to the child with our personality what it needs, just as in earlier years it needed to imitate what it perceived through the senses, so now it needs that what we ourselves are as teachers, then we will be no more of an obstacle to the forces that may not even be in us than a mother carrying the germ of a child within her is an obstacle to genius if she is not a genius herself. We become custodians of the child's qualities and will not be tempted to impose on the child what we ourselves are. That is the worst educational principle, to want to make children into an image of ourselves. We will not be tempted to do so if we acquire knowledge of human nature in the sense of spiritual insight, and if the child is a mystery for us to solve at every stage of life.

My only regret is that we cannot yet have a kindergarten so that younger children too can be educated in these principles. We are not yet able to do so for financial reasons. But those who are teachers at the Stuttgart Waldorf School feel how what is revealed in the human physical organism as soul and spirit through the gaze, through the physiognomy, through the word, through everything possible, makes use of the body — which is by no means neglected in this education — how it has descended from divine spiritual heights and united with what has become of it from the father and mother in the hereditary current through conception or through birth. Anyone who approaches the child with the feeling that this child has descended from the spiritual world to you, and that you are to solve its riddle from day to day, from hour to hour, has in his mind the loving devotion to the child's development that is necessary to guide this child through all possible imponderables on its path through life. And it is such imponderables – that is, those things that cannot be grasped in a rough and ready way – that are often involved in education and teaching. It is truly not only that which a systematizing educational science wants to accept as prevailing between the educator and the child.

I would like to illustrate what I mean with another example. Let us assume that a teacher has the task of teaching a child in a childlike, simple way about the immortality of the human soul. This must be taught to the child, who is between the change of teeth and sexual maturity and is preferably attuned to receiving images – not yet abstract concepts – and who wants to accept everything on the basis of self-evident authority, precisely through an image.

Now this image can be presented to the child in two ways. You can say: I, the teacher, am terribly clever. The child is still terribly foolish. I have to teach it about the immortality of the soul. I will use an image. I will say to the child: look at the butterfly chrysalis, the butterfly will crawl out of it. It will crawl out as a visible being. Just as the butterfly crawls out of the chrysalis as a visible being, so your soul will separate from the physical body at death, as from a chrysalis, and fly away into the spiritual world.

Of course I am not saying that this is philosophical proof. It is certainly not that. But a view can be taught to the child in this way. I can do it – as I said – the way I have just described it. I say, I know all this well, because I am clever and the child is stupid. I teach it to the child. It is a foolish comparison, but the child should believe it.

Now, my esteemed audience, you will not achieve anything by approaching the child in this way, because the child may remember it, but what you are supposed to achieve, raising the soul's level, filling the soul with a life-giving content, you cannot do that in this way. But it can be done in another way, if you do not say to yourself: You are clever as a teacher, the child is foolish, but if you say to yourself - forgive me for speaking so paradoxically -: Perhaps the child is even much cleverer than you are in the subconscious depths of his soul. Perhaps you are the foolish one and the child is cleverer. In a sense this is true, because who knows how the still unformed internal organs, namely the brain, are shaped by the still unconscious soul, the dreaming soul of the child, how an immensely significant wisdom is formed in the earliest years of childhood. Anyone who has an appreciation for such things, who is not a crude philistine and cannot appreciate such things, still says to himself: All the wisdom we acquire in life, no matter how beautiful machines it may produce, is not as far advanced as the unconscious wisdom of the child.

Teachers who work in anthroposophical settings believe that the butterfly can emerge from the chrysalis, because they say to themselves: I am not making this comparison, nature itself is making this comparison. What happens at a higher level, the release of the immortal soul from the body, is modeled in nature by the deity itself in the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. If I imbue what I hold in front of the child as an image with my own feelings, then I give the child what is right, I give it life force with it. Nothing that I do not myself believe in with all my might can have the right effect on the child. These are the imponderables that should be at work between the teacher and the child, the unspoken, that which lies only in the exchange of feelings, the supersensible in teaching. If that is not there, then, I would say, only the gross, not the imponderable, is at work, and then we do not give the human being what is right for the path of life.

I wanted to use these things to point out, above all, how an artistic element, I would like to say a pious mood towards the human being, belongs in education and teaching. This is particularly evident when we turn our attention to the religious and moral education that we want to give the child. And here anthroposophical spiritual science, which I have had the opportunity to speak about here in The Hague during the past few days, shows us how, precisely in relation to the religious and moral element present in the human being, this temporal organism has its great significance for the whole human being and his earthly life. If we can gain insight into the attitude of the very young child, who imitates everything, towards his whole external world, and if we can put ourselves in this child's place, then we cannot characterize it other than by saying that the child is completely given over to the external world; he loses himself to the external world. Just as the eye loses itself in the outer world of colors and light, so the child loses itself in the outer world. The inner world dawns only very gradually. Out of dreams that are still completely absorbed in the outer world, more definite ideas gradually emerge.

Now, my dear audience, when you have truly appreciated this mood in the child, do you know what it is? It is in truth the pious mood, it is in truth the religious mood, placed in the midst of the sense world. However strong a tomboy the child may be in other respects, in relation to its relationship to the sense world, in relation to its devotion to the sense world, the child is religiously minded. It wants to be itself wholly what it beholds in its surroundings. There is not yet any religion in which the child finds itself. But this mood, which is present in the child especially in the first years and gradually fades away until the change of teeth, this mood, which is no longer present when the self-evident sense of authority sets in with the change of teeth, reappears in a remarkable way later on for the insightful teacher.

When children reach primary school age between the ages of nine and ten, the truly insightful teacher and educator may be faced with their greatest challenge. For it is then that they will notice that most of the children entrusted to them approach them and have a particular need for them, that they do not always have explicit questions but often have unspoken ones, living only in their feelings. These questions can take on hundreds of thousands of forms. It is much less important to give the child a specific answer. Whether one gives one answer or another is not as important as the content of the answer. What is most important, however, is that you instill the right trust in the child with the right feeling, that you approach the child with the right feeling at just the right moment, which for children always occurs between the ages of nine and ten.

I can characterize this moment in the most diverse ways. When we teach the child, we notice that before this moment, which lies between the ages of nine and ten, he does not yet properly distinguish himself from his environment, does not properly experience himself as an ego - even if he has long been saying “I” to himself. In this moment of life, he really learns to distinguish himself from his environment. We can now no longer just influence the child with fairy tales and all kinds of lessons, in which we bring the outside world to life. We can now already draw attention to the fact that the child distinguishes himself from the outside world as “I”.

But something else of fundamental importance occurs, which is deeply connected with the moral development. This occurs: in the early days of that epoch of life in which the child is subject to authority, he takes this authoritative personality as it is. Between the ages of nine and ten – it does not even need to be conscious of this, it can happen deep within the feeling, in the subconscious, as it is called, but there it is – the child sees itself forced, through its development, to look through the authoritative personality at what this authoritative personality itself is based on. This authoritative personality says: This is true, this is good, this is beautiful. Now the child wants to feel and sense where this comes from in the authoritative personality, what the knowledge of the good, true and beautiful is, the will in the true, good and beautiful. This comes from the fact that what I would like to say in the depths of the soul has been retained during the change of teeth and even afterwards, which in early childhood was, if I may use the strange word, a sensual-pious surrender to the outside world, because that has disappeared there in the depths of the soul and now emerges spiritually as if from the depths of the human being. What was sensual in the infant until the change of teeth, what as sensual is the germ of all later religious feeling towards the world, that emerges soulfully between the ages of nine and ten, becomes a soul need.

Knowing this, and reckoning with the fact that, just as one lovingly tends the plant germ so that it becomes a plant, one now has before one, in soul form, that which was once prepared in the child in a sensually germinal way, and has to be cared for in soul form, gives one a special relationship with the child. And in this way one lays the religious germ in the child.

Then the educators will notice that in later life, towards the seventeenth or eighteenth year, what has emerged as a religious feeling in the soul, that then emerges spiritually, that it is absorbed into the will, so that the person builds up their religious ideals during this time.

You see, it is extremely important to understand these things at the fundamental level if we want to educate and teach in a meaningful, truthful and realistic way. After all, nature has taken care of the physical organism of the human being, otherwise we might not be sure whether - especially if the people concerned are modern futuristic painters - people might even think of putting their ear in the wrong place or something similar. Such things could well happen if nature had not provided for the whole corresponding organization of the human being. So we, as teachers and educators, must take care of the time organism. We must not try to cultivate the religious sense of the child's soul in any other way than in preparation for the moment between the ages of nine and ten. We must handle this time body of the child with care. We must say to ourselves: Whatever religious feelings and concepts you teach the child before that remains external to him; he accepts them on authority. But between the ages of nine and ten something awakens in him. If you perceive this and direct the feelings that then arise of their own accord out of the soul in the religious sense, you make the child into a religiously true human being. There is so little real psychology of the age today, otherwise people would know where the false religious feelings and sentiments that are present in social life today come from: because it is believed that anything can be developed in a person at any age, because it is not known what exactly needs to be brought out of the child's soul between the ages of nine and ten.

If we organize the entire curriculum in such a way that by the age of twelve the child has absorbed so much from the natural sciences – entirely in keeping with primary school education and teaching – that he has an overview of some physical and botanical concepts and so on, not in a scientific but in a thoroughly childlike sense, then at this age, around the age of twelve, we can look at the child and the child treated accordingly – that conflict that arises when, on the one hand, we look up to the divine governance of the world, to which the child can be guided between the ages of nine and ten, and that contrast that arises when we only take note of the external – not moral, not divine-spiritual – unfolding of forces in the natural phenomena that manifest themselves before us. These natural phenomena present themselves to us without appearing to be permeated by moral principles, without our directly perceiving the divine in them.

This is what brought modern people into the conflict in the first place, which on the one hand directs the mind to the religious sources of existence, and on the other hand to knowledge of nature. Around the age of twelve, our knowledge of human nature tells us that we can gently address these conflicts in the maturing child, but that we are also in a position - because the soul-religious feelings are still so strong, so fresh, so full of life, so youthful, as they can only be in a twelve-year-old child, then to be able to guide the child in the right way, so that in later life he does not need to see nature itself as divinized, but can find the harmony between nature and the divine-spiritual essence of the world.

It is important that one allows this conflict to arise around the twelfth year, again taking into account the right development of the temporal organism in man, because it can be most effectively bridged by the forces that are present in the human soul at that time.

In turn, for anyone who is able to observe social life today in truth — not lovelessly, but with a genuine psychology — the art of education offers the insight that many people cannot overcome the conflict mentioned because they were not led into this conflict at the right age and helped to overcome it.

The main thing is that the teacher and educator know about the life of the human being in general, so that when they encounter an individual child or young person, they can recognize what is right at the right time and know how to orient themselves at the right time.

Religious experience also lies within the human being itself. We cannot graft it into him; we have to extract it from the soul. But just as we cannot eat with our nose, but have to eat with our mouths, so we have to know that we cannot teach the religious to a person at any age, but only at the appropriate age. This is something we learn primarily through a true knowledge of the spirit: to bring the right thing to the child at the right age. Then the child takes that which is appropriate to his abilities.

And when we look at this child development and know how everything between the change of teeth and sexual maturity is geared to the personal relationship between teacher and child, and how there must be something thoroughly artistic in this personal relationship , then we will also see that for the child it must initially be a kind of pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and antipathy, which in turn develops out of imponderables in the face of self-evident authority.

The teacher either talks to the child in stories, in parables – there are hundreds of possible ways – about what he finds morally good and what he finds morally evil. If he is really able to develop an artistic education, then the artistic element between the educator and the child works in such a way that the child, precisely through this inclination towards the self-evident authority, learns to look with sympathy to good and antipathy to evil, and that between about seven and fourteen years of age a moral sense develops in the child out of pleasure and displeasure.

It is completely wrong to try to get the child to obey rules during these years. We either enslave the child or make it malicious, stubborn, and rebellious against the rules. It does not understand why it should follow the commandments. But it can like or dislike what the self-evident authority finds right or wrong, good or evil, and it can learn to follow it with sympathy or antipathy. And this sympathy and antipathy becomes the self-evident content of the soul.

What develops in a scholastic way during this period of life, what has been established in the child's moral sense between the ages of seven and fourteen in the manner indicated, only comes to the fore in the seventeenth or eighteenth year as a volitional impulse, provided that the personality is present later on who, through his own enthusiasm for moral ideals, for beautiful human ideals, shines forth for the young person as a later guide in life - as a volitional impulse only appears in the seventeenth or eighteenth year.

Just as the plant germ is not yet the plant, but the plant germ must first come into being for the plant to arise, so too must the moral will in a healthy way be able to become the ripe fruit of the moral person in the sixteenth or seventeenth year, with all its strength, if the moral feeling has developed between the seventh and fourteenth year, in the process of clinging to the self-evident authority.

And what is the safest way for us to develop this moral sense? If we direct all instruction, all education, in such a way that the child learns to develop a feeling above all else. If possible, the education of even the very young child, long before the change of teeth, can take care of this if we direct this child in such a way that it learns to develop feelings of gratitude towards everything it receives in life. The feeling of gratitude is underestimated today. This feeling of gratitude connects people with the world and allows people to recognize themselves as a part of the world. If a child is guided in such a way that it can develop a clear feeling of gratitude for the smallest of things, then the child does not shut itself away in selfishness, but becomes altruistic and connects with its surroundings. Then one arrives at directing the lessons in such a way, even at school age, that the child gradually receives its physical existence, its soul existence, its spiritual existence, so to speak, in gratitude from the powers of the world, from the physical, from the soul and from the spiritual powers of the world, and that this feeling of gratitude spreads into a feeling of gratitude towards the world from whose bosom one has sprung.

Thus can the feeling of gratitude towards parents, educators, towards all the environment, be transferred into the great feeling of gratitude towards the divine rulers of the world.

This feeling of gratitude must be there before any knowledge that a person can ever acquire. Any knowledge, no matter how logically justified, that does not at the same time lead to the feeling of gratitude towards the world, is detrimental to a person's development, and in a sense maims them mentally and spiritually.

This is shown by spiritual science, which I have had the honor of representing here these days: that every, even the highest, even the most exact knowledge, can lead to feelings, but above all to feelings of gratitude. And if you have planted the feeling of gratitude in the child, then you will see that you have planted the soil for moral education. For if one has cultivated this feeling of gratitude and this feeling of gratitude proves to be compatible with all knowledge, then the child's feeling easily becomes one of love, as one must have it for all other people, and ultimately for all creatures in the world. One will be able to develop love most surely out of the feeling of gratitude.

And in particular, one will be able – again from that point in time, which lies between the ninth and tenth year of life – to gradually transform authority into an authority imbued with love. The teacher's whole behavior must be organized in such a way that this authority, which at first, I would say, is neutral in the face of love, becomes a matter of course, a matter of obedience, a free obedience when the child is nine or ten years old, so that the child follows in love the self-evident authority, in a love that it already awakens in itself, in a love that it already understands.

If one has developed feelings of gratitude and love in the right way in one's soul, then later on one is also able to bring the moral sense of the child or young person to the point where the person now life really sees that which is the very basis of his human dignity to the highest degree: he sees that which elevates him above the mere sensual world, above the mere physical world, which lifts him up to a truly spiritual existence.

In these days I have tried to describe the spiritual world from a supersensible knowledge in certain respects. The spiritual researcher can acquire knowledge of this spiritual world. But with our moral inner life, we also stand in a spiritual way in our ordinary life at all times when we feel the moral with the necessary strength and the necessary purity. But we achieve this if we teach the child a very definite knowledge of human nature. And we should not dismiss any child from the school that is the general school of life, the general elementary school, without a certain knowledge of human nature. We should dismiss the child only when we have imbued it to a certain degree – and it is only possible to this degree – with the motto: “Know thyself”.

Of course, this “know thyself” can be brought to an ever higher level through all possible science and wisdom. But to a certain extent, every elementary school should teach the child to fulfill the “know thyself”. To a certain extent, the human being should recognize himself as body, soul and spirit. But this knowledge of the human being, as it follows from real knowledge of the spirit, establishes a true connection between good and between human beings.

Why does today's recognized science not go as far as to recognize this connection? Because it does not fully recognize the human being. But just as one would not be a complete human being if one lacked blood circulation in some organ - the organ would have to atrophy - so one learns, when one really looks at the whole human being in terms of body, soul and spirit, to recognize that good is what makes a human being human in the first place, and that evil is something that comes from the human being remaining incomplete.

A child who has been guided through life with gratitude and love ultimately comes to understand that a person is only complete when they see themselves as the embodiment of the divine order of the world, of good in the world, in their earthly existence. If one has based moral education on gratitude and thus overcome selfishness in a healthy way – not through mystical-moral declamation or sentimentality – if one has transformed gratitude into love in a healthy, non-sentimental way, then in the end one will be able to young person who loves the world to the realization that the person who is not good as a whole person in body, soul and spirit is just as crippled in the spiritual as someone who is crippled in having one leg missing. One learns to recognize the good in the imagination, in the etheric knowledge of the spirit as the complete human being.

And so, just as if you were to find a diagram of the nervous or circulatory system, a fleeting glance at which resembles a shadow of the human being itself, so too, when you form an image of the good through intuitive knowledge, this is the model for the whole human being.

But here moral education unites with religious education. For only now does it make sense that God is the source of good and man is the image, the likeness of God. Here, religious and moral education will lead to man feeling - and incorporating this feeling into his will - that he is only a true man as a moral man, that if he does not want the moral, he is not a real complete man. If you educate a person in such a way that he can honestly feel that he is being robbed of his humanity if he does not become a good, moral person, then you will give him the right religious and moral education.

Do not say that one can easily speak of these things, but that they must remain an ideal because the outside world can never be perfect. Of course the outside world cannot be perfect. He who speaks out of the spirit of spiritual science knows that quite certainly and quite exactly. But what can permeate us as an attitude, in that we teach or educate, what can give us enthusiasm in every moment and with this enthusiasm brings us to be understood by the childlike soul, that we find the way to the childlike will, that lies nevertheless in what I have just hinted at - in a true knowledge of human nature, which culminates in the sentence: The truly complete human being is only the morally good human being, and the religious impulses permeate the morally good human being.

Thus all education can be brought to a climax in moral and religious education. But here too we must realize that the human being carries within him a time organism, and that in order to educate the child we must, in a spirit of spiritual insight, learn to observe this time organism hour by hour, week by week, year by year. We must lovingly enter into the details.

I have thus indicated to you how guidelines can be obtained from a spiritual knowledge for a part of practical life, for education. I am not just describing something that exists in gray theory. I have already indicated to you that those educational principles which I could only sketch out very briefly have been applied for years at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, that from the outset what I have suggested here for religious education permeates the entire curriculum, a curriculum that is based on the pre-service training of the Stuttgart Waldorf School teachers. And I may add that now, looking back over the first years of the school's development, we can say, even if everything remains imperfect in the outer life, that it is possible to make these principles practical principles so that they reveal themselves in the unfolding of the child's life.

And so these impulses of religious and moral education also show themselves, just as the fruitfulness of the impulses of physical education shows itself on the other side, guided from the spiritual and soul side, for example in the application of the art of eurythmy in school. I mention this only because it has been shown how children naturally find their way into this eurythmic art, just as they find their way into speaking the sounds at an earlier age, and to show you that those who want to see religious and moral education practised in such a way, as discussed today, do not want to neglect physical education at all. On the contrary, anyone who looks at the life of the child with such reverence and spiritual activity does not neglect physical education either, because he knows that the spiritual and soul-like is expressed in the body down to the individual blood vessels and that anyone who neglects it is, so to speak, pushing the spirit back from the sensory world into which it wants to manifest itself.

Above all, the child is a unity of body, soul and spirit, and only those who understand how to educate and teach the child in this totality as a unit, based on genuine observation of human beings, are true teachers and educators.

This is what we are striving for at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart and what has already been practically proven to a certain extent in relation to what I have tried to show you today as just one side of education. But what must always be said with regard to this area and other areas of life – and it is obvious to turn our gaze to the whole of social life, which is stuck in so many dead ends today, it is obvious from the point of view of education – is this: social conditions today can only experience the desirable improvement if we place people in social life in the right way, not just by improving external institutions. When all this is considered, the importance of a true, realistic art of education becomes clear; and it is this kind of realistic art of education that Waldorf school education, Waldorf school didactics, wants to introduce into the world as a prime example of an art of education.

It has already experienced a great deal of success, and anyone who is enthusiastic about a realistic art of education based on spiritual science naturally wants it to be widely adopted. For it is built, I would say, on an archetypal truth. Education is also something that must be seen as part of the social life of human beings. For this social life is not only the coexistence of people of the same age, it is the coexistence of young and old. And finally, part of social life is the coexistence of the teacher, the educator, with the child. Only when the teacher sees the whole human being in the child and can, in a prophetic, clairvoyant way, see what depends on each individual educational and teaching activity that he undertakes in terms of happiness and destiny for the whole of life, will he educate in the right way. Because all life, and therefore also the life of education and teaching that takes place between people, must be based on the principle that Everything that happens between people only happens right when the whole person can always give themselves to the whole person in right love.

But this must also be true in the whole field of education. Therefore, in the future, the art of teaching will be based on a secure and realistic foundation when the teacher is able to bring his best humanity to the best humanity in the child, when the relationship between teacher and child develops in the most beautiful sense of the free relationship between human beings, but also in the relationship given in the necessity of the world.

Preliminary note: During the first three-week “Anthroposophical College Course” (September 26 to October 16, 1920 in Dornach), at which 30 representatives of various disciplines gave lectures in addition to Rudolf Steiner, Three evenings of conversation also took place, on October 4, 6 and 15, 1920. During these so-called “Conversations on Spiritual Science,” questions on any topic could be asked, to which Rudolf Steiner then responded in more or less detail. The stenographers did not record the conversation evenings in their entirety, and there are gaps in some of them.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! I imagine that today, in a kind of conversation, we will discuss all kinds of questions and the like that arise in one or other of the honored listeners in connection with what has been developed here in recent days as anthroposophy. Although, as I have endeavored to arrange, you will be offered a hundred lectures during these three weeks, it is not possible to do more than touch on individual topics in outline. What can be given to you here can only be suggestions at first, but these suggestions may perhaps show that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science meant here is no less well founded

Asa is more firmly grounded than that which is taken from the external life of today's strict science, yes, that it absorbs all the methodical discipline of this science and also perceives that which stands as a great demand of the time, the demand for further development. This demand for further development arises from the fact that those impulses of scientific life, in particular, which have produced great things in the past epoch, are now in the process of dying out and would have to lead to the decline of our civilization if a new impetus were not to come.

The suggestions that have now been made for such a new impact can certainly be expanded in a variety of directions in the context of a discussion such as the one taking place today, and I would now like to ask you to contribute to this expansion. Please ask questions, express your wishes and in general put forward anything you wish to say. The questions can best be put in writing, and I ask you to make good use of this opportunity.

Mr. Conrad: The question I have to ask relates to a therapeutic area. In his lectures, Dr. Steiner pointed to certain illnesses that are currently occurring very frequently. There are certain mental disorders in this regard for which I would be grateful for an answer about the deeper causes. These are mainly speech disorders. I would like to point out that I am not motivated by personal interests, but am only asking to the extent that pedagogical interests are involved. Teachers have often asked me what to do about speech disorders. However, since this question touches on the field of therapy, I do not want to encourage questions that only concern illnesses. I would be very grateful for an answer because this question seems to be very pressing at the moment.

Rudolf Steiner: Perhaps we can start by answering this question. When something specific like this comes up, we must of course bear in mind that such specific disturbances in the human organism can have the most diverse causes and that it is extremely difficult to talk about these things in general if we want to get to the real cause. In all such matters, my esteemed audience, it is actually a matter of using spiritual science to enable one to assess the individual case in the right way. And here I would like to say something that perhaps has a much more general significance than this question requires.

You see, we live in an age of abstraction, in an age when people love to reduce the manifold world, the multiform world, to a few formulas, when people love to establish abstract laws that encompass vast areas of existence. They can only do so in an abstract way, ignoring the individual. Spiritual science will have to bring about a significant change in this direction in particular. It will indulge less in simplifying the manifold existence and will bring insights about the concrete spiritual. But by approaching the concrete spiritual, one's soul is stimulated in such a way that the ability to observe and judge is strengthened and invigorated. This will become apparent in people's general social interaction. A large part of the social question today actually lies in the fact that we no longer have any inclination to really get to know the person we pass by, because our inner being does not have the kind of stimuli that enable us to properly grasp the individual, the particular. Here spiritual science will achieve something different. Spiritual science will enrich our inner life again, enabling it to grasp the particular. And so our powers of observation and discrimination and all that will be particularly developed. Therefore, we will have less desire for abstract generalizations, but more desire for the particular, the individual. In a sense, we will adhere more to the exemplary than to the abstract. And especially when dealing with something like physical disorders, with speech disorders, one must say: almost every single case is different – it is of course a slight exaggeration, but still generally valid – almost every single case is different, and at least one must distinguish typical ones.

We must be clear about the fact that some of the things that cause speech disorders are, of course, organically determined, that is, in a certain way, based on the inadequate development of this or that organ. But a whole series of such disorders in the present day are due to the fact that the human being's spiritual and soul forces are not being developed in the right way. And it may even be said that if a proper development of the spiritual and mental abilities of the human being can be achieved through education in childhood, at a time when the human organism is still pliable, then organic disorders can also be overcome to a certain extent; they can be overcome more easily than at a later age, when the body is more solidified. Our entire education system has gradually become more and more abstract. Our pedagogy does not suffer from bad principles. In general, if we look at the abstract treatment of pedagogical principles, we can see that we had great and significant achievements in the 19th century. And if you look at today's abstract way of applying how to do this or that in school, you have to say that 19th-century pedagogy really means something quite tremendous. But the art of responding to the individual child, of noticing the particular development of the individual child, is something that has been lost in modern times through the rush towards intellectuality and abstraction. To a certain extent, we are no longer able to strengthen the child's soul and spirit in the right way through abstract education. Do not think that when such a demand is made, it is only to point to a one-sided, unworldly education of soul and spirit – oh no. It may seem paradoxical today, but it is actually the case that materialism has had the tragic fate of being unable to cope with material phenomena. The best example of this is that we have such psychological theories as psycho-physical parallelism. On the one hand, we have human corporeality, which is only known from the point of view of anatomy, which only learns from the corpse; on the other hand, we have theories about the soul and spirit that are imagined up or even only live in words , and then one reflects on how this soul-spiritual, which bears no resemblance to the physical body, how this soul-spiritual is to affect the physical body. Spiritual science will lead precisely to the fact that one will be able to deal with the physical in a concrete way, that one will know such things as those which I already hinted at yesterday in the lecture and whose importance I would like to mention again here: From birth until the second set of teeth has come through, something is at work in us as human beings that we can call a sum of equilibrium forces that organize us thoroughly, and something that is mobile forces, that are life forces. This is particularly strong in our organism within this human age. What is at work in the human being is what really, I would say, pushes out the second teeth, what finds its conclusion in the pushing out of the second teeth, what, for its effectiveness in the organism, comes to a certain degree - it continues, of course - but comes to a certain degree to a conclusion with the appearance of the second teeth. It then transforms into what we can call mathematical, geometric thinking, what we can call thinking about the equilibrium conditions in space, thinking about the conditions of movement in space, what we can call finding oneself in the conditions of life in space and in time. We study what emerges from this, what passes, as it were, from a state of latency into a state of freedom, when it has just been released. There it is, as spiritual soul, as a very concrete spiritual soul, as we see it growing up in the child, when the change of teeth begins and continues into the later years of life. And now we look at this and see: what is spiritual and soul-like has an organizing effect in the body during the first seven years of life. And again, we study the connection between the spiritual and soul-like and the physical organization when we consider what the human being can then experience - albeit consciously only in inspiration - that is, what he experiences with ordinary consciousness, but still unconsciously, in the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. It is more of an immersion into physical corporeality, where in its course, first of all, as the most important phenomenon – but there are others as well – it awakens the love instinct, where it marks the end, for example, with the change of voice in the male sex, and with somewhat broader effects in the female sex. What we recognize when we observe the development of the emotional world, and when we observe, for example, something like the development of the sense of music, especially at the time when the emotional world is developing, we study this again as the connection between the soul and spiritual life and the physical organization from the seventh to the fourteenth or fifteenth year.

In short, spiritual science does not ask the abstract question: How does the soul affect the body?, but rather it studies the concrete soul, it knows that one must look at the concrete soul at certain ages and how it affects the body in other ages. Thus it transforms the abstract and therefore so unsatisfactory method of treatment of today's psychology and physiology into very concrete methods. And in the further course, one then comes to the point where one can not only determine in general through spiritual science: in the first seven years of life, equilibrium, movement, and life force are at work; but one can also specialize in how this spiritual force expresses itself in the organs, how it works in the lungs, heart, liver, and so on; one has the opportunity to really look into the human body in a living way. In this way, the knowledge of the material turns out to be quite different from what materialism can [recognize]. The peculiar thing about materialism is that it devotes itself to a false, namely an abstract, a deducted spirituality. The peculiar thing about spiritual science is that it is precisely able to assess the material in the right way. Of course, it also goes in the right way to the spiritual on the other side. More and more clearly should we fight the opinion, which starts from nebulous mystics, that spiritual science is something that deals with phantasms in general talk. No, spiritual science deals precisely with the concrete and wants to provide a view of how the spiritual and soul life works down into the individual organs. For it is only by getting to know the workings of the spiritual in a concrete way in the material existence that one recognizes the material existence. But through such a concrete penetration into the human organism, one gradually acquires — through a kind of imagination, inspiration and so on — an ability, I would say a gift, to really see the individual and then to be able to judge where any particular fault lies, for example, when speech disorders are present. At a certain childlike age, it will be possible to influence the development of the speech organs through special speech exercises. The important thing is to be able to observe what physical disorders may be present at the right age. And although all kinds of obstacles are present simply due to external circumstances – after all, today only that which is officially certified in this direction is recognized and allowed to be practiced in any way – although all kinds of obstacles are present, we can still say that, for example, some beautiful results have been achieved in the case of speech disorders simply by rhythmic speech exercises were carried out, that the particular defect was recognized, and that the person with the defective speech organism was then allowed to recite things in this or that speech rhythm, always repeating them, and that he was then instructed to place himself in the rhythmic process of these or those tones, feeling them particularly. In this direction one can achieve very significant improvements or at least relief from such disorders. But something else is also possible. For example, in the case of speech disorders, one can work particularly on regulating the respiratory process, a regulation of the respiratory process that must, however, be completely individual. This regulation of the breathing process can be achieved by letting the person you are treating develop a feeling between the internal repetition, or perhaps just thinking, but broad thinking, slow thinking of certain word connections [and the breathing process]. The peculiar thing is that if you form such word connections in the right way, then, by surrendering to such a rhythm of thought or inner rhythm of words, you convey a feeling to the person being treated: With this word and its course, its slow or fast course, you notice it in your breathing, it changes in this or that way, and you follow that. In a certain way, you make him aware of what arises as a parallel phenomenon to breathing for speech. You make him aware of it. And when he can then tell you something about it, you try to help him further, so that once he has become aware of the breathing process, he gradually reaches the point where he can consciously snap into it himself, I would even say in word contexts that he forms during this breathing process, which he can now consciously follow in a certain way, in an appropriate manner.

So you have to think of it this way: by first giving rhythms, which, depending on how the matter lies, are to be thought inwardly, murmured, whispered or recited aloud, you cause the person in question to notice a change in breathing. Now he knows that the breath changes in this way. And now he is, in a sense, forbidden from using the very word or thought material that has been given to him. He is made aware that he is now forming something similar within himself, and then he comes up with the idea of consciously paralleling this entire inner process of thinking or speaking or inwardly hearing words with the breathing process, so that a certain breathing always snaps into an inner imagining or inner hearing of words. In this way, a great deal of what I would call a poor association between the processes that are more mental, more soul-like, in speaking, and those processes that take place in the organism as more material, as physical processes, is balanced out. All of this has a particularly favorable effect when applied in the right childhood period. And it can be said that if our teachers were better psychologists, if they really had a concrete knowledge of the human body from the spirit, they would be able to work with speech disorders in a completely different way, especially in a pedagogical way.

Now, what I have mentioned can also be developed into a certain therapy, and it can also be used to achieve many favorable results for later stages of life. But it seems to me to be of particular importance – and here we could already point to certain successes that have been achieved in this direction – that such things can be cured by a particularly rational application of the principle of imitation. But then one must have a much more intimate, I might say subjective-objective knowledge of the whole human organism and its parts.

You see, people speak to each other in life; but they are hardly aware of the, I would say imponderable, effects that are exerted from person to person when speaking. But these effects are there nevertheless. We have become so abstract today that we actually only listen to the other person's intellectual content. Very few people today have a sense of what is actually meant when a person with a little more psychic-organic compassion feels, after speaking to another, how he consciously carries the other person's speech to a high degree in his own speech organism. Very few people today have any sense of what is experienced in this respect when one has to speak in succession with four, five or six people, one of whom is coughing, the second hoarse, the third shouting, the fourth speaking quite unintelligibly, and so on, because one's own organism is also involved; it vibrates along with everything, it experiences it all. And if you develop this feeling of experiencing speech, you certainly acquire a strong feeling, I might say, for defense mechanisms too. The peculiar thing is that it is precisely in the case of such things, which are so closely connected with the subjectivity of the human being as speech disorders, that one then finds out how one has to speak to someone who suffers from speech disorders, how one has to speak to him so that he can achieve something through imitation. I have met stutterers; if you have been able to empathize with their stuttering and then spoken to them rhythmically by name, then you could get them to really achieve something like forgetting their stuttering, by running after what is spoken to them, so to speak. However, you then have to be able to develop human compassion to the point where it is organic. In therapy, an enormous amount depends on the ability to make the patient forget the subjective experience associated with some objective process. And in particular, for example, a real remedy for speech disorders is, if the time between the ages of seven and fourteen is used correctly, by lovingly encouraging those with speech disorders to engage in the kind of imitation just described. It is often the case that one experiences that stutterers sometimes cannot pronounce three words properly without stumbling, cannot say three words

properly one after the other. If you give them a poem to recite that they can become completely absorbed in, that they can love, and if you stand behind it as it were as an attentive listener, then they can say whole long series of verses without stuttering. Creating such opportunities for them to do something like this is something that is a particularly good therapeutic tool from a psychological point of view. It is a bad thing to point out such defects to people, no matter what the reason. I had a poet friend who always lost his temper when someone tactless pointed out his stammering. When someone tactfully asked him, “Doctor, do you always stammer like that?” he replied, “No, only when I am confronted with someone who is thoroughly unpleasant to me.” Of course, I would have had to stutter terribly now if I had really wanted to imitate the way this answer was given.

But then, little by little, one will recognize what a significant remedy can be found in eurythmy for such and similar defects in the human organism. Eurythmy can be studied from two sides, as it were. I always draw attention to this in the introductions to the performances. I show how the speech organism and its movement tendencies can be perceived through sensory and supersensory observation of the human being today, and how these are then transferred to the whole human organism. However, the reverse approach is no less important. For, as has been very well presented to you today from a different point of view by Dr. Treichler, in the development of speech, a primeval eurythmy of human beings undoubtedly and most certainly plays a very significant role. Things do not have the sound within them, as it were, in the sense that the bim-bam theory asserts, but there is a relationship between all things, between the whole macrocosm and the human organization, this microcosm, and basically everything that happens externally in the world can also be reproduced in a certain way in movement by the human organization. And so, basically, we constantly tend to recreate all phenomena through our own organism. We do this not only with the physical organism, but also with the etheric organism. The etheric organism is in a state of perpetual eurythmy. Primitive man was much more mobile than he is today. You know, this development from mobility to stillness is still reflected in the fact that in certain circles it is considered a sign of education to behave as phlegmatically as possible when speaking and to accompany one's speech with as few gestures as possible. It is “considered” a mark of certain speakers that they always keep their hands in their trouser pockets, so that they do not make any gestures with their arms, because it is considered an expression of particularly good speech delivery when one stands still like a block. But what is caricatured here only corresponds to humanity's progression from mobility to stillness. We have to recognize a transition from a gestural language, from a kind of eurythmy, to phonetic language at the very bottom of human development in primeval times. That which has come to rest in the organism has specialized in the organs of speech, and has naturally first actually developed the organs of speech. Just as the eye is formed by light, so the speech organ is formed by a language that is initially soundless. And if we are aware of all these connections, we will gradually be able to use eurythmy particularly well by introducing it properly into the didactic process, in order to counteract anything that could interfere with speech. And in this direction, if there is even a little leisure time, it will be a very appealing task to develop our current, more artistic and pedagogically trained eurythmy more and more towards the therapeutic side and to create a kind of eurythmy therapy that will then extend in particular to such therapeutic demands as the one we have been talking about here. I am not sure whether what I have said is already exhaustive, but I wanted to address it briefly. Of course, as questions accumulate, the level of detail in the answers will have to decrease.

A participant asks how the movement of eurythmy is meant in relation to the ether body, and whether, according to spiritual scientific research, it has the same form as the body. Is the ether body localized at the larynx?

Did the Hungarians, who were recently observed by Dr. Steiner playing cards in a Hungarian border town, themselves fall under the tables or only their etheric bodies? Was this a process that could only be observed in the etheric body?

Rudolf Steiner: Please understand me correctly. Eurythmy is such that it can be performed in the physical body and through the physical body, which otherwise only the etheric body of the human being can perform. The fact that a person as a eurythmist performs the movements studied in the ether body with his physical body does not mean that the person who stands there doing eurythmy when he has some horrible thought is not carrying out this horrible thought with his ether body. He can perform the most beautiful movements with his outer, physical body, and then the etheric body, following his emotions, may dance in a rather caricature-like manner. But those people I characterized the other day as being at the Hungarian border playing cards were, of course, characterized entirely on the basis of their physical behavior. I only said that one could study these passions in the soul and spirit, the passions that led them to do such things above and below the table, and that one could study these passions in the soul and spirit.

I would like to say the following. It is generally the case, when you look at a person at rest, that the etheric body is calm and only slightly larger than the physical body. But this is only because, schematically speaking, the physical body has a dilating effect on the etheric body of the human being in all directions. If the etheric body were not held in its form by the physical body, if it were not banished from the physical body, then it would be a very mobile being. The etheric body has the inherent possibility of moving in all directions, and in addition, in an awakened state, it is under the constant influence of the mobile astral, which follows everything of a spiritual nature. The etheric body in itself is therefore something thoroughly mobile. As a painter, for example, one has the difficulty when one wants to paint something ethereal, that one must paint, I would say, as if one could paint lightning. One must translate the moving into stillness. So at the moment when you step out of the physical world, at that moment the concept of distance also ceases to apply, along with all the things that actually only relate to resting space; all that ceases, and a completely different kind of imagining begins. A form of imagining begins that can actually only be characterized by saying that it relates to the ordinary imagining of spatial things as a suction effect relates to a pressure effect. One is drawn into the matter instead of touching it and so on. This is how it is with the relationship between the etheric body and the physical body.

A participant (also speaking for others): Dear attendees, prompted by discussions with many friends, I would like to ask a few questions that may express some of what has been going through many minds and hearts over the past week. We have heard that young students in particular can hear and learn many things here that need to be carried out into our people to build a new culture. Now, in the midst of all the problems that are being discussed here, the question of the fate of our German people often arises. How must our youth place themselves in the context of the fate of our German people if they want to fulfill their inner duties in the right way and of their own free will? Just as Fichte brought forth great and powerful thoughts a hundred years ago, so too are we receiving powerful thoughts today, the realization of which we long for. In wide circles, at least in those circles that are close to the threefold order, the view prevails today that this threefold order will also be realized without intensive work, that it can thus come about all by itself, so to speak, even if people contribute nothing to it.

Now I would like to raise the question: What will actually be the fate of our nation if this fatalistic attitude prevails in our circles – which is, of course, very easily explained from our overall cultural development – and if it is not replaced by the courageous will that is wanted from here? Today one often hears that it is possible that Bolshevism will spread even further, that it is possible that anarchic conditions in Germany will continue to spread. How should we position ourselves in the face of these questions, when this fatalistic element, which I have tried to describe, is confronted with the courageous, forward-storming will?

A second question: we are talking here about anthroposophy, about human wisdom. Now the question has been repeatedly asked in recent days: what would the whole world view actually look like if one did not start from the point of view of the anthroposophist, but if one started from the point of view of some other consciousness? We know from Dr. Steiner's lectures, but also from other lectures, that the three lower realms, that is, the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, are actually the brothers of man who have remained behind. How would this now present itself if we were to relate man again to the higher hierarchy, for example to the angelic beings? Is it conceivable that what is presented from a human point of view today as anthroposophy might be presented from the point of view of a higher consciousness, that is, from the point of view of an angelic consciousness - one could perhaps speak of an angeloisophy in this context - and how would the problems appear from this point of view? I ask this question because it has repeatedly come up in our conversations in recent days.

A third question: From the previous remarks by Dr. Steiner, it is clear that eurythmy is extremely important from a therapeutic point of view. Now I would like to point out that if we observe certain things today, things that appear to be trivial, we can see how absolutely necessary eurythmy is from a different point of view. Even in certain children's toys, we can see how certain forces appropriate to the present time want to come out, push towards manifestation. [There follows a reference to diabolo games and toys that were introduced by French and American soldiers in particular.] Do such toys not show certain forces that pull downwards? Is there not something in them that expresses forces that are polar to human nature, perhaps a hint of the devilish? And so I wanted to raise the question: Is it not possible that the harmful aspects of these or other materialistic games given to children today could be overcome through eurythmy? Just yesterday in children's eurythmy we had a living example of how children can respond to eurythmy in an ingenious way and then reject everything that is contained in such games.

Rudolf Steiner: I will try to answer the questions briefly, although each one would require a lecture in itself. However, I would ask you to bear in mind that if one says something in a brief answer to a question, it is of course easy for some inaccuracies or misunderstandings to arise.

First of all, the question of the fate of the German people: it is true that today an enormous sense of fatalism is emerging within broad sections of the German people. This fatalistic mood can be observed on a large scale and in detail. And this fatalistic mood was also, I might say tragically there when we began in April of last year in Stuttgart to seek understanding for the threefold social organism and for the upliftment of what lies in such a terrible way, that comes from this understanding. But on the other hand, it must be said that we have arrived at a very special point in the development of humanity. I must frankly admit that when I was invited by the Anthroposophical student group in Stuttgart to give a lecture for the students of the Technical University in their assembly hall, I was still under the impression of Spengler's book “The Decline of the West”. Yes, my dear audience, we have come to the point where today we can prove the decline in a strictly methodical way. Now, Spengler's book is by no means a talentless book. On the contrary, in many respects it is extraordinarily ingenious. What is presented there testifies to nothing other than this: if only the forces of which Spengler is aware were to be effective in the future – he is not aware of anthroposophy, but, as can be seen from some of his writing, he would probably turn red with rage just hearing about it — if only what Spengler knows remains effective, then the downfall of Western civilization would be absolutely certain well into the second millennium. Just let everything that has developed in humanity be effective — the downfall is certain. Just as a human being ages when he has reached a certain number of years and is heading towards death, so this culture is heading towards death. What people like Spengler do not know is what has developed in the successive cultural periods, which you will find described in my “Occult Science”.

In the first cultural period — I have called it the primeval Indian period — there was a primeval culture based on the wisdom of the time. Some of this has already been characterized in these lectures. From this there was an inheritance in the next age, in the ancient Persian, in the Zarathustra culture; from there, in turn, diluted into that age, what can be called the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, the third period, which closes approximately in the 8th century BC before the Mystery of Golgotha. Then very little goes into the fourth period, where Plato still lets his teaching and his writings be steeped in ancient mystery wisdom, but where naturalism and intellectualism already begin with Aristotle. During this period, in which human original wisdom is already beginning to decline, Christianity is founded. The Mystery of Golgotha is still understood with the last original wisdom. But as this ancient wisdom itself fades, it finally becomes modern theology, which either degenerates into a material dogmatism and church belief or into a description of Jesus as a simple man from Nazareth, in whom the Christ, the Christ-being, has been completely lost. But of course a new understanding of Christianity itself must come. The origin of Christianity extends into this fourth period, and from the point of view of Primordial Wisdom, it extends a little into our fifth period. The fifth period is the one in which Primordial Wisdom disappears, is paralyzed, and in which man must find a new spirituality from within himself. All talk about this spirituality coming from outside is in vain for the future. In the future, the gods must speak through the human soul. Today, the question is not addressed to any other power of the soul than to our will alone. That is to say, today it is a matter for all mankind to thoroughly overcome fatalism and consciously absorb spirituality into the will. This mission has already fallen to the German people to a very considerable extent. Anyone who studies this in more detail, by looking at the great figures of the German people, will notice how this people in particular has the mission to reshape its world, I would say its social world, out of its will, despite all the hardship and all the terrible things that are now unfolding within this people. Only for the time being there is no awareness of the actual facts and the great world-historical context.

I would like to do as I sometimes like to do, not just give my own opinion, but refer to the opinion of someone else, Herman Grimm, who certainly cannot be said to have been a Bolshevik or anything of the sort. As early as the 1880s, Herman Grimm wrote that the greatness of the German people is not based on its princes or its governments, but on its intellectual giants. But it may also be said that this is precisely what has been most misunderstood and most forgotten. Today there is a significant fact that one must only properly observe. Take the general intellectual life, untouched by a real spiritual upsurge. Study it as it lives itself out in popular literature, be it in Berlin, Vienna or elsewhere – I am not just talking about after the war here, but long before the war. study how it is lived out in Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Cologne, Hamburg, Bremen and so on, study it in popular literature, especially in newspaper literature, which can be said to represent the opinions of a very large number of people. Yes, especially during the war, it turned out that sometimes people also remembered that there was a Goethe, that there was a Schiller, that there was a Fichte – yes, even Fichte's sayings were quoted. But the fact of the matter is this: anyone today who has a feeling, a real receptivity for the inner structure, for the direction, for the whole signature of intellectual life, knows that what was written in the 20th century in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Dresden, Leipzig was more similar to what was written in Paris, Chicago, New York, and London than to what a Herder, a Goethe, or a Fichte felt vibrating through their souls.

This fact is widely misunderstood. What Central Europe's greatness is actually based on has been forgotten. Once we describe figures like Frederick the Great according to the truth, not according to legend, then some of it will melt away in the face of the real intellectual greatness in Central Europe. And this must come. We must learn again, not just to quote the words of Fichte, not just to quote the words of Goethe, but to be able to live again in what lived at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. And we must become aware that only through the individual shaping of the peoples differentiated across the earth can something of what is to be achieved be achieved – not, however, by some unified culture emanating from some side, which is a Western culture, and one that is justified only for the West, has flooded Central Europe, not through the fault of the West alone, but above all because Central Europe allowed itself to be flooded and accepted everything. And this awareness of what is at stake is what must be spread today by those who mean well.

Dear attendees, I knew an Austrian poet; I met him when he was already very old: his name is Fercher von Steinwand. He wrote many important works that unfortunately have remained unknown.

I will just add what I wrote in my booklet [1895] about Nietzsche, a fighter against his time. Right at the beginning, I quoted a saying of Nietzsche that actually deserves to be better known: the saying that Nietzsche wrote down when he served in the Franco-Prussian War, albeit as a military hospital attendant. There he wrote [about the terrible, dangerous consequences of the victorious war and called it a delusion that German culture had also triumphed; this delusion posed the danger of transforming victory into complete defeat,] yes, into the extirpation of the German spirit in favor of the German Reich. In recent decades, when people spoke of the extirpation of the spirit, they understood little of this, if they spoke of the will to let this spirit flow in again.

And when all this is taken into account, it is necessary to recall what Fichte felt and what he expressed so magnificently in his “Addresses to the German Nation”: that the gods serve the will of men, that they work through the will of self-aware men.

And after Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and others, it is precisely this German nation that should be aware that the will must arise, but that will must be imbued with spirituality. What strange mental wanderings this German nation has gone through. There are many things that can be recalled that are only rarely presented in external history.

I advise everyone to buy the Reclam booklet by Wilhelm von Humboldt: “Ideas for an Attempt to Determine the Limits of the Effectiveness of the State”. You will see how much of it is already contained in the middle part of the threefold social organism, the legal, state part. Of course, the threefolded social organism is not in it, but what can be said about the state itself is there. In this writing, Wilhelm von Humboldt attempts to protect the individual against the state, against the increasing power of the state in the intellectual and economic realms. Wilhelm von Humboldt was Prussian Minister of Education from 1809 to 1819 – one almost dare not say this in view of what happened afterwards.

And so many more examples could be given. What is necessary, above all, is that those who feel this question before their soul really let history come to life in them. My dear audience, as an Austrian, one has a very special feeling for this when one gets to know the school history books of northern Central Europe. In 1889, I came from Vienna to Weimar to work on the publication of Goethe's works at the Weimar Goethe-Schiller Archive. And since I had previously been involved in education and teaching, I was also given the friendly task of guiding the director of the Goethe-Schiller Archive's boys a little. They were then in high school, and it was only then that I got to know their history books a little – I hadn't taken that into account before – starting with the creation of the world and going up to the development of the Hohenzollern dynasty, and only then the actual world history. Several textbooks presented it this way, one being roughly the same as the other. But is it not always a mere radicalism when speaking in this way, but sometimes it is also the right love for the German nation. And the right love, if it can really come through spiritual-scientific stimulation, will in turn give rise to a culture of the will from mere fatalism, and that is what matters. Unless we grasp this either/or, either destruction or ascent through our own will, we will not escape destruction. Of course, ascent will not come, but something quite different. Well, I could say a lot more about this topic, but perhaps that's enough for now. We'll see each other more often.

Regarding the question: What would our world view look like from the standpoint of a different consciousness, for example, an angelic consciousness?

Well, in a certain sense, spiritual science describes completely different forms of consciousness, such forms of consciousness that people had in the earlier stages of development, or such forms of consciousness that one can ascend to through inspiration or imagination. So, in a certain sense, one learns through spiritual science to recognize what the world view of another consciousness is. But as far as the question of an angelic consciousness is concerned, ladies and gentlemen, it is very important that we do not choose more abstract questions than are necessary for a certain, I would say elasticity, of our conceptual ability. Because, you see, we do not have our consciousness to satisfy ourselves with all kinds of sensational news from the most diverse worlds, but so that we can go through our overall human development through its development. And the angels have their consciousness precisely so that they can undergo angelic development. And if someone were to ask what the world would look like with a different consciousness, it would be like someone asking me how a person would eat if they had a beak instead of a mouth. It is a textbook example of moving out of concreteness and into abstraction. Anthroposophy is supposed to achieve precisely that, to remain within the realm of experience and to extend it only

extended only to the spiritual world, that one is always ready to broaden one's experience, but not that one constructs all kinds of questions out of pure abstractness. It is not at all necessary for us to speculate in any way about angelic consciousness or mammalian consciousness or the like, but it is necessary for us to simply abandon ourselves to experience. It gives us the input into our consciousness that we need for our orientation and for our further development in the world. And that is what we have to learn from anthroposophy: to remain within the sphere that concerns us as human beings, because that is where we make appropriate progress.

This is connected with the question I heard here just now, which is asked incredibly often: what is the ultimate goal of human development in the first place?

What is the ultimate purpose of human life, or rather of life?

You see, it is precisely in relation to such questions that spiritual science must be approached not in an abstract but in a concrete way. If you had no possibility of getting a timetable for the journey to Rome here in Dornach, but only as far as Lugano, and you knew that you could get a further timetable in Lugano to go on to Florence, and from there on to Rome, one would do well not to refrain from the journey or to speculate about how I have to organize the journey from here to Rome, but to travel first to Lugano, and then see how things go from there. It is the same with human life, especially if one knows that there are repeated earthly lives. If I now tell you something about the goal of all human life here with the abilities that one can have in this one earth life, then it could indeed be something more perfect next time and then one could answer more completely how one gets the timetable to Rome. So one has to take into account what is immediately given in the concrete, and one must know that human life is in a state of perpetual development. So one cannot ask about its ultimate purpose, but only about the direction of development in which one is moving. If you really look into it, there is truly a lot to be done for the physical, soul and spiritual life. And this path to Lugano is not quite close – I now mean the path in the development of humanity – and how that will continue, we want to leave that to the more fully developed abilities of the future. In short, it is a matter of remaining in the concrete, bit by bit, and of getting rid of the abstractness that also gives birth to such questions. Now, something else is needed here about eurythmy:

Can eurythmy, when used correctly, bring important achievements for our folk culture to light?

Yes, dear readers. From some of the comments I have already made about eurythmy, you will be able to see that eurythmy can have a great pedagogical-didactic significance. If you are convinced of this, and if you are not not only believe it but also recognize that it can even help to alleviate disturbances in life through appropriate eurythmic didactics, then there is much more that can be brought into the right channels in social life through healthy eurythmy. But of course one thing needs to be noted in this regard. You see, we should be able to take this eurythmy into children's play. The esteemed questioner spoke of children's toys and asked whether eurythmy could not be used for a lot of things. And it was also asked whether eurythmy can have a healing effect on children aged five to seven who suffer from epilepsy.

It can certainly do so if it is applied in the right way. Admittedly, we are only just beginning with eurythmy. But the continuation of this beginning does not always depend only on the intellectual momentum. For example, we had intended to build a kind of eurythmeum in Stuttgart to begin with, because of course the Waldorf School is there, and later here in the building itself. You really need opportunities if these things are to be developed bit by bit. You cannot pursue these things without practising them, without having the necessary premises and also the necessary connection with the rest of human culture; you cannot pursue these things out of the blue. It would have been terribly expensive to build a eurythmy in Stuttgart and we only had a small sum of money together. Perhaps I may say the following about this. In the first year, through the dedicated work of our Waldorf teachers, which cannot be sufficiently recognized, we really achieved everything possible for the Waldorf School in the first year. Although, in spiritual and psychological terms, everything that could be expected has been achieved – it is fair to say this without being immodest – this year began with extraordinary worries for those who were sincere about the Waldorf School. It is a fact that the Waldorf School had to be enlarged because a large number of children came from outside; the number of children has more than doubled compared to the previous year. We were facing a very considerable deficit, and the fund that we had for a eurythmy school was first eaten up by the Waldorf School. It is only natural that the Waldorf School should take this on, but it means that we cannot build a eurythmy school. What lets us down is people's lack of understanding. Nowadays people are willing to understand anything, except for work that comes out of the truly concrete soul and spiritual life. I do not want to be polemical here, but I could tell you many things that would show you the dilettantism and the philosophical emptiness that is added to it today, as it performs a few somersaults before all possible reactionary powers in the world. We do not easily find the understanding of those who could do something on the material side to help things move forward. And anyone who wants the didactic, pedagogical, and especially the folk-pedagogical side of eurythmy and other aspects of a spiritual-scientific art of education to be further developed must ensure that understanding of what is actually intended is drawn into as many minds and as many souls as possible, with what is asserted here as anthroposophical spiritual science.

Question: It is often mentioned in spiritual science that those or those of the higher hierarchies have gone through their stage of humanity in these or other circumstances. What does stage of humanity mean in this sense, that is, the goal of human development? Is the goal set as the development of the I, of freedom, which freedom is denied to the higher hierarchies? So what is the stage of humanity?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, I don't know who has denied the higher hierarchies the freedom in its special form of education. What is meant when I speak, for example, in 'Occult Science' or in the other writings of the human stage of other beings, is essentially characterized by degrees, by the different states of consciousness. In spiritual science, the term “stage of human development” is to be understood as follows:

Today, within human development in the broadest sense, we live in a state of consciousness when we are awake, which we can call object consciousness. This state of consciousness can be described as Dr. Stein described it to you in his lectures, according to his activity in imagination, concept, judgment. One can also add perception and the special kind of emotional effect, the volitional emotion, volitional impulses and so on. Then present-day humanity also still knows, but only in reminiscences, in chaotic images, the dream state, but this points back, it is an atavistic remnant of an earlier state of consciousness, of an ego-less image consciousness; this is therefore an underhuman consciousness. And it is preceded by two other states of consciousness, so that we can say: the present state of consciousness is the fourth in the series. It will be followed by a fifth, which we can anticipate today through imagination, inspiration and so on. We can also characterize this progression as future states of the sixth and seventh states of consciousness. The fourth, however, the one we have today, is in the narrower sense the state of consciousness of humanity as it is today. So when we speak of the human stage, we mean beings with object consciousness. Beings who do not perceive through such senses as human beings do, who have a special education, perhaps through very different senses, but who, in their inner being, depend on imagining and grasping and then, in a more or less subconscious activity, connecting perception with ideas and concepts. The higher, fifth state of consciousness would thus be one in which one consciously differentiates between the inner, spiritual realm, which one first grasps in pure thinking, as has been attempted in the Philosophy of Freedom, and then has perception as such as a phenomenon of development in its own right, into which one no longer mixes concepts and ideas, so that, as in the process of inhalation, in inhaling and exhaling, an inner interaction between perception and concept consciously takes place. That would be the next higher state of consciousness.

When we speak of other beings and say that they were at the human stage of development at different times, we mean that they had a perception of the external world in the past – regardless of which senses were involved – which they connected in a more or less conscious way with the inner soul life, so that at that time they were not yet at a stage that humanity will reach in the future, the stage of a separate experience of perception, of the spiritual soul realm, and a conscious synthesis. That is what needs to be said about this question.

Dear attendees, it is now 10 a.m., I think I will collect the questions that have yet to be asked and save them, and we can meet again in the next few days. I think we will be able to discuss the matters on the other notes better and with more focus if we don't rush through it in a few minutes, but instead come together again to answer these questions. I also think you will agree to this, after we have spent two hours having this conversation. So we will conclude today and continue in some way soon.

In the introductory lectures of this year's winter cycle, we have already often pointed out the sources of man's supersensible knowledge, the knowledge of which – and also of its relationship to the world in which we live – this entire lecture cycle is intended to deal with. It was pointed out how these sources of supersensible knowledge lie in the human soul, in every human soul itself, in it as dormant forces and abilities, which can be brought forth through appropriate means in intimate inner experience, so that the human being can become able to look into the spiritual worlds. The development of these abilities lying dormant in the soul is to be sketched out this evening. Further explanations of what is to be presented today will then arise in the next lectures.

If the aim is to make it clear how the soul's dormant powers of supersensory knowledge can be brought out, then one can always point to an occurrence, to a fact that happens to every human being in the course of twenty-four hours: to the alternation of sleep and waking. Man usually passes by those riddles of life that play into his life daily as something familiar, and the rare and, because of its rarity, oppressive will in most cases easily evoke a longing to be solved as a riddle. Such oppressive riddles of life will be discussed here in the next lecture. Today, however, we will start from a mystery that eludes man in its mysteriousness only because he is so accustomed to the phenomenon in question, namely the alternation of sleep and waking.

In order to sustain our lives, we must pass from a state of consciousness into one of unconsciousness every day. What happens when we pass into the unconscious state of sleep? The senses lose their capacity to perceive, the organic limbs lose their capacity to move, and thinking, which is bound to the activity of the brain when it is engaged in the external world, ceases. As we fall asleep, we feel all the activities and all the awareness that fill our day subside. It would be a logical impossibility for anyone who judges impartially to think that what surges up and down in our soul from morning to evening in our conscious state as our ideas, our feelings, sensations, affects, passions, yes, as our ideals and ideas, actually passes into “nothingness” each time we fall asleep and then arises again the next morning. Only logical prejudice can deny that man's spiritual and soul essence is also present while he is in the unconsciousness of sleep.

If we assume hypothetically for the moment – and the following lectures are intended to justify this assumption – that while man is in the unconsciousness of sleep, he has, as it were, withdrawn with his actual spiritual-soul core from his physical body and the forces animating this physical body, and that he then lives in a spiritual world , it is not far-fetched to assume that the reason for this lies within the person themselves: that when a person's spiritual and soul essence is withdrawn from their body, they cannot perceive their surroundings in the same way that they perceive them when they use their eyes, their other sensory organs and their brain in the physical world. It is not far-fetched, I say, to think that man's spiritual-soul powers are initially dependent on using the 'ordinary life of the senses and the brain' in order to have a world around them, and that when man, as in sleep, divests himself of the possibility of perceiving through these instruments, they are too low, too weak to really see, really feel and think what they could then perceive.

Such a supposition could only prove to be correct if there really were the possibility of actually drawing forth from their hiddenness the forces which one suspects as weak, for instance if one were able to condense and concentrate within oneself the soul forces which, as it were, are 'thin' in ordinary normal life concentrate them within oneself, so that what a person experiences in sleep would not have to occur when they stop using their senses or their brain, but that there could also be a state similar to sleep, and yet in a certain respect completely opposite to it. This state would have to be similar to sleep in that the person would not be forced, as when falling asleep, but would voluntarily, through his inner powers, through his will, cause himself to withdraw from the senses or from the brain , so that he could be completely awake but not see his surroundings through his eyes, nor perceive anything through the other senses, but bring his eyes and other senses to complete silence. In other words, he would have to be able to completely suppress all sensory activity through his will, and he would have to be able to suppress ordinary thinking, the kind of thinking that is activated in everyday life through ideas about the external physical world. Furthermore, if man could suppress by his own will what otherwise brings him to perceive, he would now be able, in his spiritual and soul essence, not to reach the unconsciousness of sleep, but to concentrate forces that are otherwise weak and thin, so that he can also properly act without his body, outside of his body.

The question arises as to whether what has just been said can be realized in some way. Of course, this can only be answered by the facts that the person evokes in himself, namely simply by the fact that he is able to apply means to his soul through which what has just been characterized occurs. Through the application of such means to the soul, one comes to supersensible knowledge. The path to supersensible knowledge is not one that leads through external means, that requires all sorts of machinations merely existing in the external world, but it is an intimate path of the soul, and everything that has to be done for it takes place in the depths of the life of the soul itself.

Now, if we want to ascend into the worlds that are to explain to us the outer world in which we live, if we therefore want to ascend into the supersensible worlds, there are three stages that we must pass through. A more detailed account of these three stages can be found in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Here, however, they will only be briefly outlined. When describing these three stages, I ask you not to be put off by the words. Some of the words are used today in everyday language for something quite different from what is meant here, and some of them do not sound good in the thinking habits of the present day because they are used for all kinds of things that are recognized imprecisely or unclearly, or even for those that are rightly rejected. This sometimes causes a kind of emotional emphasis when these words are heard. But it is easy to see that this must be so to a certain extent for the things to be discussed here, because our language is there for the external world. Therefore, the words for the designations must be borrowed from the external world and can therefore never fit exactly for what lies outside the external sense world for which language is created.

The first step of higher, supersensible knowledge is imagination, imaginative knowledge. To avoid the misunderstanding that has just been mentioned, I would ask you to understand by imagination only what I will characterize in a moment. The second stage of supersensible knowledge is inspiration, and the third stage is what, when the word is used as we shall characterize it later and not as it is often used inaccurately in ordinary life, can be called true intuition. Outer sense and intellectual knowledge, which we apply in ordinary life and also in the science of the outer world, is related to these three stages of supersensible knowledge as a kind of preliminary stage, so that, when the stages of supersensible knowledge are added, one can speak of four stages of human knowledge.

Now there are many means, and many means must also be applied when it is a matter of rising from ordinary sense and intellectual knowledge to the first stage of supersensible knowledge, imagination, and I will, because there is not would not have time, I will emphasize with all concreteness how the soul must, as it were, use one of the means – you will find others in “How to Know Higher Worlds” – to awaken the slumbering supersensible cognitive abilities in it. One of the means is the so-called meditation.

If we ask ourselves: What is meditation in the spiritual-scientific sense? — we must say: This meditation is the devotion to an idea, to a thought-feeling or to a volitional content in such an intense way and in such a way that it does not happen in ordinary life, but it is suitable for concentrating and condensing forces that are otherwise present in our soul life, as it were, in a diluted form. In this process, it is good, although the opposite is also possible, not to use concepts for such an understanding of the soul that one otherwise gains in ordinary life or in ordinary science. These concepts can certainly be used, but they are not as good to use. The most useful concepts for meditation are allegorical, symbolic concepts. I will develop such a symbolic concept here, which has already been presented to some of the listeners in other contexts. At first it may seem grotesque, paradoxical, that someone would be expected to let what is now being discussed take effect in his soul, but we will characterize later why it should happen. Let us assume that someone forms the idea that he has two glasses in front of him, an empty glass and one partially filled with water. Now he pours the water out of the full glass into the empty one and imagines that, by pouring the water out of the full glass into the empty one, the full glass does not become emptier and emptier, as it does in the external world, but fuller and fuller. This is indeed a paradoxical idea at first, but this idea is meant to be an allegory, and the spiritual researcher should be aware that it is an allegory. It is meant to symbolize, as it were, the nature and essence of human love for our soul. With human love and with everything that falls under the idea of love, it is certainly the case that this source of love is so infinitely deep and so infinitely rich that when we see the fact of love in the world, we must humbly admit at all times: This mystery of love in its true essence is most certainly unfathomable for every soul. And the more we have this sense of unfathomability, the better it is for the content and intensity of our lives. But there is one quality of real love that we can clearly know and emphasize: that is the quality that is symbolically represented to us by the image we have just spoken of.

The person who gives love and acts of love to another person never becomes poorer or emptier through what he does out of love, but always fuller and fuller, richer and richer in his soul life. This quality of love, emphasized, we have before us, as it were, when we imagine the image of two glasses and the pouring of water from one into the other.

We do something similar to what is done in another area of knowledge, and in doing so we arrive at important results for the external sense world. Let us assume that we have a circular plate made of some substance unknown to us. When we look at this circular plate, we can say that what it is as a substance, how the materials are welded together, is initially unfathomable to us. But there is one thing we can do if we want to know something about this disk: we can draw a circle in front of us. Then we have emphasized something about this disk, namely that it is circular, and this emphasized fact is absolutely certain, however little we know about the disk in general. If we think mathematically, we also do it in such a way – and all mathematics is symbolism in this respect – that we highlight some aspects symbolically. This process of creating images that are perceived by the senses and then held fast by the soul is the preparation for imaginative knowledge for soul-spiritual deeds and for soul-spiritual experiences.

If someone were to say: Then the spiritual researcher sets out to bring images and symbols to life in his soul that do not correspond to any truth at all, so he sets out from the outset to think untruth and to bring untruth to life in his soul – then the answer would have to be: But of course the true spiritual researcher is aware that what he brings to life in his soul as symbols does not correspond to any external reality! If for a single moment he could mistake a symbol for some kind of reality, then he would no longer be a human being on the way to supersensible knowledge, but on the way to illusion. These symbols are not meant to represent outer realities, but to live in our soul, to connect and blend with our soul life and to concentrate our soul life on them.

If we are now able to focus so strongly on such a symbol that we use all the power of our soul to let only this symbol live in our soul and to put aside everything that could penetrate us from external impressions, and to put aside all other thoughts , so that we bring only and alone such an image to the center of our consciousness, then such an image is better than an immediate impression of an external reality, because such an impression always draws us back to the external reality with our soul forces, distracting us from ourselves, as it were. But when we have formed a pictorial, arbitrary idea with full awareness that we have something purely constructed, to which we now surrender, it is something that retains reality only insofar as it is borrowed from it. Whatever images we form, we have taken the components for them from external reality. These images are presented in colors, shapes, etc., they are borrowed from external reality, but they do not refer to external reality. This is because it does not happen in external reality that a glass becomes fuller when you pour out the contents.

Such an exercise has the consequence that the soul must concentrate its powers in a completely different way than if it takes what it has otherwise experienced to help it. If the one who wants to go the way into the supersensible worlds has patience and perseverance to practice such concentrations of his soul life again and again, he will be able to have a very definite inner experience. Having this experience is the first step towards imaginative knowledge. He will experience that he has thereby inwardly changed his soul life, and that after some time he can become aware of how such images, such pictures, arise from his soul itself, without him first bringing them about, and arise in such a way that they present themselves to him with all the appearance of reality, as images otherwise only present themselves when we have made external perceptions and formed ideas from them.

In our ordinary external life, our soul's images arise as reflections of external reality, as it were. Through the exercises mentioned, however, images arise from the depths of our soul life, which are only pictures at first, of course. But this is where the elevation of the soul life lies: the soul now feels inwardly strong and can enter a state that is similar to, yet opposite of, the state of sleep. During sleep we abstract from all outer perceptions and also from brain-bound thinking, but we fall into unconsciousness. In imaginative cognition we also abstract from all outer perceptions and from all brain-bound thinking, because we suppress all that. But despite this, the soul does not become empty, does not become unconscious, but images arise from its depths, images that become richer and richer, more and more extensive, and then present themselves to the soul like a new world. This is the world of which it has already been indicated in these lectures that it can be confused by the layman, who is not familiar with such things, and its value can be mistaken for the world of morbid illusions, hallucinations, delusions and the like. But only someone who is ignorant of the facts in this matter, and judges only from the morbid life of the soul, can make such a mistake; for there is an enormous difference between the morbid, even the slightest morbid, representations of this kind, and those that have been rightly won by methodical soul-education.

Anyone who has learned even a little about what are called pathological soul phenomena, hallucinations, illusions or delusions, knows one thing: that those persons who are afflicted by such ideas ultimately believe in the reality of them so firmly that the faith they themselves have in the experiences of the external sense world is nothing in comparison. That is the characteristic of delusions and illusions, that those who are afflicted by them also develop an overwhelming belief in them. There is nothing more difficult than to talk a person out of their delusions – they don't even have to reach the degree of hallucinations, just ordinary delusions, paradoxical ideas. If, for example, a person begins to develop the morbid idea that other people are persecuting him, it is extremely difficult to get rid of this idea by mere persuasion, and it may happen that he constructs the most marvelous logical thought-constructions to prove how right all these delusions are. Man can become obsessed by these ideas, and he firmly believes in the objective reality of such conceptions.

If you now only take into account some of what is said in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, you will see that while man brings himself to let such images and imaginations take effect in his soul, at the same time everything is done through the right schooling of the spirit to ensure that, to the same extent as this world of images blossoms in the soul, the belief in them as in an objective reality is expelled from the soul, so that at no moment can the person training spiritually ever arrive at the idea that what arises in him as imaginations is an objective reality. All schooling of the spirit is wrong that does not at the same time evoke in the soul the clarity: What occasionally enters as marvels such as new worlds, has no objective reality in the way it comes over you. Everything is initially there only to inwardly revitalize the soul, to make it richer in itself and, if we want to use the paradoxical expression, more inwardly real, more fulfilled by the real. And that is the best, indeed the only true attainment of the disciple, that he knows: the imaginations that arise are nothing other than a reflection of his own being.

If the spiritual disciple is able to overcome all belief in the reality, in the objectivity of these imaginations of his, in the same moment when he receives them, then the spiritual training is the right one. Generally speaking, it is difficult for many people to accept the one with the other, because by applying the appropriate exercises in his soul, the human being is, so to speak, endowed with a new world, a world of sometimes magnificent ideas. But for many people this is an extraordinary satisfaction, an extraordinary pleasure, something that fills them with deep sympathy. And anyone who tried to make them believe, even in the slightest, that all this is not an objective reality but only a reflection of their own nature, that it is only their own nature expressing itself more meaningfully than before, would be regarded by them as an enemy, as a blasphemer of the most beautiful hopes of the soul. But it must be understood that such imaginations, as they first appear, are not at all suitable for giving real knowledge of the higher worlds, but that they are only a bridge for the soul. For now a completely different task begins for the soul, the task that gradually leads from imagination to inspiration. A struggle begins, as it were, between the soul and what appears as its imaginations. If I am to characterize how this struggle is waged, I must use a simile from ordinary life.

We experience time and again in ordinary life that we do not have all the contents of our soul in our consciousness. Imagine what it would be like if you suddenly had in your consciousness everything you had ever imagined! You could remember ideas that you might have had decades ago. These rest in the depths of your soul and are called up at some opportunity. That means that in ordinary life one has the possibility to forget and to bring the forgotten out of the soul again. One also has the possibility to bring out of consciousness what the consciousness experiences as ideas and to separate it from our conscious life so that it is somewhere in our soul independently of it. The content of consciousness can thus be lowered somewhere, so that it is then out of consciousness.

We must succeed in doing the same thing – even if it is different in this area – with all our imaginations when we become spiritual researchers. We must be able to extinguish every imagination that arises from our soul at will, we must be able to extinguish it at will and bring it into a state where it is thrown out of our consciousness in the same way as a forgotten idea is thrown out of our consciousness, which we can later retrieve. This is necessary. In the whole realm of our imaginations, we must be masters of every single one of them, and we must be able to make each one of them independent of us.

A conscientious spiritual researcher who undertakes such spiritual research and then conscientiously communicates it to the world, does this often and often, again and again, that he repeatedly pushes down what arises before his soul as an image, which has emerged, again and again, making it unconscious, erasing it. Then it comes again, and now not only through arbitrariness, but through something quite different: through an inner power of which we only become aware at this very moment if we are at the appropriate level. And not all imaginations come up, but we have the clear consciousness that there are imaginations that remain down there in an unknown, that cannot be brought up again, or if they do come up again, they show themselves as such, which we reject.

The images change when they come back to us; they are then also something completely different. They reach us in the same way that perceptions of things in the physical world reach us externally. For the same reasons that we, if we have common sense, can distinguish externally between something dreamed and something non-existent and something real and present, we can recognize in its reality and in its spiritual essence what emerges again as imagination.

The question was once asked, when such things were being discussed: How can a person be sure when his imaginations come back to him, which he first threw out of his subjectivity and handed over to objectivity, only to have them returned to him, how can he be convinced that they represent realities or unreality? We know that there are suggestions and imaginations that are so strong that they overwhelm a person, so that he perceives as reality what is not there at all. A vivid example was given: if someone is so sensitive that, without drinking lemonade, he has the taste of lemonade in his mouth just at the mere thought of it, that is an example of something being there that is not really there. So one can also be subject to a similar deception with what the reborn imaginations are.

Such an objection can always be made. It can also be maintained in a mere dialectic, in a mere play on words, but not in the face of reality. For anyone who develops his soul in the way described comes to the same possibility of distinguishing truth and error as one distinguishes truth and error in the external world, where one has nothing but a healthy soul to distinguish truth and error. Everyone can form a concept of this if they think, for example, of Schopenhauer's philosophy with the sentence: “The world around me is my idea.

I do not underestimate Schopenhauer's philosophy, otherwise I would not have published it myself and written an introduction to it. But great minds often make the simplest mistakes. For the sentence “The world is my imagination” is actually refuted by pointing out a completely trivial fact: if he imagines a piece of steel at 900 degrees Celsius and thinks of his fingers touching it, he will not get burned. He will never get burned by such an imagination, no matter how saturated it is. But if the real steel is in front of him, he will get burned. Thus, not through concepts or philosophies, but through experience, he will be able to distinguish reality from imagination. But there is no other distinction. And there is no other distinction in the supersensible realm either, except that through schooling one has acquired the right way of being with supersensible reality.

Therefore, it is necessary for our consciousness to know that When imaginations first arise, they have been created by our soul itself, and so they are only a reflection of our own nature. A person can have the most beautiful imaginations — at first he does best to interpret them in such a way that he says to himself: What hidden state of mind, what hidden passion, what belief or superstition is there in me that these or those images arise before my soul? If he sees nothing in the pictures but the reflection of himself, then he has acquired the right state of consciousness for walking the paths up into the supersensible world. He must then be able to be a fighter against himself, drawing on the inner strength of his soul. He must be able to uproot what he is often most tempted to believe in, what he loves most, what for many people could already mean bliss, and let it descend into a sphere of forgotten ideas. When he has so unselfishly torn from himself what his soul had first created and given it over to the world outside of himself, it comes back to him again as inspiration. Then he is able to live with those entities, real beings and facts of the supersensible world to which such imaginations belong.

At first, such imaginations appear quite familiar to us because we can explore how they are formed not differently than we ourselves are in our soul, how they are only a mirror image of the soul. One can always prove from the world of imaginations that these imaginations are so and so, depending on who we are and on our state of mind. But when they return, it is indeed different. The same images do not return, but different ones do, new ones that we have not been confronted with at all before, and which announce themselves as reality just as external realities announce themselves as such to us. Only one has a completely different feeling about them.

We face the things of the external world in such a way that we stand outside them. A table we look at is outside of us. It is there, and we cannot enter into things. When we have prepared ourselves in the way described, we immediately have the inner experience of consciousness when we encounter the facts and things of the higher worlds: we could only come to them by giving them something that we have first brought forth from the depths of our soul. It is truly the case that, as when an object lies before me and I want to grasp it: as I have to stretch out my hand and become aware of its reality, so too, through that which I first achieve through the method described, I have to separate what then confronts me as imagination from my own ego, and plunge it into oblivion. But in doing so, I extend my own being into a world that I can then grasp.

In the world, one experiences many refutations of what has just been said. But however much one looks around, however much one wants to familiarize oneself with these refutations, one thing always comes to mind: the people who refute what has just been said have not yet understood it. This is evident from the way they speak about it. And anyone who has understood it would never dream of wanting to refute it. Thus one encounters very frequently this supposed refutation, namely, that one hears it said: But these supersensible perceptions that you then have and that you take for impressions from beings that are supposed to inspire you, do not differ after all from quite ordinary illusions or hallucinations! They differ tremendously in that the true spiritual researcher has a different relationship to them, a relationship that allows him to maintain his common sense in relation to these things just as he does in relation to the things of the external world. Therefore, persons who are most unfit to become real investigators of the spirit are those who are superstitious or gullible, those who are termed visionaries in common parlance.

Those who readily accept a truth will certainly not be able to conduct proper spiritual research. Imagination and faith are the greatest enemies of genuine spiritual research, although what imagination is in art, for example, and what faith in reality is, can ultimately be the most wonderful gifts of spiritual research. For what can be investigated in the spiritual can be transformed into imagination and become a work of art. Likewise, when it is said that what spiritual researchers proclaim is something that only appeals to faith, the sentence must apply: the spiritual researcher certainly believes what he knows. But he would truly be a fool if he did not believe what he knows; yet he believes nothing but what he knows.

It has just been said that we have to tear what we have acquired out of our souls, so to speak, that we have to stretch out spiritual organs through them and get back the spiritual reality through them. As we become more and more immersed in such a soul life, we also grow more and more together with the beings and things of the spiritual world. Then there occurs what happens in our consciousness in such a way that we do not communicate with these beings as one person communicates with another through external organs, but through what speaks directly from being to being, what is directly perceived by the beings, in that our soul is directly with the being that perceives it, so that it is, so to speak, not outside of it but in it. Then intuition sets in, which is actually only the conclusion of supersensible knowledge, that supersensible knowledge that does not lead us into a blurred, nebulous spiritual life, but into a concrete, essence-shaped, reality-filled life. There is no other way to truly come together with the spirit and its existence than to merge with it, as it has now been described. But anything with which we do not merge can never be accepted as proof of the spirit, for there is no other proof than to find one's own experience coinciding with the experience of the spirit. Whoever wants to experience a spiritual being must bring his soul so far that he can let his own experience coincide with the experience of this spiritual being.

The entire process of spiritual experience, as it has been described, can make it clear – it would be of no use to obscure the facts, for they must be stated openly – that man can most easily can recognize pure spirits, if I may use the expression, through imaginative knowledge. These are spirits that only have a spiritual body and no other covering than a soul or spirit. Spiritual entities that do not come into embodiment and do not express themselves in outer natural phenomena can be recognized at the level of imagination, when we do not yet have the ability to penetrate to inspiration. This happens in such a way that the imaginations which we have sunk down into oblivion come back to us in a modified form, and we then recognize them as images for spiritual entities, which are as spiritual as our spiritual-soul life conceived without a body.

On the other hand, one must ascend to inspiration if one wants to recognize entities that are connected, for example, with the elements of nature, with the glow in nature, with the warmth in nature, and so on. In short, to recognize the powers and entities that lie behind the sensory world, which express themselves in the external world and can only be recognized there in their external expressions. This is only possible through inspiration. For this, what we have in our soul must be torn out more intensely, so that it dives down, than in the case of beings who have a mere spiritual existence. And the strongest powers of vision must be applied if one wants to recognize those creative powers, which the outer mind consciousness only addresses as the materialistic forces of nature, but which in truth are creative entities.

If we want to recognize these creative entities that lie hidden behind all external existence, then we must be able to tear our inner soul life out of us as strongly as it is the case when we have just ascended to intuition. That means that to recognize through supersensible knowledge the preceding incarnation of a human being in a concrete case is one of the most difficult tasks, for in a human being as he appears to us in the sense world, we are also dealing with something that manifests itself in natural and bodily effects.

Behind these physical effects lies something like creative powers. But for the spiritual seer, this is hidden behind the physical exterior just as the spiritual beings that are present in lightning and thunder and behind all nature are hidden behind them; and one is hardly easier to find than the other. Therefore, it will be found time and again that people who develop intuition tell all kinds of real illusions from past incarnations. Therefore, it is good to pay as little attention to them as possible. The true spiritual researcher knows that this is one of the most difficult things that even the most developed soul can do at any given moment.

What has been said so far relates to the investigation of the supersensible, of spiritual life and activity. By preparing his soul in the manner described, the soul itself becomes a tool for penetrating into the supersensible worlds. But for the spiritual researcher who wishes to communicate spiritual knowledge of the world, the most significant task is yet to come. For this insight into the spiritual worlds is mostly misunderstood and misjudged by people who do not know it in the right way. And this also belongs to the correct assessment of the paths of supersensible knowledge, that the human being is able to form an opinion about what real spiritual knowledge is and what is either nonsense, charlatanry or self-deception.

It must be said again and again: to research in the spiritual world, to seek out supersensible facts and entities, the soul must educate itself to do so. But when a spiritual researcher who has penetrated into the supersensible worlds in the right way describes his observations correctly, using concepts that correspond to a healthy human understanding and a right feeling for truth, then what the spiritual researcher describes can be understood in the right way by every person who does not allow himself to be prejudiced. The prepared soul is needed to investigate supersensible facts and beings, but never to comprehend them. This is, so to speak, the secret of the presentation of spiritual things: that they can be presented in such a way that every soul can understand them, after they have been investigated by the supersensible powers of knowledge.

Now there is a peculiarity: the human soul needs the results of spiritual research to understand the things we will talk about, for example, in the next lecture on 'Life's Questions and the Riddle of Death'. The human soul thirsts to have ideas and concepts about what goes beyond death, ideas and concepts to truly grasp the essence of the soul. And anyone who wanted to refuse to understand the nature of the soul could well suppress for a while what may be called the yearning of the soul for the solution of the riddles of the world. But then it becomes all the more apparent that we may well deny the soul spiritual nourishment, but we cannot suppress the hunger that arises and can drive the soul not only into despair but also into unhealthiness. Man needs, so to speak, for his welfare and for his safety in life, the results of spiritual research, and to make the soul happy in the right way with the results of spiritual research, for this it is only necessary to have common sense. The natural sense of truth is enough to grasp what the spiritual researcher imparts. As long as it is not investigated, it cannot be said. But when it has been investigated and formulated aright, it can be understood.

The truth of this can best be seen from the fact that the spiritual researcher himself has gained nothing for the happiness of his soul, for everything that he needs for his soul in general, from his “vision”. He has a new world. But this new world is of no use to him as long as he has not developed it to the point where it can be used to judge the soul life that we lead in everyday life, and which longs for the solution of the riddles of the world. What the spiritual researcher can get out of his research is of no use to him, quite unlike the other person to whom it is related and who grasps it with a natural sense of truth and common sense. But as regards what the soul needs for its life, the spiritual researcher has nothing through his research, but only and alone through what then comes out of the research and can be communicated to everyone. The spiritual researcher can only be of use to humanity as a whole if he is able to express the results of his research in such concepts and ideas that they can be grasped by the ideas of an age, provided that the latter are sufficiently unprejudiced and unbiased. This unprejudiced attitude is certainly still largely lacking in the present day because people believe that other ideas, for example those of natural science, contradict the results of spiritual science. But if one looks more closely at the results of spiritual scientific research, one will see everywhere that this is not the case.

But still another thing stands between the spiritual researcher and his audience. Precisely what the spiritual researcher is, in that he can see into the spiritual world, is actually widely misunderstood. People make serious mistakes about the spiritual researcher as such precisely when they want to approach or long for spiritual research. In order not to speak at too great length, I will merely remark that the greatest error, especially among well-meaning people, is that the spiritual researcher, because he has prepared his soul to see into the spiritual world, is regarded as a kind of “higher animal”, as being somewhat ahead of other people. But by such a view, the one who wants to come to supersensible knowledge, blocks the way to it the most. It very often happens that out of a certain goodwill, the view is formed that the spiritual researcher, because he can see into the spiritual world, is therefore superior to other people, is worth more than they are, that it is something particularly desirable for the human soul and its value to be able to see into the spiritual world. That in our time this striving occurs in the widest circles, stems from a fact that can be briefly characterized in the following way.

In earlier times we also find communications from spiritual research that were given to people. But mostly only the results were communicated. The methods were not spoken about as, for example, one can speak about them today, or as it can be spread in a public book today, as it is in «How to Know Higher Worlds?» or in my «Occult Science in Outline». For certain reasons, the methods were only spoken of to a few individuals whose certain qualities were quite certain. This was right for older times because there was feeling and sense and also a sense of truth for a larger audience, in order to allow the results to affect the soul and also to make the soul happy, but not enough to overcome the difficulties for the soul to enter the spiritual world.

Today, souls live differently. Today there is the possibility of a completely different way of thinking. Let us just compare how people today can think quite differently, not only through the advanced natural sciences, but also through the ever-advancing education that people learn to think quite differently than was the case in the past. As a result, the age has acquired the ability to judge things better. Therefore, things can be communicated. But this is only just beginning. Therefore, it is inevitable that errors will arise.

It is such an error to regard the spiritual researcher as something special. But man is never, by increasing his knowledge, as it has been described, something that stands out above humanity, which cannot have such knowledge. Just as the chemist is no different from the other people because he knows chemistry, so the spiritual researcher is no different from the other people. It is not through such things that the value of a person is determined, but it is determined within certain narrower limits by intellectuality, by the power of healthy thinking. One person is worth more if he can think well than another who can think badly. And in the most comprehensive sense, a person's value is determined by his morality, by the fact that he performs moral acts and has a moral state of mind. He is not ahead by virtue of a particular training of the soul, but solely by virtue of his intellectual and moral qualities.

For this reason the bad habit, which obscures the paths to supersensible knowledge, should be completely eradicated in those who wish to approach such knowledge: that one considers the spiritual researcher, who is able to see into the spiritual world, to be a special authority because he can do so, and regards him as something special. This gives rise to a belief in authority and a blind following, which are bad enough in other fields, but are most disastrous in the field of spiritual scientific research, for experience shows the following for the practice of spiritual research.

Those who, in the ordinary course of life, have acquired sound, straightforward, logical thinking, just as other people do in the ordinary course of life, also carry this logical, healthy thinking into the supersensible world and are thus able to judge what is real, what is right and what is true, and they alone can then pass on correct judgments to their fellow world from what they recognize. It is not by looking into the supersensible world that one forms correct judgments, but by going into it with correct intellect, with good logic. No matter how much a fool can see in the spiritual world, who sees a whole heap of all possible spiritual things, because he has in some way trained his soul for it, will also tell nothing but nonsense about what it is like in the spiritual world. Whether one comes to the truth depends on one's ability to judge. Therefore, even if a person with good sense is unable to see into the spiritual world, he is always able to judge whether what someone is saying, no matter how much he has “seen” it in the spiritual world, is nonsense or whether it has substance. If someone shows that he cannot think well, that he cannot connect things properly, then, instead of listening to the spiritual researcher, he should rather stand guard over his common sense, for then he will always know whether something comes from a wise or a foolish mind.

Even more important in this regard is the moral state of the soul. Anyone who approaches the spiritual world with bad passions, bad feelings and emotions, but especially with vanity and ambition, will see what is presented to him only in a distorted and untrue way. He will see the worst aspects of the spiritual, and these will present themselves to him in such a way that they do not tell him the truth, but create illusions. The spiritual seer's moral state determines what he can see in the spiritual world. To that extent, spiritual vision itself is not suitable for making people some kind of authority. Rather, we have to pay attention to the way in which spiritual research is prepared, and we must know that we will cause the greatest harm if we do not keep watch with our common sense and only look at what can be objectively judged.

This is the way to judge supersensible knowledge on the part of those who long for such knowledge for the salvation and happiness of their soul. If man relates to the spiritual researcher in this way, then truly this relationship of the world to the spiritual researcher is no different than the relationship of the world to other sciences. Just as not everyone can go to the observatory or the laboratory to conduct research there, so too, although a certain deepening into the spiritual world is always possible today, relatively few can see into it. But this is not necessary either, because the fruits of spiritual knowledge can be understood by unbiased comprehension when they are communicated. This can become the right relationship between the spiritual researcher and his audience, and this is also always the right one in the coexistence of people.

The more we succeed in not taking the spiritual researcher as an authority, but rather relying on our common sense, examining everything, and the more we measure everything the spiritual researcher says against how we see it when we compare it to life, when we apply our common sense in other words, the more we do that, the more we stand on healthy ground. We may well say that spiritual science, insofar as the world needs it, is accessible to every human being today, because it is comprehensible, even if one cannot see into the spiritual worlds. We are already at the point today where it is actually no longer denied to any soul to go the way into the spiritual world. Our age demands that people become more and more convinced that the path into the supersensible worlds can also be taken. This is the right thing to do, in contrast to what leads people to a blind belief in authority. But only what is right has value for the happiness and salvation of the soul.

These are a few suggestions regarding the paths to supersensible knowledge, to that knowledge that really leads us into a spiritual world that lies behind our sensory world and that also enables us to comprehend this spiritual world. The spiritual researcher himself has something of the spiritual world for his personality, for his being, only when he can not only see but can also grasp what he has seen. For everything seen is still of no value if it is not grasped. But when it is grasped, grasped by the characterized common sense and the natural sense of truth, then it digs itself into our soul, connects with it, and our soul feels directly what is in it, as the soul, when it comes before a picture, directly feels what is in the picture, even if it cannot make this picture itself. Just as it is not necessary to be a painter to benefit from a picture, it is equally unnecessary to penetrate into a knowledge that is also necessary for the soul to the highest degree, for example, of immortality or of the passage through repeated lives on earth, or to penetrate this knowledge sufficiently to be able to form these cognitions oneself in spiritual vision — although it would be good if more and more people were to penetrate into spiritual vision. But this is conquered by time, and more and more people will also do so because the necessary, insuperable need will arise to live one's way into the supersensible world. Souls will be more and more compelled to become seers, so to speak, to really grow together with the spiritual world.

But this gives - be it understood self-seeing, be it understood seeing of the other - the possession of supersensible truths, of supersensible knowledge, that our soul knows how we recognize through outer science, how all the outer substances that are present in the whole universe, so that we are embedded in the same that is spread throughout the whole universe. In this way, through spirit-comprehending research, he also learns to recognize that in everything that surges up and down in his consciousness or subconscious, he is connected to a world of spiritual beings that are truly more real than the substances with which the body is connected.

Thus, little by little, man feels the fruits of spiritual research in the peace of his soul, and also feels the power to work and be active in the spiritual universe, in the God- and spirit-imbued universe. But that is what makes man know what he is and have the necessary knowledge for him: that he lives and feels connected to and knows that he lives, resting and active, thinking, feeling and willing in the spirit-imbued universe. And that is what the soul cannot do without, what it seeks when it does not have it for a certain period of time. The soul needs this if it is not to become desolate within itself and, through this desolation, become incapable of working with humanity, so that it would not only despair of the divine but also fall into decadence. But the consciousness of belonging together with the supersensible worlds underlies what instinctively felt in Goethe when he says:

Were the eye not sun-like,
The sun could never behold it;
Were not in us the power of the Godhead,
How could we be enraptured by the Divine?

Well, the eye is solar! The same power that is in the sun is in the eye. Thus, as the ancient philosophers said, like can be recognized by like. There is a divine in man, the whole world is imbued with divinity: thus, the inner divine can grasp the outer divine. But Goethe also recognized that the opposite of this is a truth.

Schopenhauer, although he makes the whole world an appearance of will, is unable to see that what is within us is not only necessary for the knowledge of the external world around us, but that, conversely, the external world is also necessary for the existence of the internal world. According to Schopenhauer, the sun only exists because we have an eye. This is how the peculiar philosophy arose that regards the world as soundless, as cold, and so on, and that all this only begins when the human organs enter the world. But Goethe knew the right thing: that not only do we see things by having eyes, we hear sounds by having ears, but that an eye can only arise because the sun is there. From a once eyeless entity, man has become a seeing being because light fills space and brings forth the eye from an organism that did not yet have an eye. The power of the sun created the eye through the light it spread. So it is not important that we carry the divine within us and, for example, in Fexerbach's sense, we only project the divine that we have first created within us into the world, but we must know that we would not have this “sense of God” within us at all if the divine-spiritual did not fill the world and create a spiritual organ in us, just as the outer sun created the outer eye.

Therefore we can say: The consciousness of the belonging together of soul and world, which gives the soul strength and power and lets it rest and be active in the spiritual universe, is composed of two things, two things of which we can characterize one with the beautiful Goethean saying:

If the eye were not itself the sun,
The sun could it never see;
Were not in us the power of God himself,
How could we be delighted with the Divine?

But it is entirely in the Goethean sense when we, complementing this one-sided truth with the other, which only makes it the full truth, add the other saying, which may be:

If the world were not endowed with the sun,
How could the eyes of beings flourish?
If existence were not God's revelation,
How could people come to be filled with God?

Dearly beloved! Although the great riddles concerning fate and death must always inspire people to reflection, this is especially the case in our fateful days, when the question of fate and the riddle of death are awakened directly or indirectly in so many souls by the immediate events of the day. In the lectures I have been permitted to give on this subject from the standpoint of spiritual science, I have often pointed out that in our time, in view of all the indications of our time, questions such as those concerning fate and the nature of death must gradually change from an old way of looking at and feeling to a truly scientific way of looking at and perceiving them.

Just as two or three hundred years ago a wave of human development brought the newer scientific view, we perceive how it lies in the impulses of the time in the present, that spiritual science, science about the questions of spiritual life, is moving into the cultural development of humanity from our time on. But now it must be emphasized that precisely when spiritual questions and spiritual enigmas are to be examined in the light of science, scientific research and work must take on a completely different character than scientific work and research into the external life and facts of nature.

And that, honored attendees, is what still arouses the harshest prejudices in so many circles, one might say, in general today, against what spiritual science has to say. Not only do the general prejudices exist, which assert themselves against every new cultural movement, which have asserted themselves even in the widest circles when the dawn of the new natural science appeared, but there is something quite special about it, that in a much higher degree humanity will have to relearn with regard to spiritual science, as it has to in relation to natural science. And although it was inconceivable to mankind only a few centuries ago that contrary to all appearances of the senses, it should be assumed that the earth does not stand still and that the sun does not stand still, but that the sun stands still and the earth moves around it, it is even more fundamentally inconceivable to these people, given their present state of development, to assume that the life of the spirit, the results of spiritual science, in the most eminent sense, must fundamentally contradict all that the outer senses present, and that the very nature of research to assume, according to their present course of development, that the life of the spirit, the results of spiritual science in the most eminent sense, must fundamentally contradict all that the outer sense appears to offer, and that the very nature of research into spiritual realms must take a different form from that of outer scientific research.

Let us try to recall the most elementary, most primitive character of external scientific research and observation! It consists in the fact that man first directs his senses and also his mind, insofar as it is bound to the brain, to the external world, receives impressions of the external world and forms ideas, thoughts, concepts about this external world. In these ideas, thoughts and concepts that he forms, he then has to experience within himself what are usually called the laws of nature. Two things can be pointed out in this external research if one wants to emphasize the difference between this research and what spiritual science wants.

On the one hand, it can be said that this research is based on what is real, spread out before it externally; and from this external reality, the human spirit progresses, the human view of the soul progresses to what it wants, to what it wants to achieve, so that science of this external nature is, so to speak, a consequence, a consequence of the experience of external real reality in this field. The other thing that is obvious to anyone who takes a little time to consider the soul's attitude to this outer research is that in this research, in this progression from looking at the outer world to the concepts, ideas and notions we form, we we make for ourselves, we proceed, as it were, from the fully-juicy reality, from the reality full of content, to that which is then, in our thoughts, images, concepts, in a sense, ethereal, thin compared to the full-bodied nature of external reality. We feel it: when we face reality with our senses, we stand in the full life of it. By forming knowledge and insight about external reality, we distance ourselves from this fully tangible reality. It has often been emphasized: we move away to a kind of gray inner experience, to a thin “ethereal”.

Now the spiritual researcher has to take the opposite path to that of the researcher in external nature in the way described. The researcher of external nature has this nature before him and he finally arrives at the content of his knowledge, his science, which lives in his soul. The spiritual researcher must start from what lives in the soul, and everything that can be called knowledge, science, inner imagination, inner experience in thoughts and concepts, which is the result and consequence of external research, is the preparation for the spiritual researcher. The spiritual researcher cannot start from something that is given to him externally; he must start from the inner, powerful experience, and that which is otherwise the content of science is only the preparation for that which the spiritual researcher can bring to life in his soul when he turns his gaze away, turns his attention away from all outer sense perceptions, from all that the intellect can think under the influence of outer reality.

The preparation for his research lies in what the spiritual researcher experiences here, when he excludes external reality and directs his gaze purely to inner thoughts and imaginative experiences, when he turns his attention entirely to his inner being. What happens in his inner being is what it is all about. What is going on in his mind, the extent of his inner experiences, can all be characterized by saying: The path of the spiritual researcher is through the concentration of thought. But this concentration of thought must be imagined as something quite different from what is called concentrated thinking in ordinary life. Not that it is something different, it is basically only an intensification of what we otherwise also call attention in our external life; but it is an unlimited intensification of this attention.

The point is that one takes up images, which initially need have nothing to do with an external reality, that one takes up symbolic images, ideas, not in order to reflect on these ideas as such in terms of their content, but in order to concentrate all the soul's inner forces, which would otherwise be scattered over external reality, onto one inner point, the point that one has steered into the center of the soul's life with an image. Then one is completely within oneself; but one is not calm within oneself. Then one is inwardly actively experiencing. Whoever continues such an inner concentration of thoughts for a sufficient length of time – a sufficient length of time does not mean a few hours, but weeks, years, in repeated inner activity – whoever continues this for a sufficient length of time, walks a path in his soul that ultimately leads him to experience a reality. Just as in ordinary observation one starts from reality and progresses to soul experience, so in spiritual research one starts from concentrated inner experiences and arrives at a new spiritual reality. This new spiritual reality cannot be made inward. What can be made inward is merely preparation for spiritual observation. This spiritual reality must approach man at the end of the path of preparation. While knowledge is otherwise acquired as a result of looking at external reality, in spiritual research reality is attained on the basis of inwardly working, inwardly active knowledge. No one can somehow inwardly do in the spirit what he then comes to. What he can do in the spirit is go the way that leads there.

What I am characterizing here is felt, for example, by a mind like that of the one I spoke of yesterday, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in terms of what he could already know, intuit, of the knowledge of real spiritual science. He spoke beautiful words in this regard:

The natural man is not able to rise to the supernatural by his own power, he must be raised to it by the power of the supernatural itself.

That is to say, the human being must approach the supernatural, and this supernatural must accept him. That is what it is about. From the ethereal, from the thin of the inner soul experience, we start and arrive at the full content of spiritual reality.

Of course, dear attendees, the objections that can be made from a time-consciousness against such spiritual scientific research are natural, I would say self-evident; in particular, the objection is self-evident that will be raised again and again that what the spiritual researcher experiences cannot have any general objective value, but that they are subjective experiences, that if a person wants knowledge, he must, in principle, define the limits of the cognitive faculty and admit that the supersensible is based on subjective experiences. This objection is very justified because it really applies to the beginning of the path, because the beginning of the path, as long as it is this preparation, involves inner struggles, inner battles, inner soul tragedy that are subjective, that basically only concern the person going through them. But it is quite another matter when one finally arrives at something that one does not evoke from one's own inner being, but which one encounters and which one accepts. Just as one can ascend a mountain by many different routes to reach the summit, but it is only from the summit that one can see all sides, so it is with the spiritual researcher: as long as the spiritual researcher is on his way, things only concern him personally; But when he has confronted spiritual reality, then he stands before an objective, before a real, which is supersensibly so full of content for the spiritual researcher, as the sensible is full of content for the outer observation.

But now there is one thing that must be taken into account as particularly characteristic when the spiritual researcher goes through the path just characterized. Let us recall once more what this path consists of: it consists in the fact that, with distraction of attention from all external sense world, with the most intense attention, increased to the unlimited, one only lives in perceptions and concepts that one's own soul can awaken in itself. In this way, one gradually enters into an inner life that has been intensified and concentrated in this way. Now the strange thing is: the more one succeeds in driving this inner concentration to a certain point, the more one comes to experience inner tension, in which one says to oneself: “You are now completely absorbed in what you have set out to do, you have forgotten your entire physicality and environment, you live only in your concentrated thoughts, the more you notice from a certain level on - because before this the inner thought life becomes stronger and stronger - you notice that this inner thought life undergoes an extinguishing in itself, it becomes less and less intense. And a peculiar experience occurs, which could be described as follows: It is as if the thought on which one has concentrated takes one with it with all one's soul forces and dissipates into the general ether of the world. This is the result of this tense, heightened, one might say technically conducted, increase in inner concentration and attention.

If you want to use an image, you could say that you have to take your inner concentration of thought so far for the purpose of spiritual research that the thought first becomes stronger and stronger and then, as it unfolds its life in the soul, it increases to such an extent that it dies and you, so to speak, die with it in your soul feeling. Thought must first die in the soul, if man is to be transported into the spiritual world.

When one has attained a certain level of spiritual research activity, one has, as it were, achieved what could be called an inner spiritual feeling and sensing in the world. The spiritual researcher knows at this moment, when the thought begins to die, that he is now entering a sphere of experience, of inwardly strong experience, where the thought ceases, but where the life forces are experienced in a concentrated way. The spiritual researcher knows that at this moment, with what he experiences inwardly, he is not within the confines of his brain; he knows this through the direct experience. He knows: You are now experiencing yourself outside of your body. And in this experience, which becomes intense, consciousness dies, so to speak. And in this dying, an inner experience occurs, an inner experience that is extraordinarily significant, that is shattering when it is experienced for the first time. The experience that occurs is this: that one gets a feeling: living in the spiritual world is something completely different than living in the outer physical world.

And here it is necessary to emphasize that it is so difficult to disseminate correct concepts about the spiritual world because most people, according to the currently prevailing conception, actually have to imagine this world differently than it is. While one faces the physical-sensual world in such a way that one can say: It is out there, you look at it, you take it in through your senses and your mind, is it with the spiritual world and everything that is of such a nature that it stands before you, so to speak, all thinking fades and something else occurs. It happens that you feel as if you have been taken in by a world, that you feel towards this world as you would feel towards the plant, the stone outside, at the moment when you could recognize them: you are now being taken up by the knowledge, the imagination of a human being. Just as our thoughts, streaming in from the outside world, feel accepted by us, so the person who, in true spiritual research, with his whole being, feels the imagination within him dying, is absorbed in the New, feels accepted by a world. That is what matters.

The way we grasp our thoughts and accept them and then have them within us is how we experience the destiny of thoughts, so to speak. We ourselves become thoughts, we can say, and feel as if we were a thought and were grasped by supersensible beings, as otherwise our thoughts are grasped by us, and as if we were now resting in these supersensible beings. We are within these beings. When we come to this stage, we realize that an invisible world is above us, but that we cannot experience it as some imagine it; rather, it must be experienced in such a way that everything [thought-like] ceases and we enter into a supersensible world. For a moment it is as it would be for someone who strained his face and hearing harder and harder, and with increased face and hearing, became blind and deaf. So one becomes, as it were, blind and deaf to the presentation of thoughts, because one feels: You are now accepted by the spiritual world. Not: one experiences, but one feels, one is being experienced. It must be emphasized again and again: the ascent into the spiritual world has a character opposite to that of penetrating into the outer, sensual world.

It is not about penetrating into a ghostly world, but about an experience in a different sense than the ordinary experience. That is what it is about. So you are inside, - that is all you know at this stage - so you are inside a spiritual world. So you know: spiritual beings hover over this sensual world, as it were, and you can be taken up by them, as your thought is taken up by you. But one feels as if one were blind and deaf, for thinking, knowledge, has died. Ordinary science must first die before one can penetrate into the spiritual world. One feels as if one were blind and deaf, but groping in the spiritual world. The life forces that one feels within are strained, and one feels groping.

But one does know what it means to be outside one's body. The fact that one is aware of this brings about a change in the entire human experience. And this change can best be characterized by drawing attention to something that has often been pointed out from this place, namely the changing consciousness of the human being – for every normal person probably within 24 hours – the changing consciousness of sleeping and waking. By going through what has been described, the spiritual researcher learns to recognize through direct inner experience that the human being's actual inner being can be experienced in and of itself, above all physical aspects. He learns to recognize – by experiencing the strength that in himself, he learns to recognize that he can live through the experiences that would otherwise remain completely unconscious in sleep, that are unconsciously experienced in the human soul, with the power that he has thus gained.

Not that the spiritual researcher does not need sleep; he does need it. But he can artificially induce states in which he is able to experience as otherwise only happens to a person from falling asleep to waking up. For the spiritual researcher knows, by experiencing the following: You are outside your body, you develop an activity that is not dependent on the brain and nervous system, and he comes to understand through actual experience what is experienced from falling asleep to waking up. He comes to recognize that in fact the human being's actual spiritual-soul entity is outside of the body, that when a person falls asleep, he leaves his body with his spiritual-soul entity and when he wakes up, the spiritual-soul entity once again enters the body.

But now the spiritual researcher, by means of experiential knowledge, can recognize what is actually outside the body during sleep. He can also see from this spiritual-soul that has been illuminated, from this spiritual-soul that is, as it were, revealed before the spiritual eyes, he can recognize why the soul is unconscious from falling asleep to waking up, why darkness and gloom spread around it. From the moment of falling asleep until waking up, something lives in the soul that, as already mentioned, can be perceived by the spiritual researcher. It can be called the desire, ever present in the soul during the entire physical experience between birth and death, to return to the physical body. This life of desire always fills the soul in the ordinary experience between falling asleep and waking up. The soul always wants to return to its body and, through this will, feels itself with this will, and this experience, this development of this desire, clouds what would otherwise be there in the spiritual-soul experience between falling asleep and waking up. And only when the soul submerges into the physical body, when this desire is fulfilled, can it develop its supersensible activity and then it stimulates the physical body so that it becomes a mirror of external expression.

In that the spiritual researcher learns to recognize what can actually be experienced in the soul, in the soul free of the body, he perceives directly that which otherwise extinguishes in sleep. But with the power he has gained, he is able to illuminate and clarify the soul's spiritual content. But if man wants to achieve this illumination and clarification, then something else must occur in the spiritual researcher that characterizes him. For we have seen that basically the intensity of thinking fades, basically man feels mentally blind and deaf and only as if groping in the spiritual world. What must be added in order for him to enter into spiritual vision and hearing again lies in another sphere. Something must be developed that is the second element of spiritual research, which otherwise remains dormant in life. And to realize what must be developed, one can direct one's spiritual gaze to the following.

Consider what is usually called fate. How do we stand in its current? We stand in it in such a way that - well, as we often say - the events of fate approach us by chance and are experienced by us. We feel separated in our inwardness from what befalls us as experiences of fate. In order to fulfill the second element, the spiritual researcher must take a completely different approach to these fateful experiences than the ordinary person does. To understand this, just look back at what you experienced in your youth, at the vicissitudes of fate, and then look at yourself today, at what you actually are in relation to your true self. You can realize that you would not be what you are, would not be in every detail, if you had not already experienced this or that stroke of fate, good or bad, in this ordinary life. That you take this or that approach at a certain moment, that you relate to it in this or that way, depends on the fact that you have experienced this or that in your destiny. If you really ask without prejudice, what are you actually? Then you have to say to yourself: you are the result of your destiny. The content of the soul, what you can do or want, is the result of your destiny.

What lies in these thoughts can now be used, as it were, for another soul exercise. The first soul exercise has made us strong in concentrated thinking; the second is one that relates to the feeling will, to the inner soul impulses, to what one actually is as an I. And one can call what the spiritual researcher has to go through as a second exercise, initially, meditation on the vicissitudes, well, let's say initially of one's own destiny. Not in theory, but in real inner experience, one realizes how one has actually become what one is now, by going through this or that, one grows into one's destiny, one grows together with it. You grow out of your ordinary self, which believes in coincidence, you weave yourself into the stream of destiny, become estranged from your own inner self, merge into destiny and know yourself flowing with destiny.

When this inner meditation bears fruit, then something very special occurs in the mind of the spiritual researcher. Namely, the spiritual researcher can notice when he has gone through this path of concentrated thinking, through the dying away of thinking, the feeling into higher, supersensible entities - which, as it were, absorb him, as we absorb a thought. When the spiritual researcher has gone through all this, then he experiences within himself, or rather observes within himself, something like an inner protest, like an inner opposition to what he himself has done with his entire spiritual research journey. And this protest can be expressed in such a way that one says: the spiritual researcher, through his concentrated thinking, arrives at a point where he feels that he has dissolved with his soul life. And he struggles against this dissolving. This inner protest, which is again a harrowing experience, lessens, stops, is overcome when the exercise of taking hold of fate is done, when one becomes immersed in fate. And just as one can say that the thought dies in concentrated thinking when it has reached its highest energy, so one can say: one perceives by entering into the stream of fate, one perceives how the will itself, which is otherwise within the human being, is grasped by the stream of fate. While we usually see the external world of fate as something standing opposite us and our will as something within us, we experience our own will in what we encounter as fate. We learn to see in our will that through which we shape ourselves in life. Our will is awakened and gradually pours over our entire destiny. When one has undergone such an exercise for a long time, one experiences to the full what the second element of spiritual research development is. The second element is the awakening of the sleeping will in our destiny. We wake up ourselves outside of us in the stream of our destiny, we enter with what we are into what we otherwise call the external.

By going out of ourselves in this way, new soul forces arise in us. This can be characterized by saying that whereas we used to kill our thinking life by concentrated thinking and then felt blind and deaf in the spiritual life, only groping our way as we entered the supersensible worlds, we now begin to live in these worlds as a self, we begin to feel a strong, higher consciousness in higher beings. We now feel not only accepted as a thought would feel accepted in us, remaining unconscious in us, but we enter a world, into supersensible entities, become like their thoughts, but in such a way that we are living thought-beings in them, developing self-awareness in them.

And with this higher consciousness, something occurs that may now be called an expansion of the soul's power, which is already present in ordinary life, but which in ordinary life extends only to the ordinary experiences of memory. We remember what we have experienced in ordinary life from a certain point in time after our birth; we can recall these experiences in our soul, we can also say to ourselves: If we could not remember, we would not be what we are. We owe our memory to what we appear to be. We must be able to look back on our lives. This ability to look back on our lives is expanded and intensified by the meditation on fate, but it must be taken so far that we really feel in our deeds our fate as we otherwise feel in our body. Then a new power of the soul arises for us outside of our body, which goes back behind our birth. We now, as we do through the memory of the events since a certain point after the birth, envisage events that lie before birth, that we have lived through in a spiritual life that preceded our birth, and we know that, as we make ourselves what we are in ordinary life, through what we have already gone through in this life, that we have made ourselves out of the spiritual world, through those prenatal experiences, into the whole man of destiny and temperament that we are.

In other words, through meditation on destiny, we expand our soul power into the power of remembering a life that we have experienced outside the body. And with this experience, which we have had outside of the body, we simultaneously gain insight into the entire nature of this life outside of the body that we have undergone before birth. It is simply one of the experiences that this expanded memory has that it sees through why it has sought out this earthly existence through birth. It has sought it out because it must incorporate this soul life as an effect of earlier earthly experiences into this one, and it arises as an immediate inner experience, which from the marked point of development is experienced in the same way as color is for the sensual person, it arises what can be called : the realization of repeated earthly lives, that realization of the complete life of a person that allows him to be portrayed as undergoing repeated earthly lives and, between death and rebirth, lives in the spiritual world over and over again, in which the experiences on earth are processed.

It cannot be said that this spiritual experience, of which this is spoken, this spiritual science, has not always been dormant in the best minds of human development; our time only seems to be called upon to highlight what has been dormant in the best minds as real knowledge. If you want to be a truly enlightened person, you can look to a man like Lessing, admire him and say: Well, he has achieved extraordinary things, but even at the end of his life, like his spiritual testament, he also wrote “The Education of the Human Race”, and in this ‘Education of the Human Race’ he also put forward the hypothesis that man not only lives on the physical earth once, but goes through this life in repeated earthly lives. There he has grown old, one can say, there he has already become weak. Of course, one can feel very enlightened in such an assessment; but as natural as such an assessment may still be in our time, it is no different from the progress of humanity than the judgment that was held before Copernicus: the earth stands still, the sun moves around it and must move, and that was brought to Copernicus as a prejudice.

The prejudice that is repeatedly asserted against the idea of repeated earthly lives is no different than this prejudice, which lay dormant in people for a long, long time. And just as scientific progress has defeated all prejudices against it, so will spiritual scientific progress defeat all prejudices that are asserted against it. Lessing will be proved right with his work when he says: Should this hypothesis of repeated lives on earth - for spiritual science it is no longer a hypothesis, but something that can be experienced in the sense of today's discussions - should it therefore, because it is found at the bottom of the knowledge of the oldest of the primitive peoples, because it has arisen in the human mind before it was darkened and distracted by the sophistry of school, should it therefore be rejected, because it is opposed to the repeated lives on earth today? - should it be less valuable than another because it is found at the bottom of the knowledge of the oldest of the primitive peoples, because it has arisen in the human mind before it was darkened and distracted by the sophistry of school? One will recognize that what Lessing said - really what I yesterday called brave [science] - that this can really be raised to the rank of genuine science.

Then, when what has been hinted at here is truly grasped by people, then people will think differently about the fateful question than they do today. Then they will take what fate brings as intimately related to their being, then they will know that they are placed into the higher spiritual world by fate as conscious beings. With fate, people will grow together in their entire world view; fate will be seen as something that is there to lend a higher self to man, just as our body gives us the ordinary self of everyday life that we need to be a personality.

And then, when the human being has grown together with his destiny, little by little it will no longer seem incomprehensible to him what spiritual science has to say about death and its riddles. It is not without reason that the experience attained by the spiritual researcher, when on the one hand he grasps concentrated thinking and feels it dying away and when on the other hand he finds the awakening of that which what otherwise only lives in the human being in the whole stream of fate — the experience he undergoes has not been called in vain in the true mystical worldviews: approaching the gate of death.

For in fact, what the spiritual researcher experiences, even if not as direct reality, is in the image of experiencing death. When the spiritual researcher, by means of his two elementary preparatory experiences, is able to clarify and illuminate the spiritual and soul life within himself, he experiences it in such a way that he has to say to himself: 'You have left your physical body, you are looking at this physical body, you know what it means to live outside the body'. What the spiritual researcher experiences in his mind's eye when he approaches the gate of death in recognition is what every human being experiences when he passes through the gate of death: the body takes itself away from the soul and spirit, as it were. And through this experience, what is otherwise always present in the soul and spirit is extinguished.

For the spiritual researcher recognizes: When the human being is outside of his body from the moment he falls asleep until he wakes up, he still has a craving for his body. He recognizes at the same time, by approaching the gate of death in the sense indicated, how through the actual experience of passing through the gate of death, how through this actual experience of death, through this dissolution, through this acceptance of the body, this desire for the body is gradually eradicated in the soul. And as it is extinguished, it is as if a mist permeating the body were to leave the body and it were to become light. Man is truly absorbed into the sphere of the beings that are otherwise supersensible and invisible; man is accepted as thoughts are by man, and dying means being accepted by the spiritual beings.

But this moment of death, as it is experienced when the person looks back on the taking away of the body, is an experience that has a consequence. Just as the spiritual researcher experiences an expansion of his memory as he grows into his destiny, so the human being in general experiences an expansion of his memory when he passes through the gate of death, looking back on the life he has lived in the body. What presents itself at the moment of death triggers certain soul forces within him when he is accepted by the higher beings that embrace him.

And now something special occurs. To understand this, we have to draw attention to something. How do we have this self-awareness in our ordinary lives, this kind of consciousness, whereby we address ourselves as I? From the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, we do not address ourselves as I; we have to submerge into our spatial body in order to address ourselves as I. Basically, it is the case that every morning, when we submerge into our body and use our eyes, ears and other senses, we first become aware that we are an I. It is in our spatial body that we attain self-awareness. The spiritual researcher can observe this in himself by going outside of his body and going through all the struggles of deadening and suppressing the desire for the body; he knows what higher powers of remembrance he must use to be a self, how he must grow together with his destiny. What he experiences is otherwise experienced through the sight of leaving the body.

And another power comes into play: we can no longer enter a body. But what happens now is the memory that we were in the body. That is the significant thing. We would not come to an ego [consciousness] in the time between death and a new birth if we were merely thoughts of the higher beings, so to speak; only because we can always look back into our past earthly life, because we have a time body instead of the space body in the ordinary life after death, only because of this do we have self-awareness. In perpetually looking back at our temporal life, we remember this temporal life and thereby ignite our self-awareness. While in ordinary life our self-consciousness is kindled in the spatial body, after death it is kindled by what we call the heightened memory of what we were in the time between birth and death. Instead of space, time enters into the circumstances described after death. Thus we see how death, by its very nature, has an awakening power for the supersensible being of man, how what we experience in death gives us the ability to develop self-awareness after death. Just as thought dies in us and our self must be kindled by merging with fate, so man will kindle his self-awareness after death by looking back on his life on earth.

In this way, we gain a very real idea of what is otherwise called the soul and spiritual inner life in man; in this way, we come to a feeling for the living, soul and spiritual core of the human being, the core of the being that Johann Gottlieb Fichte, as far as he could in his time, felt as [I shared from him yesterday]. In addition to yesterday's passage, today I would like to add the other one where he, in his writing on the destiny of the scholar, talks about how the soul feels when it is truly able to grasp its spiritual-soul essence, grounded in the eternal super-sensible. There Fichte says: “And if you all, rocks and mountains, that you have piled up, fall down on me...” /gap in the text].

The task of spiritual science is to elevate to the level of scientific knowledge that which has been sensed by the best minds. Now one can say: Of course, not everyone in our time can go through such experiences that lead them to an immediate grasp of the spiritual world, as described. But that is not at all necessary. These inner experiences are necessary so that what can be said about the spiritual world is brought up out of the abyss into which it would otherwise be sunk. These powers are necessary for the bringing up; but when what has been said about the connection between human destiny and death is formed into ideas and brought into the language of human conceptions, then these soul experiences not be necessary, but one recognizes approximately what has been brought to light by the spiritual researcher, so through the inner ability to perceive the truth as correct, as one perceives mathematical judgments when they are formulated and presented to us. For it must be said again and again: Every human being, without exception, is called upon to go through what has been described today in order to see the spiritual world directly and to recognize the human being in his or her eternity. But not every human being needs to do so. Every human being, however, can truly recognize and correctly understand what spiritual research says, provided they do not throw obstacles and prejudices in their own way. It is not contradicted by the fact that today the majority of people still say of the results of spiritual research: It is a vain fantasy, pure nonsense, the brainchild of a few thinkers. The human being does not decide on the basis of reasons in reality, does not prove in reality, but the human being decides according to habitual thinking. And today's thinking habits are the result of that thinking, that imagining, which had the very purpose of penetrating into the outer, sensual reality, which became accustomed to adhering to this outer sensuality.

It is natural today that the majority of people, precisely because they have risen to this natural thinking, cannot approach the law of development. But as natural as this is, the time is coming when the bow of materialistic thinking will be so taut on one side that it will have to break on the other. And everywhere there are signs that humanity is about to grasp spiritual scientific thinking in the same enthusiastic way that it has embraced natural scientific thinking. Today, all kinds of objections are still being raised against spiritual scientific thinking; but I would like to say that the best minds in human development have also had the right feeling about this. And Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whom I tried to present yesterday as an exemplary guiding genius, has, as far as he could in his time, refuted an objection that is so easily raised against the presentation and consideration of the spiritual world, with the following words. He says: “The doctrine of a spirit, by no means arbitrarily assumed, in whose higher power we all live, which unintelligent people believe to have been sufficiently struck when they call it mysticism, this is by no means enthusiasm; for it goes to the root of the matter, and indeed to the most intimate spirit, which is to animate all action. It would only become enthusiasm if it were added that this view emerges from a mysterious source of light that is granted only to a few chosen ones. In which approach the actual mysticism consists. If this pretense is pride in sensual [gap in the text]."

As I said, Fichte did not yet have spiritual science, but he had the seeds, and by developing these seeds, spiritual science comes into being – through a science that does not appeal to mere passive external observation, but to the inwardly active powers of the soul, through a science that wants to be experienced science. But that which this spiritual science wants to bring to humanity should also be a real force for the future and progress of humanity, a truly real force. Through spiritual science, fate and death will be placed in the context of life as belonging to the whole human experience. Just as we look at the processes of external nature and see how what the human being is in this external nature is formed at the highest peak of these processes, so humanity will gradually come to understand, precisely through spiritual science, that what the human being is in his innermost spiritual-soul core of being, what he is in that through which he is connected to the eternal, that this rests in the forces that otherwise confront us externally incomprehensibly in fate and in the riddle of death.

And then one looks at this spiritual-soul core of the human being as at a real one; one sees the outer life not as the cause, but as the creature of this real spiritual-soul core within the human being. One sees how what connects the human being to the eternal forms his bodily exterior, shapes everything one sees in the outer life. And then, through spiritual science, those riddles of life that are otherwise so difficult to solve do not appear as riddles, but as something that sustains life, that gives strength in the blissful moments of life, but also comfort in the bitter moments of life. Therefore, because this is so, I do not want to shrink back at this moment from stating, as it were, a special result of spiritual research, which may interest us particularly now.

We see people dying in the prime of their lives; we see the outer body detach itself from the person – compressed into a short moment in time – how the outer body detaches itself from the soul, which we must assume would otherwise have had years of strength to prevail over this physical life. And as we contemplate the essence of the human being as revealed to us by this spiritual-scientific portrayal, we ask ourselves: What is it like for a person who lays down his physical body in the prime of life, that is, in the spiritual world, where the experience of self comes about through memory? What does this early death mean for the core of a human being who would still have had the strength to permeate physical life for many years? How does fate present itself here? I believe that we can best come to terms with this if we compare those who sacrifice themselves for their fatherland - which current events demand - with those who sacrifice their body, with an ascetic who also sacrifices the physical in a certain way.

I have often pointed out here that spiritual science, when it is properly understood, is not an enemy of life, does not lead away from life, but precisely because it grasps the full reality, is life-promoting, that the spiritual researcher, precisely because he points to the spiritual world, wants to say: In these spiritual sources lie powers which enrich life, which would be poorer without them and without the directing of thoughts to them. Spiritual research does not lead a person to despise the life of the body, but to spiritualize it, to control the body. In this way, however, it is also able to indicate the wrongness of a false asceticism, the asceticism that believes it is living its way up into the spiritual through the killing or paralysis of the body, which is caused by certain powers of the spiritual and soul. Of course, one attains all kinds of things by mortifying or paralyzing the body, just as everything that happens in the world has consequences. One attains many things; but what does one attain through such asceticism? True spiritual experience seeks to penetrate into the spiritual worlds; false asceticism impoverishes life by only developing what is already present in the spiritual and soul core of our being, because it does not ascend to new powers, but kills and paralyzes the body through already existing powers. What does one attain through this? One attains a certain strengthening of inner powers, the possibility of experiencing the soul-spiritual core of one's being in a richer, more meaningful way. But one attains this in and through the body, even if one attains it by killing and paralyzing the body, but precisely by overcoming these bodily powers in the body. But as a result, what the in a sense wrong ascetic attains, refers to his personal, individual life, that when he goes through the gate of death, he then has a stronger soul-spiritual core, that he uses all the powers he has acquired to look in a personal, individual way at what his life on earth was. He acquires a heightened sense of self-awareness for his own personality, and, as it were, cultivates a supersensible egoism through his asceticism.

On the other hand, let us consider - I cannot help but say that I would like to draw attention to the objective results of spiritual research without any sympathy or antipathy - let us consider the person who is not an ascetic but who sacrifices his body, sacrifices for his country and people, sacrifices in the prime of youth and carries within him a spiritual-soul core that could live in the body for a long time; he experiences, through all the circumstances surrounding his death, namely through the circumstances that make his death a conscious death of the victim, a strengthening of these inner forces that lead to self-awareness . But now, after death, these strengthened powers are not merely strengthened when looking back at one's own body, they are not merely a strengthening of personal self-awareness, but rather a strengthening of the powers that are less inclined to be bound to bodily life; the strengthened powers are, as it were, diverted from bodily life. The self-awareness that is strengthened in the ascetic more in relation to the supersensible-egoistic, is strengthened in the person sacrificing himself on the battlefield for a great cause in such a way that the volitional impulses, the flowing impulses of feeling, are strengthened. Everything that is less selfish is strengthened. And so it happens that those forces that such a person brings through the gate of death have strengthened the selfless in him, and these remain with the national community for which the person in question sacrificed himself, or with the cause for which the person in question sacrificed himself. The ascetic basically spends the strengthened powers he has acquired on himself; the one who sacrifices himself in the prime of youth on the battlefield or for the greater good spends what fate demands of him for the sake of humanity, for the human community.

This is also something that gives us answers to the riddles of fate and death in a specific case, and this is what spiritual science will bring in general: it will create a worldview in the consciousness of human beings that comes to terms with the events between which the human soul, emerging from the dark mysteries of the world, must now walk. Certainly, everything that man can experience about the riddle of death and fate, he experiences in his entire life. All live in the spiritual, in the supersensible world, when they go through the gate of death; but as everything happens and would happen in nature outside, even if man knew nothing about it, it is still necessary for human progress that what happens outside in nature is taken into knowledge; because that brings man forward. Processes, objective realities, facts are all that the spiritual researcher explores, but what takes place in the spiritual world must become knowledge. And just as nature entered into progress in a moment of development, so spiritual knowledge must enter into cultural development from our time onwards.

When man assimilates into his knowledge that which exists without him, he advances his race. It can be said that anyone who has a sense for such spiritual knowledge will naturally do their part to promote progress in the sense of this spiritual science. I said with the first words of our reflection today that what is happening in the East and West makes it particularly important for us to ask about the riddle of fate and death. And if we look at it in such a way that we can say this about the connection between fate and death with the sacrificial life of the one who sacrifices himself, then we can say: We live in a time in which a large number of spiritual-mental cores of being, which could still awaken life, could promote physical life, go up into the spiritual world. There they will be.

In physical science, one speaks of the conservation of forces, of the fact that no force is lost; through spiritual science, one will increasingly speak of the conservation of spiritual forces, of their not being lost. These powers are there, these powers belong to the world's effectiveness. Not only the souls of those who go through the gate of death in a sacrificial death live on in the supersensible world, but what lives on as a sum of special powers is what has gone out of the bodies as soul nuclei and what could still have lived in these bodies. And when we spoke yesterday of the survival of the leader-geniuses, not only through tradition but in a real sense, as if these leader-geniuses radiated something into the descendants of their people that lives in the ranks of this people when this people is called upon to act, we can also say the same of all these spiritual and soul-like cores of being that had to prematurely complete their lives under the demands of the time.

Doesn't it seem to us as if the events of the immediate present, as if this most terrible struggle that humanity has experienced, is not the beginning of something completely new? I believe that anyone who feels the power and violence of what is currently happening will have to say to themselves: It is the introduction of something that must come as something completely new, in which those who will not have been forced to leave life and experience for the physical world, who will enter the future without having attained death and without the pain of being wounded, will participate. But this time that is to come will also be marked by all the forces that have passed into the spiritual world in the way just described. One will have to say: Whatever may come, the forces that have ascended from the physical world into the supersensible world without being exhausted will speak in the souls of the survivors and those born later in such a way that they will appear as challenges.

In a sense, one will have to say: Those who look up to these forces will demand a completely new life, and those who look at the signs of the times, at what can be said from the feelings of spiritual research about the signs of the times, if one considers this properly, will say: What is required of the living and dead, is that the materialistic, purely naturalistic view of the world is joined by a living grasp of the spirit and the spirit permeating human deeds, and that what goes up to the spiritual world in the form of unspent human cores will understand these forces, what is happening below. Only when that which is happening below feels the duty to cultivate the spirit, only that will be understood by those who, so to speak, have newly fertilized the field in which the survivors have to work with their blood, have newly revived it through their death.

And I mean more than an image when I say: spiritual science will [in the future be a confrontation] with these sacrificed forces, will be able to be felt as an obligation towards the sacrifices that are now being made and that will only have meaning if they usher in a new age. Therefore, it is as if all those who now pass into the other world through sacrificial death speak the word in a very special way, as a warning to humanity about a spiritual awakening, which Robert Prutz once spoke to Jacob Grimm, perhaps on much lesser occasions, with reference to [gap in text] relations /gap in the text] – now it is as if it were sounding as a reminder of those forces that have prematurely passed into the spiritual world through sacrificial death and are allowed to sound to urge on the fulfillment of duties with regard to spiritual life, [gap in the text].

It is for the coming generation,
It is for the dawn of the future.
It is for freedom and for the right,
It is for life and for death.

Yes, what can be achieved in the present through spiritual science is what counts for the future dawn, and what can be explored through spiritual science about the riddle of fate and death is what counts. It is not just about the life that can be perceived by the senses, it is about life and death and the life that emerges from death, and about death, which itself awakens life.

In one of his works Tolstoi expressed surprise—one might almost say disapproval—that in exploring modern science he found every kind of investigation concerning the evolution of the insect world, concerning what seemed to him insignificant things in the organic body or elsewhere in the world, whereas he found nothing in science itself concerning the important, the essential things, concerning the questions which stir every heart. Tolstoi said that above all he found nothing whatever concerning the nature of death. From a certain point of view one cannot entirely disagree with such an objection to the modern scientific spirit, coming from so distinguished a source. Nevertheless from another aspect one may stress the point that, if such an utterance is meant as a reproach, it is indeed to a certain extent unjust towards modern science, and this for the very simple reason that modern science has long owed its magnitude and importance to that very sphere in which answers to questions connected with the nature of death have been sought in the main without success. On the basis of the conception of the world represented here, it is certainly not necessary to inveigh against deficiencies in modern science. We can admire in the very highest degree the splendid achievements, the truly significant successes, both in their own sphere and also with respect to their application in practical life and in human society; here the opinion has repeatedly been expressed that Spiritual Science has certainly no need to lag behind in any kind of admiration pointing in this direction. At the same time, however, the most important achievements of the modern scientific world stand on a footing that gives no foundation for those points of contact which must definitely be reached, when questions concerning death, immortality and the like, are to be examined. Modern science cannot do this, because from her starting point she has in the first place set herself the task of investigating material life. But wherever death intervenes in existence, we find, when we look more closely, the point of contact which draws the spiritual and the material together. Certainly, when these subjects are under discussion, there is no need to agree with the many cheap attacks on the efforts of modern science. Indeed, we may even say (and this, too, has been often emphasized here) that when the great questions of conscience are to be examined, we may—even as spiritual scientists—find ourselves with reference to the feeling of scientific responsibility and scientific conscience, more drawn to the procedure adopted today by external natural science—although it is unable to penetrate to the most weighty problems lying behind life—than to many facile explanations springing from dilettante theosophical or other spiritual-scientific sources. These often give—especially with regard to method—too easy answers to such questions as we are dealing with today.

Recently, indeed, some approach has been made from the standpoint of science, to the problem of the death of created beings. This has come about in a peculiar way. Apart from many separate attempts which have been made, analyses of which would carry us too far today, one investigator at least may be mentioned, who has handled the question of the nature of death in a significant book. This writer has adopted a strange attitude towards the question, so strange that we are obliged to say again, as we did in a similar case, concerning the explanations of the origin of man: as spiritual scientist one feels peculiarly placed with regard to modern natural science; for whenever one is faced with a fact, we find that precisely from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, we can fully accept this fact and can see in it strong proofs of that which Spiritual Science represents. Faced, however, with the theories and hypotheses advanced by the adherents of the present-day world conception, in a more or less materialistic or, as it is considered more elegant to say, in a monistic way, then indeed it is a different matter. Here, one feels that, sincerely as we may agree concerning the facts brought forward in modern times, we cannot always declare ourselves in agreement with the theories and hypotheses, which those who believe they are on the sure ground of natural science feel bound to construct on what is produced as natural-scientific fact.

The research worker who has written on the nature of death from the standpoint of his natural science has called attention to something very interesting, precisely in connection with Spiritual Science. This is Metschnikoff, the man who for long was Director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He seeks clarity—so far as it is possible to obtain it today—concerning the data, the actualities, which bring about the death of the living being. In the first place, when considering such a question, we must not take into account what are called violent deaths, though we may perhaps have occasion later to refer to these violent deaths brought about by accidents or otherwise. When, however, we discuss the question of the nature of death—Metschnikoff, too, draws attention to this—we must see it as established in natural existence, must study it as appertaining, so to speak, to the phenomena of life, must be able to bring the phenomena of life before our eyes in such a way that death belongs among them. So, then, the riddle of death can be solved only in the case of so-called natural death, which is brought about at the end of life, just as other natural processes are brought about in the course of a life. Since this is only an introduction to what is to be said about natural science, it is impossible to go into the interesting details of the arguments of the above-mentioned investigator and thinker. It must, however, be pointed out that in studying the actualities of life he calls attention to the fact that in the processes of life itself, in that whereby life is to some extent evolved and perfected, the naturalist really meets with nothing which could give a real reason why death, the annihilation of the being, encroaches upon life. By numerous examples, Metschnikoff seeks to show how whoever follows the course of life sees everywhere that death makes its appearance without our being able to give the ready explanation people are prone to give, when the span of life is drawing towards death; that this is brought about by exhaustion. This investigator calls attention to numerous facts which prove that although the processes of life continue, and continue in an unenfeebled condition so that there can be no question of exhaustion in life itself, yet at a certain point of time death intervenes; so that this investigator arrives at the—it must be admitted—extremely remarkable position in which fundamentally every death, every ending of life in the animal, vegetable or human kingdom is to be attributed to external influences—the action of certain enemies of life which, in the course of a lifetime, obtain the upper hand and which finally, fighting against life, work as a poison on it, and at last destroy it. Whereas, then, for this investigator, the organism itself everywhere shows signs that it does not actually come to an end through its own exhaustion, this individual expects to see—when death approaches—such enemies of life appearing in one form or another, as poison phenomena making an end of life. Here, then, we have before us a hypothesis of natural science—it is indeed no more than this—which, as it stands, traces every natural death to external influences, to the action of poison phenomena brought about by external living beings of the plant or animal kingdom which make their appearance as enemies of life and at certain moments destroy the organism.

Such an interpretation employs all means to come to some kind of understanding of the nature of death within the actual material phenomena. In pursuing such a course, the reasoner strives to ignore as far as possible the fact that the spiritual element may intervene actively and effectively in organic life, and that perhaps this spiritual element as such may have something to do with death as we meet it in the outside world. It is not unthinkable—although at first sight this must appear absurd to those who maintain a more or less materialistic or monistic attitude—that those very enemies which appear as poisonous forces in relation to the organism might be enlisted as necessary accompanying phenomena of the spiritual forces which permeate organic beings, strengthening and stimulating them on their path towards death. It would not be unthinkable that the powerful spirit which, on the one hand, is directed to use the organism as its instrument in the physical world, might, on the other hand, make it possible through its operations for those hostile forces to seize upon the organism and destroy it.—In any case, if we allow ourselves to be influenced by such an explanation as that just quoted, there is one thing we must not disregard; namely, that modern natural science with its interest in merely material phenomena actually makes the investigation of the death of the organism an easy matter. But in reality it should not make light of it. And this leads me to emphasize that it will not be easy for Spiritual Science—which, from our own day onwards, must make the effort to take its place in the evolution of mankind—to carry out investigations concerning certain questions so simply as those world conceptions often do which expect to be able to determine something about the great riddles of existence merely out of external material facts.

Hence, from the very outset attention must be drawn to the fact that from the way in which modern natural science observes phenomena, no real distinction is made by those who feel they are standing on its firm ground between death in the plant world, the animal world, and the human world. But what have these three in common except the destruction of an external phenomenon? This, however, they share, to all intents and purposes, with the destruction of a machine: the cessation of the connection of the parts. Looking only at the external phenomena it is easy to speak of death, insofar as this death may then be spoken of as uniformly similar in plant, animal, and man. We may see where this leads, by a case which I have often quoted to a number of the audience sitting here, but which is always interesting when the relation of science to such a question is being considered. I do not wish on an occasion like this to refer to the ordinary popular writings which make it their business to carry into wider circles the results natural science is supposed to have obtained; on the contrary, if the connection with natural science is to be established, I should wish always to point to the arguments of this kind accepted as the best. Here, then, with reference to this question, we have always the opportunity to point to a distinguished book which is at the same time easy to understand; namely, the “Physiology” of no less a writer than the great English scientist, Huxley, translated into German by Professor J. Rosenthal. In the first pages of this work the subject of death is dealt with in few words but in a very remarkable way, which shows us immediately how inadequate on the whole is the thinking—the judgment on such questions, not the research—of present-day science. T.H. Huxley writing on Physiology says something to this effect: The life of man is dependent on three things, and when they are destroyed death must supervene. Then he continues: If, in the first place, the brain is destroyed, or, secondly, the pulmonary breathing is stifled, or thirdly if the action of the heart is inhibited, man's death must ensue; yet, strangely enough (though one cannot be sure nowadays that this strangeness will be felt in those wide circles in which the habits of thought have allowed themselves to be influenced by materialistic wisdom), strangely enough, Huxley says that it cannot be stated without reserve that, if the three above-named functions of the human organism are inhibited, the death of the living human being must ensue. One might rather think that supposing the brain no longer functioned, if the activity of the lungs and heart could be artificially maintained, life might still continue for a time, even without the action of the brain. Whether this is felt to be strange is only a question of habits of thought; for, actually, we should say: The life of a man when he cannot use his brain in the physical world cannot for a human being really be called a continuance of life. It must be admitted that life is ended for a man when that for which he needs the instrument of his brain can no longer play its part. And then if by some means the activities of heart and lungs could be maintained, that might be approximately a continuance of life, perhaps in the sense of a plant existence, and, if one wished to preserve a completely open mind, one might speak of that death which must still take place when the action of the heart and lungs ceases, as of a plant death added to the former death.

To speak, then, of human death so open-mindedly can only be justified when death is imminent because the man can no longer make use of the most important instrument whereby he carries on his life in the physical world—in his actual consciousness. And the ceasing of his consciousness in the physical world, insofar as it is bound up with the indispensability of a brain, must, for the human being alone, be designated as death. How superficially such things are studied is amply shown by Huxley himself when, in those pages where he speaks of death, he draws attention to natural science having not yet succeeded in progressing in the same way as, in his opinion, what he calls “an old doctrine” progresses; namely, by following the spiritual, essential actualities of the soul, through its journeying in the further course of existence, after the passage through the gate of death. Not yet, remarks Huxley, can modern natural science follow up what it has to follow: the oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and so on which compose the human organism, and which fall asunder when the man has passed through the gate of death.—Hence, this investigator considered that natural science could contribute something towards the problem of the meaning of death: that is, if the path could be followed which is taken after death by the materials composing the human organism during lifetime. And it is interesting and significant that, at the end of this first treatise on physiology by an important scientist, we find a reference to words which we can understand when spoken by the gloomy, melancholic Prince of Denmark, Hamlet—but which we should not have expected to find quoted when so serious a question is raised as the nature of death in the world. If we inquire into the nature of death in man, it is exclusively the destiny of the being of man that interests us. We can never be content with knowing the relation to one another of the various materials, the individual components, which have combined to form the exterior corporeality, so long as the essential soul and spirit of man made use of the external instruments. Out of his gloomy melancholy, Hamlet may say:

“Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,
O that that earth which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a hole t'expel the winter's flaw.”

This the melancholic may say, and we understand it in its dramatic connection; but when the naturalist calls attention to the way the molecules and atoms once in the body of Caesar might go on living in some other being, it may be, as Huxley suggests, in a dog or in a hole in the wall; whoever is in real earnest feels in the depths of his thinking how impossible it is that such a thought should approach the great problems of the world riddles.—And this is no disparagement of natural science which has to accomplish its achievements on the material plane. It is only to point out how, on the one hand, natural science should perceive and observe its limitations, and should answer the questions about material processes and the destiny of substances, while, on the other hand, those students who wish—on what they can learn by conscientious research concerning the destiny of substance—to build up a world conception of such a problem as death, in essentials far overstep the boundaries of which they should be conscious, if they want to remain on the ground of external, material facts. As I have said, it is not so easy for Spiritual Science, because from its point of view it is necessary to examine separately the phenomena of what may be called death in plants, of what is called death in animals, and also, apart from these, what in particular constitutes death in the human kingdom.

No conception of death in the plant world can be obtained by studying plants as they are very often studied now; that is, by observing each individual plant as a separate entity. It would, of course, lead us much too far today to explain again in detail what has been already indicated in former lectures; namely, that Spiritual Science must regard the earth as a vast living being, of which the life principle has indeed altered in the course of evolution. Were we to examine the life principle of the earth throughout the ages, we should find that in the far-distant past, the earth was a completely different entity, that it has been through a process which has now led to the increased suppression of the life of the earth as a whole in favor of the individual life kingdom, in favor of the vegetable, animal and human kingdoms. But even in our present time, Spiritual Science cannot think of the earth as the merely physical combination of external substances, as it is regarded from the standpoint of modern physics, geology, and mineralogy. On the contrary, in all that is presented as the mineral basis of our existence, the ground which we tread, Spiritual Science must see something which, as the solid foundation of the whole earth organism, stands out just like, or similar to, the solid skeleton as it is differentiated from the soft parts of the human organism. As in the human being the solid skeleton inclines to become a kind of merely physical system, a merely physical aggregation of organs, so, in the vast earth organism we must regard what confronts us as physical and chemical in its action, as a kind of skeleton of the earth. It is merely separated off from the whole life of the earth, and everything which happens on the earth, everything carried out in the earth processes, must in the sense of Spiritual Science be considered as a unity. Thus, when we study plants individually, we are just as wrong if we ascribe to each plant the possibility of an individual existence as we should be if we looked at a single human hair or nail and tried to study it as an individuality. The hair or the nail has significance only, and its inner principle can only be recognized when it is studied not as an individual by itself but in conjunction with the whole organism to which it belongs. In this sense the single plant and everything vegetable upon the earth belongs primarily to the earth organism.

I must add this remark: The assertions thus maintained by Spiritual Science are to be recognized in the ways already specified in these lectures; so that we are not applying to the world around us the conclusions reached in the study of man himself. It is true it is often said that Spiritual Science presents occurrences in the universe after the analogy of processes taking place in man. We may indeed sometimes feel obliged for the sake of the presentation to make use of such analogies, because what the research of Spiritual Science perceives in the universe is illustrated and symbolized in the human organism; for the human organism primarily represents the connection of the bodily with the spiritual, and man is best understood when the connection between human and spiritual is made clear. That the earth, however, is an organism, and that what exists as a plant is embedded in the vast organism of the earth, belonging to it as hair and nails belong to the human organism, this, for Spiritual Science, is something not inferred by analogy, not at all the result of a mere deduction. On the contrary, it is the result of investigations by the spiritual scientist, along the lines described or indicated here, which can be pursued in detail in the book “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.”—The essential in such research is that by it the investigator himself widens his consciousness, ceasing to live in himself alone, and that he is no longer influenced only by what the senses can perceive and the reason bound to the instrument of the brain can apprehend. The result of such research is that the man frees himself from the bodily instrument, that he becomes a participator in a spiritual world; then, in his own circle, in his spiritual horizon, he possesses not only what is presented to the external senses and the reason, but perceives the spiritual beings and spiritual forces. Thus, for the spiritual investigator, there exists what may be called the soul of the earth, a soul element giving life to the whole earth, just as the soul existing in man gives life to the human organism. The spiritual investigator widens his consciousness to a horizon where the soul element giving life to the whole earth comes directly under his notice. And then, for him the plant world is no longer merely the sum of the individual plants, for then he knows that what may be called the earth soul has to do with everything living and growing as a plant on the earth.

Yet the question is still: How are we to conceive that the plants begin and end their existence? How are we to picture, so to speak, the birth and death of a plant? We shall see at once that these words applied to the plant kingdom have, fundamentally, no more real significance than if we were to say, when a man's hair falls out that the hair is dead. Once a man rises to the thought that with regard to the earth he is dealing with an ensouled organism, he acquires a completely new outlook on the beginning and end of life in the plant world. To anyone not merely following the single plant individual purely externally, from seed to seed again, but rather bearing in mind the sum total of plant life on the earth, it will be obvious that here something different is at work from what may be called the beginning and end of life in the animal, or the human, kingdom. We see that the play of the elements in the course of the year is closely connected with the rise and decay of plants, with the exception of those which we count as perennials; but it is quite a different connection from that which exists, for instance, in animals. In animals we seldom find death so closely bound up with the external phenomena, as we see the withering of the plants bound up with certain phenomena of the whole earth nature when, for instance, autumn is coming on. In reality, people regard the life of a plant abstractly, detached from the fact that it is embedded in the whole earth existence; this is because they study only the single plant and do not consider the rhythmic, up and down undulation, of the life of the year, which at a definite time impels the germinating plants to sprout, brings them to a certain maturity, and, again at a definite time, causes them to wither. If we contemplate this whole process, externally sound observation, even if it has not penetrated the nature of Spiritual Science, may say: Here we are not dealing merely with the rise and decay of individual plants, but with the whole earth process, with something living and weaving in the whole existence of the earth. Where, however, do we find anything of which we can say that what it shows in its own phenomena explains how the invisible, spiritual element that we must think of as ensouling the earth is connected with the sprouting and withering of the plant? Where do we find anything at all which meets our spiritual eye so as to make this outer process intelligible to us?

Here it becomes evident to the spiritual scientist that he has something within himself to explain this living and weaving in the plant world, something which, if only it is studied in the right light, will account for the rise and decay of life in the plant world. We find in human nature what we call the ordinary phenomena of our consciousness. We know very well, however, that these phenomena can be experienced by the human being only during his waking day life, from waking up to falling asleep. The process of falling asleep, the process of waking up, are noteworthy incidents in human life. For what do we perceive? In falling asleep we become aware of a plunging of the whole inner processes of the soul into an indeterminate darkness; we are aware of the fading of our thoughts and ideas, our feelings and the impulses of our will into the darkness of sleep; at waking we become aware of the emerging of the whole of this soul content. Of this, man is conscious. Now it would doubtless be absurd to think that sleep has nothing to do with what exists as evolution of the consciousness in the whole human organism. We know how important regular, periodical sleep is for our physical life, insofar as spirit and soul live in it. We know what we owe to regular sleep. We have only to be reminded of what is constantly experienced by a man who needs a retentive memory. We say: If a man wants to avoid wearing his memory out, so that it becomes unserviceable, if he wants to keep his memory in good order, he must constantly sleep on the things to be remembered. If he has something very long to learn by heart it is clearly noticeable how much in the whole activity of remembering he owes to regular sleep. Apart from this, however, it appears quite natural that the weariness or exhaustion we notice as the result of our waking life is brought about by the life of our consciousness. By allowing the processes of our soul—our life of ideas, of feeling and of willing—to be overworked, we do violence to the delicate construction of our organism, as regards our will processes, even to the coarser parts. Quite superficial observation can teach us that tiredness of nerves, muscles and other organs is brought about solely by the encroachment into our organism of the conscious manifestations of our ideas, feeling, and will. We know quite well that if we give ourselves up to the ordinary musing of the day, where one thought gives place to another, the brain becomes less tired than if we set our thoughts to work under the compulsion of some method or doctrine. We know, too, that the muscles of the heart and lungs work throughout the whole of life without requiring sleep or rest, because weariness does not enter into this, since as a rule the organism evokes, in the unconscious or the subconscious, only appropriate activities. Only when we consciously encroach upon the organism do we produce weariness.—Hence we may say: We see the processes of the soul encroaching upon the life of the body—we see how what is active in the soul works itself out in our bodily life—in that which is evoked by the processes of the body which may be called normal—the activities of the heart and lungs and the other continuous processes of life. Here no weariness, no exhaustion, enters in. It is when conscious processes intrude that weariness enters. We become aware of a deterioration, a destruction of the organism through the encroachment of consciousness.

Here we have reached the point at which we can see the significance and function of sleep. What is worn out in the organism during the day, what is destroyed by conscious activities must, when the conscious activities are discontinued, be restored again in sleep. Here the organism must be left to itself to follow the processes inborn, inherent in it. Here we stand at the point where we can say: Again Spiritual Science coincides remarkably with what the facts of natural science tell us—even in the form adduced by the already-mentioned Russian scientist who was for many years Director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Now, can we not say that consciousness itself, man's spiritual life itself, causes—in order that it may subsist, that it may indeed be there at all—the exhaustion and weariness of the organism? And so, in order to throw a little light on this investigator's hypothesis, we might answer the question: Why, then, do the enemies of life described by him come into our organism? By saying: Because, fundamentally, the consciousness process always confronts what is merely organic life in man as a kind of poisoning process, and we could not rise to our higher spiritual life at all if we did not destroy the organism. In the very processes hostile to the organism lies the whole potentiality of our consciousness. When we speak of the effect of poison with reference to organic activity, we are bound to say: What we must regard as the blessing, the salvation of our life—namely, that we can be a conscious being in a physical body and can develop conscious activity—we owe to the circumstance that, with our conscious life, we encroach destructively, poisonously, upon our organism. Only, for the ordinary conscious life, this process of poisoning and destruction is by no means irreparable; on the contrary, the organism has been attacked in such a way that when the process of destruction has reached a certain point the conscious spiritual life withdraws, leaving the organism to its own activity. So then sleep intervenes; and in it, while the organism is left to its own activity, what has been destroyed through the conscious phenomena of the soul life, is restored again. The spiritual scientist is well aware of the many ingenious, more or less significant hypotheses which have been advanced concerning sleep and fatigue; one would have to speak at great length to analyze these hypotheses. Here, however, it is not our concern to explain these purely materialistic hypotheses, but to establish the fact that consciousness with its content must itself intrude destructively into the organism which contains the external instrument of the consciousness, and that the sleep condition compensates for the destructive process which is thus really repaired. Hence we may say: Sleep is the healer of those conditions which, as processes of ill health, consciousness is obliged to bring about in the organism.

Now when the spiritual scientist has come so far as not only to see what the normal, external consciousness sees—namely, that on falling asleep the conscious ideas and so on sink into indeterminate darkness—when he comes to the point of actually observing what goes on around him, even when this normal, ordinary consciousness disappears, then he also reaches the point of being able to follow the process of falling asleep and waking. It is self-knowledge in the widest sense that a man makes his own through spiritual research. And then he comes to a true conception of those processes which accompany falling asleep, and which are processes of building up, of the bourgeoning of life in the organism. Actually, through spiritual research, through all reasoning and thinking in the light of Spiritual Science, we experience something of this bourgeoning life in the mere bodily organism, every time we fall asleep; but—as it goes no farther than the mere organism—it has only the value of plant life.—What can be experienced every evening on falling asleep may be described thus: You see your own organism with the whole of your soul life; you see what has filled your consciousness during your day life sink out of sight; but as compensation you see, springing up in your own organism, processes which are restorative, not destructive—which, nevertheless, within you are only like the sprouting of plant life. Thus during sleep we have in our organism something like the experience of spontaneous vegetation. The experience of falling asleep, with the fading away of conscious ideas, is something like a springtime experience in which we see what is only plant-like in our organism emerging out of the unconscious. The moment of falling asleep may in this sense be regarded as completely parallel with the emerging of the sprouting, growing plant world in spring.

When we look at plant life in this way, we give up the idea of comparing this sprouting forth of the plants in spring with a human birth or, in general, with what can be called birth in man or in any living animal being; we come to understand that the great earth mother is a complete organism in herself experiencing in spring—in that part of the earth where it is springtime—what man for his part experiences when he falls asleep. The mistake most often made in such comparisons in usually the result of things not being viewed in their reality, but rather considered in connection with external circumstances. It will satisfy the imagination of many to be able to compare the sprouting of plants in the spring with something in the human being periodically repeated, which does not actually represent death and birth; but if a man is following his imagination only he may wish to compare the germinating of the plant world in spring with man's moment of waking. This is wrong. It is not the waking, the return of the soul content, with which the springtime is comparable; it is with the falling asleep, the fading away of the inner spiritual life, the actualities of the soul, and the germination of the merely organic, the merely vegetable in man. If, through the clairvoyant faculty, man can follow consciously at the moment of waking how his ideas and all that he remembers emerge from indeterminate darkness, then there is present again something bringing about the necessary destruction of the whole germinated inner vegetation. It is actually as if with the rising of our ideas on waking in the morning, autumn conditions had blown over everything which had grown up overnight: an inner process comparable for the whole earth with the withering of the plants towards autumn. Only, the earth is not represented as man is by two states of consciousness—waking and sleeping; while one half of the earth is asleep the other half is always awake, so that sleep always follows the sun's journey from one hemisphere to the other. Thus, then, with the earth we are dealing with a vast organism which lives its sleep life from spring to autumn, the sleep life which we are shown in the external organs, in what sprouts and grows in the plant kingdom, and in autumn withdraws into its spiritual sphere, into what is the soul of the earth; for the life of the earth is in the season from autumn to spring. Hence, we cannot speak of a real death or a real birth in plants at all, only of a sleeping and waking of the whole earth organism. As in human beings sleeping and waking is repeated rhythmically in the course of twenty-four hours, and as we do not speak in this connection of the death and birth of our thought world either, if we wish to speak correctly, should we speak of the life and death of plants. We should keep the whole earth organism in view, regarding the plant process belonging to the whole earth organism as a waking up and falling asleep of the earth. When we are feeling most pleasure in what is springing out of the earth, when we remember how men of earlier times, out of their joy in the sprouting life, kept the Feast of St. John, that is precisely the time for the earth which is midnight for man, with respect to his organism and external bodily nature. And when men prepare to celebrate the Christmas festival, when life without is dead, then we are dealing with the spiritual processes of earth. At this time man best finds his connection with the whole spiritual life of the earth; he realizes what he has indicated (from a correct instinct) by fixing mankind's spiritual festivals in winter. I know what objections external natural science can raise against this, but natural science does not consider man's correct instincts.

Now let us try to investigate what we can call death in the animal kingdom, not indeed by making judgments through analogy but rather, by expressing once more, through a process in the human being, what Spiritual Science has to give.

Now we must notice that our soul life, if we study it carefully, certainly shows a different course from that which consists in its furtherance and fructifying through the alternation of waking and sleeping. It should be pointed out that through the whole of a man's life—from his childhood, for as long as he can consciously remember—he is experiencing a kind of maturing process. Ever more and more mature does a man become through what he can absorb of life's experience. This maturing process is accomplished in a strange way. We remember—and through this alone is it possible for an ego to speak within us—all that we have experienced back to a certain point in our childhood; but we remember only the things connected with our ideas, with our thoughts. This is a very remarkable fact, but everyone in himself can follow up the statement. When you remember a painful or a pleasurable occurrence which took place perhaps thirty years ago, you will say: I can quite well recall all the details of the ideas which came into my mind, so that I can reconstruct them in my conception of the incident; but the pain or the pleasure connected with the occurrence at that time does not remain in my soul so vividly as objects of thought generally do. They have faded, severed themselves from the idea, and sunk into indeterminate darkness. We might say: We can always retrieve the ideas from the deep strata of our soul life, but—apart from exceptions—we must leave submerged our memories of what we have experienced as feelings, impulses, or passions. What we have experienced in the way of feeling remains submerged, detached from the bare ideas. Is it entirely lost? Does it lapse into nothingness? Emphatically No. For one who has not studied human life really conscientiously and in detail, it may seem to be so; but a conscientious observer studying from every point of view, will find the following: If we observe a human being at a definite juncture of his life; for example, in his fortieth year, we find him in a certain condition, a condition of soul but also of bodily health or sickness. The man appears to us as gloomily melancholic, easily depressed, or cheerful, or in some way of a phlegmatic or other temperament, easily grasping at the actualities of the world, easily absorbing what pleasure and joy can give him, and so on. The soul condition should not always be separated from the bodily; for the condition of soul appearing in a man is dependent on the way the bodily functions work. If we thus observe the soul mood and the whole disposition of a man at any age of his life, we shall soon find out what has become of the feeling experiences separated from the ideas which could only be remembered later as mental images. We shall find that what became detached as the mood of heart and soul has united itself with our deeper organization; it cannot be remembered in our inner life, but it expresses itself in the inner life, expresses itself, indeed, even as far as in health and sickness. Where are these moods lingering since we cannot remember them? They are submerged in the life of body and soul, and constitute a definite disposition in the man's whole life. Thus it appears to us that as we need memory for the whole course of our conscious life, as in sleep memory always plunges into indeterminate darkness, so our experiences of heart and soul sink down into the darkness of our own being and work upon our whole disposition.

So we have a second element at work in man. And now if we direct our gaze away from man to the whole earth organism, which we are studying as an ensouled being, we do not indeed study it as if the forces of soul and spirit at work in it are organized in the same way as the soul of man. For Spiritual Science shows us that many such beings as man dwell in the soul sphere of the earth; so that the soul of the earth presents a multiplicity, whereas that of man is a unity. Nevertheless, with respect to what has just been described, what is of a soul nature in the earth can quite well be compared with the soul experiences in man himself.—When we see how our moods of heart and soul sink down into our own organism, work on our body and come to expression in our whole disposition, we recognize a parallel to this in the sum total of processes carried out on earth, and indeed in all that finds expression in the origin of the living animal being. In ourselves, a process of body and soul is only set free through what is forced down into the darkness of our bodily disposition by the experiences of our heart and soul. For the earth, the corresponding experiences of soul and spirit are, as it were, crystallized in the birth and death of an animal being.—I know very well that a man who thinks out of hypotheses he can form a world conception which apparently stands firmly on the ground of natural science, may be disgusted by this explanation. I can sympathize with such a man. But the time will come when the direction of human thought and judgment leading to the elucidation of the processes of earthly death and birth will in the next spiritual evolution take the path indicated here; for all that we see as fact in natural science leads us to this conclusion.—Just as a man sees the moods of his soul which shape his organic disposition sinking into his bodily organism, so does he see externally in the earth organism the corresponding process of the rise of the animal world.

So, then, we find in the human being still another process: we see how out of the whole organism the so-called higher feelings and emotions emerge again in the soul. What is the characteristic of these? Whoever deals with this question without prejudice, but also without false asceticism, without false piety and hypocrisy, will say: What we may call the higher moral feelings and those moods in a man which develop into enthusiasm for all that is good, beautiful and true, for all that brings about the progress of the world, this is alive in us only because we are able, by the disposition of our heart and soul, to rise above everything originally implanted in us by instinct; so that, in our spiritual feelings, in our spiritual enthusiasm, we raise ourselves above all that the bodily organism alone can arouse. This can go so far that he whose enthusiasm is in his spiritual life sets so much store by the object of it, that it is a light thing for him even to give his physical life for the sake of what has inspired his higher moral and aesthetic feelings. Here we see that which lives as the spiritual element in this enthusiasm rise, with the suppression of our merely organic nature, in a mood which primarily has nothing to do with the course of the organic life. Thus an element in man also runs its course; that element which he sends down into the depths of his being and which there carries out its organic processes; but from the depths of his being also raise his moral and spiritual feelings, and with them the disposition of his heart and soul. These conquer, in ever-progressing evolution, what belongs merely to the organic, to the physically instinctive constitution of man.

This process, which we find in the human being divided into two elements, we find also in the world of living animals. If in our own case we let our disposition of heart and soul sink down into the life of the body, allowing ourselves to be influenced to the extent of health or sickness by our moods of heart and soul, we see, on the other hand, in all that is lived out in animal life, what constitutes a sinking down of such disposition for the whole earth. All that is feeling and passion in the whole earth organism is lived out in the animal kingdom just as our passions and impulses are lived out in our whole organization. As we look at the animal world we see in each separate form the result of the disposition of the soul of our earth. And if we consider the attraction which the earth exercises over the life of the animal world, allowing itself to be most closely linked with the external physical body, we see that this is no other than the victory of the spiritual—of what, with regard to animals we call the group soul. It is the super-sensible element which finds its representative only in externals, and conquers the external, as in man the spiritual feelings conquer what is merely instinctive. That the external processes of the earth organization always acquiesce in the power of death over the individual animal is in no way different from the victory always achieved in us by the spiritual over what is merely connected with the organic. Seeing the spiritual element in the animal from this point of view, we cannot apply the expressions birth and death to the beginning and end of an animal's existence in the same way as we apply them to man. It is certainly in animals a process of the whole earth, already more individualized than in the plant world. Nevertheless, if we bear in mind the different group souls assigned to the various animal species, we must see how, in each death which overtakes the individual animal, the external, bodily part perishes, but the group soul, which is the spiritual element in the animal, is always triumphant over the external form; just as in man the spiritual triumphs over the merely instinctive, represented not in the separate form but certainly in the organization.

Thus we see, as it were, a vast living being composed of the individual group souls of the animals, and we see the birth and death of the living animal appear in such a way that what forms the foundation of the spiritual in the individual animal has always to fight for its victory over the individuality. Hence we have death in animals presented as that which, as the group soul, moves above the wasting and decay of the individual animal form. We could only speak of a real death in connection with an animal if we failed to bear in mind what remains after the death of an animal; namely, the spiritual, as in man the spiritual, rising above itself, triumphs over the disposition of soul as well as over what is doomed to wither away.—If Darwinism ever advances beyond its present stage, it will see how, throughout the animal kingdom, from the earliest ages, a thread of evolution runs through the apparent births and deaths into the distant future; so that the whole evolution of the animal kingdom will lead at last to a victory of what the lower, the individual animal form being overcome—will issue from the entire spiritual world, leaving behind the lower part living in the individual animals, and will one day triumph over the instinctive element apparent in the whole of animal nature.

And when in man we come to what we call the human will nature—if we then do not speak only of the ideas he has had, which can be recalled again and again, and do not fix our attention only on the soul disposition which sinks in the way described into the deeper organization—if we, rather, look to the impulses of the will, we shall see that they represent above all the most enigmatic part of human nature. How the impulses of a man's will are determined depends upon the experiences life has brought him. If we look back from any point in our life, we find a continuous path, a movement, in which each soul event is linked with one before it. We find, however, that what we have experienced flows mainly into our will in such a way that if we look at ourselves thus, we may say that we have actually become richer in ideas, and riper with respect to the impulses of our will. Indeed, we develop a very special ripeness with respect to our will. This is experienced by everyone looking back upon his life. We do something in life; how we ought to have done it we actually learn only when we have done it. And everyone knows how little chance there is of finding himself in the same situation again later, so that he may apply, at a later opportunity, what he has gained as maturity in life—what he has, perhaps, won through experience of trial and error. One thing, however, he knows; namely, that all his experiences are fitted together in the whole composition of his will, in what we may call the wisdom of his willing; this makes for the maturity to which we gradually attain. It is our will life which becomes increasingly mature; the whole of our feelings, ideas, and so on, combine together to make our will, even with regard to external concerns, increasingly mature. For, when our thinking becomes riper through the experiences of life, this is indeed only a growing ripeness in the will expressed in the fitting together of thought with thought. So we see how our whole soul life as we survey it in retrospect leads us, as it were, to the center of our being, which forms the background to our will impulses and in which this constant ripening is expressed. If we bear this in mind, we have the third element of human evolution, of which we can say that in life we cultivate it in our physical body—we grow up in this element—in it we grow beyond and above what we were when we came into this existence through birth. As in this existence we are clothed in a physical body, and this physical body is the instrument we have to use for our soul—because the soul employs the reasoning power, employs the brain—the being of our soul acquires experience and maturity in life which crystallizes, as it were, in the whole structure of the mature will.

In this life, however, we are not as a rule in a position to work out, to carry through, what is now present in the impulses of our will. This is the question before mankind: What is it in these will impulses which we cultivate as the dearest possession of our souls, which we have made our own, perhaps just on account of our imperfection, that makes us never able to bring them to expression? What we send down into the depths of our being as the content of the experiences of our soul (we have observed this in the second part of our study) leads to the whole disposition of our body and soul. It leads to the way our character is determined, to what life has made of us with regard to health and sickness, whether we are more melancholic, or cheerful, and so on. But what we have made of ourselves with respect to the disposition of our will, this is our inmost being; this is what we have become. Through this, however, we have outgrown what we were. And in the second half of our life, when we are going downhill, we notice how our body refuses to carry out what we have become through the impulses of our will. In short, we see that through our life as perceiving, feeling and willing beings we become something completely at variance with what we already are, something which recoils from what we already are. As our life ripens we feel inwardly in our souls how we clash with what, through our elements, through our bodily aptitudes, through our soul life, we have become. We feel inwardly the conflict between the whole structure of our will and mature life, on the one hand, and on the other the whole structure of our organization; fundamentally we also feel this clash in every single impulse of the will leading to action. This is because our thoughts are to a certain extent transparent, and our feelings, too; but the way in which will power becomes action is inscrutable. The will clashes, so to speak, with external life, and becomes conscious of itself only when this clash takes place. And here we may follow, in the whole of life, even in the bodily organization, what already appears in the life of the soul; namely, that what a man has become, what has given him the aptitude for his talents, must be broken and destroyed by the will, which only appears in this life; otherwise this will power will never be able to make itself felt.

Just as man can become conscious of himself only through the clash with reality, so can he only experience himself as a progressive process by his whole physical life being destroyed through the will, in the same way as the brain is destroyed by the life of ideas. But whereas the brain can be restored through sleep, a new growth of the will cannot be promoted; in fact, through the impulses of the will a continuous process of destruction enters into every life. Thus we see that man must destroy his organism; we realize the necessity of real death for man. Just as we understand the necessity of sleep for the life of ideas, so we now understand the necessity of death for the life of the will. For it is only because man's physical organization is in opposition to his will that the will is aware of itself, that it is strengthened in itself, and thus goes through the gate of death into a life in the spiritual world where it appropriates to itself the forces to build up, in a future incarnation, all that man has not attained in this bodily life. This could be developed for him only by a consciousness ripe for the next move, for something which gives opportunity for a further advance that has not been fully carried out in this life; for this he could only have a consciousness ripe for the next stage which gave him the aptitude for something further that could not be lived out in this life. This will be lived out in a coming earth life, in which the man will work at his new destiny, his new earth life, in an appropriate way.

Whereas, then, with reference to death we could only speak in the plant world of a waking and falling asleep of the whole earth nature, and in the animal world could only compare death with the ebb and flow, and the conquest of our lower life of instinct, it is only with human death that we find what points us, through the destruction of this one life, to ever-recurring lives. It is only through the destruction of this one life that we can attain to what enters into the new earth life and alone leads to the true consummation of the whole human existence. Through this it is also established that the will of man, to become conscious of itself in its entirety, needs the dying away of the physical body; and that, fundamentally, the experience it requires for the correct will impulse is only present when we pass through the gate of death, when this will impulse shares the gradual decline and dying of the external organization. For the will grows by means of the opposition it perceives in the external organization; through this it grows ever stronger and prepares itself to become that which lives throughout eternity. Hence, apart from all that you find explained in Spiritual Science about an unnatural death, it is easy to see that a death brought about by an accident, or suicide, or anything of the kind, is quite different from a natural death, which gives the guarantee for resurrection to a new life. Unnatural death in any form can indeed also be something which signifies an advance in man's total destiny. But what the will, in its general nature, would have had to experience in its victory over the bodily nature, remains in a certain sense present as an inner force, and has to follow a different path when man goes through the gate of death in an unnatural way, from the one it would take if he lived to the natural end of his life.

Thus we see that we may really speak of death only when we are referring to what we may call the development of a new type of will for a new life, and that for this reason we cannot speak of a true death with reference to other beings. As regards man, however, we must speak in such a way that not only are Goethe's words true: “Nature has invented death in order to have more life”, but also in such a way that we say: If there were no death, we should have to wish that it existed, for it makes it possible that through the opposition and withering away of the external organization, the will grows increasingly—growing, indeed, for the new life. And this makes it possible for evolution to advance to greater heights through the different incarnations, so that the life also assumes a more exalted form—even though this does not occur immediately in the next lives, even though retrogression may take place. In the whole course of repeated earth lives the advance will, however, be recognized.

Thus death is the great strengthener of the will for the spiritual life. And we see—as has already been indicated—that recent natural science, although with faltering voice, agrees with Spiritual Science in pointing out that death represents a kind of poisoning process.—Yes, indeed, all spiritual evolution goes its own independent way in devastation, destruction, of the external bodily life. What the world of ideas lays waste in man is repaired by sleep. What is destroyed by the instincts of man is restored by the higher moral and aesthetic feelings and emotions; the destruction of the bodily organization brought about through the activity of the will is restored in the whole life of man through that ripeness of will which persists through death and is able to build up a new life. Thus death acquires a meaning: the meaning whereby man is able, not only to think of immortality, but actually to experience it. Whoever considers death in this way sees it approach as the power leading the external bodily life to its dissolution; but in opposition to this dissolution, he sees the dawn of a new human soul life, the life which man maintains from incarnation to incarnation throughout eternity. Not until we understand the meaning of death for man's eternity have we grasped the meaning of death for the whole of nature. Then, however, we must also give up the widespread, foolish conception which speaks of death in relation to animals and plants; then we must know that actually there can only be a question of real death when those destinies are taken into consideration which the spirit experiences in passing through bodily existence, and when we look at the realities which the spirit must develop in the bodily sphere in order to perfect its own consummation. The spirit must abandon the body to death, so that the spirit may raise itself to an ever higher level of perfection. Keeping this point of view in mind and looking upon death in the human kingdom, our soul may tell us that through death man's spirit and soul can rise to a higher perfection. Even when looking at death in the kingdoms of animal and plant we see the spirit shining through to the ground of all phenomena—and the soul may show itself at one with these words which arouse us, not only bringing us comfort but every hope of life:

Out of the spirit all being has sprung,
Deep in the spirit are the roots of all life,
The aim of all striving is spirit.