The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In continuation of yesterday's sketch on the planetary evolution, let us now add some further explanations. We have already explained that our earth once passed through a Saturn, a Sun and a Moon condition. Let me now describe to you these successive states of existence, as they are usually described in occultism. When speaking of the soul's development along the path of knowledge, we shall be able to understand many things which can now only be advanced hypothetically.

If we consider the Saturn state of existence, that condition of our earth lying millions and millions of years before the present time, we find that it presented an aspect greatly differing from the one which is taken for granted through our present physical conditions. Above all, we should bear in mind that man, the most perfect being we know, has passed through the longest course of development. You will therefore hear the description of a course of development which greatly deviates from the Haeckel-Darwin theory of evolution, but the advantages of this purely materialistic theory may be gathered from my book, “Haeckel, the Riddles of the World and Theosophy”.

The first thing to be grasped is that the most perfect beings are those who passed through the longest course of development, and the most perfect being of all is man, especially the physical body of man. All other beings in our environment have not attained to the perfection of man's physical body, which has taken longer than all others for its development. If we look back through spiritual vision, we therefore find that the first foundation of man's physical body was laid upon Saturn. The whole universe, with all the beings and objects which it contained, influenced the first state of the earth's existence. The present human beings on our planet still possess all the organs which were formed upon Saturn and they are the most perfect parts of man's physical body, namely, the sense-organs. These apparatuses can be grasped from a purely physical aspect and their first foundation was then laid. Of course, you must not think that the eye existed on Saturn in the same form in which it exists to-day. But the first foundation of the eye, the ear, of every sense-organ and of all the other purely physical apparatuses of the human being appeared upon Saturn. The only activities existing upon Saturn which may still be found to-day, are those which pertain to the mineral kingdom. (Crystallizations, etc.)

Upon Saturn, the human being existed in the form which was the first foundation of his physical body; everything, else, the blood, the tissues, etc. did not then exist. Physical apparatuses constituted the first basis of man's physical body. Even as the emerald, the mica, etc, arise through physical laws and develop in the form of cubes, hexahedrons, etc, so at that time forms developed which resembled apparatuses and which existed upon Saturn in the same way in which crystals now exist upon the earth. The activity of Saturn's surface essentially consisted in a kind of reflection which went out into the universal space. The Beings in Saturn's environment who were scattered in the universal spaces sent down their influences. Something which we may call the “cosmic aroma” was also then strongly developed. Only a few phenomena of the present day may give you a feeling for what took place upon Saturn: for example, when you hear an echo in Nature, the sound of this echo can convey to you something which went streaming out of Saturn as the result of the impressions which it received. These conglomerations of forces resembling apparatuses which threw back pictures in the universal space, formed the first foundation of that which developed later on as the eye. In a similar way we might follow the development of everything else. What you now have within your body, was once upon Saturn a physical kingdom, which sent out into the world's spaces the reflection of the whole cosmos in a manifold manner.

Myths and legends preserved this knowledge far more clearly than one generally supposes. The Greek myth of Chronos and Rhea, proceeding from the Eleusinian Mysteries preserved, for example such a truth; it contains however, a great displacement of facts due to the way in which the Greeks viewed the great cosmic connections. This myth tells us that Chronos sent down his rays and that these rays then returned to him in many forms: this explains the picture of Chronos devouring his children.

Now you must not think that the Saturn mass was as firm and solid as the physical bodies of to-day; even water and air do not give you an idea of Saturn's fundamental substance. When speaking of bodies in occultism, we speak of solid, liquid and gaseous bodies. And if we speak of the elements in the old manner, they correspond to that which modern chemistry designates as the “aggregate conditions” of matter, for you must not think that the men of olden times, when speaking of the “elements” meant the same thing as we do. Then there is a higher “aggregate state”, designated in ancient occultism as “fire”; a better meaning is however conveyed by calling it “heat”. Even physics will be obliged to recognise that what is designated as heat, may be compared with a kind of fourth aggregate state, with another kind of substance differing from air and water. The Saturn mass was not even condensed to the state of air it consisted of purified heat, and its activity resembled that of the heat your blood, for it was connected with inner life-processes. The physical processes upon Saturn were real life-processes. Saturn consisted of heat-substance, of an immensely fine volume which may be designated as neutral, if compared with our present substances.

If we wish to study the Beings who inhabited Saturn, we must realise that the Beings whom we now see moving about upon the earth, then possessed only the first beginning of a physical body; they were embodied in heat-substance, and their activity consisted in a current of heat which moved about. These currents constituted the deeds of the Beings who filled Saturn with life. Even as to-day you are able to make a table, so these Saturn-beings did their work by producing currents of heat. Nothing else could be observed of these Beings. A greeting exchanged upon Saturn was as if two currents of heat moved to and fro, exchanging their forces.

The Beings who passed through the human stage upon Saturn did not possess a physical body as their lowest member, for they did not descend into matter so deeply as to require a physical body. Their lowest member was the Ego, even as to-day our lowest member is the physical body; then came their Sprit-Self or Manas, their Life-Spirit or Buddhi, then Spirit-Man or Atma. In addition they developed an eighth, ninth and tenth members, which must be included.

Theosophical literature calls these members which the human being has not yet developed, the “Three Logoi”; in Christianity they are called the Holy Spirit, the Son or the Word, and the Father. We may therefore say: Even as the human beings now consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man, so these Beings living upon Saturn, who in regard to their connection with the earth may be compared with the present human beings, consisted of Ego, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man; of the Holy Ghost, the Son or Word, and the Father. The theosophical terminology designates them as “asuras”. They are the Beings who from the very beginning implanted into the physical foundation of man's body the feeling of independence, of Ego-consciousness, and of Ego-feeling. You could not use your eye in the service of the Ego had your eye's foundation not been prepared at that time, so that now you are enabled to place your eye at the service of the Ego. These members were therefore prepared by the Spirits of the Ego, also
named the Spirits of Egoism. They gave us the wisest thing of all, when developed in the right way. But everything of the highest nature becomes perverted into its opposite if it is not developed in the right way, because then it exercises the most harmful and destructive influence. Man could never reach that high stage which we designate as human dignity, had not these Spirits of Egoism implanted in him the Ego-feeling. There have always been Beings who followed an evil Course, and consequently we must say: The Beings who implanted the Ego into man and who are now upon a stage of development greatly surpassing the human one, those Beings to whom we may look up as the highest of all, gave their Ego as an offering of self-renunciation and sacrifice; but the others followed the development of their Ego in a selfish manner.

In striving after freedom and human dignity we bear within us the influences of the Spirits of the Ego who followed the good path, and we bear within us the seed of evil, because the influence of the Beings who fell away continued to be active. This contrast has always been felt. Christianity itself makes a distinction between God the Father, whom it considers as the most highly developed Spirit of Saturn, and his opponent, the Spirit of all the evil Egos and of everything which is radically immoral, the Spirit who fell away upon the ancient Saturn. These are the two representatives of Saturn.

Even as after death we encounter other forms of existence, so a cosmic body, such as Saturn, passes through a kind of intermediate state, a kind of sleep-condition, before it enters into a new condition; it passes through a “pralaya” in contrast to a “manvantara”, so that we have a kind of resting, passive condition of the planet, between the Saturn and the Sun state of existence. The whole planet then emerges in a new form from its sleeping state, which is, however, a spiritual one.

Saturn thus emerged as the Sun, and a considerable transformation had taken place. Upon the Sun a great number of the germs which had already developed upon Saturn and which are still developing within us to-day, were permeated by an etheric body. During such a planetary transition something evolves which may be compared with the fruit of a plant which we lay in the earth; it decays, but it forms the foundation of a new plant Thus everything which developed upon Saturn arose again upon the Sun with a new foundation and it became permeated with an etheric body.

There were also other beings who had remained behind upon the mineral-physical stage, and they can be compared with the present mineral kingdom. The Sun absorbed them as a kind of subordinate kingdom of Nature, but at the same time another kingdom was raised to the stage of plant-man.

You obtain a right conception of the Sun-atmosphere if you imagine a thick, chemical gas, no longer representing a merely reflecting body, but one which absorbed everything which, came raying towards it, and after having transformed it, reverberated it in the same way in which plants now reverberate colours. The plant forms its green colour and other substances and returns them to the cosmic spaces. That which lived upon the ancient Sun cannot be compared with an echo, nor with a reflected image, as in the case of Saturn, in regard to the beings embodied upon the Sun, we come across a phenomena which can only be compared with a kind of Fata Morgana, with atmospheric phenomena resembling coloured pictures. Such phenomena which can only be perceived to-day in certain regions of our globe, can give you an idea of how these plant-bodies could be perceived. You must imagine that your bodies revealed certain Fata Morgana-like processes, through which your present bodies could pass as if through air. You were then as transparent as a Fata Morgana—but this phenomenon did not only consist of light, but also of tones and smells whirring through the gas- sphere of the Sun.

Whereas the beings living upon the Sun could shine like the fixed stars of to-day, the ancient Saturn kingdom of the beings who had remained behind, could be observed like a dark mass, like dark forms against the light, like obtuse. caverns in the body of the Sun, which disturbed its harmony. Particularly in regard to the “cosmic aroma” these retarded beings mixed into it sensations which provoked all kinds of evil smells. Myths have retained a recollection of this, for they relate that the Devil leaves behind an evil smell. As it progressed, the Sun really left behind a dark part, and the sun-spots which are visible now, are the remnants of the ancient Saturn kingdom which once existed upon the Sun. Hypothetically these spots should be explained exactly as we explain them now; for all these explanations are valid.

In a short sketch you thus have the earth's sun-existence painted, as it were, from its material aspect. Let us now see who were the Beings who attained the human stage upon the Sun. They would have to be described as follows: Their lowest body is the astral body, then comes the Ego, the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, the Spirit-Man or Atma, then the Holy Ghost in the Christian meaning, and finally the Son or the Word. They did not have the Father, for this member was only developed during the Saturn era. These Saturn Spirits meanwhile rose to a still higher stage, and now they stand far above the human being.

The Leader of the Sun Spirits, in so far as He exercised the highest, influence upon the earth, the representative of the Spirits whose highest member was the Son or the Word, is the Christ, in the esoteric meaning of Christianity. He is the real regent of the earth, in so far as the earth is based upon the Sun state of existence. Upon the Sun, Christ would not yet have been called by that name. The old form of Christianity always taught this truth, and the difference between genuine Christianity and, the exoteric form of Christianity, which is in so many cases based upon misunderstandings, is that the older form of Christianity exerted all its thinking power and applied every conception in order to understand that high Being Who took on human shape in Jesus of Nazareth. The ancient form of Christianity wished to gain a conception of what lay at the foundation of this mystery, and no wisdom was too high for it, or too complicated: It explained the Being of Christ within Jesus of Nazareth in accordance with this truth. Many a passage in the Gospel of St. John can only be understood if you grasp it from this aspect. It suffices to draw attention to one point: If you take the words, “I am the Light of the World” literally, these imply that the Christ is the great Sun Hero, and that the Light which belongs to the Sun constitutes His being. We designate the whole hosts of Spirits whose Leader is the Christ as the “Fire Spirits” and we say: The Asuras or the Ego Spirits reached the human stage during the Saturn era. During the Sun existence the Fire Spirits or the Logoi, whose highest representative is named the Logos or the Word, reached this stage. For this very reason, Christ is named the “Word” that existed in “the beginning”, and the “beginning” designates in the Bible a definite point of departure in the cosmic evolution.

Again we have an intermediate condition, a kind of sleeping condition for the whole cosmic body, and then it begins to shine forth again as the ancient Moon.

You must imagine that in the beginning the present Earth and the present Moon formed one body with the Sun. Only when the Sun began to shine forth again, one part of the Beings separated from it with their own environment, so that two celestial bodies arose. One of these bodies, the Sun, begins to develop into a fixed star, and the body which separates from it begins to circle around it. The ancient Sun thus divided itself into two parts; the more highly developed substance remained behind upon the Sun, and the less perfect substance was eliminated. Consequently, that which once pursued the same course, because there was only one body, now followed two separate course: the Sun path and the Moon path. The Sun path was the one which developed upon the Sun-body, whereas the Moon developed its own world. You could reconstruct the ancient Moon by mixing together the present earth and the present Moon; this would enable you to form a conception of the way in which the ancient Moon was constituted. Both physically and spiritually the present Moon is far below the Earth in regard to its quality, and the Earth separated from the Moon just because it needed better conditions of life for Beings who lived upon it. The Earth developed beyond the stage it had reached during the Moon existence; but its best part remained behind upon the Sun.

What was the aspect of things upon the ancient Moon? The Beings who had passed through a preparatory stage upon Saturn by developing the physical foundation of the sense-organs, transformed these organs upon the Sun by permeating them with a etheric body; the sense organs thus became centralised, and the first basis of the organs of growth reaching as far as the glands could unfold upon the ancient Sun under the influence of the etheric body; this was a final product of the Sun existence.

Upon the Moon, the astral body was added in a similar manner. Everything astral first existed in the surroundings; the Fire Spirits had an astral body as their lowest member. The Beings upon the Sun resembled plants; for instance, they could not move from their fixed places. Although the whole body of the Sun was gaseous, you must imagine air-strata of greater density which were the bodies of these human plants. But now the astral body of man was added; this gave rise to the first foundation of a nervous system. The kingdom which had reached the plant stage of development upon the Sun, passed over to the animal stage, to a stage resembling that of animals. The physical ancestors of man upon the Moon thus possessed three bodies: the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body, yet they greatly surpassed the most highly developed apes of our planet; they were human animals which no biology can describe, an intermediate kingdom between man and animal. Our present vegetable, animal and mineral kingdoms only developed later, but even as there were human animals; so we must admit the existence of an intermediate kingdom between plant and animal; plants with a kind of sentient capacity, plants which literally squeaked if one touched them. These plant-animals could never have grown upon a mineral soil, such as the present soil of the Earth; in fact, this mineral soil did not exist upon the Moon. Its mass did not consist of the present rocky substances, not even of loose soil. Comparatively speaking, the Moon's foundation consisted of a mass resembling a mash of cooked spinach or salad, and in it a kind of mineral plant, The whole foundation of the Moon was therefore of vegetable nature. A peat bed of to-day would resemble the kingdom which existed at that time as an intermediate kingdom between our plants and minerals. There were no rocks, and anyone walking over the ground would have walked over such a peaty ground or vegetable foundation, and analogously you may think of rocks in the form of woodened portions within this mass.

The plant-animals grew out of this whole foundation, and above them, in the Moon's environment which may be designated as “fire-air”, moved those beings who were man-animals. Imagine the whole atmosphere filled with saltpeter, carbon and sulphur gases; the Moon-men lived in this fiery air which you would thus obtain. Occultists always knew of the existence of this fire-air, and under older conditions of the Earth it was even possible to produce this fire-air artificially. This is only possible to-day in a very restricted circle, but this knowledge has been preserved in genuine alchemy. Consequently, if you read in Goethe's “Faust”, “Let me produce a little fire-air”, this touches the depths of occultism. Fire-air enwrapped; the Moon; this was its atmosphere.

We can understand this Moon-existence even better if we add another fact. Upon the Moon there was a kingdom of plant-minerals, of animal-plants growing out of this vegetable-mineral soil, and then there were the animal-men moving about upon it. But upon each stage there are beings who remain behind—you may, if you like, say that they did not “pass”. This is the case not only at school, but also in the great course of development, where a pupil may have to repeat a class. These beings who did not “pass”, appear in future stages of development in very peculiar conditions. Such stragglers of the plant-minerals who did not “pass” still exist in parasites, for instance in the mistle-toe. It cannot grow upon mineral soil, because it was accustomed to grow upon a vegetable-mineral soil. It proves a fact resembling that of a pupil who did not move on to a higher form; except that the case of the beings who remain behind in the cosmic development is far worse. Particularly in the North we come across a myth which describes this; you are all acquainted with the northern myth of Baldur and his death through Loki.

The Gods were frolicking about in the Aesir's home and in there games they hurled about all kinds of objects. Baldur had just before had dreams foreboding his early death, and the Gods were therefore afraid to lose him. The Mother of the Gods had taken an oath from all the living and inanimate beings and they all had all promised that they would never hurt Baldur, and so the Gods enjoyed the game of throwing all manner of weapons against Baldur. Loki, the opponent of the Gods, had discovered that one being, who was considered to be harmless, had not made any promise, and this was the mistle-toe, which lay in hiding somewhere in the distance. Loki obtained the mistle-toe, gave it to the blind god Hodur, who threw it at Baldur: the mistle-toe wounded Baldur, for it had not sworn the oath, and Baldur died.

This myth indicates that that which is invulnerable upon the Earth can only suffer harm through that which has remained behind from another existence as something evil. In the mistle-toe people saw something which had entered the present state of existence from an earlier one. All the beings now living upon the earth can only suffer harm through that which has remained behind from an earlier one. All the beings now living upon the Earth are connected with Baldur. But it was otherwise upon the Moon; consequently that being which had remained behind from the Moon was able to kill Baldur. All the various customs connected with the mistle-toe arise out of this foundation.

We should also consider the Moon existence from another aspect, from the Spiritual one. The Moon Beings who had reached the human stage must be described as beings whose lowest member was the etheric body, their second one the astral body, then the Ego, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man or Atma, and then they also had the Holy Ghost. They no longer had the ninth member pertaining to the Fire Spirits upon the Sun. The highest of the Moon Spirits who had reached the human stage is called the “Holy Ghost” in Christian esotericism. In the early original form of Christianity, the threefold Godhead was therefore intimately connected with the evolution of the earth. The Holy Ghost is a Spirit who is above man and Who is able to inspire him in a direct way.

Thus you may see that the Moon Spirits now stand above the human being. They are also called “Lunar Pitris”, “Moon Fathers” and “Spirits of Twilight”. The whole host belonging to the Holy Ghost is called in Christian esotericism the Host of Angels. The Angels are the Spirits immediately above man, who passed through their human stage upon the ancient Moon.

The life of the animal-men and of the plant-animals upon the Moon, differed from that of the beings who developed out of them upon the Earth. The movement of the Moon, which had already severed itself from the Sun, was quite different from the movement of the present earth around the sun. The ancient Moon circled around the Sun in such a way that it always turned the same face towards it, even as the Moon to-day always shows the same side to the earth. The Moon thus turned only once around its own axis, while circling around the Sun. The Moon Beings were therefore dependent upon the Sun in quite a different way than is the case with the present earthly inhabitants. During the Moon's whole epoch of revolution around the Sun, it was always daytime on one of its sides, and a kind of night upon the other. The Moon Beings, who were already able to move about, wandered in a kind of circle around the Moon, so that they passed through one epoch in which they stood under the influence of the Moon. The time in which they stood under the Sun's influence was their time of procreation. For there was already a kind of procreation. The Moon-men could not as yet express joy and pleasure through sounds; their expressions had a more cosmic significance. The sun-epoch was the time of ardour and passion, and it was connected with a great screaming on the part of the Moon Beings, This exists to-day in the animal kingdom.

Many other things have remained from that time. You know how one tries to investigate the true reason for the birds migration, why they circle around the globe in a certain manner. Many things which are mysteriously concealed to-day, can be understood if the whole course of earthly evolution is borne in mind. There was a time when the lunar beings could only procreate when they wandered towards the Sun; this may be called their epoch of sexual life. General processes of lunar life expressed themselves in sounds at certain seasons of the and at other times, the beings upon the Moon were dumb.

We have thus learned to know time earth' s passage through the three preceding conditions of its existence: that of Saturn, of the Moon and of the Sun.

On various occasions it has been emphasised that the spiritual development, as aspired to by Spiritual Science, must bring the human being into a living relationship with the whole environment. Much in our environment that filled our ancestors with veneration has become dead and mundane for man. For example, a large number of people are alienated from and cold towards our annual festivals. The urban population in particular has only a scant memory of what Christmas, Easter and Whitsun (Pentecost) mean.

Today, mankind does no longer possess this enormous emotional content that our ancestors connected with the festive seasons because they were aware of the great facts of the spiritual world. Cold and sober people look at Christmas and Easter today, and especially also at Whitsun. The pouring out of the Spirit has become an abstract event for many people. But this will change—it will only become life and reality when mankind will come to a truly spiritual realisation of the whole world.

Today, there is a lot of talk about the forces of nature, but not a lot is said about the beings behind these nature forces. Modern man regards talk about the “beings of nature” as a rehashing of an old superstitious belief. It is considered an old superstition if someone believes that the words used for gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders, as our ancestors called them, are based on reality and mean something real. First, in a certain way it doesn’t matter what kind of theories or ideas people have, but if people are tempted by these theories to ignore certain things and to apply their theories in their daily life in practice, then the issue becomes fully relevant.

Let’s take a grotesque example: Who believes in beings whose existence is bound to the air or who are embodied in water? For example, if someone says, “Our ancestors believed in certain beings like gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders, but this is all imaginary stuff!”, then one would like to respond by saying, “Ask the bees.” And, if the bees could talk, they would answer, “Sylphs are not a superstition for us—we know quite well what they are to us!” Someone who is clairvoyant can trace (with his eyes) which force it is that draws the little bee to the flower. “Instinct, natural drive,” is man’s answer, but these are empty words. It is those beings, that our ancestors called sylphs, that guide the bees to the bloom’s calyx to search for food—and those beings are active in the whole bee swarm in search for nourishment.

Wherever different nature kingdoms touch, there is an opportunity for certain (elemental) beings to reveal themselves. For example, inside the Earth, where the stone touches on a metal vein, special beings will settle down. At a spring, where moss covers the stone and thus the plant kingdom touches the mineral kingdom such beings will settle in. Where animals and plants touch, in the bloom’s calyx when the bee touches the blossom, particular beings will embody themselves, and likewise where the human being touches onto the animal kingdom. This is not happening in the normal course of contact. For example, not when the butcher slaughters cattle, or when someone eats the flesh of animals—nothing like this will happen in the normal course of life. But where in the extraordinary course of events, as it happens with bees and flowers, the kingdoms touch each other in an exuberance of life, beings will embody themselves. And especially where man’s mind, his intellect, is particularly engaged in interacting with animals, such beings embody themselves. An example would be the emotional relationship a shepherd has with his sheep.

When we go back to the ancient times, we find such close relationships between humans and animals more often. In times of lower cultures, it was common to have relationships such as an Arab has to his horse, but not as the owner of a racing stable has to his horses. There we find those powers of mind that interplay between kingdoms–like between the shepherd and the lambs. Or where the senses of smell and taste will be developed and radiate across, like between bees and flowers, an opportunity is created for certain beings to embody themselves. When a bee sucks at a flower, a clairvoyant can perceive how at the rim of the flower a small aura is created. This is the effect of the taste: The sting of the bee into the bloom’s calyx has produced a certain flavouring agent – the bee perceives the taste and radiates it out like a bloom’s aura – this is the nourishment for sylph-like beings. Likewise, the element of feeling between the shepherd and the sheep is food for salamanders.

The following question is not for one who understands the spiritual world, “Then why are these beings there and not otherwise?” We should not ask about their origin, because their origin lies in the cosmos. But if one creates an opportunity for them to feed then they appear. For example, bad thoughts emanating from a person will attract bad entities to settle into his aura because they find food there. Then certain beings embody themselves in his aura.

Wherever different nature kingdoms touch, the opportunity presents itself for embodiment of certain spiritual beings. When a miner hacks away the soil—where metal nestles against the stone in the interior of the Earth—the clairvoyant can observe at various spots strange beings crouching, huddling together in a very small place. They scatter, they sputter apart when the earth is removed. They are strange beings but, in a way, not at all unlike humans. Although they have no physical body, they have reason. But the difference between them and human beings is that they possess intelligence without responsibility. Therefore, they do not feel anything is wrong about sometimes playing a prank on human beings. They are called gnomes, and numerous species of them are housed in the earth. They are at home where stone and metal touch. In the past they served mankind very well with mining—not with coal mining but with metal mining. The way how mines were constructed in ancient times, the knowledge about how the strata are layered, was learnt from these beings. They knew the most productive seams and how the layers ran inside the earth. Therefore, they were able to provide the best instruction on how to proceed with work. If one doesn’t want to work with spiritual beings and only relies on the senses, then one will end up in a dead-end road. From these spiritual entities one has to learn a certain method to explore the Earth.

Likewise at a spring beings embody themselves. Where the stone touches the spring, beings bound to the element of water embody themselves: the undines. Where animal and plant touch, the sylphs are working. The sylphs are bound to the element of the air, they lead the bees to the blossoms. Therefore, we owe almost all useful knowledge about beekeeping to old traditions. Especially about beekeeping¹ we can learn a lot from them, because the science that exists about this today is completely erroneous. The old wisdom that has spread through tradition will only be confused by this. Science proves to be useless in this context. Useful are only the old beekeeping flicks of hand whose origin is unknown, because man at that time used the spiritual world for guidance. Nowadays people also know about salamanders because if one says, “Something is flowing to me, I do not know where it comes from...”, then this is usually the effect of the salamanders.

When a human being enters into such close contact to animals as a shepherd to his sheep, then the beings who live in his surroundings will whisper insights to him. A shepherd would have received the knowledge he had about his flock from the salamanders in his surroundings. These old insights have dwindled and now must be regained through proven occult knowledge.

If we follow these thoughts further, then we will have to say to ourselves, “We are completely surrounded by spiritual beings! We walk through the air, and it is not only a chemical substance, but every breath of wind, every air movement is the revelation of spiritual entities.” We are surrounded and completely permeated by these spiritual entities. And, in the future man must have knowledge of what lives around him, if he doesn’t want to experience a completely sad and life draining fate. Without this knowledge he will no longer be able to progress. Man must ask himself, “Where do these beings come from? Where do these beings stem from?”

This question will lead us to an important realisation. To form a view about this, we have to become clear about how in the higher worlds certain facts play out, where what is detrimental and evil is transformed through certain things by wise guidance into something good. For example, the waste, the manure—this is what has been chucked out and through wise usage it is later effective in the economy as the foundation for plant germination. Higher powers pick up and transform things that have seemingly dropped off from higher development. This we encounter to a great extent in the beings we have spoken about, when we follow up on their origin. How do these “salamandrian” entities come into being? Let’s look at this in detail. Salamanders depend on the existence of a specific relation between human and animal. Animals do not have an “I/ego” such as human beings have. Such an ego exists only in modern man on Earth. These human egos are so that every human being has an ego enclosed in himself. This is different with animals. The animals have a “group-ego,” a “group-soul”. What does that mean? A group of animals of the same species, animals of similar shape, have a common ego. For example, all separate lions share a common ego, all tigers, all pikes do.

The animals have their ego in the astral world. This is as if a human being would stand behind a wall with ten holes in it and would put his ten fingers through the holes. Then the human being could not be seen, but every rational person would conclude, “there is a central power behind it that belongs to the ten fingers.” This is how it is with the group-ego. The separate animals are merely the limbs. What they belong to is in the astral world. These animal-egos are not similar to humans, although, from a spiritual perspective they could well be compared with each other, because an animal group-ego is a very, very wise being. The human being as an individual soul is not nearly as wise. For example, think of certain bird species: how wise is it that they are migrating at particular heights and in specific directions to escape winter, and return again by different routes in spring. Here we can recognise in the bird migration the truly wise powers of the group-egos. They can be found everywhere in the animal kingdom.

People are very narrow minded when they are listing human progress. Let us remember our school days, where we learnt how in the Middle Ages slowly the stream of the modern times emerged. The Middle Ages surely have something important to put on record, such as the discovery of America, the invention of gunpowder, the art of book printing and finally also of linen paper. It was probably an important progress to use this product instead of parchment, but thousands of years ago the wasp group-soul had done the same, because wasps’ nests are made from the same material as the paper produced by man; it is made of paper.

Human beings will only slowly find out how certain conjectures of his spirit are connected with what the group-souls have worked into the world.

The group-souls are in constant movement. The clairvoyant perceives a persistent flicker across the backbone of the animals. The spine seems to be enclosed by flickering light. The animals are pervaded by an infinite number of streams that are encircling the Earth in all directions, such as the trade winds, which affect the animals by streaming around the spinal cord. These animal group-souls are perpetually going around the Earth in a circular motion at every height and in every direction. These group-souls are very wise, but they are missing one thing which they do not yet have—they do not know that which on Earth is called “love.” Only in a human being is love connected to wisdom in an individual.

The group-soul is wise, but the individual animal experiences love as sexual love and parental love. In an animal love is individual, but the wise arrangement, the wisdom of the group-ego is still void of love. The human being has united love and wisdom—the animal has love in the physical life, and it has wisdom on the astral plane. Such realisations will be immensely enlightening for people.

The human being arrived at his current “I” only gradually. Previously man also had a group-soul, and the individual soul has crystallised itself only gradually. Let us follow backwards the evolution of mankind up to ancient Atlantis. In former times man lived in the old Atlantis, a continent that is now covered by the Atlantic Ocean. At that time the wide Siberian plains were covered with large oceans. The Mediterranean Sea was quite differently distributed then. Also in our European regions were wide expanses of sea. The further we go backwards into the old Atlantean time, the more all circumstances of life are changing, the more the human being’s waking and sleeping state changes.

Now when man sleeps the physical body with the etheric body remains in bed, and the astral body and the ego lift themselves out. The consciousness darkens, everything becomes dark, sombre, silent. In the Atlantean time the difference between sleeping and waking was not yet so pronounced. At that time, during the waking state, the human being did not see such firm boundaries, such sharp contours, such strong colours attached to objects. When he woke up in the morning, he dived into something like a nebulous substance. For example, there was no greater clarity than when we would look through fog at lights with an aura. Instead, his consciousness did not exactly cease when he was asleep—he then saw the spiritual things.

As man progressed, the physical world gained more and more its contours, but in exchange for this the human being lost his clairvoyance. Then the difference became more and more pronounced: in the spiritual world above, it became increasingly darker and in the physical world below increasingly brighter. All myths and sagas originated during the time when the human being still perceived the astral world up there. When he ascended into the spiritual world, he learnt to know Wotan, Baldur, Thor and Loki and beings, who had not yet descended onto the physical plane. This could be experienced in former times, and all myths are memories of living realities.

All mythologies are such memories. These spiritual realities have simply disappeared from human beings. In the past, when man dived into his physical body in the morning, he got the feeling: “You are an individual, a single one.” But when he dived back into the spiritual world at night he felt: “You are not at all an individual, you are just a link in a great whole, you belong to a great community.”

Tacitus² still told that the ancient peoples, the Herules and the Cheruscans, felt themselves to be more like a tribe than as individual human beings. From an individual’s sense of belonging to a tribe—that one would count oneself as belonging to a tribal community—certain customs such as the blood feuds have originated. Everything that belonged to the whole tribal group-soul was one body. All happens gradually in evolution. Only gradually did individual consciousness evolve out of this absolute tribal group consciousness.

Also, in the descriptions from the time period of the Patriarchs, we find traces of the transition from the group-soul to an individual soul. In the time prior to Noah, memory was quite different: it reached back to what the father, the grandfather, the great-grandfather had experienced. The boundary of birth was not a boundary. In the same blood the same memory flowed on into generations far removed. Today authorities are interested in knowing an individual’s name. In the time when the human being still had a memory of what his father and grandfather had done, this was called by a common name. Then what was connected by the same blood and the same memory was given the same name. This was called “Adam” or “Noah”. Names like Adam or Noah do not describe the life between birth and death of an individual, but the stream of memories as far as it reached. The old names cover whole human communities that were alive in those times.

How would it be if we would compare certain beings: the human-like apes with the human being. The immense difference is that the apes have a group-soul and the human being an individual soul, or at least the aptitude to develop one. The ape group-soul exists in a very special situation (see drawing). Imagine the Earth (refers to sketch) as the horizontal line. Above this, the group-souls of the animals are floating in the astral world like in a cloud that extends over our physical world. Let us now focus on the lion group-ego and the ape group-ego. Each lion is a separate limb into which the group-soul pours part of its substance. When a lion dies, its physical part drops away from the group-soul, like a fingernail from a human being. Then the group-soul retracts what it had sent into the lion and gives it to a different lion, which is newly born. The group-soul stays above. It sort of stretches out tentacles that are hardening in the physical world, then drop off and are being replaced again.

Therefore, the animal group-soul does not know birth and death. The individual animal is something that “falls off” and “grows on”—the group-soul remains untouched by life and death. For the lions it applies entirely, that each time a lion dies, all that has been sent from the group-soul returns to it again.

However, this is not so with the apes. There are individual animals that tear off a piece of the group-soul, which then cannot return to it. When the ape dies the essential part returns, but another part of it excises itself from the group-soul. What the group-soul stretches out, the ape makes it too tight, and when the ape dies part of the group-soul is excised, so that, in a sense, a part of it breaks out, rips away from the soul and does not return to it. In this way excisions from the group-soul arise. In all ape species excisions from the group-soul occur.

We find something similar in certain amphibians, in certain bird species, and especially pronounced in the kangaroo. Through these excisions something is kept back from the group-soul. What remains in this way from the warm-blooded animals will become an elemental being, a nature spirit—the salamander. These elemental beings, these nature spirits are, so to speak, waste, waste products of the higher worlds, that will be put into service by higher beings. They would, if left to their own devices, create interferences in the cosmos. Instead, the higher wisdom uses the sylphs to send the bees to the flowers. Thus, the large forces of elemental beings are placed under higher, wise leadership and the harm that they could cause is transformed into something useful.

This is how it is in the realms that lie below the human being. Now, it could also happen that a human being excises himself off from his group-soul, and as an individual does not find a possibility to develop himself further. Because, whilst being a “limb” of his group-soul, he was guided and led by higher beings, but now he is left to his own guidance. If the human being does not acquire appropriate spiritual knowledge, then he is in danger to excise himself. This is the question that arises.

What is it now, that prevents human beings from excision, from wandering around without direction and aim, whilst earlier the spiritual group-soul has provided directions? We have to become clear that man more and more individualises himself and that in the future he has to voluntarily seek to unite with other humans. In the past, a link existed based on blood relations, tribes and races. But this type of “union” comes more and more to an end. Everything in a human being leads more and more to him becoming an individual being. The only avenue possible is a reversal. Imagine there are a number of people on Earth who say to themselves, “We are going our own way. We want to find inside of us the direction and the goal of the path ourselves. We are all on the way to becoming more and more individualised human beings.” There is a danger of fragmentation. Already people are no longer able to endure spiritual unions. Today we are going as far as everyone having their own religion and presenting their own opinion as the highest ideal. But when human beings internalise ideals, then this leads to agreement, to a common opinion. For example, we recognise internally that 3 x 3 = 9, or that the sum of the three angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. This is an inner knowledge. One doesn’t need to cast a vote about such inner knowledge. No misunderstandings will arise about such inner recognitions, they lead to agreement. All spiritual truths are of this kind. What is taught by the Science of the Spirit, the human being finds through his inner forces. These lead him to an absolute unity, to peace and harmony. There are no two different opinions about a truth without one of them being wrong. The ideal is maximum possible internalisation—it leads to unity, to peace.

First there existed a human group-soul. Then mankind was released from this group-soul in the past. But in the future of evolution people must set themselves a sure goal to strive towards. When they unite themselves in a higher wisdom, then from the higher worlds a group-soul will descend again—when free communities arise out of the bound natural communities. What the leaders of the Science of the Spirit movement hope is that we will find in it a community where the hearts stream towards wisdom, as the plants stream towards sunlight. Where a common truth binds together the different egos, there we create an opportunity for a higher group-soul to descend. By turning our hearts together towards a higher wisdom, we embed the group-soul. We are building, so to speak, the bed, the environment, in which the group-soul is able to incarnate. Humans will enrich life on Earth by developing something that allows spiritual beings to descend from the higher worlds. This is the aim of the Science of the Spirit movement.

This was now once presented in a grand, magnificent form to mankind to show that the human being without such living spiritual ideal would transition into a different situation. This is a “symbol” that can illustrate to man with overwhelming power how humanity can find the way through a spiritual union, to provide a site to incarnate for the common spirit. This symbol is put in front of us in the Whitsun community in which a number of people, glowing from a common feeling of fervent love and devotion, had assembled for common action. There were a number of people whose souls were still reverberating after the shattering event, so that in all of them the same was alive. In the convergence of this one same feeling they provided that in which a higher, a common soul could incarnate. This is expressed by the words that say the Holy Spirit—the group-soul—descended and separated itself into fiery tongues. This is the great symbol for the humanity of the future. If the human being would not have found this connection, then man would transition into an elemental being. Now humanity must search for a site for the Beings from the higher worlds that bend downwards. With the Easter festival man was given the power to absorb into themselves such mighty imaginations and to strive towards oneness of the spirit. The Whitsun Festival is the fruit of the unfolding of this power.

Through the souls’ striving together towards the common wisdom, a lively relationship must be established forever with the forces and beings of the higher worlds, and with something that currently has as little meaning for humanity as the Whitsun Festival. Through the Science of the Spirit, it will once again become meaningful to man. Once people understand the significance of the descent of the Holy Spirit for them in the future, then the Whitsun Festival will come to life again. It will then not only be a memory of that event in Jerusalem, but the everlasting Whitsun Festival of the united soul endeavour will manifest for humanity. It will become a symbol for the great future Whitsun community when mankind will unite in a common truth to allow higher beings the possibility to incarnate. It will depend on human beings themselves, how valuable this will make the Earth for the future and how effective such ideals can be for mankind. Once humanity will strive towards wisdom in this right way, then higher spirits will join mankind.

• 1. compare Rudolf Steiner - Cosmic Working in Earth and Man, Beekeeping. GA 351
• 2. Cornelius Tacitus, 55 to about 120 AD, Roman historian, in his work Germania

We speak in the correct sense, as it were, of the spiritual forces which are driving forward; we speak of the different hierarchies and we know that certain of the beings of these hierarchies remain behind. Then when they reach a later stage, in so far as they remained behind at an earlier stage, they do not unfold that activity which they would have unfolded if they had progressed in the right way, but they develop an activity which corresponds to an earlier stage of world development. We call those beings the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings, beings who exercise their activity for the earth, and beings who in a normal way exercised their activity during the Moon existence. From various points of view, we have mentioned what the significance is of the inter-weaving of such Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings in the whole world development.

You see, my dear friends, centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, there was something very immense which proceeded from ancient India, a teaching which is indicated in the Bhagavad Gita and in other writings of the Orient. At that time you had something great, something full of significance, and nothing of our spiritual science ever attempted to belittle the immense significance of such phenomena. You can realize this from the cycle I gave about the Bhagavad Gita in Helsingfors where I pointed to the immensity of the deep truths which exist in the Bhagavad Gita. It is also very good for present day man to deepen himself in that which at that time was very great and important for mankind. However, since then, the Mystery of Golgotha has come over mankind and the importance of this Mystery of Golgotha is indicated by the fact that we divide history into two parts, that which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha and that which came afterwards. But the Orient does not possess this historical concept, because it is unable to acquire a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. As far as the Orient is concerned, you have one absolute truth which is valid for all age, and they do not ascribe to an evolution of truth.

It is still very difficult in our time for human beings to understand and think about the development of knowledge. This proceeds from the fact that we have not yet been able to completely permeate ourselves with the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us assume that someone appeared in our time and wanted to speak in the same way as the author of the Bhagavad Gita spoke or as Buddha spoke in his time; that person would do something which would be perfectly valid for a time dating back centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha. One could say that if the person in question said that at that time when the Bhagavad Gita was brought forward, then it would be a correct deed in the evolutionary sense. However, if he appears today and tries to speak in the same sense as the Bhagavad Gita speaks, that is a Luciferic act and something which really was valid for an earlier period has been brought over into our time. A person who does that would extinguish the whole development of the intellect, of the power of conceptualization which has developed in the evolution of thinking. Now, I am not speaking about something abstract, but about all this because I want to bring a very significant concrete phenomena to your attention. A book appeared in 1912 entitled The High Goal of Knowledge, The Aranada Upanashad written by a man who signs his name as Omar al Rashid Bey. This Omar al Rashid Bey is really a very good German. We see that this book really belongs to the centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha and therefore today we have to grasp it as a Luciferic phenomenon.

Now, in the very near future a book by me will appear which contains a great many of the ideas which I have put forth in the public lectures over the last two winters. There will be much in this book. However, of that which goes beyond what one can find in ancient India, because it belongs to the world conception idealism appropriate to the times after the Mystery of Golgotha. As a matter of fact, my dear friends, that which Fichte, Hegel, Schelling and the others who I have mentioned in this book, what they have done is far superior to that which is contained in the oriental wisdom, contained in Brahmanism and the fact that human beings today do not recognize it is the result of the following. Usually it is very difficult for people to grasp the ideas in this book, and for that reason I have written about it in my book, The other reason is that we, in the main, do not have a talent to appreciate and look up to knowledge in the way possessed by the oriental. In this book entitled The High Goal Of Knowledge you will find not only that knowledge is imparted, but from the beginning to the end people are made to remember that what is being dealt with here is an elevated knowledge, and you have to reverence this knowledge highly and realize that it is available to specially selected people and is known by the highest masters of wisdom who have deigned to stoop down to enable you poor people to have this knowledge available to you. This sort of approach is what people like to get hold of, they think this is really good, especially when it starts off with something like this: “Peace and blessings be to you, oh dear ones.”

When you compare this with the writings of the German classical philosophers who you will read about in this book which will appear shortly, you will find those people who have developed the new world conception idealism and that they put the main emphasis an man's ability to live in the ego, to experience the ego; for this is what it must be after the Mystery of Golgotha. But the oriental wisdom goes not only towards being able to experience the ego, but actually to overcoming it, to extinguishing it. This selbstsucht, this egotism, this searching for the self, this actually exists before the finding of the ego. As long as a person is looking for his “I”, so long does he develop this selbstsucht, this egotism and in order to free himself from this seeking for the self, this egotism, he must find the ego. Once you have found the ego, then you are no longer afflicted by the seeking for the self, therefore finding the ego is the only real possibility of overcoming this egotism. That person today who after the Mystery of Golgotha wants to flee away from the ego and says that which was said in ancient India, that all that is thrown back out of the ego into the seeking of the ego, that person is really fostering egotism. Hence, such books make an egotistical impression on us today, an impression which shows us that those very people want to draw away from the world, and do not really want to seek for their immortal part; they do not in reality want to seek for the spiritual, but want to withdraw from the reality of the spiritual in order in an egotistical way to try in their own dreamingness try to seek for knowledge. This is egotism of knowledge and this egotism of knowledge which does not notice itself is the worst form of egotism. Hence the book entitled The High Goal of Knowledge written by Omar al Rashid Bey, who really is a very good German, is reproducing all that ancient Indian stuff which is the worst type of egotism.

Before the Mystery of Golgotha when the ego had not entered into the development of mankind through Christ, then the way that the oriental spoke was not too dangerous, but to speak in that way today is to try to push the ego away and you really get sucked in by Lucifer and do not notice that you get, into an egotistical state of mind. This same book furthermore states: “The person who seeks for salvation in this world remains a victim of this world.” Now, on the other hand we say that since the Mystery of Golgotha, the person who does not seek for his salvation in the spiritual of the world but wants to draw himself from the world, actually falls victim to the world, he falls a victim to that part of the world which is dreaming in him. We say that after the Mystery of Golgotha, the person who unites himself with the eternal nature of this world and seeks the eternal within the time aspect, does not fall a victim to this world. One can take every sentence in this book and reverse it and then you will find the right thing. I have noted the following in the margins of this book: The person who flees from the ego falls a victim to the search for the ego, since the search creates the “I” for itself. The finding of the ego frees you from the searching for the ego, frees you from egotism. That person who is able to see through this world can win this world, whereas the book itself says: “Whoever is not able to lift himself out of this world lives and falls a victim to this world.” Today, after the Mystery of Golgotha we say that the person who today is able to see through this world is the person who can become a victor over this world. You can see from all this how such a book is a very Luciferic book. These people are trying to teach something in the present which really was valid thousands of years ago; hence we can call it Luciferic.

The person who has vision permeated with reality is passed by by most of our contemporaries; they are not able to come to terms with people who are trying to share reality with them. A person who, from a certain point of view, could be called a real seer is Robert Hammerling, the great modern poet of Central Europe. Now I will not speak of Robert Hammerling's poetry nor about his philosophy in general. You can read about that in the book I have recently written. What I would like to bring to your attention is Hammerling's seer vision, how he really is able to see through what is happening in this world and therefore wrote the great satire entitled Homunculus shortly before his death. Homunculus typifies the people of today who say everything that exists is subject to and stands under mechanistic materiality; also all spiritual phenomena and experiences are subject to mechanistic materialistic laws of force and substance. Hammerling responds to this question with a real artistic poetical power in so far as he presents a person to us such as Homunculus which mankind must become if they consider the world purely in this materialistic way.

Now this Homunculus achieves a great deal. The brain, in a certain sense, is really a mechanical tool and can itself be produced out of mechanical action; therefore the brain can produce a very, very strong wisdom. So Homunculus, Hammerling is very wise and is able to know what exists in the world and combines it all together, he founds a universal newspaper and becomes a billionaire. You can do that sort of thing in a world in which the spiritual is neglected. But he goes further. He produces a school of apes, because naturally materialistic Darwinism has the idea that man descended from apes. Therefore, all they have to do is handle the apes in a very pedagogical way and naturally they would turn into men. This school of apes is a very fine chapter in Hammerling's Homunculus. He also shows the type of people who write rubbish in their articles. In the 1880's Hammerling really had a good sense of seership and wrote his Homunculus out of the reality of his seership. Homunculus finds a soulless woman and Homunculus, whose knowledge is not accessible to soul and spirit, becomes the typical man without a soul.

Hammerling had an inkling that in the future people would come along and say: “Thank God we have overcome all this Goethean classicism and everything connected with it. We have overcome this belief in homo sapiens, this belief of the wise man who can find something in his spirit and therefore establishes human ordering. However, we know that all of human ordering is purely conditioned by external economic relationships; therefore man depends only upon these external economic relationships and fortunately we have overcome this ancient classicism which emphasizes and looks upon men as men of wisdom, as homo sapiens and replaces that by homo economicus. Actually today we have a real homunculism which Hammerling prophesied in the 1880's. We have homunculism in our philosophical world conception; Homunculus becomes not only a billionaire; he establishes a universal newspaper; he writes the book The Renewal of Austria Political Programs by Dr. Karl Renner. Hammerling was a seer. He could visualize what was going to come. It is very important for us to realize that and to obtain an understanding of the greatness of such an artistic creation as Homunculus. The greatness of such a creation consists in the fact that without spiritual science, Hammerling said to himself: What would happen to the human being if he considered that all he has is a physical body? Therefore he depicted Homunculus as a person who, in the main, brought nothing with him as heredity from Saturn, Sun and Moon developments, but only has that which Earth evolution has given him. The significant parts of the ego, astral body and the ether body are lacking. Therefore we can understand Hammerling's Homunculus correctly precisely from the point of view of spiritual science.

The last time I told you that the science of the spirit brings together three things in order to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. First Jesus as He is incarnated as Zarathustra in the Solomon Jesus Child and how he brings through this Solomon Jesus Child that which mankind has experienced through its historical development since he himself has passed from incarnation to incarnation. I have told you about the Nathan Jesus Child who has within him that which was actually predestined for the earth but never went through this earth evolution; it was held back. I have showed you how the Nathan Jesus Child was completely described in the Koran to the point where it says that the Nathan Jesus Child actually spoke when he was born. The Christ Being incarnates in the Nathan Jesus Child with the Solomon Jesus Child, the Christ Being Who comes from beyond the super-earthly, Who draws into the personality of this Solomonic Nathanic Jesus in the 30th year so that we can recognize in Christ a union of the spiritual worlds external to the earth with that which has occurred upon the earth. And I have brought to your attention the fact that it is necessary in our time to become able to understand the concept of the immensity of the greatness of the Jesus figure, and with that the greatness of the Mystery of Golgotha, since our time has certainly developed the intellect, the intellectual thinking in its 5th post-Atlantean period. However, the spiritual comprehension of the would has to be added to this intellectual thinking. Then it will be possible to understand the Mystery of Golgotha again as it was understood many, many years ago but understood now in a very advanced way. I might say that before the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha could have been acquired, that which was inserted into human understanding through the Ahrimanic powers had to occur. As a matter of fact, I can say that all the good spirits are really waiting for mankind to understand the Mystery of Golgotha; yet in spite of that people are fighting against this understanding. They do not want to enter into the understanding of this Mystery of Golgotha and therefore deny it in an unconscious way. They also unconsciously deny the figure who stands in the centerpoint of this Mystery of Golgotha. You know that when a very intellectual person tests the Gospels in a critical way, he finds contradictions in them which show that these refer at the most to the fact that a good man lived in Nazareth. He says that a reasonably intelligent man cannot believe that other things are contained in the Gospels, only a weak-minded person can say: I follow the Christ Jesus.

I would like to bring a book to your attention entitled The Fool in Christo Emanual Quint, a novel by Gerhard Hauptmann which contains what I have just indicated to you. Now, I am not going to say that Gerhard Hauptmann had not written a very fine drama at an earlier time, however our time is ripe for that which this great poet of the present applies as a weak mind in order to represent Christ. I know very well that many will come to me and say: You are condemning this Fool in Christo Emanual Quint by Gerhard Hauptmann because you are looking at it from the religious or philosophical aspect and do not have any understanding for the purely esthetic. But I might say this: From the purely esthetic point of view, this work is just an imitation, a very bad reproduction of Dostoevski's Brothers Karamasov. I prefer to read Dostoevski and I advise everyone to read him rather than reading this weak imitation of his work which Gerhard Hauptmann has written. (Rudolf Steiner reads portions from this book to show that it resembles the things found in the Brothers Karamasov, but not in an artistic way.)

This book, The Fool in Christo Emanual Quint by Gerhard Hauptmann is highly praised by the critics and they say that because of its popularity many editions will have to be printed, also it will be translated into many languages. Both young and old will appreciate it; it will become a classic. It really is a novel of the religious battles of our age in which a person who was a son of the people rises up to become a son of God. Every religious person will be able to appreciate what is involved in this novel. This can be an example of how we are permeated by sick thought and this is why I emphasized time and again in the course of the winter's lectures how one of the functions of the spiritual science is to make our thinking healthy, to enable our thought forms to be constructed along the correct paths. When one abstractly states that today the classical time of homo sapiens is passed and that we must put homo economicus in its place, then you should be sufficiently awake to see that this man is an idiot even though he does not think so. He thinks he is the great culture bringer of our age who is solving the great riddle of our life. So much around us is trying to prevent people from developing the sort of thinking that deals with reality. You will be able to find what I mean when I say “Thinking according to reality” when you read my book in which these ideas are clearly presented. The book which will appear shortly.

Remember that we have Emanuel Kant who has written the book The Critique of Pure Reason in which he makes very clear that everything is only an appearance, that one can never arrive at the reality of the thing in itself behind the phenomena. We also have a Critique of Language who wants to foster the fame of this Critique of Language. You get all sorts of journalists who consider it to be the monumental world of the present time; whereas it is nothing more than frightful philosophical dilettantism. Fritz Mauthner cannot advance to a single real concept. All he can do is to say that the word has nothing in it. All the word is is just a gesture, a pointer. Mauthner does not have the slightest inkling of language of words. He criticizes the word, believes that people themselves have created words and that the words are really hiding reality. Indeed, you cannot criticize reality because you are criticizing the word. I will try to make this clear to you through a drastic example.

Just think what this Fritz Mauthner does. He has written Critique of Language which comprises three thick volumes, a Dictionary of Philosophy comprising two think volumes in which he has gathered together the concept of existence, the concept of knowledge, and so on. All of this is handled according to the words: Where words proceed from; where words first appear; how one word changes from one language into another. And in so far as he does all this describing of how the word changes itself from one language into the other, then he believes that he can say something about these things. I will try to make this clear with a drastic example. Let us assume that Fritz Mauthner traveled through Austria and found a word which has been formed there, the word Boehmishe Hoffrat—Bohemian privy counselor. This word is used all over Austria; every other person is a Boehmishe Hoffrat. What would this critic of speech, this Fritz Mauthner make out of this word using his method? Naturally he would look under ‘B’ in his philosophical dictionary, analyze the word Boehmishe in an orderly way and discover that it is a part of the concept berman. Then he would look under the letter ‘H’ to find Hoffrat and would then take that concept and analyze it in an orderly fashion and in this way he tried to discover the reality of what Boehmishe Hoffrat means. However, the singular fact is that in Austria, a Boehmishe Hoffrat is neither a Bohemian nor is he a privy counselor. On the contrary, most of the Boehmishe Hoffrate in Austria are neither one nor the other. It is only an accident when one is a privy counselor or a Bohemian. In Austria, a Boehemishe Hoffrat indicates a person who is an intriguer, who has the talent for displacing those above him, climbing the ladder into their place at the top. It has nothing to do with the Bohemian nor with the privy Counselor. A person can be an office attendant born in the Steimark and still be a Boehmishe Hoffrat. So you see how words are formed and how they relate to reality. All words are formed that way. When you want to seek the reality behind words, then you find very little of it behind the word Boehmishe Hoffrat if you do not have the ability to penetrate deep within the words and find out how there content was arrived at and what the word signifies.

You see, my dear friends, our present age has reached this degree of confusion and people have arrived at a point in their confusion where they look on a book such as Fritz Mauthner has written as an epoch making creation. It is not really without significance to know that the tasks of people arise out of works in which the fantasy of human beings is poisoned as is done by Gerhard Hauptmann in his book The Fool in Christo Emanual Quint. It is not really an arbitrary thing when the thinking of the human being is confused by a book such as Fritz Mauthner's Critique of Language or something like it. These are the outflow of the intellectual pride which places itself against acquiring a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, that understanding which is so necessary for the present time. I might say the following: Just as the crucifixion had to enter for Christ Jesus, so also must the concept of Christ as it appears at the present time in mankind also be crucified. And this concept of Christ is crucified through books such as The Fool in Christo Emanual Quint by Gerhard Hauptmann. Surely Gerhard Hauptmann feels himself especially clever because he points to the fact that bishops, pastors and officials have thrown out the fool, Quint when he came and announced that he was Christ. But Hauptmann in an eloquent way adds that eventually this fool could actually be Christ, then the people would have thrown Christ out.

There is so much of what is happening in the present time which prevents people from penetrating to the threefold understanding of the Christ, to the historical Christ, to the Zarathustra Child in which the Christ Being entered, to the earthly Christ, namely, to the Nathan Jesus Child who, however has not worked into the earth; to the Christ understanding, to that Power which descended out of the spiritual heights and has fructified all earth life. This threefold understanding must be acquired, my dear friends. It will be acquired when spiritual science is able to permeate through all the egotism and pride of those who say that they have reached the highest goal of knowledge. In spite of all that, there will be people who are able to enter to an understanding of this threefold Christ. When we come together again, I will be able to attach something else to what I have said today.

Yesterday we considered the forms in the astral world brought about by the influence of man himself. Today we are coming to those beings in astral space who are more or less its permanent inhabitants.

To understand what part man takes in astral happenings, we must consider the nature of the sleeping human being. Man consists, as we know, of four members: physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. When he sleeps, the astral body with the ego is outside the human sheath. Such a person wanders about in astral space. As a rule he does not move far away from the physical and etheric bodies which remain lying in the bed. The two other members, the astral body and the ego, are then in astral space.

Now when the physical and etheric bodies remain on the physical plane we must certainly not imagine that because of this only physical forces have an influence on them and only physical beings have access to them. Everything that exists as thoughts and mental images has an influence on the etheric body. When someone sleeps the etheric body remains on the physical plane. If, in the vicinity of a sleeping person, we think about something, we exercise an influence on his etheric body; only nothing of this will be experienced by the sleeper. When awake, the human being is so taken up with the outer world that he represses all the thoughts which penetrate into the etheric body. But in the night the etheric, body is alone, without the ego, and is exposed to all the thoughts flying hither and thither around him, without the sleeper knowing anything about it. During waking life also he knows nothing of this, because the astral body, which dwells in the etheric body, is engaged with the outer world. When man is in a sleeping condition, any being having the power to send out thoughts, can gain an influence over him. He can therefore be influenced by higher individualities, such as those we call Masters. They can send thoughts into the etheric body of the sleeper. Someone can therefore receive into his etheric body pure and lofty thoughts when the Masters consciously wish to make this their concern. But in the night thoughts that flit into it from the outer world also enter into the etheric body. These man finds when in the morning he slips again into his etheric body. There are two kinds of dreams. The one kind arises directly from the experiences of the astral world: from echoes of day experiences and certain things from the astral world. As a rule the ego at night in astral space experiences little else than things connected with daily life. When the ego returns, it may or may not bring with it into waking life the experiences of the astral world. Certain things are however already present in the etheric body. What is found there is taken up by the astral body and then manifests itself to us as dreams. What however has taken place during the night in regard to the etheric body is another kind of experience. Thus in the morning there are to be found in the etheric body, firstly thoughts which have approached it from the environment and secondly thoughts also which the Masters or other individualities have implanted into it. The introduction of these latter is made possible by the person in question meditating. In that someone occupies himself during the daytime with pure, noble thoughts dealing with eternal things, he brings into his astral body the disposition for such thoughts. Should he not have this disposition, it would be useless were a Master to wish to work upon his etheric body. If one reads ‘Light on the Path’⁵⁵ and meditates upon it, one prepares the astral body in such a way that when the Master imbues the etheric body with lofty thoughts the astral body can actually contact them. This is called the relationship of man to his higher self. Such is the true nature of this process. The higher self of man does not live within us, but around us. The more highly developed individualities are the higher self. Man must be clear that the higher self is outside him. Were he to seek for it within himself, he would never find it. He must seek it with those who have already trodden the path that we wish to tread. Within us is nothing except our karma, what we have already experienced in earlier incarnations. Everything else is outside us. The higher self is around us. If, in preparation for the future, we wish to approach it more closely, we must seek it above all in the company of those individualities who can work during the night on our etheric body. The higher self is in the universe; therefore the Vedantist says: ‘Tat twam asi’—That art thou. If through appropriate writings, such as Light on the Path or the Gospel of St. John, we incline the astral body to take in lofty spiritual nourishment and thus to understand the Masters, we are thereby working in a good way towards what will lead to the higher self.

In the night therefore we find in astral space the sleeping bodies, or the pupils with their Masters, in so far as someone who has formed a tie which unites him with the Master, through an appropriate meditation, is led towards him. This is what can happen during the night. It is possible for everyone by immersing himself in inspired writings to reach the point of taking part in such intercourse and through this to attain to the development of his higher self. What in the course of some thousands of years will become our self is now the higher self. In order however really to get to know the higher self we must seek for it where it already is today, with the higher individualities. This is the communication of the pupils with the Masters.

Something else that we can meet with in astral space is the black magician with his pupils. In order to train himself to become a black magician, the pupil has to go through a special schooling. The training in black magic consists in a person becoming accustomed, under methodical instruction, to torture, to cut, to kill animals. This is the ABC. When the human being consciously tortures living creatures it has a definite result. The pain caused in this way, when it is brought about intentionally, produces a quite definite effect on the human astral body. When a person cuts consciously into a particular organ this induces in him an increase in power.

Now the basic principle of all white magic is that no power can be gained without selfless devotion. When through such devotion power is gained, it flows from the common life force of the universe. If however we take its life-energy from some particular being, we steal this life-energy. Because it belonged to a separate being it densifies and strengthens the element of separateness in the person who has appropriated it, and this intensification of separateness makes him suited to becoming the pupil of those who are engaged in conflict with the good powers.

For our earth is a battlefield; it is the scene of two opposing powers: right and left. The one, the white power on the right, after the earth has reached a certain degree of material, physical density, strives to spiritualise it once again. The other power, the left or black power, strives to make the earth ever denser and denser, like the moon. Thus, after a period of time, the earth could become the physical expression for the good powers, or the physical expression for the evil. It becomes the physical expression for the good powers through man uniting himself with the spirits working for unification, in that he seeks the ego in the community. It belongs to the function of the earth to differentiate itself physically to an ever greater degree. Now it is possible for the separate parts to go their own way, for each part to form an ego. This is the black path. The white path is the one which strives for what is common, which forms an ego in community. Were we to burrow more and more deeply into ourselves, to sink ourselves into our own ego organisation, to desire always more and more for ourselves, the final result would be that we should strive to separate ourselves from one another. If on the other hand we draw closer, so that a common spirit inspires us, so that a centre is formed between us, in our midst, then we are drawn together, then we are united. To be a black magician means to develop more and more the spirit of separateness. There are black adepts who are on the way to acquire certain forces of the earth for themselves. Were the circle of their pupils to become so strong that this should prove possible, then the earth would be on the path leading to destruction.

Man is called upon to enter into the atmosphere of the good Masters to an ever greater degree. Near the adept with his pupils, there is also on the astral plane the black magician with his pupils. One also finds there human beings who have died some time previously and they are there for the purpose of gradually getting rid of the connections they have had with the earth. The satisfaction of desires must be put aside. Such desires are a process in the astral body, but the astral body cannot satisfy them. As long as one lives on the physical plane one can satisfy the desires of the astral body through the instrument of the physical body. After death the desire for enjoyment is still there, but the means for its satisfaction are not to be found. Everything that can only be satisfied through the physical body must be relinquished. This takes place in Kamaloka. When man has put aside all such desires, Kamaloka is at an end and is followed by the time in Devachan.

When Kamaloka time comes to an end something can occur which is not quite normal in human development. In the normal way the following happens: the person has freed himself from desires, wishes, instincts, passions and so on. Now everything which is of a higher nature lifts itself out of the astral body. Then a sort of shell remains behind, the residue of what man made use of in order to enjoy the pleasures of the senses. And when someone has left the Kamaloka plane, these astral human shells float around there. They gradually dissolve, and when the person returns most of them have usually disappeared. It may well happen that strongly somnambulistic or mediumistic natures can be troubled by these astral shells. This shows itself in the case of weak mediumistic people in a way that makes a very unpleasant impression on them. It can come about that in his ego someone may have such a strong inclination for the astral body, in spite of the fact that on the other hand he is already so far developed as to be comparatively soon ready for devachan, that parts of his already developed Manas remain united with this shell. It is not so bad if someone develops lower desires when he is still a simple person, but it is a bad thing if someone uses his highly evolved intellect to gratify those desires. Then part of his manasic nature unites with these lower desires. In the materialistic age this is extremely frequent. With such people part of Manas remains united with the shell, and then this shell has automatic intellect. These shells are called shades. These shades endowed with automatic intellect are very frequently what manifest through mediums. Through this, one can be exposed to the illusion that what is merely the shell of a person is his real individuality. Very often what is made known after the death of a person proceeds from such a shell that has nothing whatever to do with the ego which is developing further. But with the dissolving of the shades, karma is not absolved.

We take with us the cause of every counter-image that we have brought about in astral space. Our works follow us. Just as a monogram is imprinted into a seal, so it is with what we imprint into astral space and it can bring about devastating effects. What corresponds to the seal we take with us. What remains behind however in astral space we should not disregard. Let us imagine that in this life someone were to evolve beyond a certain clearly defined stage of development. At the earlier stage he held opinions which those he held later contradicted. When he ascends into devachan the old opinions, with which he had not come to satisfactory terms, remain behind in the shell. Now if a medium comes into contact with this shell, it can be that opinions are found in it which are in contradiction with the later life of this person. This was actually the case when the attempt was made to get into touch with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky on the astral plane. At one time her attitude had been that there was no such thing as reincarnation. The medium in question⁵⁶ had obtained this opinion from the shell that Blavatsky had left behind, an opinion which however in her later teachings she declared was erroneous.

Innumerable errors can assail anyone who enters astral space. Besides everything else, there is on the astral plane an imprint of the Akasha-Chronicle. If someone has the faculty of reading, on the astral plane, the Akasha-Chronicle, which is there reflected in its single parts, he will be able to see his earlier incarnations. The Akasha-Chronicle does not consist of printed letters, but one reads there what has actually taken place. Even after one thousand five hundred years, an Akasha-picture gives the impression of the earlier personality. Thus on the astral plane there are also to be found all the Akasha-pictures from earlier times. So one can easily fall into the error of believing that one is speaking to Dante, whereas today Dante might actually be reincarnated as a living personality. It is also possible for the Akasha-picture to give sensible answers, even to go beyond itself. It can therefore come about that we get verses from Dante's Akasha picture which do not proceed from the progressed individuality but must be looked upon as a continuation of verses coming from the previous personality of Dante. The Akasha picture is something living, by no means a rigid automaton.

In order to be able to find one's way on the astral plane a severe and systematic schooling is necessary, because there is always the possibility of deception. And it is especially important to refrain from forming judgements as long as possible.

Let us now turn our minds to the process of dying, in order to understand the technique of reincarnation. The moment of death consists in the separation of the etheric and physical bodies. The difference between falling asleep and dying is that when one falls asleep, the etheric body remains connected with the physical body. All one's thoughts and experiences are imprinted into the etheric body. They are deeply embedded in it. Man would be able to remember much more of his experiences if it were not that they are continually obliterated by the outer world. He is not always aware of his thoughts and impressions because his attention is directed outwards. If he ceases to do this, he perceives what is stored up in his etheric body. In the main, he directs his attention outwards and absorbs the impressions into his etheric body. These however he partially forgets. When at the moment of death the physical body is laid aside, he perceives what is stored up in his etheric body. This is what happens after his ego has separated from the physical body together with the astral and etheric bodies. Immediately after death therefore opportunity is given for complete recollection of the past life.

Now we must try to understand another and similar moment, namely the moment of birth, when the human being enters into a new incarnation. Here something different occurs. He brings with him all that he has worked over on the Devachan plane. Like bells, the astral bodies, desirous of incarnation, whirl towards the life-ether and now form a new etheric body. When the human being has united himself with his future etheric body, a momentary vision arises just as previously, at death, he looked back on his past life. This however expresses itself in quite another way, as a gazing into the future, a fore-knowledge. In the case of children with somewhat psychic tendencies, one can sometimes hear them tell of such things, in their earliest years, so long as the materialistic culture has not yet affected them. This is prevision of the coming existence.

These are two vital moments, for they show us what the human being brings with him when he descends in order to incarnate. When he has died, the essential thing is memory. When he reincarnates what is essential is a vision of the future. These two are related to one another as cause and effect. Everything that man experiences in the last moment of dying is the gathering together of all previous lives. In Devachan this is transformed from what is connected with the past into what is connected with the future. These two moments can form an important signpost pointing to quite definite connections in two or more succeeding incarnations.

• 55. Light on the Path by Mabel Collins.
• 56. refers to a booklet by Georg von Langsdorff, Freiburg i. Br. known as a translator and publiciser of spiritualistic material. Rudolf Steiner also refers to the matter in the lecture 24.8.1906 in At the Gates of Spiritual Science.

At the outset of our studies to-day we must deal with a word that in Spiritual Science is very important. In Christian occult science the Old Moon is called the Cosmos of Wisdom and the Earth the Cosmos of Love. By “Moon” we here mean the Moon Period of the Earth. The reason why the Old Moon is called the Cosmos of Wisdom is because all that was then developed was filled with wisdom. When the Earth Period succeeded the Moon Period the Cosmos of Wisdom was replaced by the Cosmos of Love. When the Earth came forth from the darkness of Pralaya, the rudiments of the human being which had been developed in former periods reappeared—the physical, etheric and astral bodies. On the Old Moon Wisdom had been implanted in these bodies and their mutual relationships; we therefore find wisdom in the constitution of these three bodies. We find the greatest wisdom in the construction of the physical body, less in that of the etheric body, and still less in that of the astral body. If we thoughtfully observe the human body we discover this wisdom in each organ, in each part. For instance, if we study the upper portion of the human thighbone we find in it a network of cells beautifully constructed with a view to their purpose. No engineer of the present day would be able to produce these two columns, which bear the upper part of the human body with the smallest expenditure of matter and force. Wisdom was implanted in the human body as long as the divine Spirits worked upon it. As a rule the physical body is looked upon as the lowest part of man, unjustly so, for the very greatest wisdom can be seen just in the physical body. Only through this wisdom is it possible for the physical body to withstand the attacks continually made upon it by the astral body, and so not break up before the time. The pleasures and desires which hold sway in the physical body when tea and coffee and so on are taken, all these are attacks of the astral body on the physical body, and especially on the heart. It has therefore to be so wisely constructed that these attacks can be withstood for decades. Of course the suitable form of the heart could only be discovered by subjecting it to many transformations.

Wisdom lies at the foundation of the construction of the world, and it is for this reason that our intellect can now seek and find it there. But wisdom did not come suddenly into the world, it was only poured in slowly and gradually; and in the same way love will also permeate the Earth very gradually. The purpose of the evolution of our Earth is to be permeated with love. Love has only begun to permeate the Earth to the smallest extent, but it will spread more and more, and at the end of the Earth Period everything will be saturated with love, just as it was saturated with wisdom at the end of the Moon Period.

When the Moon separated from the Earth the force of love was only contained in it seminally. First of all only those who were related to one another by blood loved one another. This state of things lasted for a long time; then the sphere of the activity of love gradually widened. For the perception and exercise of love a certain independence is necessary.

From the beginning of human evolution two forces have always been active: one that draws together and one that separates (Sun and Moon forces). Under the influence of these two forces man was so far developed that his three bodies, together with the bearer of the ego, inclined towards the Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man. But a final union could not have come about without the addition of a new cosmic force. This force, which exercised a specially strong influence after the separation of the Moon, came from another planet, which entered into a remarkable relationship with the Earth. This planet, Mars, made a sort of passage through the body of the Earth when the latter began its evolution. Until then iron had been lacking in the Earth, and through its appearance on the Earth the course of evolution was changed at one stroke. It was the planet Mars which brought iron to the Earth, and from that time it was possible for Man to develop warm blood containing iron. Through Mars the astral also received a new principle, the sentient soul, the courageous soul. When Mars entered, the aggressive element developed in the soul. We have now to distinguish in men the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the sentient soul. Red, warm blood was the result of the activity of the sentient soul on the physical body; then the fertilising Ego could gradually be membered into the human being.

“Blood is a very special fluid.” The God of Form, Jehovah, now played a specially important role. He took possession of the newly developed organ, the blood, permeated it with His forces, transformed the aggressive qualities of the courageous soul into the forces of love and made the blood into the physical vehicle of the Ego.

In the beginning each human individual did not possess his own Ego. The same Jehovah-force, the Ego-force, the same Ego worked in all who were related by blood, who preserved the same blood through endogamy (near marriage). A small group of this kind had a common Ego. The individual was related to the whole family as a finger is related to the whole body. In the beginning there were group-souls; the individual felt himself to be part of the family or tribe; and the same Ego lived on through several generations, it was not confined to those who were living at the same time; the common Ego was felt as long as the blood remained unmixed, as long as those who belonged to the same tribe intermarried. Therefore the Ego was not felt as something personal, but as something common to all the members of the tribe. Just as a man now remembers what he has experienced from the time of his birth, the men of that time remembered what the ancestors of the same tribe had done as vividly as if they themselves had experienced it: The grandchild and great-grandchild felt within them the some Ego that had lived in the grandfather and great-grandfather. When we know this we shall understand the secret of the great age of the patriarchs. For example, “Adam” was not the name of a single individual but of the common Ego which flowed through many generations. We have just said that Jehovah made the blood, into the physical vehicle of the Ego. He did this by taking in hand the development of the blood. He expressed His force in the kind of breathing; man became the Jehovah-man through Jehovah giving him the breath. The fact that the man who was supplied with the necessary preliminary conditions had the living breath breathed into him must be taken quite literally. “Jehovah breathed breath into man and he became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). But this inbreathing of the soul did not take place suddenly, it was a process which lasted for thousands of years. Man thus became a breather of air.

On the Old Moon there was something else in place of the breathing of air. Whereas the man of the present day breathes air in and out and thereby has a source of warmth within himself, his ancestors on the Old Moon consisting of physical, etheric and astral bodies; breathed the substance of warmth or fire in and out. Man's predecessors on the old Moon were fire-breathers. Occult Science looks upon all matter only as the expression of spirit. We breathe in and out not air alone, we breathe in the Spirit it contains. Air is the body of Jehovah just as flesh is the body of man. The remembrance of this is expressed in the German legend of Wotan who rides in the Wind. What was breathed in and out on the Old Moon was also spirit.

Upon the Old Moon there were the same spiritual Beings as live upon the Earth; there they lived in fire, but upon the Earth they have become spirits of air. In cosmic evolution Beings remain behind in their development, just as some pupils are backward at school. The Beings who made the Sun their dwelling-place had developed more rapidly and made the transition from fire-spirits to air-spirits; but a great host of beings had not made this transition. The former now worked upon man as spiritual forces from outside, from Sun and Moon. Man takes them into himself through his breath. Between Man and these highly developed Sun-Spirits there are the spiritual Beings, who, it is true, developed very much further than man upon the Moon, but not as fast as the Sun-Spirits and Jehovah. They were unable as yet to influence man through his breathing, nevertheless they endeavoured to influence him. They were the Fire-Spirits who had not completed their task. They worked in the element of warmth and this existed in man his blood. They lived in this warmth.

Thus in the course of his evolution man was placed between the Air-spirits, who live in his breathing (the highest Spirits who permeate him with Spirit), and the fire-spirits who live in the warmth of his blood. They act in his blood as the opponents of the God Jehovah. Jehovah sought to hold men together by love in small groups, He desired to fill them with the feeling of belonging together. But if love had only existed in this form men would never have become independent beings; they would have had to develop love involuntarily. The Fire-spirits directed their attacks against this, with the result that man gained his personal freedom. The small groups of people were broken up. Jehovah's only interest was to lead people together in love, He worked in the blood as the God of blood-love. The action of the Fire-spirits was different; it was they who brought art and science to men. These Spirits are also called Luciferic Spirits. The further course of the evolution of humanity proceeded under the influence of Lucifer, who brings freedom and wisdom to man. Under the guidance of the God Jehovah men were to be led together through the principle of blood-brotherhood. The fact that man has become a free citizen of the Earth,—this he owes to Lucifer. Jehovah placed men in the Paradise of Love; then there appeared the Fire-spirit, the Serpent, in the form which man once possessed when he still breathed fire, and opened men's eyes to what still remained from the Old Moon. This Luciferic influence was perceived as a temptation. But those who were instructed in the occult schools did not look upon this enlightenment, as wrong; the great Initiates have not cast the Serpent down but, like Moses in the wilderness, they have raised it. (Numbers 21:8-9).

That which was revealed in humanity was manifested for a long period through Jehovah as blood-love. Beside this worked the Spirit of Wisdom, a principle which has to prepare something different. Love gradually spread from smaller to larger groups of human beings, from families to tribes and peoples. A characteristic example of this is the Hebrew people, which felt itself as a group which belonged together and called all others “Galileans,” i.e. those who did not belong to the blood. But humanity was to receive not only blood-love but spiritual love, which will embrace the whole earth with a bond of brotherhood. The period during which humanity was held together by the love which existed between relations is only to be looked upon as a period of preparation for what was to come later. The action of Lucifer, too, which consisted in splitting apart the bonds which confined human beings, is only the preparation for the activity of a higher Being who was to come. This higher Being was called in the Christian occult schools the true Light-bearer, the true Lucifer, the Christ.

Let us now go back to the period when the Atlantean humanity lived on the Earth. The Earth had quite a different appearance then. Between Europe and America, where now the Atlantic Ocean rolls, there was land, a part of the Earth which now lies at the bottom of the ocean. Modern science is gradually arriving at the knowledge that a continent once existed where the Atlantic Ocean now lies. In Haeckel's magazine, '“Cosmos,” there is an interesting article on “Atlantis.” Atlantis was inhabited by people who were quite different from those of the present day. The relationship between the etheric and physical bodies was then quite different from what it is now. The clairvoyant sees two-points in the human head, one in the etheric brain, the other in the physical brain, between the eyes, about half an inch below the surface. In the man of the present day these two points coincide, but in the Atlantean this was different; the etheric brain projected some distance beyond the physical brain and the two points did not coincide. It may also happen in exceptional cases in people of the present time that these two points do not coincide and the consequence is—idiocy. It was only in the last third of the Atlantean Epoch that these two points came together, and only from that time did man learn to say “I” consciously to himself. Before that time the Atlanteans could not reckon, think logically or form a judgment; but they possessed a wonderful memory, which extended over generations, and they were dimly clairvoyant. They did not see the outlines of physical objects clearly, but they perceived psychic occurrences. When the Atlantean met an animal he perceived clairvoyantly the attitude of the creature towards him whether it was friendly or hostile. For instance, if he saw reddish-brown colour, he turned away for he knew that a hostile influence was approaching; but if he saw a reddish-violet colour he knew that something sympathetic to him was approaching. He also recognised the value of certain foods to him with the aid of this clairvoyance. The animals of the present day, which have preserved this dim clairvoyance, distinguish in a similar way between the plants in the meadows in respect of their value as food or their harmful nature. The kind of vision man now possesses in dreams is a decadent remnant of the clairvoyance of the old Atlanteans. Among the Atlanteans there was not such a clear separation between the consciousness of waking and sleeping as there is in the man of the present day. Their day-consciousness was less clear than ours; but their consciousness during sleep and in dreaming was clearer. During the early part of the Atlantean Epoch there were also times of complete unconsciousness, which were filled with mighty dream-pictures. In those very early times, too, the Atlanteans were unconscious of the act of reproduction. This took place in a state of complete unconsciousness. When the Atlantean awakened, he knew nothing about the act of reproduction; this process was only shown to him in pictorial images. We are reminded of this by the Greek legend which tells of two people who came to Greece and threw stones behind them, and out of these stones men developed. The act of reproduction was veiled in unconsciousness as long as marriages took place between those who were related by blood. It is due to the activity of the Luciferic Spirits, who opened the eyes of men, that men awakened to consciousness and that they recognized the act of reproduction consciously. Men learned to distinguish between good and evil. Because Men now knew about their love and no longer enquired about the blood-relationship they became independent. Then Jehovah was replaced by Christ, Who brought a higher love into the world and made man independent of the members of their tribe and blood-relationships. This universal love is only just beginning; but when the Earth has one day passed on its being to Jupiter, it will be entirely permeated by this spiritual love. It is to this universal love that Christ's statement refers: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children and brethren, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26). It is the Christ Who pours out this universal love more and more over the Earth. The evolution of the Earth is divided into two parts through the appearance of Christ Jesus,—the blood, which flowed on Golgotha signifies the replacement of the love of relations by spiritual love. This is the connection between Jehovah, Lucifer, and Christ.

In the past I have spoken here on a variety of subjects concerning spiritual life. It may be permissible today, therefore, for me to touch upon a more prosaic theme from the standpoint of spiritual science. Problems of nutrition undoubtedly offer a more mundane subject than many we have heard here. It will be seen, however, that particularly in our age spiritual science has something to say even concerning questions that directly affect everyday life.

On the one hand, spiritual science stands accused, by those who know it only from the outside, of aspiring too loftily to spiritual realms, thus losing the firm ground under its feet. On the other hand, the opposite can perhaps also be heard again from those who have become acquainted with spiritual science or anthroposophy through only a single lecture or brochure. This consists in the statement that anthroposophists are entirely too concerned with, and talk too much about, questions of what they should eat and drink. In some respects these critics might well be called idealists in that they believe they view the common aspects of life from a certain exalted level. They raise this objection particularly by taking a stand that can be expressed in the following way. “What man eats and drinks is unimportant. It does not matter what food one takes, rather must one rise above the material dimension by the strength of one's spirit.” Even a well-intentioned idealist might level this objection against anthroposophists.

Well, at a time when these questions are being widely discussed from other angles, it might be interesting to hear what spiritual science has to say about them.

It was a German philosopher, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, to whom the phrase, “A man is what he eats,” is attributed. Many thinkers of consequence have agreed with Feuerbach that what man produces is basically the result of foods ingested by him and his actions are influenced by the food absorbed in a purely materialistic way through his digestion. With so much discussion of eating going on, somebody might get it into his head to believe that man is indeed physically nothing more than what he eats. Now, we shall have several things to say on this point.

We must understand each other precisely as to the purpose of today's lecture and the intention behind it. We are not agitating in favor of particular tendencies, nor are we trying to be reformative. The spiritual scientist is obliged to state the truth of things. His attitude must never be agitatorial, and he must be confident that when a person has perceived the truth of what he says, he will then proceed to do the right thing. What I have to say, therefore, does not recommend one course as opposed to another, and he who assumes that it does will misunderstand it completely. Merely the facts will be stated, and you will have understood me correctly if you realize that I am not speaking for or against anything.

Bearing this in mind, we can raise the question from the standpoint of spiritual science as to whether the statement, “A man is what he eats,” does not have a certain justification after all. We must continually bear in mind that the body of man is the tool of the spirit. In discussing the various functions the body has to perform, we see that man utilizes it as a physical instrument. An instrument is useless if it is not adjusted correctly so that it functions in an orderly manner, however, and similarly our bodies are of no use to our higher organism if they do not function properly. Our freedom can be handicapped and intentions impeded.

When we as spiritual scientists consider our organism, we can ask ourselves if we do not make our bodies unfit for the execution of the intentions, aspirations and impulses of our lives if we become bound by and dependent upon our bodies through an unsuitable diet. Is it not possible to mold the body in such fashion that it turns into a progressively more suitable instrument for the impulses of our spiritual life? Will we lose our freedom and become dependent upon our bodies if we ignore what is the right nourishment for us? What must we eat so that we are not merely the product of what we eat?

By asking such questions, we come to look at the problem of nutrition from another perspective. You all know, and I only need allude to this generally familiar fact, that speaking purely materialistically, people continuously use up the substances that their organisms store and they therefore must take care to replenish them with further nourishment. Men must concern themselves with replenishment. What, then, could be more obvious than to examine those substances that are necessary for the human organism, that is, to find out what substances build up the animalistic organism, and then simply see to it that the organism is given them. This approach, however, remains an extremely materialistic one. We must rather ask ourselves what the essential task of a man's food is and in what way it is actually utilized in his organism.

I must stress that what I say about man is applicable only to him, since spiritual science does not consider man to be so closely connected with the animals as does natural science. Otherwise, one could simply state that the human organism is composed of proteins, fats, carbohydrates and mineral substances, and consequently search for the best method to satisfy man's nutritional needs of them. But spiritual science holds to the principle that every material occurrence, everything that takes place in the physical sense world, is only the external aspect of spiritual processes. Indeed, even the nutritional processes cannot be purely physical, but as material processes they are really the external aspects and expressions of spiritual processes. Similarly, man is a unity even though the composition of his physical body appears to be a conglomeration of chemical events.

Our attention has frequently been focused on how the ascent from the purely physical to the spiritual realm can be made. We have often heard that the physical body is sustained by the etheric body. This is the architect of the physical body, which must not be viewed as if only chemical processes took place in it. We will be wrong if, by observing only the chemical processes, we simply ask in a materialistic fashion what happens to the chemical substances. Beyond the etheric body, we must remember, is the astral body. Through it are expressed the instinctive feelings and in certain respects the various aspects of the soul. When we behold man from the standpoint of spiritual science, we find that his etheric body as well as his physical body are inter-penetrated by his astral body. We must not see only one side but also perceive the astral body beyond the physical. Added to these is the ego, the fourth member of the human being. We have the total man before us only when we see in him this fourfold being. Only with the total fourfold man before us can we do justice to the scope of the problem of nutrition. Only then can answers be given to the question of how these four members of man's organism react to the influences of various diets.

Now, you all know that men eat food derived from the vegetable, animal and mineral kingdoms, and with it they sustain their bodies. Let me emphasizes again for the sake of those who are more narrowly inclined toward the care of the inner life that I am not speaking to mystics nor to anthroposophists who are striving to develop themselves spiritually in particular, but to all men. Men take their sustenance from the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. We must realize that plants represent the direct antithesis of men, and the animals represent the mean between the two. The external physical expression of this contrast is to be found in the breathing process. It is a familiar fact that men inhale oxygen, assimilate it and subsequently combine it with carbon that is finally exhaled as carbon dioxide, while in plants, which absorb carbon to sustain themselves, the reverse is true. In a sense, plants also breathe but their breathing process has a completely different significance for them. Hence, we can say that in a spiritual respect plant and man stand opposite each other.

We can become even more aware of this relationship by bearing in mind the influence of light on plants. The effect of deprivation of light on plant life is well-known. The same light that maintains life in plants makes it possible for us to perceive the light-filled world of our surroundings. Light is also the element that maintains life in plants. This is physical light but it is also something more. Just as there is a spiritual counterpart to everything physical, so there is spiritual light in the physical light that rays down on us. Each time a man rejoices over the brilliance of physical light he can say to himself, “Just as when I see another person and it dawns on me that in this man there lives a spiritual counterpart, so also I can imagine that in light there lives a spiritual counterpart.” Indeed, the spiritual light that permeates the physical sunlight is of the same kind and being as the invisible light that dwells within the human astral body. A portion of the spiritual light that permeates the cosmic realm lives within the astral body. It is, however, physically invisible and in this it can be seen that it is the opposite or complement of physical light.

The invisible light lives within us and fulfills a definite task. We might say that since they are opposites, it is to physical light what negative magnetism is to positive magnetism. We perceive it in its external expression when we realize the relationships existing between physical body, etheric body and astral body, which, in turn, is permeated by the ego. It has often been explained that throughout life the etheric body fights against the deterioration of the physical body. Men as well as animals also possess an astral body and hence the inner light. Now, the function of this inner light is the opposite of that of external light. When external light shines on a plant, the plant builds up its living organism by producing proteins, carbohydrates, etc. Conversely, the task of inner light is to break down, and this process of disintegration is part of the activity of the astral body. There is indeed a continuous dissolution and destruction of the proteins and other substances that we consume so that these substances are utilized in a sense to direct counter-effects against what external light has built up. Without this activity of inner dissolution a man could not be an ego being, and it is only by virtue of his ego nature that he can have inner experiences. So, while the etheric body is concerned with the preservation of the physical body, the astral body takes care that the food a man consumes is constantly built up and again destroyed.

Without this process of disintegration within the physical body, the astral body, in which the ego is incorporated, could not live a full life within the material world. As we have seen, there is an alternating process obtaining between men and plants, that is, exhalation of carbon dioxide in men and absorption of carbon dioxide by plants; exhalation of oxygen by plants and inhalation of oxygen by men. These processes reach such extremes only between men and plants. Animals do not have individual egos as is the case with men, but they have collective group egos. Thus, the animals of a species have one common group ego that governs them from without. The significant difference between men and animals is found in the fact that the disintegration processes within animals are directed by an entity external to them, whereas the same processes in men are conducted by their individual inner egos. Moreover, a man's individual ego can gradually become master over what takes place within him.

Let us consider how the ego can gradually take a central position within the bodily functions. Let us examine what the astral body does when it dissolves the substances assimilated by men. In regard to nourishment an entirely different viewpoint must be stressed. The body permeated by the ego performs an action in disintegrating substances, and through this action something is created inwardly. The inner activity of consciousness particularly comes about through the astral body's processes of dissolution. Actions, activities are called forth by the process of destruction. First, inner warmth is produced and second, something that is less noticeable than inner body heat the physical expression of inner light. Just as the internal warmth that permeates the blood is the result of the dissolution of proteins, so the activity of the nervous system is the expression of this inner light. In regard to its inner activity the nervous system is also a result of the disintegration process not the nerves themselves but the activity of the nerves, the actions within the nerves, that which makes possible imagination and calls forth thinking. It is this activity that can be called the physical expression of the invisible light and that is brought about through the degeneration and dissolution of substances.

Basically, as has been said, inner body heat is generated by the disintegration of protein. Inner light is produced within the organism as a result of protein. Inner light is produced within the organism as a result of processes involving fats, carbohydrates, starches and glucose that are also utilized in the production of warmth and inner movement. In all this is contained the expression of the activity originating from the astral body. Men do not nourish themselves properly simply by ingesting the correct quantity of food, but rather when these inner processes can be carried out in the right way. The inner life is founded on them. Men are beings continually occupied inwardly with movement and liveliness and their inner life consists of these. If this inner life is not produced in the right way, it cannot react properly and a man then becomes ill.

The right kind of inner flexibility offers the foundation for the right solution of the nutritional problem. This statement points to the fact that all internal processes that men must execute must be carried on in the opposite direction from the processes of plants. A man must begin his processes where the plant processes leave off. A specific example will clarify what this means. When a man eats vegetarian food, it demands a great deal of his organism. Plant food does not combine much fat. The human organism, which is able to produce fats, is thus required to produce fat from something that in itself contains no fat. In other words, when a man eats vegetarian food, he must produce an activity within himself and make an inner effort to bring about the production of fats. He is spared this task when he eats ready-made animal fats. The materialists would probably say that it is advantageous for a man to store up as much fat as possible without having to make too much of an effort. Yet, speaking from the spiritual viewpoint, the unfolding of this inner activity signifies the unfolding of the actual inner life. When a man is forced to produce the forces that make it possible for him to produce fat on his own, then, through his inner flexibility, the ego and the astral body become master of the physical and etheric bodies. When a man eats fat, he resultingly is spared the task of producing fat himself. Yet, if he takes the opportunity to unfold his own inner activity through producing his own fat, he is made free and thus becomes lord over his body. Otherwise, as a spiritual being he remains a mere spectator. Everything that takes place in him in such wise that he remains a passive spectator becomes a heavy weight in him and hinders his urge to let the astral body come to full life. Thus, the astral body's inner flexibility comes up against an internal obstacle if it is denied the opportunity to produce its own fat.

The essential question now to be asked is what internal activities are aroused by what substances. Here we shall try to throw light on the relationships of vegetable and meat substances in human diets, and thereby to gain some idea of the manner in which animal and vegetable foods react in the human organism.

For a man to eat animal protein is not the same as for him to eat plant protein. Up to a certain point the inner processes of the animal are quite similar to those of the human organism, since the animal also possesses an astral body. Even though the animal astral body causes the dissolution of the synthesized substances of its physical body the human organism carries the processes a bit beyond the limits reached by that of the animals.

In reflecting upon the animals around us and by looking spiritually into their ways and characteristics, we shall, by comparing men with the multitudes of animals, find distributed among the animals the various and manifold characteristics of men. In spite of the fact that one can point out great human differences between the various peoples, one must still conclude that each individual man represents a species. Men appear to be the spiritual consolidation of all that can be observed distributed in the various animals forms. If one were to picture all the individual characteristics of the various animal species as being mutually complementary, one would arrive at the essence of what is contained in appropriate moderation in each individual man. Each individual animal one-sidedly contains within itself something of the forces that are harmonized within men, and its whole organism is constructed accordingly. Everything down to the most minute structure of substances is so organized in the animal kingdom that it is like a tableau of human characteristics spread out before one.

If a man is to find the physical expression of the characteristics of his astral body, he must strive to utilize all its forces. He must become master of his own inner processes and activate his astral body in such wise that the plant processes will be continued inwardly. In the food we consume from the animal kingdom, we not only take into ourselves the physical meat and fat of the animal but also the product of its astral body contained in these substances. When, through a vegetarian diet, we enlist the virginal forces of our astral body, we call forth our whole inner activity. In a meat diet part of this inner activity is forestalled.

We can now proceed to consider the relationships of these two types of diet from a purely spiritual basis.

If a man desires to gain an increasing mastery over the inner processes of his body, it is important that he become correspondingly active in the external world. It is important for him to unfold certain external qualities such as stamina, courage and even aggressiveness. To be able to do [so], however, it is possible that a man may not yet find himself strong enough to entrust everything to his astral body and may have to fall back upon the support of a meat diet.

It can be said that man owes everything that liberates him internally to the substances derived from plants. Faculties, however, that enable him to be actively engaged in earthly life, need not necessarily grow out of the virginal nature of his astral body. These qualities can also be derived from a meat diet. This fact that men are to become progressively freer while at the same time needing qualities that they can acquire with the help of impulses found spread out in the animal kingdom, has induced them to resort to nourishment in animal food. If the eating habits of the people of those militant nations that have striven to develop qualities enabling them to unfold their physical forces are investigated, it will generally be found that they eat meat. Naturally, there are exceptions. On the other hand, a preference for an exclusively vegetarian diet will be found to prevail among people who have developed an introverted and contemplative existence. These two aspects of the problem should be kept in mind. A person, of course, can adopt either diet as a panacea if he wishes to propagandize rather than to act out of knowledge. Nevertheless, it is not without reason that a mixed diet has become acceptable to many people. To some extent it had to happen. We must admit, however, that even though a vegetarian diet might indeed be the correct one for some people purely for reasons of health, the health of others might be ruined by it.

I am speaking here of human nature in general, of course, but men must be considered as individuals if they are to find the right path to satisfy their needs with a vegetable or meat diet. Today, an extreme diet of meat naturally brings its corresponding results. If by eating meat a person is relieved of too large a portion of his inner activities, then activities will develop inwardly that would otherwise be expressed externally. His soul will become more externally oriented, more susceptible to, and bound up with, the external world. When a person takes his nourishment from the realm of plants, however, he becomes more independent and more inclined to develop inwardly. He will become master over his whole being. The more he is inclined to vegetarianism, the more he accepts a vegetarian diet, the more he will be able also to let his inner forces predominate. Thus, the more apt he will be to develop a sense for wider horizons and he will no longer restrict himself to a narrow life. The person who is fundamentally a meat eater, however, limits himself to more narrow vistas and directs himself more rigidly toward one- sidedness.

Naturally, it is the task of men today to concern themselves with both aspects so as not to become impractical. A man also can be so completely unprejudiced as to have no judgment at all. Still, it is a fact that everything that limits men and leads them to specialization is derived from a diet of meat. A man owes to a vegetarian diet the impulses that lift him above the narrow circles of existence. An extreme diet of meat is definitely connected with a man's increasing dogmatism and his inability to see beyond the confines into which he was born. In contrast, if men would show more interest in the food coming from the realm of plants, they would discover that they are able more easily to lift themselves out of their narrow circles. The person who abandons the task of fat formation by eating meat will notice that the activity thus forestalled erects a sort of wall around his astral body. Even if one is not clairvoyant but judges these matters only with common sense, he can tell from the look in a person's eyes whether or not he produces his own fat. It can be seen in the eyes of a person whether or not his astral body is obliged to call forth the forces necessary to produce its own fat.

Now it can be seen how two opposing conditions of character are created when a person takes his nourishment from either the plants or animals. We find that we indeed penetrate into the world through our organism and must again rise above it by means of the right kind of food. A time will come when a vegetarian diet will be valued much more highly than is the case today. Then thinking will be so flexible that men will be willing to investigate such matters knowing that what they believe today to be foolishness could, viewed from another standpoint, also have its merits. They will realize then that their whole physical and spiritual horizon can be widened through a vegetarian diet, thus counteracting the rigor of specialization within them. Particularly in certain areas of science would perspectives be widened if vegetarian diets should become prevalent.

Let me mention a few more examples to demonstrate that men are indeed what they eat and drink.

Consider, for example, alcohol, which is obtained from plants. It would take too long to explain the spiritual scientific reason showing that alcohol produces physically and in an external way out of the plant, just what a man should develop physically within himself through his ego being centered within him. It is a fact inwardly perceived through spiritual science that when a person drinks alcohol, it takes over the specific activity that otherwise belongs wholly to the person's ego. A person who drinks much alcohol needs less food and his body will require less nourishment than is normally required in the process of combustion.

It calls forth forces that otherwise would be called forth by the ego's inner penetration. Thus, a person can externalize the activity of his ego by infusing his body with alcohol. Consequently, alcohol imitates and copies the activity of the ego, and you can understand why it is that people turn to it. To the extent, however, that a man replaces his inner self with such a substitute, to that extent does he become its slave. If otherwise qualified, a man will be better able to unfold the best forces of his ego when he abstains from alcohol altogether. By drinking alcohol an inner hindrance is created behind which something takes place that actually should and would be accomplished through the activity of the ego itself if the hindrance had not been produced.

Some foods have a specific effect of their own on the organism. Coffee is an example. The effect of coffee becomes manifest through its influence on the astral body. Through caffeine and the after-effects of coffee, our nervous systems automatically perform functions that we otherwise would have to produce through inner strength. It should not be claimed, however, that it is beneficial under all circumstances for a man always to act independently out of his astral body. Men are beings who are not dependent on themselves alone. Rather are they placed within the whole of life.

Coffee is also a product of the plant kingdom that externally has raised the specific plant process up a stage. Consequently, coffee can take over a certain task of man. Trained insight perceives that everything in the activity of our nerves that has to do with logical consistency and drawing conclusions is strengthened by coffee. Thus, we can let coffee take over in making logical connections and in sticking to one thought, but this, of course, is in exchange for a weakening of our specific inner forces. What I mean can be seen in the tendency of gossips at a coffee break to cling to a subject until it is completely exhausted. This is not only a joke. It also demonstrates the effects of coffee.

Tea works in a totally different and opposite way. When large quantities are drunk, thoughts become scattered and light. It might be said that the chief effect of tea is to let witty and brilliant thoughts, thoughts that have a certain individual lightness, flash forth. So we can say, coffee helps those, such as literary people, who need to connect thoughts in skilled and refined ways. This is the positive aspect of the matter. The negative aspect can be observed in coffee table gossip. Tea, which tears thoughts asunder, is the opposite. This is why tea is not without justification a popular drink of diplomats.

It might be of interest to cite as a last example a food that plays an important part in life, that is, milk. Milk is completely different from meat in that it expresses in the weakest possible form the animalistic process brought forth by the astral body of the animal. Milk is only partly an animal product and the animal or human astral forces do not participate in its production. For this reason milk is one of the most perfect foods. It is suitable for people who want to abstain completely from meat but who do not yet possess sufficient strength to work entirely out of the inner forces of the astral body. Even from a purely external standpoint it can be seen that milk contains everything a man requires for his organism. Although this applies only in a restricted sense, it has little to do with the individual characteristics of a man.

Weak as well as strong organisms can gain support from milk. If a person were to live exclusively on milk for a time, then not only would his regular forces be awakened but it would also go beyond this. He would receive from it an influx of forces giving him additional strength. A surplus of forces would be acquired that could be developed into healing forces. In order to possess a force, it must first be acquired, and in milk we see one means of developing certain forces in ourselves. Those who are moved by the earnestness of life to develop certain psychic healing forces, can train themselves to attain them. Naturally, we must remember that what is suitable for one, is not suitable for all. This is a matter for the individual. One person is able to do it, another not. A man can if he wishes build up his organism in a wise manner. He can contribute toward the unfolding of free, independent inner forces. So through spiritual science we come back to the saying of Feuerbach mentioned at the beginning, “Man is what he eats!”

Man can nourish himself in such fashion that he undermines his invisible independence. In so doing he makes himself an expression of what he eats. Yet he ought to nourish himself in such a manner that he becomes less the slave of his nutritional habits. Here spiritual science can direct him.

The wrong food can easily transform us into what we eat, but by permeating ourselves with knowledge of the spiritual life, we can strive to become free and independent. Then the food we eat will not hinder us from achieving the full potential of what we, as men, ought to be.

Yesterday we indicated that it was now necessary to answer the question: What really happened to that Being whom we designate as Christ Jesus from the Baptism by John in Jordan to the Mystery of Golgotha? To answer this question as far as possible, we must recall briefly what we know from former lectures concerning the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who in his thirtieth year became the bearer of the Christ. The essential points are given in my recently published book, The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind.

We know that in Palestine, at the time which concerns us, not one but two Jesus-children were born, one of them from the Solomon line of the House of David. This is the Jesus child of whom the Matthew Gospel speaks. The peculiar contradiction between the beginnings of the Matthew and the Luke Gospels derives from the fact that the writer of the Matthew Gospel was concerned with one of the Jesus-children, the one born from the Solomon line. Then, at almost but not quite the same time, another Jesus-child was born, from the Nathan line of the House of David.

The important thing is to understand clearly what kind of beings these two children were. Occult investigation shows that the individuality who was in the Solomon Jesus-child was none other than Zarathustra. After Zarathustra's most important mission, of which we have spoken in connection with the ancient Persian civilisation, he had been incarnated again and again; lastly during the Babylonian-Chaldaic civilisation, and now as the Solomon Jesus-child. This Zarathustra individuality, with all the great and powerful inner forces which in the nature of things he had brought over from earlier incarnations, had to incarnate in a body descended from the Solomon side of the House of David; a body adapted for working up and further developing the great faculties of Zarathustra, in the way that human faculties, when they are already at a very high level, can be brought further on, in so far as they belong to the being who is going from incarnation to incarnation. We are concerned therefore with a human body which did not wait until later years to work on these faculties, but could do so in a youthful, child-like and yet powerful organism. Hence we see the Zarathustra-individuality growing up in such a way that the faculties of the child developed comparatively early. The child soon showed an extent of knowledge which would normally have been impossible at his age.

One fact, however, we must keep firmly in mind: the Solomon Jesus-child, although the incarnation of so lofty an individuality, was only a highly developed man. Hence he was encumbered—as even the most highly developed man must be—with certain liabilities to error and moral difficulties, though not exactly vices or sins. Then we know that in his twelfth year the individuality of Zarathustra, by an occult process known to everyone who has made himself conversant with such facts, forsook the body of the Solomon Jesus-child and went over into the body of the Nathan Jesus-child. Now the body of this Nathan Jesus-child—or, better, his three-fold bodily organisation physical body, etheric body, astral body—was formed in a quite special manner. In fact, this body was such that the child showed capacities exactly contrary to those of the Solomon Jesus-child. Whereas the latter was remarkable because of his great gifts in relation to things one can learn externally, it might almost be said that in this respect the Nathan Jesus-child was untalented. You will understand that saying this implies not the slightest deprecation. The Nathan Jesus-child was not in a position to familiarise himself with the products of human culture on earth. By contrast, the remarkable fact is that he could speak as soon as he was born. A faculty which belongs more to the physical body was thus present in him from his birth. But—according to a good tradition which can be occultly confirmed—the language he spoke could be understood by his Mother only. The child's most strongly marked characteristics were qualities of the heart. He had an immense capacity for love and a disposition capable of immense self-sacrifice. And the remarkable thing is that from the first days of his life his mere presence, or his touch, had beneficent effects—magnetic effects, one might perhaps call them nowadays. Thus all the qualities of heart were manifest in this child, enhanced to such a degree that they could have a beneficent magnetic influence on his environment.

We know also that active in the astral body of this child were the forces which had once been acquired by that Bodhisattva who became Gautama Buddha. We know indeed—and in this respect the oriental tradition is absolutely correct, for it can be confirmed by occult science—that the Bodhisattva, who on becoming Buddha five centuries before our era no longer needed to incarnate further on earth, worked from the spiritual world upon all those who devoted themselves to his teachings. It is characteristic of such an individuality, who rises to heights from which he need no longer incarnate in a body of flesh, that he can then take part in the affairs and destiny of our earth existence from out of the spiritual worlds. This can happen in the most manifold ways. In fact, the Bodhisattva who went through his last incarnation on the earth as Gautama Buddha has taken an essential part in the further evolution of humanity. Our human spiritual world stands continually in connection with all the rest of the spiritual world. The human being not only eats and drinks and so takes into himself the substance of the physical earth; he continually receives soul-spiritual nourishment from the spiritual world. In the most varied ways forces continually flow into physical earthly-existence from out of the spiritual world. Such an in-flow of the forces which Buddha had gained for himself came into the wider stream of humanity through the fact that the Buddha forces permeated the astral body of the Nathan Jesus-child. We know, too, from earlier lectures that the words we still have today as a Christmas message—‘The Divine reveals itself from the heights, and on earth peace will spread in the hearts of men of good will!’—originate in essence from the influence which flowed down into human evolution through the immersion of the Buddha powers in the astral body of the Nathan Jesus-child.

Thus we see the Buddha forces working further in the stream of earth-existence which took its start from the Events of Palestine. And it is interesting that precisely the researches made by western occultism in quite recent years have led to the recognition of a very important connection between European civilisation and the Buddha forces. For a long time these Buddha forces have been working from the spiritual worlds, particularly upon everything in Western civilisation which is unthinkable without the specific influence of Christianity. All those philosophical streams which have developed during recent centuries up to the nineteenth century, in so far as they are Western spiritual currents, are permeated by the Christ-Impulse, but the Buddha has always been working into them from out of the spiritual worlds. Hence the most important thing that European humanity can receive from Buddha today does not depend on the handing down of the teaching that Buddha gave to men about 500 years before the Christian era, but on what he has become since that time. For he has not remained at a standstill; he has progressed; and it is through this progress, as a spiritual being in the spiritual worlds, that he has in the highest sense been able to take part in the further evolution of Western civilisation. The outcome of our own occult investigation harmonises in a wonderful way with much that had been known previously, before this important influence could be investigated again. For we know that the same individuality who appeared as Gautama Buddha in the East had previously worked in the West, and that certain legends and traditions connected with the name of Buddha or Wotan have to do with this same individuality, just as Buddhism has with Gautama Buddha in the East; hence the same field of action in human evolution which had been prepared earlier by the same individuality has again been occupied in a certain sense. Thus are interlaced the ways taken by the spiritual currents within the evolution of humanity.

Today the most important thing for us is to establish that in the astral body of the Jesus-child described by Luke we have the Buddha forces at work. And when this Nathan Jesus-child was twelve years old, the Zarathustra individuality passed over into his three-fold being.

Why is it, then, that this Jesus-child had the remarkable qualities we have just characterised? It was because he was not a human individuality like every other, but in a certain respect quite different, and in order to understand him we must go back to the ancient Lemurian time in which, strictly speaking, the Earth-evolution of man took its start. We must clearly understand that everything before the Lemurian time was really only a repetition of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods. Only in the Lemurian time was the first germ-condition laid down in man as a potentiality, so that during the Earth-evolution he could receive the fourth member of his being, the Ego. We can say the extension of mankind over the Earth—a subject dealt with more precisely in the Outline of Occult Science—is to be traced to certain human ancestors in the Lemurian period, the period with which our present Earth took its start.

It is only after a certain point of time in this Lemurian period that we can speak correctly, in a modern sense, of the human race. Before this, those Egos who have since continued to incarnate were not present in men on Earth. They were not yet separate from the substance of that Hierarchy which had first brought the human Ego into being: the Hierarchy of the Spirits of Form. We can now picture to ourselves—occult research shows this—that part of the substance of the Spirits of Form entered into the incarnations of men for the building up of the human Ego. But when in due time man was given over to his physical incarnations on the Earth, something was held back. A certain Ego substance was not brought into the stream of physical incarnations. If we were to represent the stream of physical human incarnations, beginning with him whom the Bible calls ‘Adam’, the progenitor of the human race, we should have to draw a genealogical tree with wide-spreading branches. Instead, let us simply imagine that the substance poured down from the Spirits of Form now flows onward, but that something was held back: an Ego that was now protected from entering into physical incarnations. Instead, this Ego preserved the form, the substantiality, which man had had before proceeding to his first earthly incarnation. This Ego lived on collaterally with the rest of humanity, and at the time of which we are now speaking, when the Event of Palestine was to take place, it was still in the same condition, if we wish to speak according to the Bible, as was the Ego of Adam before his first embodiment in flesh.

In examining what occult science knows about this Ego—which naturally for modern man is something extremely foolish—we see that this Ego, which was, as it were, held back ‘in reserve’, was given into the care of the Holy Mysteries through Atlantean and post-Atlantean times. It was preserved in an important Mystery centre, as in a tabernacle, and because of this it had quite special characteristics; it was untouched by everything that a human Ego could have learnt on Earth. It was therefore untouched by any Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences; it was indeed something we can think of, in contrast to other human Egos, as an empty sphere, still completely virginal with regard to all earth experiences—a nothing, a negative, in this respect. Hence it seemed as though the Nathan-child, described in the Luke Gospel, really had no Ego; as though he consisted only of physical, etheric and astral body. And it is quite adequate if at first we say that an Ego, developed as Egos had developed in Atlantean and post-Atlantean times, was not there at all in the Luke Jesus-child.

We speak in the true sense of the words when we say that in the Matthew Jesus-child we have to do with a completely human being; whereas in the Nathan Jesus-child of the Luke Gospel we have to do with a physical, an etheric and an astral body which are interrelated in the harmonious unity that belonged to man when he emerged from the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. Hence this Jesus-child, as the Akashic Record tells us, was untalented for all that human culture had developed. He could not receive it because he had never been among it. External abilities and adaptations to existence are the outcome of certain experiences in earlier incarnations. Anyone who had never shared in such experiences would show himself without talent for all that men have accomplished during the earth-evolution. If the Nathan Jesus-child had been born in our time, he would have been totally ungifted for learning to write, since in Adamic times writing was unknown. By contrast, the Luke Jesus-child revealed in a high degree the qualities he had brought with him—qualities that had not fallen into decadence through the Luciferic influence. Even more interesting is the remarkable language he spoke.

Here we must bring to mind something I mentioned in The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind: that the languages which are now spread over the earth took their rise comparatively late in evolution: they were preceded by what can truly be called a primal human language. It is the disuniting spirits of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic world who have made many languages out of the primal language. The primal language is lost, and can be spoken today by nobody with an Ego which in the course of earth-evolution has passed from incarnation to incarnation. This Jesus-child, who had not gone through human incarnations, acquired from the starting-point of human evolution the faculty of speaking, not this or that language, but a language of which we can rightly say that it was not comprehensible to those around him. But, because of the inner qualities of heart that lived in it, it was understood by his Mother's heart. This points to a phenomenon of immense significance in the case of the Luke Jesus-child.

We have seen that when this Luke Jesus-child was born, he was provided with everything that had not been influenced by the Lucifer-Ahrimanic forces. He did not possess an Ego that had been through a series of incarnations; therefore nothing had to be discarded when, in his twelfth year, the individuality of Zarathustra passed over from the Solomon Jesus-child into the Nathan Jesus-child. I have already said that the human element which had remained behind, and up to this time had developed in the Mysteries by the side of the rest of humanity, was born for the first time in the Palestine period as the Nathan Jesus-child. There was a transference from a Mystery centre in Western Asia, where this human kernel had been preserved, into the body of the Nathan Jesus-child. This child grew on, and in his twelfth year the individuality of Zarathustra passed into him. We know also that this passing over is intimated in the scene of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple. It was quite natural that the parents of the Nathan Jesus-child, who were accustomed to regard him in the light we have described, should find a remarkable change when they discovered him in the Temple after he had been lost. For that was the moment when Zarathustra passed over into this twelve-year-old child. From the twelfth to the thirtieth year, therefore, we have to do with the individuality of Zarathustra in the Luke Jesus-child.

Now in the Luke Gospel we have a remarkable expression which indicates something that can be made clear only by occult investigation. You know that in the Luke Gospel, after the description of the scene with the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple, there is a passage: ‘And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man’. (Luke II:52). In truth this passage stands as follows when we restore the text of the Gospels from the Akashic record: The twelve-year-old child increased in everything wherein an astral body can increase, i.e., in wisdom; in everything wherein an etheric body can increase, i.e. in all the qualities of kindliness, goodness, etc; and in everything wherein a physical body can increase, i.e., in all that pours itself into external beauty of form. In this passage, therefore, a special indication is given that the Jesus-child, not having gone from incarnation to incarnation, had up to his twelfth year remained untouched, and could not be touched in his individuality, by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces. The Luke Gospel intimates this again by tracing the sequence of generations back through Adam to God, thus indicating that the substance in question was uninfluenced by all that had taken place in human evolution.

So this Jesus-child lived on, increasing in all that was possible for a three-fold organism not touched by the contamination which has affected the three-fold bodies of other men. And this enabled the individuality of Zarathustra, from the twelfth to the thirtieth year of life, to pour into this three-fold human being all that could come from the heights to which he himself had previously attained. Hence we form a correct idea of Jesus of Nazareth, up to the thirtieth year of his life, when we think of him as a lofty human individuality, for whose coming into existence the greatest possible preparations had been made.

But we must now be clear about one thing if we want to understand how the fruits of a development we go through in our bodies are of benefit to the individuality. Our bodies enable our individuality to absorb the fruits of our life for its future evolution. When in death we forsake our bodies, we do not usually leave in them what we have achieved and gained for ourselves as individuals. Later on we shall see under what special conditions something may remain in the bodies; but it is not the rule that the individuality should leave behind in his bodies whatever he has won for himself. When Zarathustra forsook the threefold bodily being of Jesus of Nazareth in the thirtieth year, he left behind the three bodies, physical, etheric, and astral. But all that he had been able to gain through these instruments went into the individuality of Zarathustra and lived on further with him, to his benefit. Something however, was gained by the three-fold bodily organism of Jesus of Nazareth. His human nature, still free, as it always had been, from Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, was conjoined for a period with the individuality who had unequalled insight into the spirituality of the cosmos.

Think what this Zarathustra had experienced! While he was founding the ancient Persian civilisation and looking up to the great Sun Spirit, he was even then gazing out into the cosmic realms of the spiritual. Through successive incarnations his development went on. When the innermost part of human nature, together with the most intensive powers of sympathy and love, had become manifest through the unsullied human substance which had been preserved until the birth of the Nathan Jesus, and when the astral body had permeated itself with the forces of Gautama Buddha, there was present in this child what we may call the most intimate inwardness of man. And then into this bodily nature there entered the individuality who above all others had seen most clearly and deeply into the spirituality of the Macrocosm. By this means the bodily instrument, the entire organism, of the Nathan Jesus was so transformed that it could be the vehicle capable of receiving into itself the Christ-extract of the Macrocosm. If this bodily nature had not been permeated by the Zarathustra-individuality up to the thirtieth year, the eyes would not have been able to endure the substance of the Christ from the thirtieth year up to the Mystery of Golgotha; the hands would not have been capable of being permeated with the substance of the Christ in the thirtieth year. To be able to receive the Christ, this bodily nature had to be prepared, expanded, through the individuality of Zarathustra. Thus in Jesus of Nazareth, as he was at the moment when Zarathustra took leave of him and the Christ-Individuality entered into him, we have to do neither with an adept, nor with anything like a higher human being. For an adept is an adept because he has a highly developed individuality, and it was just this that had passed out of the threefold bodily nature of Jesus of Nazareth. We have simply the bodily nature so prepared through the indwelling of Zarathustra that it could take into itself the Christ-Individuality. But now, through the union of the Christ-Individuality with this bodily nature, by necessity the following consequence came about.

During these three years, from the Baptism by John in Jordan onwards to the Mystery of Golgotha, the development of the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body was quite different from the bodily development of other human beings. Since the Nathan Jesus had received no influence from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers, the possibility was given that, from the Baptism in Jordan onwards—now that there was in Jesus of Nazareth no human Ego, but solely the Christ Individuality—everything which is normally at work in a human organism was not developed.

We said yesterday that the human Phantom, the primal form which draws into itself the material elements that fill out the physical body and are laid aside at death, had degenerated in the course of time up to the Mystery of Golgotha. At the beginning of human evolution it was intended that the Phantom should remain untouched by the material elements that man takes for his nutrition from the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms. But it did not remain untouched. For the Luciferic influence brought about a close connection between the Phantom and the forces which man absorbs through his earthly evolution; a connection particularly with the ashy constituents. The result was that the Phantom, while continuing to accompany man during his further evolution, was strongly drawn to these ashy constituents, and instead of adhering to the etheric body, it attached itself to these products of disintegration. But where the Luciferic influences had been kept away, as they were from the Nathan Jesus, no force of attraction arose between the Phantom and the material elements that had been taken into the bodily organism. Throughout the three years from the Baptism up to the Mystery of Golgotha, the Phantom remained untouched by these elements.

In occult terms we can say: The human Phantom, according to its intended development through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods, should not have been attracted to the ashy constituents but only to the dissolving salt constituents, so that it would have taken the path of volatilisation in so far as the salt constituents dissolved. In an occult sense one can say that it would have dissolved and passed over, not into the earth but into the volatile constituents. The remarkable fact is that with the Baptism in Jordan and the entry of the Christ Individuality into the body of the Nathan Jesus, all connection of the Phantom with the ashy constituents was wiped out; only the connection with the salt constituents remained.

This is alluded to in the passage where Christ Jesus wishes to explain to his first-chosen disciples: ‘Through the way in which you feel yourselves united with the Christ Being, a certain possibility for the future evolution of humanity will come about. It will be possible for the one body risen from the grave—the spiritual body—to pass over into men’. That is what Christ wished to say when he used the phrase, ‘You are the salt of the earth’. All these words we find in the Gospels, reminding us of the terminology and craft language of the later alchemists, the later occultism, have the deepest imaginable significance. And in fact this significance was well known to the mediaeval and later alchemists—not to the charlatans mentioned in the history books—and not one of them spoke of these connections without feeling in his heart a connection with Christ.

Thus it followed that when Christ Jesus was crucified, when his body was nailed to the Cross—you will notice that here I use the exact words of the Gospel, for they are con-firmed by true occult research—when this body of Jesus of Nazareth was fastened to the Cross, the Phantom was perfectly intact; it existed in a spiritual bodily form, visible only to super-sensible sight, and was much more loosely connected with the body's material content of earth-elements than has ever happened with any other human being. In every other human being a connection of the Phantom with these elements has occurred, and it is this that holds them together. In the case of Christ Jesus it was quite different. The ordinary law of inertia sees to it that certain material portions of a human body hold together after death in the form man has given them, until after some time they crumble away, so that hardly anything of them is visible. So it was with the material portions of the body of Christ Jesus. When the body was taken down from the Cross, the parts were still coherent, but they had no connection with the Phantom; the Phantom was completely free of them. When the body became permeated with certain substances, which in this case worked quite differently from the way in which they affect any other body that is embalmed, it came to pass that after the burial the material parts quickly volatilised and passed over into the elements. Hence the disciples who looked into the grave found the linen cloths in which the body had been wrapped, but the Phantom, on which the evolution of the Ego depends, had risen from the grave. It is not surprising that Mary of Magdala, who had known only the earlier Phantom when it was permeated by earthly elements, did not recognise the same form in the Phantom, now freed from terrestrial gravity, when she saw it clairvoyantly. It seemed to her different.

Moreover we must clearly understand that it was only through the power of the companionship of the disciples with the Christ that all the disciples, and all those persons of whom the same is told, could see the Risen One, for He appeared to them in the spiritual body, the body of which Paul says that it increases as a grain of seed and passes over into all people. Paul himself is convinced that it was not a body permeated by the earthly elements which had appeared to the other apostles, but that the same which had appeared to him had also appeared to them, as he says in the following passage:

For I have delivered unto you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that He was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (I Corinthians XV:3–8.)

But what was it that convinced Paul? In a certain sense Paul was an Initiate before the Event of Damascus. His Initiation had combined the ancient Hebrew principle and the Greek principle. He knew that an Initiate became, in his etheric body, independent of the physical body, and could appear in the purest form of his etheric body to those who were capable of seeing it. If Paul had had the vision of a pure etheric body, independent of a physical body, he would have spoken differently. He would have said that he had seen someone who had been initiated and would be living on further in the course of earth-evolution, independently of the physical body. He would not have found this particularly surprising. What Paul experienced on the road to Damascus could not have been that. He had experienced something which he knew could be experienced only when the Scriptures were fulfilled; when a perfect human Phantom, a human body risen from the grave in a super-sensible form, would appear in the spiritual atmosphere of the earth. And that is what he saw! That is what appeared to him on the road to Damascus and left him with the conviction: ‘He was there—He is risen! For what is there could come only from Him: it is the Phantom which can be seen by all human individualities who seek to relate themselves to the Christ.’ This is what convinced him that Christ was already there; that he would not come first in the future, but was actually present there in a physical body, and that this physical body had rescued the primal form of the human physical body for the salvation of all men.

That this deed could be accomplished only through the greatest unfolding of divine love, and in what sense it was an act of love, and then in what sense the word ‘salvation’ is to be understood in the further evolution of humanity—this will be our subject tomorrow.

(The German transcript has been slightly abbreviated)

The information revealed by the “Fifth Gospel” sheds new light upon the great steps taken, as it were in the whole Cosmos, in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha. Spiritual Science conceives the Mystery of Golgotha to be a kind of interim culmination of other happenings with which it is connected in the streams of world-realities.

We have heard that the Jesus boys were born in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha. One of them was the “Solomon Jesus Child” who bore within him the Ego of Zarathustra. The age of the two boys was approximately the same and when they were twelve years old, the Zarathustra-Ego passed over into the body of the other Jesus boy who had descended from the “Nathan line” of the House of David. Then—from the source of the Fifth Gospel—it was possible to give details of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. His three bodily sheaths were those of the Nathan Jesus Child and the Zarathustra-Ego was present these three sheaths until Jesus of Nazareth reached his thirtieth year. You have also heard of the conversation with the mother which then took place and how, as he poured his very Self—his Ego—into the words, the Zarathustra-Ego departed from the bodily sheaths. Then, at the Baptism by John in the Jordan, the Christ Being descended into the threefold bodily sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth.

This conception of the Being Christ Jesus gives us an infinitely deeper and grander impression than is possible to those who draw only upon the sources of hitherto existing knowledge and the information contained in the Gospels.

Thee Event which, together with the “Crucifixion” and the “Resurrection” we call the Mystery of Golgotha, followed three other Events as a kind of culmination.

One of these other Events had taken place in very ancient Lemurian times; the second in the early period of the Atlantean epoch, and the third towards its end. These first three Events, however, transpired in the spiritual worlds, not on the physical plane. We have therefore to turn our eyes to four Events, of which the last only—the Mystery of Golgotha itself—took place on the physical plane. The three others were Events in the spiritual world, as it were in preparation for the fourth.

I have told you that the altogether unique character of the Being we know as the Nathan Jesus was revealed in that immediately after his birth he spoke certain words—albeit in a language unintelligible to everyone except his mother, who in her heart and feeling was able to discern what the words implied. It must be realised that the Nathan Jesus boy was not an ordinary human being; unlike the Solomon Jesus boy who bore within him the Zarathustra-Ego and, as other human beings, had passed through many earthly lives, the Nathan Jesus boy had no earthly incarnations behind him for the whole of his previous existence had been spent in the spiritual worlds.

I have spoken of this in earlier lectures by saying that when, from the Lemurian epoch onwards, human souls were coming down to earthly incarnations, something was as it were kept back in the spiritual worlds and incarnated for the first time in the Nathan Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth therefore was not the bearer of a human Ego in the ordinary sense, for the “human Ego” passes on from one earthly incarnation to another, whereas the previous existence of this Being had been spent in the spiritual worlds. And only the Initiates in the ancient Mysteries who were able to see into the spiritual worlds knew that this Being—who would eventually be born as the Nathan Jesus and become the bearer of the Christ—had been connected with certain previous Events in the spiritual worlds. In order to understand the nature of these Events we must remind ourselves of the following.

Most of you will remember that in lectures on Anthroposophy given here some years ago, I spoke of the human senses. I emphasised then that in reality man possesses twelve senses—the five usually enumerated forming only a part of these twelve. We will not enter into this in greater detail to-day but speak of something else, namely, that the senses of man, the senses in the physical body, would have suffered a fate portending ill for human nature had not the first Christ Event taken place in the spiritual worlds during the epoch of ancient Lemuria in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Lemurian epoch the foundations of the senses were actually present in man's bodily structure. But we know, too, that in this same epoch the Luciferic powers began to operate in human evolution and influenced the whole organism of man. If in the Lemurian epoch nothing else had happened than the descent of man to earthly incarnations and the onset of the Luciferic influence, the senses would not have developed into the organs they are to-day. They would have been hypersensitive, over-sensitive. We should have gone about the world with ‘untempered’ senses. The colour red, for instance would have affected the eye so strongly as to cause actual suffering; other impressions too would have caused pain to the senses. For example: the eye would have felt as if it were being drawn away, sucked away by the colour blue. And it would have been the same in all the other senses. The human being would have been obliged to go about the world with senses over-susceptible to pain or to immoderate, and therefore unhealthy, sensations of pleasure. Sensory activity would have been stronger and more intense than is healthy; the senses would have been affected by every single impression coming from the world outside. This would have been the outcome of the Luciferic influence, and it was averted from humanity not by anything that transpired in the physical world but by the first of the three Events which took place in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Lemurian epoch, the same Christ Being Who later on, at the Baptism in the Jordan, came down into the body of Jesus of Nazareth, united at that time with a being still living in the spiritual world—the being subsequently born as “Nathan Jesus boy.”

If we say of the Event in Palestine that the Christ Being then united with a body, of this first Event we must say that in the spiritual world, during the Lemurian epoch, He “ensouled” (verseelte sich) a Being who in a later epoch came down to the Earth as the Nathan Jesus boy.

Thus there was present in the spiritual worlds a Being of soul-and-spirit Who through this union with the soul of the later Jesus of Nazareth and through all the consequences of this Deed, averted the calamity that would have befallen the human senses. It was as though this Being radiated His light from the spiritual worlds upon humanity in order that the senses might be saved from the suffering attendant upon over-sensitiveness. The first Event in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha was for the well-being and salvation of the senses. The fact that we can go about the world with senses functioning as they now do, is due to this first Christ Event.

A second Event took place towards the beginning of the Atlantean epoch. The same being—the later Jesus of Nazareth—was again “ensouled” by the Christ Being, with the result that another evil was averted from human nature. Although the first Christ Event had brought salvation to the senses, the Luciferic and, later on, the Ahrimanic influences had so affected the seven life-organs of man that if the second Event had not taken place, human life in the world could not have been as it now is; man would have vacillated between wild, inordinate desire (in certain limits this is what we not call ‘sympathy’) and utter disgust for what he imbibes through his life-organs, for his means of nourishment. In the lectures on “anthroposophy” I also spoke of these seven life-organs. In the physical body they are vesicular organs, but what underlies them is actually a certain formation of the etheric body. Moreover for everything that found its way to his organs of breathing, too, man would either have felt inordinate desire or deepest loathing. Therefore the seven life-organs too would have become over-active as a result of the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman. The second Christ Event took place—again in the supersensible worlds. And this Event brought ‘moderation’ into the life-organs, enabled them to function with a certain restraint. Just as our senses would never have been able to face the world “in wisdom” if the first Christ Event had not taken place in the Lemurian epoch, so our life-organs could never have functioned with temperance and moderation if the second Christ Event had not transpired at the beginning of the Atlantean epoch.

But man was faced by yet another evil. This third evil threatened the astral body, in connection with thinking, feeling and willing and their due fields of activity. A certain harmony is maintained to-day in man's thinking, feeling and willing, and when this harmony is upset, the healthy life of the soul is disturbed. When thinking, feeling and willing do not interact in the right way, a man falls into conditions of extreme hypochondria, melancholy or actual insanity. As a result of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence, therefore, men's thinking, feeling and willing would have lapsed into utter disorder if, towards the end of the Atlantean epoch, the third Christ Event had not taken place. Once again the Christ Being united with the “Nathan-Jesus soul” in the supersensible worlds, bringing order and harmony into the soul-powers of thinking, feeling and willing.

These three Events all worked upon man from the spiritual worlds; they were not Events of the physical plane. But memories of the third Event in particular, have been well preserved in myths and legends; and as in many other cases, spiritual knowledge leads us to a much deeper understanding of the wisdom they contain.

We are all familiar with imagery often used for the portrayal of supersensible beings; the Archangel Michael, or St. George overcoming the Dragon, vanquishing death. This is a pictorial presentation of the third Christ Event: St. George or the Archangel Michael is inspired by the Christ Being; and the ‘Conquest of the Dragon’ indicates the overcoming of those elements in the desire-nature of man which would bring confusion and disorder into thinking, feeling and willing.

There is deep meaning in these pictures; they have not been created for the intellect but for the feeling, in order that what eludes intellectual understanding may be presented to the human soul in the form of visible symbols.

In earlier lectures we have heard how in its world of Gods and Spirit-Beings, Greek culture preserved the shadow-images of the Divine Spiritual Beings who in the Atlantean epoch had been present, in all their reality, in the sphere immediately above the world of men. The Greeks had preserved definite consciousness of the third Christ Event, the Event that is portrayed elsewhere as St. George or the Archangel Michael overthrowing the Dragon.—In their Apollo the Greeks portrayed the Christ Being permeating the soul of the later Jesus boy. And we may say with truth that in ancient Greece, St. George and the Dragon are real beings, cosmic beings. The Greeks had their Castalian fountain on Parnassos; vapours arose from a gorge in the earth and these vapours, winding around the mountain like snakes, were a picture of those wild tumultuous passions of men which cast thinking, feeling and willing into confusion and disorder. At the place—it was the abode of Python—where these curling, snake-like vapours issued from the gorge, the Greeks erected the sanctuary of the Pythian Oracle. Sitting there on her tripod above the gorge, she was transported by the rising vapours into a state of visionary consciousness and her utterances were conceived to by the words of Apollo himself. Those who sought advice addressed themselves to the Pythian Oracle and received it from Apollo through her mouth.

In Greece, therefore, Apollo was a real and living Being. We know now that he was the Being who was ensouled by the Christ and later on became the Nathan Jesus boy. This being was known to the Greeks as “Apollo.” He eliminates the effects of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences from what rises out of the earth into the soul of the Pythian Oracle. And because the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences no longer creep into her soul with the vapours which had been purified by Apollo, the forces issuing from her no longer bring thinking, feeling and willing into confusion but into order and harmony on the Earth.

And so we perceive in the figure of Apollo the idea that the God whom we in later time call Christ sent His influence into the thinking, feeling and willing of men.—He was the God Who sacrificed Himself at that time by uniting with the soul of the later Nathan Jesus, in order that harmony and order might prevail in the thinking, feeling and willing of the human soul, instead of the confusion wrought by the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman.

In the supersensible worlds, therefore, three Christ Events take place in preparation for the Event of Golgotha.

What was actually achieved by this Event? What is it that would have fallen into chaos and disorder if the Event of Golgotha had not taken place?

In the Fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Greco-Latin epoch, humanity was ready for the development of the ‘I’. The first peoples who were ready for this were those who inhabited the lands stretching from Western Asia across Southern Europe and into Middle Europe. The encounter between the Roman peoples and the Germanic peoples in Middle and Southern Europe was to give a strong impetus to this development of Ego-consciousness. The ‘I’, the Ego, was to develop in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch—but something would have gone wrong with this development had not the Mystery of Golgotha taken place in that same epoch. Just as the senses would have been impaired in the Lemurian epoch if the first Christ Event had not taken place; just as irregularity would have crept into the development of the seven life-organs if the second Christ Event had not taken place at the beginning of the Atlantean epoch; just as thinking, feeling and willing in man's life of soul would have been cast into disorder if the third Christ Event had not taken place towards the end of the Atlantean epoch... so, too it would have been with the development of the ‘I’, if the fourth Christ Event—the Mystery of Golgotha—had not taken place in the Greco-Latin epoch. For as we know, in this fourth post-Atlantean epoch men had reached the stage of Egohood, of ‘I’-consciousness.

For human beings not belonging to this particular phase of evolution, a different kind of revelation was given. The characteristic difference between the Buddha revelation and the Christ revelation is that the Buddha revelation was given to human beings not destined to unfold consciousness of the ‘I’ which passes through the series of incarnations. Without understanding what this implies, it is not possible to have a true conception of Buddhism. I have often spoken of a simile employed in a later phase of Buddhism, to the effect that the true Buddhist likens what passes over from one incarnation to another to the fruit of the mango which, when it is laid into the earth, produces a new tree upon which new fruit grows; the new mango fruit has in common with the old only ‘name’ and ‘form.’ The ‘form’ alone remains, the individual entity disappears and nothing that has real being passes on. Buddhism teaches nothing about the transmission of the Ego—for the reason that the Eastern peoples had not yet reached full consciousness of the ‘I’. And to this very day we find that when adherents of purely oriental teachings endeavour to understand Western thought and philosophy, they come to a standstill at the point where Egohood becomes an essential and basic factor. The Ego was destined to come to birth in the peoples of the West.

The time for the birth of the Ego was the Fourth post-Atlantean epoch, but if nothing had intervened, irregularity would have set in. This is indicated by something that made its first appearance in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, namely Greek Philosophy. Greek philosophy is a significant sign of the birth of the Ego, but side by side with Greek philosophy we find the Sibylline soothsayers. Unlike the Pythia under the influence of Apollo, the Sibyls were women whose life of soul lacked order and harmony, who allowed the revelations they received to work chaotically in their thinking, feeling and willing. Great and sublime truths were often contained in these Sibylline revelations which began to play a part from about the eighth century B.C. and continued right on into the Middle Ages.—But the wisdom was confused and chaotic, fraught with all kinds of extravagance. Sibylline ‘wisdom’ is a striking example of he fact that the birth of Ego-consciousness (just as would have happened to the twelve senses in the Lemurian epoch, the seven life-organs in the earthly Atlantean epoch and the three soul-faculties at the end of the Atlantean epoch had it not been for the first three Christ Events. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, disorder would have crept into the development of Ego-consciousness if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place.

The Mystery of Golgotha comes down as it were by stages, from those lofty heights of Spirit where the Christ Event had taken place in the Lemurian epoch, to the physical plane itself—as our earthly Mystery of Golgotha.

Here again we have an indication of the supreme significance of this unique Event in Earth-evolution, prepared for as it had been by great and momentous happenings in the spiritual worlds. The connection with the sublime Sun Being we know as the Christ is revealed, too, in the Greek Apollo, for Apollo is the ‘Sun God.’

I have spoken in bare outline only of matters which help me to realise the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. All these things could be expounded in detail and would reveal the untold Cosmic significance of this Event.

We have been considering the Mystery of Golgotha from the aspect of the Cosmos; but it is possible, too, to make a different approach.

A human being passes into the spiritual world through the Gate of Death or through initiation, but we will think now only of one who enters the spiritual world through death. He lays aside his physical body and this outermost sheath is given over to the earthly elements through burial or through cremation. Suppose that after death a man looks back from the spiritual world upon what is happening to his physical body as it passes over through decay or through cremation into the physical elements of the Earth.—What he beholds in the processes here taking place can be called a ‘happening of Nature’, like any other, in which no moral concepts, for example, are involved—for we do not apply moral concepts when clouds form, when lightening strikes from one cloud to another, and so forth. Man looks at his physical body in process of dissolution, just as he looks at these phenomena of Nature. But for a few days, as we know, his connection with the ether-body remains and then the second separation, the separation of the ether-body from the astral body and Ego takes place.

As man looks back upon the discarded ether-body, the processes in which it is involved are not of the same character as those operating in the discarded physical body. After death we can by no means look at what the ether-body is and what is becoming of it, as if it were a ‘phenomenon of Nature’. The ether-body reveals its own individual character, coloured by the feelings and sentiments we have harboured during life. The whole gamut of our feelings—good or bad—is revealed to us by the ether-body. The temper and tenor of our soul is stamped into the ether-body and becomes visible to us after death. Then by a complicated process it dissolves into the universe of ether, is absorbed into the other world.

Looking back in this way upon what becomes of our ether-body, we have before us an image of what we ourselves were in earthly life. And this image tells us: ‘If your feelings were good, if you were truly devoted to the spiritual worlds, then you have given over to the universe of Ether something that is good and beneficial; if your feelings were unrighteous, if you turned a deaf ear to information concerning the spiritual worlds, then you have given over to the Cosmos of Ether something that is injurious and harmful.

In the spiritual world it is part of the destiny of our soul, that is to say of our astral body and Ego, to behold ourselves in the fate of the ether-body—which cannot be changed once the separation from the physical body has taken place. It is a moment of paramount significance after death when we realise that just as in the world of sense we saw clouds and mountains, so now, after death, we see, as a kind of background, all that we ourselves laid into our ether-body through our feelings and tenor of soul. The picture expands as the ether-body dissolves, becomes as it were a “firmament” against which everything else stands out in relief. After death, therefore, man sees what is happening to his ether-body.

Something else is revealed as well, namely, two different kinks of properties, or forces, in the now dissolving ether-body: one of these properties gives rise to an impression that must always weigh heavily upon the soul after death. The best way to understand what this means is to think of the destiny confronting the physical Earth.

The destiny of the physical Earth is recognised to-day even by the physicists, who rightly speak of the “Wärmetod” (equilibration of heat and cold) to which the physical Earth will succumb. The relation of heat to the other physical forces is such that as scientific calculations already show, a time will come when all temperature will be reduced to a dead level. No life or existence in the physical kingdom of Earth will then be possible; the whole physical Earth will perish.

Materialists are bound to assume—for otherwise they would be inconsistent—that this equilibration of temperature, the Wärmetod, also entails the end of everything know to them as culture, the end of all human thinking, reflection, aspiration, endeavour, in short the disappearance of all human existence.

Those who understand the conditions as revealed by Spiritual Science know what this means, namely, that the physical Earth will fall away from the Spiritual like a corpse, just as the physical corpse falls away from that part of a man's being which passes onwards through the Gate of Death. At death, the corpse is discarded and as a being of soul-and-spirit, man lives through an intermediate period between death and a new birth, passing over from one state of existence to another. In the same way the spiritual part of the Earth will pass over to the ‘Jupiter existence’ when physical existence comes to an end. This ‘Jupiter existence’ will be a further embodiment of everything that is connected spiritually with the Earth.

And so when we are able after death to look back at the ether-body, we realise that in very truth one part of the ether-body has to do with everything in the realm of Earth that will ultimately perish. Certain forces in our ether-body have to do with the process by which the Earth is led onwards to its end. But the ether-body contains other forces too, quite different forces. We can picture the relation of these forces to the physical Earth by thinking of the seed of the plant surrounded by substance out of which the next plant arises. Similarly, we perceive in the ether-body, forces which have only to be active as long as the Earth exists, until the Earth comes to an end with the Wärmetod. But there are other forces too, ‘young’, fertile forces, and these are connected with everything that makes the Earth capable of germination in the Cosmos, of passing over to its next embodiment. This ‘fertile’ part of the ether-body can only be perceived—and here we come to another significant secret disclosed by Spiritual Science—when the human being has established a certain relationship with the Christ, the Christ Impulse. For this part of the ether-body is permeated with the Christ Forces which since the Mystery of Golgotha have poured into the sphere of the Earth. It is these Christ Forces in the ether-body which enable the ‘fertile seed’ in the human soul, too, to pass over to the Jupiter embodiment of the Earth. Our connection with the Christ Impulse therefore, enables us to perceive the fertile seed, the seed of the future within our ether-body. And this brings the certain knowledge that the power of the Mystery of Golgotha has flowed, in very truth, into the Earth-sphere and that this power was responsible for quickening the spiritual forces of the Earth with which we ourselves, as human beings, are inwoven. When a human being who has attained Ego-consciousness in the real sense—as is the case in the West to-day—gazes upon his ether-body after death, he must not find this ether-body devoid of the forces flowing from the Christ Impulse. For it means a life of unblessedness after death if the vista of the ether-body reveals that ether-body is not permeated by the Christ Impulse.

I have said many, many times that Christ has come to the Earth as a Real Being and that even those who in their surface-consciousness to-day resist the Christ Impulse... they too will gradually find their way to it, although perhaps one or two incarnations later than the peoples of the West. Man's blessedness after death depends upon the realisation that the Christ Impulse is present in the ether-body; whereas he is doomed to tribulation if he can perceive in the ether-body only that which must inevitably perish with the Earth. A man belonging to Western civilisation, born as he is with the clear Ego-consciousness to which the Oriental peoples have not yet attained, is doomed to a state of unblessedness if, after death, he must look back upon an ether-body lacking the‘substance’ of the Christ Impulse and containing only those forces by which Earth-evolution is finally led to its end. When a man cannot perceive the young, fertile forces of the Christ Impulse in his ether-body, it is rather like having to live after death under the constant impression of an earthquake or a volcanic eruption.

These young, fertile forces of the Christ Impulse... what are they?

Of one aspect I have spoken many times, namely, of the part played by the blood in the physical body of Christ Jesus. The blood is, of course, one of the physical components of the body, and in the case of an ordinary human being it dissolves away at death in the physical Elements. This did not happen to that part of the blood in the body of Christ Jesus which flowed from the wounds on Golgotha. This blood was ‘etherised’, was actually taken up into the etheric forces of the Earth. The blood that flowed from the wounds on Golgotha became Ether-Substance. And perceiving this Ether-Substance gleaming and glistening in the ether-body after death, man knows it to be the young, fertile life by which he is borne onwards into the future.

These quickening, freshening life-forces pour into the human ether-body from yet another source. Contemplation of the Fifth Gospel reveals—it is a deep and solemn impression—that after the body of Christ Jesus had been laid in the Grave, a certain happening led, in actual fact, to the scene described with such marvellous exactitude in the Gospel of St. John: the clothes lay scattered around the empty Grave. The Fifth Gospel reveals that it was indeed so. An undulating earthquake had produced a rift in the earth and into this rift the body of Christ Jesus fell. The rift then closed again and, as described in St. John's Gospel, the clothes in which the body had been shrouded were hurled about the empty sepulchre by the tempest. When these things are revealed to one from the Fifth Gospel, it is a deeply moving experience to find them confirmed in the Gospel of St. John.

And so something else too flowed into the human ether-body. What had been received into the rift in the earth poured through the blood now agleam in the Ether, making this gleaming blood visible in the human ether-body. As I said before, the ether-body expands after death and man sees it as a ‘firmament’ against which everything else stands out in relief. And the feeling arises: The body of Christ Jesus, empty of blood, spreads through the expanding ether-body like a basic substance. The body which had fallen into the chasm passed into the Earth, and the etherised blood now reveals itself in the tableau of the human ether-body, filling the tableau with life. And from this revelation arises the certainty: Mankind does not perish, but lives on as the spiritual essence of Earth-existence when the Earth falls away, just as the corpse falls away from the indwelling spiritual being on man. True, the ‘I’ and astral body guarantee freedom and immortality for man; but he would live on only for himself, he would pass over to Jupiter only to find himself in an alien world if the forces poured by the Christ Impulse into the Earth-sphere were not carried over to Jupiter.

If individual human beings were not rooted within an Earth-sphere that has been pervaded by the Christ Impulse, they would pass over to Jupiter in ‘poverty of soul’, with faculties hardly richer than those belonging to the Lemurian epoch. And this ‘poverty of soul’ which would give the conviction that earthly life is doomed to perish would betoken a state of unblessedness for man between death and rebirth; whereas realisation of what the Christ Impulse has wrought for the spiritual part of the Earth brings blessedness to the soul in the life between death and rebirth.

Since the Mystery of Golgotha, every experience by which the human soul is quickened and enriched comes from what was poured into the spiritual aura of the Earth by the Christ Impulse.

These first three lectures, including to-day's, are intended to orient us in a general way in regard to what must be considered in connection with the life of man, with his true being. For this reason some of the more important concepts first given out are, in a sense, left hanging in the air, since the more detailed exposition of these will naturally have to follow later. But it is better to make a general survey of the whole method of occult observation of the human being and afterwards to build into our study, which for the present we accept only as hypothetical, that which will then appear to us as its deeper foundations.

I have already dwelt upon one matter, at the close of yesterday's lecture. I there endeavoured to show that, by means of certain soul-exercises, by means of strict concentration of thought and feeling, the human being can call forth a state of life different from the ordinary one. The ordinary state expresses itself as it does because in our fully waking day consciousness, we have a normal connection between the nerves and the blood. That which happens by way of the nerves inscribes itself upon the tablet of the blood. By means of soul-exercises, a man may reach the point where he can so completely control the nerve that it does not extend its activity as far as the blood. This activity is thrown back into the nerve itself. But now, because the blood is the instrument of the ego, a person who does this, who has freed his nerve-system from the course of the blood through strict concentration of feeling and thought, feels as if he were estranged from his own accustomed being, lifted out of it. He feels as if he now stood facing himself, with the result that he can no longer say to this familiar being of his, “This is I”; he must say, “That is you.” Thus he stands facing his own Self just as he might face any unfamiliar person living in the physical world.

A man like this, who has become in a certain sense clairvoyant, feels as if a higher order of being were towering up in his soul-life. This is an entirely different feeling from that which a man has when he confronts the ordinary world. When he confronts the external world, he feels that he stands as a stranger facing the things and beings of this external world, the animals, the plants, etc.—as a being who stands beside them or outside them. He knows quite definitely when he has a flower before him: “The flower is there, and I am here.” It is otherwise when, as a result of the liberation from his nerve-system, he ascends into the spiritual world, when he lifts himself out of his ego. He does not any longer feel in that case: “There is the plant-being that faces me, and here am I,” but rather as if the other being entered completely into him, and as if he felt himself one with it. Thus we may say that the clairvoyant human being learns, through advanced power of observation, to know the spiritual world—that spiritual world with which man is, indeed, united and which to a certain extent, comes to meet him by way of the nerve-system, even though in normal life this occurs by the indirect road of the sense-impressions. It is the spiritual world, therefore, about which the human being in his ordinary consciousness at first knows nothing, and it is this same spiritual world which, nevertheless, actually inscribes itself upon the tablet of our blood, hence upon our ego. In other words, we may say that underlying everything that surrounds us externally in the world of sense there lies a spiritual world, so that we see as though through a veil woven by the sense-impressions. In our normal consciousness, which is compassed by the horizon of our ordinary ego, we do not see the spiritual world lying behind this veil. The moment, however, that we free ourselves of the ego, the ordinary sense-impressions disappear also. We then begin to live in a spiritual world above us, that same world that exists in reality behind the sense-impressions, and with which we become one when we lift our nerve-system out of our ordinary blood-system.

We have now followed in a manner the process of human life, how it is stimulated from the external world and how it carries on its work through the nerves and the blood. At the same time, we have called attention to the fact that we can see in the purely organic, physical inner life of man a kind of “compressed outside world”; and we have pointed in particular to the fact that such an outside world, condensed into organs, is present in our liver, our gall-bladder, and our spleen. We may say, therefore, that just as the blood in the one direction, in the upper extremity of our organism, courses through the brain in order there to come into contact with the outside world (this takes place by reason of the fact that the external sense-impressions work upon the brain) just so, as it circulates through the body, does it come into relationship with the inner organs among which we have first considered the liver, the gall-bladder, and the spleen. The blood does not in these organs come into contact with any sort of outside world because they do not open outward as do the organs of sense, but are enclosed within the organism, are covered on all sides and consequently develop only an inner life. Moreover, these organs can act upon the blood only in accordance with their own nature as liver, gall-bladder, spleen. They do not, like the eye or the ear, receive outside impressions, and they cannot, therefore, pass on to the blood influences stimulated from outside, but can simply express their own particular natures through whatever effect these may have upon the blood. When we observe this inner world into which the outside world is condensed, as it were, we may state that here an outer world which has become an inner world acts upon the human blood where it can act at all.

If we draw a sketch of this, and represent the tablet of the blood by the line A B, we have to represent everything which comes from outside as now directed in a certain sense inward, and pressing from the one direction against the tablet of the blood, while being, as it were, inscribed upon one side of the tablet, whereas everything coming from the inside we have to think of as approaching from the other direction and inscribing itself on the other side of the tablet. Or doing it less schematically, we might then take the human head and observe the blood as it courses through this in such a way that we say: “It is being written upon from outside through the sense-organs; and the brain, in performing its task, has the same sort of transforming influence upon the blood as the inner organs have.” For these three organs, the liver, the gall-bladder and the spleen, work, as we know, from the opposite direction, from the other side, upon the blood flowing into them. Thus it would seem that the blood may be able to receive radiations and influences from the inner organs, and by this means, supposing this to be possible, it can, as the instrument of the ego, bring to expression in this ego the inner life of these organs, just as everything which surrounds us in the world outside finds expression in the life of our brain.

At this point we must understand clearly, that something else very definite must happen to make possible the action of these organs upon the blood. Let us remember that we had to assert that only through the reciprocal activity, through the connection between the nerve and the course of the blood, can there be any possibility whatever that anything will be inscribed upon the blood, that any influence can be exercised upon it. If therefore from the other direction, from the inner side, influences are to be exercised upon the blood, if the inner organs, or what we may call man's inner cosmic system, are to work upon the blood, there must be inserted between these organs and the blood something similar to a nerve-system. The “inner world” must first be able to act upon a nerve-system if it is to carry its activity over to the blood. Thus we see, by simply comparing the lower portion of the human being with the upper, that we are forced to presuppose that something in the nature of a nerve-system must be inserted between the circulating blood and our inner organs—among which we have here these three representative ones, the liver, the gallbladder, and the spleen.

External observation shows us that this really is the case, that in all these organs is inserted what is called the “sympathetic nervous system” which extends throughout the bodily cavity of man, and which stands in a relationship to his inner world and to the course of the blood similar to that in which the nervous system of the spinal cord stands to the great outside world and to the life of man, to the circulation of his blood. This sympathetic nervous system passes first along the spine and, going out from there, traverses the most widely separated parts of the organism and branches out, spreading into reticular forms, especially in the abdominal cavity, where one part of it goes by the popular name of the “solar plexus.” We may expect to find a certain variation of this system from the other nerve-system. It is always interesting, even if it should not serve as any proof, to ask ourselves: What would be the relation between this nerve-system and the nerve-system of the spinal cord if those conditions should be fulfilled which we have for the present asserted hypothetically? It would be obvious that, just as the nerve-system of the spinal cord must open itself to surrounding space, so would this sympathetic nerve-system have to incline toward what is compressed into the inner organisation. Thus the nerve-system of the spinal cord is related to the sympathetic nerve-system, that is, if the facts agree with our presuppositions, somewhat as lines radiating outward in all directions from the circumference of a circle (a) would be related to those radii that we might direct away from the centre of the circle toward its circumference (b). In a certain sense, therefore, there would have to be an antithesis between the sympathetic nerve-system and the nerve-system of the brain and spinal cord. This antithesis actually does exist. We see here that it may be of great value to us to be able to point to the fact that, if our assumptions are correct, experience and observation will in a manner confirm them. And, when we turn our attention again to what we have been observing, it is evident that external observation does confirm the suppositions we have formed. We find that, whereas in the case of the sympathetic nerve-system the essential thing is that ganglia of a certain kind form themselves which are strong and large, while the connecting filaments radiating out from these are relatively small and of little account in contrast to these ganglia, exactly the reverse is true in the case of the nerve-system of the brain and spinal cord. There the connecting threads are the important thing, whereas the ganglia have a subordinate significance.

Thus our observation does, in fact, confirm what we accepted as a supposition, and we can now make the following assertion. If the function of the sympathetic nerve-system must consist in carrying over to the blood the inner life of the human organism, which expresses itself in the nourishing and the warming through of the organism, and which pours itself into the sympathetic nerves, in exactly the same way in which the outer impressions are carried over to the tablet of the blood by means of the nerve-system of the brain and spinal cord, in that case we obtain through the instrument of the ego, which is the blood, by the roundabout way of the sympathetic nerve-system, the impressions of our own inner body. Since however this inner body of ours, like everything physical, is built up out of the spirit, we therefore take up into our ego, by the roundabout road of the sympathetic nerve-system, what has been condensed as spiritual world into the corresponding organs of the inner world of man.

Thus we see here also, strangely enough, how that duality in the human being with which we began our studies is expressed in even greater exactness. We see the world at one moment outside; at another moment we see it inside. Both times we see this world working in such a way that it uses a nerve-system as the instrument of its work. We see that in the centre, between the outside world and the inside world, is placed our blood-system which exposes its two sides, to be written upon like a tablet, sometimes from outside, sometimes from inside.

We said yesterday and repeat to-day for the sake of clarity, that the human being is in position to free his nerves, in so far as these lead to the outside world, from their action upon the blood-system. We must now put the question, whether something similar is possible also in the other direction. And we shall see later that it is possible, as a matter of fact, to practise also other exercises of the soul that are capable of producing in the other direction the same effect as that of which we have spoken. There is one difference, however, in connection with the effect produced in this other direction. Whereas we are able through concentration of thought, concentration of feeling, and occult exercises, to set free from the blood the nerves of our brain and spinal cord, we are able, on the other hand, by means of such concentrations as go right down into our inner life, our inner world—by which is meant in particular that sort of concentration included under the term “the mystical life,”—to penetrate so deep down within ourselves that in doing so we most certainly do not ignore our ego, nor therefore its instrument the blood. The mystical immersion, concerning which we know that by its means a man plunges down, so to speak, into his own divine being, into his own spirituality in so far as this is alive in him, this mystical immersion is not primarily a lifting of oneself out of the ego. It is rather a positive plunging of oneself down into the ego, a strengthening or energising of the ego-feeling. We can convince ourselves of this if we set aside what the mystics of the present day may say, and consider to some extent the earlier mystics.

These earlier mystics, whether they had for their foundation more of reality or less matters not, endeavoured, above all things, to penetrate into their own ego and to look away from everything which the outside world could offer, in order to be free from all external impressions and to plunge down completely into themselves. This inward self-communion, this diving down into one's own ego, is primarily a concentration or drawing down of the entire force and energy of the ego into one's own organism. This now works further upon the entire organisation of the human being; and we may say that this inward immersion, which may be called in the true sense of the term the “mystic path,” is in direct contrast to that other path leading out into the macrocosm, so that we do not draw the instrument of the ego, which is the blood, away from the nerve, but on the contrary thrust it more than ever against the sympathetic nerve-system. Whereas, therefore, we loosen by means of the process described yesterday the connection between the nerve and the blood, we here strengthen the connection between the blood and the sympathetic nerve-system by means of true mystic immersion.

This is the physiological counterpart: that the blood is here pressed in more than ever against the sympathetic nerve-system whereas, when the wish is to reach the spiritual world in the other way, the blood is pushed away from the nerve. Thus we see that what can take place in the mystic immersion is primarily an impressing of the blood upon this inner, sympathetic nerve-system.

Now, let us suppose that we might disregard what happens when a man thus enters into his inner being, when he does not free himself from his ego, but presses down, on the contrary, into the ego, and takes with him at the same time all his less desirable qualities. For when a man frees himself from his ego he leaves the ego behind with all these less desirable qualities; but when he immerses himself into his ego it is not at all certain, to begin with, that he does not at the same time press down all his undesirable characteristics into this energised ego of his: in other words, that everything contained in his passionate blood is not pressed down with the blood into the sympathetic nerve-system. But let us suppose that we might for the time being disregard all this, and assume that the mystic has taken care, before coming to any such mystic immersion, that his less desirable qualities shall have disappeared more and more and that, in place of these egoistic qualities, selfless, altruistic feelings have appeared; that he has prepared himself by endeavouring to bring to life within himself a feeling of compassion for all things possessed of being to the end that, by means of the selfless qualities that have thus been called forth for all beings, he may paralyse these other qualities that take account only of the ego. Let us suppose, then, that the man has prepared himself sufficiently for this immersion within his own inner being. He carries his ego in that case by means of the instrument of his blood down into his own inner world. It then comes to pass that his inner nerve-system, the sympathetic nerve-system, about which the human being in his normal consciousness knows nothing, presses its way into the ego-consciousness, so that he begins to know: “I have within me something which can mediate to me the inner world in the same way that the other nerve-system mediates to me the outer world.”

Thus man descends into his own being and becomes aware, so to speak, of his sympathetic nerve-system. And just as he can know, by means of the outer nerve-system of the brain and spinal cord, the outside world that forms his environment, so there now comes to meet him that inner world which has built itself up within him. Moreover, just as we do not see the nerves, since no one sees the optic nerve, but rather that which is to be seen by means of the nerve, the external world that penetrates into our consciousness, just so also in the case of the mystic immersion it is not, to begin with, the inner nerves that penetrate the consciousness, for the human being is aware only that he has in these an instrument through which he can behold what is within him. It is indeed, something quite different that appears. Now that he has brought his faculty of cognition to an inward clairvoyance, his inner world appears before him. Just as the outward-directed look discloses to us the outer world, and our nerves do not in the process come into our consciousness, so likewise it is not our sympathetic nerve-system that comes into our consciousness, but obviously that which confronts us as “inner world.” Only, this inner world which here comes into our consciousness is really our own Self as physical man.

Perhaps it is not so much to the point here, but I should feel inclined to suggest that a thinker who is the least materialistic might, indeed, sense a feeling of horror rising up within him if he were to say to himself: “In that case I can see my own organism inside me!” And what he might mean, perhaps, would be: “How wonderful, to become clairvoyant by means of my sympathetic nerve-system and to be able to see my own liver, gall-bladder, and spleen!” As I remarked, this is not necessarily to the point, yet someone might say such a thing. But the facts are otherwise. For, in making an objection like this, such a person would fail to take into account that what the human being ordinarily calls in external life his liver, his gall-bladder, and his spleen is viewed from outside, just like all other external objects. In ordinary life we are obliged to view the human organism through the external senses, the outer nerves. What we may learn to know in anatomy, in the usual physiology, as liver, gall-bladder, and spleen constitutes these organs as seen from outside by means of the nerve-system of the brain and spinal cord. There they are viewed in exactly the same way in which one views anything externally. The position is entirely different, however, when a man can see clairvoyantly inside himself by means of the sympathetic nerve-system. He does not in that case see at all the same things that one sees when looking from outside; rather, he now sees something which caused the seers throughout the ages to choose such strange names as those I cited in the second lecture.

He is now aware that in reality, to external sight which uses the brain and the spinal cord, these organs appear in Maya, in external illusion, because the aspect they offer outwardly does not show them in their inner essential significance. He sees, in fact, something entirely different when he is able to observe this his inner world from the opposite direction, but now with the use of an inwardly clairvoyant eye. He now gradually realises why the seers of all times connected the activity of the spleen with the action of Saturn, the activity of the liver with the action of Jupiter, and the activity of the gallbladder with the action of Mars. For what he thus sees in his own inner self is, indeed, fundamentally different from what presents itself to the external view. He becomes aware that he actually has before him portions of the outside world enclosed within the boundaries of his inner organs.

And one thing now becomes particularly clear, which may serve us chiefly as an example for this method of arriving at knowledge, enabling us to see what course these ways of attaining knowledge follow in the life of the organism, in leading us beyond the customary views. In this case we can convince ourselves especially with regard to one fact, namely, how very significant an organ the human spleen is. Indeed, this organ really appears to inner observation as if it did not consist of an externally visible substance, of fleshly matter, but rather, if the expression may be permitted, although it approximates only to what can actually be observed, as if it actually were a luminous cosmic body in miniature with every possible sort of inner life, and indeed an inner life highly complicated.

Yesterday I called your attention to the fact that the spleen, externally observed, may be described as a plethoric tissue with minute white corpuscles embedded in it, so that it is legitimate, perhaps, from the point of view of external observation, to assume that the blood which flows through the spleen is strained through it as if through a sieve. When this spleen is observed inwardly, on the other hand, it appears above all to be an organ which, by means of the manifold inner forces already mentioned, is brought into a continual rhythmic movement. We convince ourselves even in connection with such an organ as this that a very great deal in the world is, as a matter of fact, dependent upon rhythm. An intimation of the importance of rhythm in the entire life of the world may be felt when we recognise it also externally in the pulse-beat of the blood. In that case, however, it is externally that we recognise it. But we can follow it externally also in the spleen. For it is possible here to follow it rather exactly, and we can also look for confirmation of what has been said through external observation. To inward clairvoyant sight all the differentiations of the spleen, which take place as if in a luminous body, are there in order to give this spleen a certain rhythm in life. This rhythm differs very considerably from other rhythms that we perceive elsewhere in life. Indeed it is just here, in the case of the spleen, that it is interesting to observe how very noticeably this rhythm differs from others: that is, it is far less regular than the other rhythms of which we shall speak later. This is due to the fact that the spleen lies near the human nutritive apparatus, and has something to do with this.

Now, you will be able to understand me if you consider how amazingly regular the rhythm of the blood must be in the human being in order that life may be properly sustained. This must be a very regular rhythm. But there is another rhythm that is regular only to a very slight degree—although one could wish that, through self-education of the human being, it might become more and more regular especially in the life of the child—namely, the rhythm of eating and drinking. Any man of moderately regular habits does, to be sure, keep a certain rhythm in this respect. He takes his breakfast, his midday meal, and his evening meal at certain times, and by doing so he follows, of course, a certain rhythm. But we know, alas, how it is with this rhythm in many another respect, through the humouring of the fastidiousness of many children who are simply given a thing whenever they crave it, regardless of all rhythm. Moreover, the fact that adults also are not very particular in observing a regular rhythm in connection with eating and drinking—there is not the slightest intention here of giving pedantic instruction in this matter, for our modern life does not always allow of rhythm—the fact that we fill ourselves with external nourishment with such irregularity, and that in our drinking especially we are so irregular, is sufficiently well known and need not be criticised but only mentioned. Yet, on the other hand, that which we supply to our organism with such imperfect rhythm must gradually be changed in rhythm so that it will adapt itself to the more regular rhythm of this organism, it must be adapted, as it were. The grossest irregularity must be removed, and something like the following must come about. Let us suppose that, in order to regulate his daily schedule, a man is compelled to breakfast at eight o'clock in the morning and to eat again at one or two o'clock and assume that this has become a habit. Now, suppose that he should go to see a friend, and that while there he should be invited, through a courtesy which cannot in general be too highly praised, to take something between these two meals. In this case he has interrupted his rhythm to a very decided extent, and thereby a certain positive influence is exerted upon the rhythm of his external organism.

Now there must be something able to strengthen correspondingly whatever is regular in rhythm in the supplying of external nourishment and to weaken the influence of whatever is irregularly introduced. The worst irregularities must be counterbalanced. Accordingly somewhere along the course taken by the food as it goes over into the rhythm of the blood, there must be inserted an organ that equalises the irregularity of the process of nourishment in contrast with the necessary regularity of the rhythm of the blood. This organ is the spleen. Thus, by observing certain very definite rhythmic processes brought about by the spleen we are able to get an idea of the fact that the spleen is really a “transformer.”¹ It is there to counterbalance the irregularities in the digestive canal in order that they may become regularities in the circulation of the blood. For it would be fatal, especially in one's student days but also at other times, if certain irregularities in the taking of nutritive matter had necessarily to continue to the full extent of their action into the blood! There is much to be counterbalanced by means of a “backward thrust,” as we may call it; only so much is to be conducted over into the blood as is useful to it. This is the function of the spleen, that organ inserted in the blood-stream which so radiates its rhythm-bringing influence over the entire human organism as to produce the condition that has just been described. To external observation, all that we have obtained through the insight of an eye becoming inwardly clairvoyant is evident from the fact that the spleen does keep to a certain rhythm that actually reminds one, even if only slightly, of what I have just been stating. For it is extraordinarily difficult to find out the functions of the spleen by means of external physiological investigation. Outwardly, the only thing that shows itself is that the spleen is to a certain extent inflated for hours at a time after the partaking of a heavy meal; and that, if another meal does not follow, it contracts again.

Here you have a certain expanding and contracting of this organ. When it is realised that the human organism is not what it is often described as being, namely, a mere sum-total of the organs contained within it, but that all the organs send their most secret activities to all parts of the organism, one will then be able also to conceive how the rhythmic movements of the spleen, although dependent, of course, upon the outside world, that is, upon the supply of food, radiate throughout the whole organism and have a counterbalancing influence upon it. Now this is only one of the ways in which the spleen functions. It is impossible to explain all of them at once. Yet it would nevertheless, be extraordinarily interesting, since not everybody is capable of becoming clairvoyant, if such facts could be accepted by external physiology, accepted, let us say, as possible ideas, so that people would say: “I will for once imagine that what is attained by means of the inner clairvoyant eye is, after all, not such complete nonsense as it is often supposed to be. On the contrary, I shall neither believe nor disbelieve this; but I shall let it remain as an idea presented to me, and shall then investigate what external physiology can point out, whether, out of all that is asserted by occultists, anything whatever can be substantiated by showing clearly that it is actually confirmed by external observation.”²

In a certain sense, what I have just said is such a confirmation. For it has become evident to us that the expansion and contraction of the spleen, due to the inner structure of the organ, have a certain regularity; but that, since these movements follow the eating of a meal, they are dependent also on the supply of external nourishment. Thus we have here in the spleen an organ which is dependent from the one aspect, that of the digestive canal, on external, human will; but from the other aspect, that of the blood, we have in it an organ that sets aside to a certain extent human choice, rejects it, and leads back to a rhythm, indeed, we might say, in this way really forms man in accordance with his being. For, if man is to be fashioned in accordance with his being, it is then especially necessary that the central instrument of that being, the blood, should be able to exercise its activity in the right way, in its own blood-rhythm. The human being, in so far as he is the carrier of his own blood-stream, must be set apart, so to speak, within himself, isolated from what proceeds with irregularity in the outside world, that outside world which he incorporates within himself when he takes in his nourishment out of it. Hence this is a process of isolation, a making the human being independent of the outside world. Every such individualising of any being, making it independent, is called in occultism saturnine, something brought about by the Saturn influence. This, as a matter of fact is the original idea associated with Saturn, that from an existing world some sort of Being is isolated, individualised, in such a way that within itself and of itself it can evolve regularity.

I shall for the present disregard the fact that the astronomy of our day reckons both Uranus and Neptune, which are outside the orbit of Saturn, as belonging to our solar system. For the occultist all those forces present in our entire solar system are, for the purpose of isolating them from the rest of the cosmos and individualising them, to be found in the Saturn forces—in that planet therefore, which is the most remote one belonging to this system. If, then, we visualise the entire solar system, we might say: The solar system must be so placed that it can follow its own laws within the orbit of encircling Saturn, and can make itself independent by tearing itself loose, as it were, from the surrounding world and from the formative forces of this surrounding world. For this reason occultists of all the ages have seen in the Saturn forces that which secludes our solar system within itself, thus making it possible for the solar system to develop a rhythm of its own which is not the same as the rhythm outside the world of our solar system.

In a certain way the spleen does something similar within our organism. Certainly we do not in this organism of ours have to do with a separating from the entire outside world, but only with a separating from this surrounding world in so far as it contains the nourishment for our organism and we ourselves introduce its activities into ourselves. The spleen is the organ we first meet when we do this, dealing, so to speak, with everything from outside in the same way as the Saturn forces deal with everything within our solar system, within the orbit of Saturn. The forces that are in the spleen isolate the circulation of our blood from all outside influences, and make of it a regular rhythm within itself, a system having its own rhythm.

Here we have already come nearer, although we are not yet really near as we shall see later, to those reasons, still more or less external, for which such names as the ones already mentioned are chosen in occultism. They are chosen because the occultist does not connect with the names borne by the planets merely what concerns the planets. When these names were originally created in the occult schools they were never applied merely to the separate planets; the name Saturn, for instance, was applied to anything that excluded a world outside from a system that took on a rhythmic form within itself. There is always a certain disadvantage for cosmic evolution, as a whole, when one system shuts itself off and regulates itself within itself, fashions a rhythm of its own. And the occultists have, consequently, been somewhat concerned about this disadvantage. We might say, indeed, that it is quite comprehensible that all activities in the entire universe have a basic inner relation and are mutually related. If any one “world,” be it a solar system, or be it the blood-system of the human being, is completely separated from the rest of the universe surrounding it, this signifies that it quite independently violates external laws, makes itself independent of them, changes itself and creates its own inner laws, its own rhythm. We shall see later how this may also be true in the case of the human being although it must be clear to us, in view of the whole discussion in to-day's lecture, that it is mostly a blessing that man maintains this inner Saturn-rhythm which the spleen has created for him. At the same time we shall see that we can apply this law also in the case of man, namely, that any being, whether it be a planet or a man, brings itself through seclusion within itself into a state of contradiction to the world around it. A contradiction is thus created between that which surrounds and that which is within the being concerned. This contradiction cannot be compensated for, after it has once appeared, until the inner rhythm set up has again adapted itself completely to the outer rhythm. We shall see that this applies also to the human being; for otherwise, according to what has been said, he would be compelled to adapt himself to irregularity. We shall find, however, that such is not the case. The inner rhythm, although it has established itself, must again strive after doing this to fashion itself in accordance with the entire outside world, which means that it must eliminate itself. Thus the being first comes to have an inner existence of its own; but, because it can now work independently, it aspires to adapt itself to the outside world and to become harmonious with it. To put it in other words, everything that has made itself independent as a result of a saturnine activity is doomed at the same time, because of this saturnine activity, to destroy itself again. Saturn, or Kronos, devours his own children, so the myth tells us. Here you see a deeply significant harmony between an occult idea, expressed in the name Kronos or Saturn, and a myth which expresses the same thing in a picture, a symbol: “Kronos devours his own children!”

We can try, at least, to let such things work upon us; and, if we allow them to do so in ever-increasing number, one new fact after another comes to light till it becomes impossible after a time to say, in the light and easy manner in which we so often hear a superficial solution proposed: “Here are some of these visionaries dreaming that the old myths and sagas contained the pictorial impress of a deeper wisdom!” If a man hears two or three, or let us say even ten, such “correspondences” presented, as these so often are presented in literature in a wholly superficial way, it is of course quite possible for him to oppose the idea that there is a deeper wisdom contained in the myths and sagas than in external science; that mythology leads us deeper into the foundations of things and of Being than do the methods of natural-scientific study. But if he allows such examples to work upon him again and again, and then becomes aware that, throughout the whole extent of the thought and feeling of men and of peoples, it is verified that in pictorial conceptions everywhere and always, over all parts of the earth, anyone with a very accurate observation and devoted interest in sagas and myths may find the metamorphoses of a deeper wisdom, then he will be able to understand why certain occultists can with justice say as they do: “He alone really comprehends the myths and sagas who has penetrated into human nature with the help of occult physiology.” And, indeed, more truly than is the case in external science do even the names in these myths and sagas and other traditions contain real physiology. When once people begin to fathom how much physiology was coined, for instance, in such names as Cain and Abel, and into the names of all their successors in those olden days when it was customary to coin an inner meaning into names, when they once see how much physiology, how much inner understanding for homely human wisdom is contained in those old names in a truly remarkable way, they will then win a tremendous respect and the deepest reverence for everything that has been devised in the course of the historical evolution of man for the purpose of enabling the soul, where it cannot as yet through its own wisdom ascend into the spiritual world, to have a conscious inner experience by means of pictures of its connection with these spiritual worlds. Then will be completely banished that idea which plays too large a part at the present time: “What splendid progress we men of to-day have made!” by which is often also meant: “How well we have succeeded in getting rid of those old pictorial expressions belonging to prehistoric ‘wisdom’!” We shall then cast away such feelings, and immerse ourselves with whole-hearted devotion in the course of human evolution throughout its successive epochs. For what the clairvoyant, with his opened inner eye, establishes physiologically as the inner nature of the human organs, is so expressed in these ancient pictures that the myths and sagas really contain in them the truth of the origin of man. To make possible the expression in pictures of this miraculous process, whereby external worlds have been compressed into human organs and have condensed and crystallised themselves in the course of infinitely long periods of time in order that they might become something which, in the form of a spleen for example, brings about an inner rhythm within us, or in the form of a liver or gall-bladder, etc., as we shall see tomorrow—to be able to express all this in pictures requires a divining of what we, by means of occult science, can re-establish from the human organisation. For what we find there has been born out of the worlds, as a microcosm out of the macrocosm. We look into this whole origin or beginning with the help of occult science on the one hand; and we see on the other that intimations of these beginnings are contained in the myths and sagas, and that those occultists are right who find a real meaning in them only when they are given a physiological foundation.

It is our purpose to-day at least to indicate these facts, if no more; for this can help us to win that reverence of which we spoke in our first hours together. If we practise such a method of study as this, quite apart now from the “pictures” belonging to the different peoples, by also directly pointing to what presents itself to a deeper investigation of the spiritual content of the human organs, if we are able to present this even only to a very limited extent, it will soon become clear to us what a miraculous structure this human organism is. In this series of lectures we shall endeavour to throw a little light upon the inner quality of being of this human organism.

• 1. Figure taken from the electrical device which transforms the character of the current.
• 2. See in this connection Philo and physikalischer Nachweis der Wirksamkeit kleinster Entitäten. L. Kolisko. Orient-Occident Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany.

From what has been said during the last few days it will be clear that nowadays one human being meets another in a different way from what was the case in the past, and this is of quite recent date—in fact, it entered human evolution with the century.

In poetical language no longer suitable for today, former ages foretold what in this century has come for the whole of humanity. Former ages spoke of how, at the end of the nineteenth century, the so-called Dark Age would have run its course, how in a new age there must come quite new conditions in human evolution, conditions difficult to attain because at first man is not accustomed to them. And in spite of the fact that we have now entered an epoch of light, much will seem more chaotic than what was brought by the long, gloomy Age of Darkness.

We must not merely translate into our language what was formerly presented in a picture derived from ancient clairvoyant vision: if so, we should be understanding only the old again. We must learn to perceive it anew with the spiritual means of today. We must permeate ourselves deeply with the consciousness that in this epoch for the first time human ego meets human ego in an intercourse of soul that is free of all veils.

Were we to go back to the first epoch after the great Atlantean earth-catastrophe, to the seventh or eighth millennium before Christ, we should find that fully grown men actually confronted one another as today only the child confronts grownups, with comprehension of the complete human being as I characterized it yesterday, a comprehension where soul and spirit are not found separated from the body but where the physical body is perceived as being of the nature of soul and spirit. In the epoch I have called the ancient Indian, which followed immediately upon the Atlantean catastrophe, the human being did not consider soul and spirit in the abstract way that we do today, with a certain justification.

It is precisely expressions used in this most ancient epoch which seem to us entirely spiritual which are misunderstood today. We misunderstand them if we believe that in the first post-Atlantean epoch of culture men overlooked all they saw in the outer world and were only willing to concentrate on what existed outside the world of the senses. This was by no means the case. They had a much fuller perception of, let us say, a human movement, or of the play of expression on a countenance, or of the way young people grow in five years, or of the plastic development of new leaves and blossoms in a plant, or in an animal of the way the whole of its forces pour into the hoof and other parts of its leg. Men did direct their gaze into the world we call that of the senses, but in the material processes they saw the Spiritual. For them what in the material world presented itself to their senses was at the same time spiritual. Naturally, such perception was only possible because over and above what we see in the sense-world, they actually perceived the Spiritual. They saw not only the meadow carpeted with flowers but over the flowers they saw in a vibrating, active existence the cosmic forces which draw forth the plants from the earth. In a certain way they saw—it seems grotesque to modern man but I am telling you facts—how the human being bears on his head a kind of etheric, astral cap. In this etheric, astral cap they experienced the forces underlying the growth of the hair. People today are prone to believe that the hair grows out of the head simply by being pushed from inside, whereas the truth is that outer Nature draws it forth. In olden times men saw the reality of things which later as an artistic copy shed their light into civilization. Just think of the helmet of Pallas Athene for instance which quite obviously belongs to the head. Those who do not rightly experience this helmet think of it as placed upon her head. It is not placed upon the head. It is bestowed by a concentration of raying cosmic forces that are working around the head of Pallas Athene and densifying, so that in olden times it would have seemed impossible to the Greek to form the head of Pallas Athene without this covering. They would have felt as we do today about a scalped head. I am not saying that this was the case among Greeks of later times.

In ancient times men were able to experience the sense-world as having soul and spirit, because they experienced something of an etheric and soul-spiritual nature. But these men did not ascribe any great importance to the soul and spirit. People readily believe that in the oldest Mysteries the pupils were principally taught that the sense world is semblance and the spiritual world the only reality, but this is not true. The strivings of the Mysteries were directed to making the material world comprehensible to the human soul by the roundabout way of comprehending what is of the nature of soul and spirit.

Already in the epoch of the first post-Atlantean culture, the Mysteries were striving to understand man as a being of soul and spirit, and particularly inwardly—not theoretically—to feel, to interpret any manifestation of the physical man in terms of the spirit. For example, it would have been impossible for them to have given a mechanistic explanation of walking, because they knew that when man walks he has an experience with every step, an experience which today lies deep beneath the threshold of consciousness. Why do we walk? We walk because when we stretch our leg forward and put down our foot, we come into a different relation to the earth and to the heavens, and in the perception of this change—that we place one foot into a different degree of warmth from that in which the other foot has remained—in the perception of this interchanging relation to the cosmos there lies something that is not only mechanical but distinctly super-dynamic.

This was the perception in more ancient times; the gaze of the human being even then was directed to man's external form, to his external movements. And it would never have occurred to the men of that time to imagine that what they saw as dumb show in Nature—the growth and configuration of plants, the growth and configuration of animals—was to be interpreted in the way that we scientifically do today. In the human heart and mind there was something altogether different; a man, belonging to the old Indian civilization to which I referred yesterday, felt it as entirely natural that during a certain period of the year the earth breathes in the being of the heavens, and during another period of the year she does not breathe in but works within herself by shutting out the heavens. It was natural for it to be different in ancient India because climatic conditions were different. But were we in imagination to extend our own climatic conditions we should have to say: During the summer the earth sleeps, gives herself up to the heavenly forces, receives the power of the sun in such a way that this power of the sun pours into the earth's unconsciousness. Summer is the sleep of the earth. Winter is her waking. During the winter the earth thinks through her own forces what during the summer in her sleeping and dreaming she has thought in relation with the heavens. During the winter the earth works over in her own being what during the summer has come to her through the in-working of the forces and powers of the cosmos.

Nowadays little is known of these things—in practical knowledge, I mean—as when the peasant out in the country puts potatoes into the ground during the winter. But nobody thinks about the fate of these potatoes because men have lost the faculty of getting right into the being of Nature. It would never have occurred to human beings who felt in this way to look out into Nature at animals, plants and minerals shining and sparkling in their color, to imagine that in this there is one single reality, a dance of atoms—that would have seemed utterly unreal. “But man needs this dance of atoms for his calculations about Nature.” Yes, that is just it, people believe they need the dance of atoms to be able to make calculations about Nature. Calculations in those days meant being able to live in numbers and magnitudes and not having to attach these numbers and magnitudes to what is only densified materiality. I do not want to raise objections against the service densified materiality renders today, yet one must mention how different the configuration of souls was in that more ancient age.

Then another age came in my book Occult Science. I have called it the old Persian; everything was built upon the principle of authority. People preserved during the whole of their life what is today experienced in a dull, repressed form between the seventh and fourteenth years. They took it with them into later life. It was more intimate but at the same time more intense. In a certain sense human beings looked through the external movement, through man's external physiognomy, or through a flower. They looked at something that was less outwardly objective. What they saw gradually became only a revelation of what exists as true reality. For the first post-Atlantean epoch of civilization the whole external world was simply reality, spiritual reality. The human being was spirit. He had a head, two arms and a body, and that was spirit. There was nothing to deter the ancient Indian from addressing the being he saw standing on two legs, with arms and a head, as spirit. In the next epoch men already saw more deeply into things. It was more in the nature of a surface behind which something more etheric was perceived, a human being more in a form of light. Man had the faculty of perceiving this form of light because atavistic clairvoyance was still present.

And then came the epoch of the third post-Atlantean culture. One felt the need for penetrating still further into the inner being of man or of Nature. The outer had become clearly perceptible and man is beginning to look through the outer perceptible to the spirit and soul within. The Egyptians, who belong to this epoch of the third post-Atlantean culture, mummified the human body. In the epoch of the old Indian culture, mummification would have made no sense; it would have been a fettering of the spirit. A distinction had arisen between body and spirit by the time mummification was practised. Formerly men would have felt they were imprisoning the human spirit, no distinction having been made yet between body and spirit, if the body had been embalmed as mummy.

Then among the Greeks—and actually into our own time—there was already a clearly established separation between the body and the spirit and soul. Today we can do no other than keep these two apart, the bodily and the soul-spiritual. Thus in earlier epochs man really saw the ego through sheaths.

Imagine the ancient Indian. He did not look at man's ego. His language was such that it really only expressed outwardly visible gestures and outwardly visible surfaces. The whole character of Sanscrit, if studied according to its spirit and not only according to its content, is of the nature of gesture, of surface; it expresses itself above all in movement and contour. The ego was therefore seen through the sheath of the physical body, in the next epoch through the sheath of the etheric, in the third epoch through the sheath of the astral man, man's ego still remaining indefinite, until in our epoch having cast off its veil it enters into human intercourse.

No one can adequately describe the impulse that has entered modern evolution, unless he draws attention to the relationship of ego to ego, free from the sheaths, which is emerging in a totally new way, though slowly, today. I shall not speak in the usual sense of our age being an age of transition. For I should like to know which age is not! Every age is an age of transition from the preceding one to the one that follows. And as long as one simply says—Our age is an age of transition—well, it remains just a hollow phrase. There is something to grasp only when one describes what makes a transition. In Our age we are going over from experiencing the other man through sheaths, to direct experience of the other man's ego.

And this is the difficulty in our life of soul; we have to live into this quite new relation between man and man. Do not think that we must learn all the teachings about the ego. It is not a question of learning theories about the ego. No matter whether you are a peasant on the land or someone working with his hands, or a scholar, it holds good for all of you that at the present time, in so much as we have to do with civilized men, their egos meet without sheaths. But that gives its special coloring to the whole of our cultural development.

Try to develop a feeling for how in the Middle Ages there was still much that was elementary in the way in which one human being experienced another. Let us imagine ourselves in a medieval town.

Let us say, a locksmith meets a town councilor in the street. Now what was experienced was not just that the man knew the other to be a town councilor; it was not exhausted by the locksmith knowing—we have elected that man. It is true there existed a link which gave the men a certain stamp. One belonged to the tailors' guild, one to the locksmiths' guild. But this was experienced in a more individual way. And when one as locksmith met a town councilor, he knew from other sources than from the directory: That is a town councilor. For the man walked differently, his look was different, he carried his head differently. People knew that he was a town councilor from things other than documents, the newspaper or things of the sort. One man experienced the other, but experienced him through his sheaths.

But in the sense of modern evolution we must increasingly experience human beings without sheaths. This has gradually arisen. But in a certain sense men are afraid of it. If we had a cultural psychology then it would describe, in connection with recent centuries, men's fear of being obliged to consort with human beings whose egos are unsheathed. It is a kind of terror. In the form of a picture, one might say that those people who in the last century really experienced their own times have frightened eyes. These frightened eyes, which you would not have been able to find either among the Greeks or the Romans, make their appearance in the middle of the sixteenth century, especially in the sixteenth century. Then we follow up these frightened eyes in literature. For instance, one can form a clear mental picture on reading the writings of Bacon of Verulam. We can glean from his writings with what kind of eyes he looked out at the world. Still more so with the eyes of Shakespeare. They can be pictured quite clearly. One need only supplement the words by the descriptions which circulated of Shakespeare's appearance. And so we must picture the people of recent centuries who lived most deeply in their own times as having frightened eyes, an unconsciously frightened look. At least once in their lives they had this frightened look. Goethe had it. Lessing had it. Herder had it. Jean Paul never got rid of it to the day of his death. We must have an organ for perceiving these subtleties if we want to develop any understanding of historical evolution.

Men who want to find their way livingly into the twentieth century should realize that those who represented the nineteenth century can no longer represent the twentieth.

It goes without saying that books about Goethe written in the nineteenth century by the philistine Lewes, or the pedant, Richard M. Meyer, can give no real conception of Goethe. The only literary work of the last third of the nineteenth century which can give some idea of Goethe is at best the Goethe of Herman Grimm. But that is a nightmare to those suffering from the great cultural disease of modern times, philistinism. For in this vast volume on Goethe you find the sentence: “Faust is a work that has fallen from heaven.” Just imagine what the commentators who pull everything to pieces have said; and imagine someone comes along and says that this should not be pulled to pieces. This may not seem important, yet we must notice such things in speaking about cultural phenomena. Read the first chapter of Grimm's Raphael and you will have the feeling: this must be an abomination to every orthodox professor, nevertheless something of it can be taken over into the twentieth century, for the very reason that for the orthodox professor nothing in it is right.

Thus man was seen within sheaths. Now we must learn to see him as an ego-being without sheaths. This alarms people because they are no longer capable of perceiving what I have described as the sheaths in which, for insurance, one could have seen our town councilor. It is no longer possible, at any rate not in Middle Europe, to give people outer representations of the sheaths. For outer representations, the sheaths still had a connection with the spiritual content existing in medieval councilors. Today—I must confess—it would be difficult for me to distinguish by their outer sheaths between a councilor and a privy councilor. In the case of a soldier, in the days when militarism was supreme one could still do it. But one had studiously to learn to do it, to make it a special study. It was no longer connected with basic human experience.

So there existed a kind of terror, and people made themselves indifferent to it by means of what I described yesterday as the web of intellectualism that spreads itself around us, and within which all are caught. In the centers of culture which have retained something of the East, the inner is still brought into a relation with the outer, the basic with the intellectualistic. Those of you who come from Vienna will sense that in the last century this was still very much so. For in Vienna, for instance, a man who wore spectacles was known as “doctor.” People did not bother about the diploma; they were concerned about the exterior. And anyone who could afford to take a cab was an aristocrat. It was the exterior. There was still a feeling of wanting to live within what can he described in words.

The great transition to this newer age consists in man meeting man free of his sheaths—according to his inner disposition, to what the soul demands; but the capacities for this untrammeled encounter have not yet been acquired; above all we have not yet acquired the possibility for a relation between ego and ego. But this must be prepared for by education. That is why the question of education is of such burning importance.

And now let me tell you quite frankly when the great step forward in educational method can first be made towards the individual ego-men of the new age. But I beg you not to use what I am going to say to impress other people who are of an opposite opinion, for if you do so the only result will be a volley of abuse against Anthroposophy. We shall work rightly in education only when we have learned to feel a certain bashfulness about speaking about it at all, when we feel abashed at the idea of talking about education. This is astonishing but it is true. The way in which education is being talked about will be regarded as shameless in future. Today everyone talks about it and about what he considers right. But education does not allow itself to be tied down in formal concepts, nor is it anything we come to by theorizing. One grows into education by getting older and meeting younger human beings. And only when one has grown older and has met younger people, and through meeting younger people and having once been young oneself we penetrate to the ego—only then can education be taken quite naturally.

Many suggestions about education today seemed to me no different from the content—horrible dictum—of the book of the once famous Knigge, who also gave directions as to how grownup people should be approached. It is the same with books on good breeding. Therefore what I have said and written about education, and what is attempted practically in the Waldorf School, aims only at saying as much as possible about the characteristics of the human being, in order to learn to know him, not to give directions: “You are meant to do this in such-and-such a way.” Knowledge of man—that is what must be striven for, and the rest left to God, if I may use this religious phrase. True knowledge of man makes the human being a teacher. For we should really get the feeling that we are ashamed to talk about education. But under the cultural conditions of today we have to do many things that ought to make us ashamed. The time will come when we shall no longer need to talk about education. Today these ways of thinking are lacking, but only for a little more than a hundred years.

Now read Fichte or Schiller thoughtfully. You will find in their writings what to modern people appears quite horrible. They have spoken, for example, about the State and about organizations to make the State into what it should be. And they have spoken about the aim of the State, saying: Morality must be such that the State becomes superfluous, that human beings are capable out of themselves of becoming free men, capable through their morality of making the State superfluous.

Fichte said that the State should be an institution which gives over the reins and gradually becomes entirely superfluous. It would hardly be possible to demand this of our contemporaries nor would they take it seriously. Today it would make a similar impression as the following incident on a troupe of actors.—A play had been performed for the fiftieth time by a traveling company when the director said: “Now that we have performed this for the fiftieth time, the prompter's box can be dispensed with.” But the actors were quite terrified at the idea. Finally one of them pulled himself together and said: “But, sir, then one will see the prompter!” This is about what would happen with our men of the present day. They do not see that the prompter, too, can be dispensed with. Thus it is today. The State will have found its best constitution when it makes itself superfluous, but the government officials and the Chancellors and the Privy Councilors—what would they all say to such a thing?

Now in practical everyday life we must be right within this great revolution going on in the depths of modern souls if we are to reach an outlook where there is as little talk about education as there was in older cultural epochs. Education was not talked about in earlier days. The science of education first arose when man could no longer educate out of the primal forces of his being. But this is more important than is supposed. The boy or girl, seeing the teacher come into the classroom, must not have the feeling: “He is teaching according to theoretical principles because he does not grasp the subconscious.” They want a human relation with the teacher. And that is always destroyed when educational principles are introduced. Therefore if we are to get back to a natural condition of authority between young and old it is of infinite importance, and an absolute necessity, that education shall not be talked about so much, that there should be no need to talk or think about it as much as is done today. For there are still many spheres in which education is conducted according to quite sound principles, although they are beginning to be broken through.

You see, theoretically it is all quite clear, and theoretically people know how to handle the matter, just as it is handled by the academic opinion of the present-day. But in practice it is quite good if there should happen to anyone what happened to me. A friend had scales by his plate and weighed the different foods so as to take the right quantity of each into his organism. From the physiological point of view this was correct—quite definitely so. But picture this transposed into the realm of education. Unfortunately it does happen, though in a primitive way and only in certain connections. But it is more wholesome when this happens intuitively, if parents, instead of buying some special physiological work on nourishment, judge how to feed their children through the feeling of how they themselves were once fed. And so in Pedagogy one must overcome everything which lays down rules as to how much food should be taken into the stomach, and of striving in the sphere of education for real insight into the nature and being of man. This insight into the nature of man will have a certain result for the whole of human life.

You see, whoever comes to an understanding of the human being in the way I have been describing during these days, and thereby imbues his knowledge with artistic perception, will remain young. For there is some truth in this—once we have grown up we have actually become impoverished. Yet it is of the greatest importance that we should have forces of growth within us. What we have in us as a child is of the utmost importance. But to this we are led back in inner experience through true knowledge of man. We really become childlike when we acquire the right knowledge of man and thereby qualify ourselves to meet those who are young and those who are still children in the right way.

There must be a striving that says, not in an egoistical sense as often happens today: “Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” We must seek for this even in practical life. Unless we were imbued with an active human force which worked in us during childhood, we could never be educators. Pedagogics is not enough if it makes the teacher or educator merely clever. I do not say that it should make him empty of thought. But in this way one does not become empty of thought. Pedagogics that makes the teacher merely clever is not of the right kind; the right kind of pedagogics makes the teacher inwardly alive and fills him with lifeblood of the soul which pours itself actively into his physical life-blood. And if there is anything by which we can recognize a true teacher or educator, it is that his pedagogical art has not made him a pedant.

Now, my dear friends, that you can find a pedant working in some place is perhaps only a myth or a legend. If teachers are pedants, if these myths and legends are founded on truth, then we may be sure that pedagogy has taken a wrong road. To avoid giving offense I must assume these legends and myths to be hypothetical and say: If pedants and philistines were to be found in the teaching profession it would be a sign that our Education is going under. Education is on the ascent only when, in its experience and whole way of working, pedantry and philistinism are driven right out of men. The true teacher can be no philistine, can be no pedant.

In addition to this, so that you may be able to check what I have been saying, I ask you to consider from what vocation in life the word pedant is derived. Then, perhaps, you will be able to contribute to the recognition of the reality of what has been indicated; I do not want to enlarge upon it because already much that I have said is being taken amiss. It is only on the assumption mentioned that we can have a right Pedagogy, otherwise it would have to become a Pedagogy in accordance with what I have been giving you in these lectures. Thus in the lecture tomorrow I will attempt to bring these talks to some conclusion.