The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In these lectures, some of the occult signs and symbols will be discussed in such a way that the meaning and significance of such symbols and signs will be revealed not only to the mind but also to the senses and the soul.

You all know that in occultism, in Theosophy, the most diverse symbols and signs are used, and you also know that sometimes a great deal of ingenuity and speculation is applied to interpreting such signs and symbols. These lectures will now show us that much of this acumen and speculation is misplaced, and that speculation and acumen are not at all the abilities by which one can come close to the real meaning of occult signs and symbols. For the occultist, signs and symbols are by no means limited to what is listed as such in the usual manuals and writings. Rather, we find occult signs and symbols most frequently where we might least expect them: In myths and tales rooted in the people, deep occult truths are hidden. The mistake usually made in the interpretation of such myths and legends is simply that too much ingenuity, too much speculation is applied; one might almost say that too much is sought in a rational, too much reason is sought in a deep sense. Of course, a series of four lectures cannot exhaust this subject, but only treat it aphoristically. Nevertheless, what we discuss should be presented in such a way that we can form a conception of the relationship between the occult signs and symbols and the higher worlds, namely, what is called the astral world and the devachanic or spiritual world.

You know that even in ordinary language, when we want to imply something higher, we often use certain figurative similes. For example, if we want to use an image for knowledge or for insight, we say “light” or also “light of knowledge”. Behind these simple expressions of our language there is sometimes something extraordinarily profound. Those who use such expressions are often not even aware of the origin and therefore often have no idea how, for example, the image of light relates to knowledge or insight. They take it as a figure of speech, just as poets use figures of speech today. We would be quite wrong if we thought of occultism only in terms of such a figurative meaning. Things are much, much deeper. What in modern language is called symbolic, what is called pictorial, and what is also called an allegory, is as a rule misleading. It is easy to think that a sign has been arbitrarily chosen for something. In occultism, no sign is ever chosen arbitrarily. When a sign is used in occultism for a thing, there is always a deeper connection.

However, we will not be able to truly understand this connection between occult signs and symbols and the higher worlds if we do not delve a little into how man, from the point of view of occultism, relates to his environment. When occultism, or that elementary part of occultism that is proclaimed today as Theosophy, will one day fulfill its mission in the world in a deeper sense - with that only a beginning has been made - when it will one day come to the various branches of our life and culture are permeated by the truths and impulses of occultism, then the whole emotional and intuitive life of man, his whole relationship to the world around him, will change fundamentally. If we want to describe how today's human being relates to the environment, we have to say: for a number of centuries, the human being has increasingly developed a relationship to the environment that is very abstract, very intellectual, very materialistic. A person walking through the fields today, whether in spring, summer or fall, usually sees what meets the eye, what the senses can perceive, what the mind can combine from the sensory perceptions. If a person is aesthetically inclined and has a poetic sensibility, they imbue their perceptions with feelings and emotions, feeling sadness and pain at one natural phenomenon and elation, joy, and delight at another.

But even where, in the case of modern man, dry, sober sensual perception gives way to poetic and artistic feeling, it is actually only a beginning of what must be given through occultism, not to reason, not to the mind, not to the heads, but to the souls and the hearts. Only then will Theosophy become a significant factor in life, when it gives us not just a mental summary of all kinds of events in the physical, astral and devachanic planes, but when it becomes so ingrained in our souls that our souls feel, sense and learn differently. We must realize that through Theosophy and Occultism there will really come to pass more and more what we emphasized in our lecture yesterday: Humanity will learn to see in what is expressed in the outer world, as it presents itself to the senses, the physiognomy, the gestures, the facial expressions, through which what is soulful and spiritual is revealed behind things. We will learn to see an expression of the spiritual and soul-life in what is going on outside in the surrounding world, in the movements of the stars, just as we see an expression of something soul-like in the hand movements or in the gaze of a person. And so we will learn, for example, to see in the brightening air an external manifestation of internal processes of spiritual beings that truly permeate the air, the water and the earth.

Let us try to imagine how nature appears around us when we elevate ourselves to a concept of the soul and spirit that lives around us. Once we have opened ourselves up to this, we have to ask ourselves: What about the souls of the creatures living around us on the physical plane, the souls of animals, plants and minerals? What is in these three kingdoms of nature, besides what is physically presented to our senses? If we consider the animal kingdom, it differs quite substantially from the human being in spiritual and mental terms. What we have in the individual human being, enclosed within the boundaries of his skin, we do not have in the same way in the individual animal. The individual animal can rather be compared to an individual limb of a human being. We can compare all formally identical animals, so for that matter all lions, all tigers, all pikes, all flies and so on, everything in the animal kingdom that has the same form, with a limb of the human being, for example with the fingers of the hand. If we take the ten fingers of the human being, we will not be tempted to ascribe a soul to each of the ten fingers that would be endowed with ego. We know that all ten fingers belong to a single human being. We ascribe the I-soul to the individual human being. Just as we ascribe the I-soul to a single human being, we ascribe an I-soul to an entire species of animal; whether you call it the same group or species soul is not important. What is important is that we think of things as flowing into each other, fluctuating. Thus, in the case of a group of animals of the same form, we must assume that the same thing underlies them as underlies the individual human being: the I-soul. However, we must not look for this soul of the animal groups where we look for the I-soul of the human being. The place where this I-soul of the human being is between birth and death is the physical plane. This is not to say that this I-soul, by its nature and essence, belongs only to the physical plane, but the human I-soul lives on the physical plane. This is not the case with the group I-ness of animals. For these group Iches of animals, to which the individual animals belong that are of the same nature, it does not depend on the place where the individual animals are; whether a lion is in Africa or here in a menagerie, it makes no difference. The individual animals all belong to the same group I, and the group I is on the astral plane. So if we want to find the ego of a group of similarly shaped animals, we have to go clairvoyantly to the astral plane; and on the astral plane, the group ego of the animals in question is as complete a personality as a human being is on the physical plane. If a man puts out his ten fingers, and you put up a wall here, and the man puts his ten fingers through the ten holes in the wall, then someone standing outside the wall sees only the ten fingers; if he wants to find the ego behind the ten fingers, he must go behind the wall. So you must imagine that we have to see the individual lion as part of the group ego of all lions. If you go to the astral plane, you will find there a lion-genus individuality or personality of all lions, just as you find the individuality for the ten fingers of the human being behind the wall. The same applies to the other similarly formed animal species. And when you “walk” on the astral plane, you will find the astral plane populated by these animal group-I's, which you will encounter there just as you would encounter individual people here on the physical plane. The only difference is that these group-I's reach out for the separate animal individuals on the physical plane, just as you reach through the wall for the individual ten fingers.

But there is an enormous difference between the nature, the inner character of the group-I of the animals and that which is the character of the individual human being. This difference will seem very paradoxical to you, but it exists. There is a peculiar fact here: if you compare the intelligence and wisdom of the animal group-I on the astral plane with the intelligence and wisdom of humans here on the physical plane, you will find that the animal group-I are much cleverer. Everything they have to do is done with the greatest matter-of-factness. In the course of evolution, the human being must first bring his I to that wisdom which the animal group-Iche already have on the astral plane. These animal group-Iche lack one thing, however, which the human being here on the physical plane has to develop throughout the entire evolution on earth. This specific element is not to be found at all in the animal group-Iche. This is the element of love, everything that is love - from the simplest form of blood love between blood relatives to the highest ideal love of a universal brotherhood of man. This element is being developed by humanity within the evolution of the earth. The animal group-egos also have feelings, perceptions and volitional impulses. The mission of the human being here on earth is to develop love; this is lacking in the animals. The basic element of the group ego of animals is wisdom, just as the basic element of the human ego is love.

If we now want to find out how we ourselves are to perceive the revelations of these animal group-Iche within the surrounding nature, we only have to remember that everything around us here are revelations of spiritual events and spiritual beings. Those who are not endowed with clairvoyant abilities cannot, of course, take those “walks” on the astral plane whereby they encounter the population of animal group-Iche there as they encounter physical human Iche here on the earth. But even those who are not clairvoyant can perceive the effects, the deeds of what the group-Iche do here on the physical plane. He can observe how every year, when autumn approaches, the birds fly in the direction from northeast to southwest to the warmer regions, and how they fly back in very specific paths when summer approaches. If you compare the individual paths according to their height and direction for the individual bird species, you begin to suspect that there is wisdom, deep wisdom in all of this. Who is in charge of all this? The animal group egos are in charge. Everything that the various animal species accomplish here on our planet is an effect, an action of the animal group egos. And if you follow these actions of the animal group egos, you will find that, essentially, these animal group egos span the circumference of the earth, that they unfold as forces around the circumference of the earth. The earth is circled by forces of the most manifold kind, by forces that go around the earth in the most manifold convolutions, in straight and crooked and snake-like lines. Man can see these forces here only in their effects, in their revelations. When he grasps these revelations, he can divine what, with clairvoyant ability, leads him to the group Iches of the animals. Thus we can learn to empathize with the wisdom that takes place in our animal kingdom. What the genera and species do reveals something of the deeds of the animal group-I.

The situation is different for the plant world. For the plant world, too, the occult observer sees a series of I's, but there are far fewer I's for the plant world than for the animal world; they are more limited in number. Again, whole groups of plants belong to a common I, and these lie, when we visit them, in an even higher world. While the animal group I's are on the astral plane and live out their lives in the astral that flows around and envelops our Earth, the plant group I's are to be found in the lower regions of the Devachan plane, in what we are accustomed to calling in Theosophy the Rupa parts of the Devachan plane. There they live as closed personalities; just as people do here, the group-I-ities of plants walk there. Along with other beings that do not have a physical body at all, the plant-I-ities are there and form the population on the lower devachan plan.

How does a person find their way into the perception of these plant group-I-ities? The perception itself is ultimately tied to the development of clairvoyant abilities. But this development leads from lower levels upwards, ever higher and higher. What one must first develop in order to ascend to these abilities is feeling and sensation for the matter. Real, true clairvoyant abilities are always based first on the development of feelings and sensations, but not on trivial, egoistic feelings, no, on deeper and more devoted feelings. This is something completely different.

When you look at a plant, you must first of all focus your attention on the fact that the plant develops its roots into the soil, that it pushes its stem upwards, unfolds its leaves upwards, gradually transforming them into sepals and a corolla, in which the fruit then forms. It is important to realize that we cannot compare the plant to the human being in this way. We must not compare the human being to the plant in such a way that we compare the head of the human being to the corolla of the plant and his feet to the root. That is completely wrong. In occult schools, it has always been pointed out and said: You must compare the plant and the human being. But you have to compare them in such a way that you compare the head of man with the root of the plant. Just as the plant turns its root towards the center of the earth, so man turns his head into the universe; and just as the plant chaste turns its blossom and its fruit organs towards the sun, man shamefully turns his fruit organs straight down, where the plant turns its root. That is why occultism says: Man is the upturned plant. The plant appears like a human being standing on its head; the animal stands in between.

In what is usually called a plant, only the physical body and the etheric body of the plant are present. But the plant also has its astral body and its I. But where is the astral body, and where is the I of the plant? We can ask about this place, because it is only a general definition of the matter when one says that the group I of plants is on the lower Devachan plan. We can indicate quite precisely where the astral body of the plants and where the ego of the plants is. The astral body of the plants, and indeed the astral body of all plants that exist on our globe, is the same as the astral body of the earth itself, so that the plant is immersed in the astral body of the earth. In terms of location, the plant-I am in the center of the earth. From the occult point of view, we can understand the earth as a great organism, as a living being that has its astral body; and the individual plants that are on our earth are the limbs. Individually, separately, they only have the physical body and the etheric body. In the individual plant, the individual lily, the individual tulip and so on, there is no consciousness; the earth has its consciousness, its astral body and its I. But there are not only plant 'I's; there are also other spiritual entities. We must not ask whether there is room for all of them. They are interwoven, and they can get along very well there. So when you look at the individual plant, you can only ascribe to it the properties of a physical body and a life body, but not consciousness as an individual being. But plants do have a consciousness, and it is connected with the consciousness of the Earth, it is part of the consciousness of the Earth. Just as we human beings have a consciousness that encompasses joy and sadness, and these interpenetrate each other, so the individual astral bodies of plants permeate the astral body of the Earth, and the plant 'I's permeate the center of the Earth. The living plant occupies the same position in the organism of our earth as milk in the animal organism. Similar astral forces underlie the process by which the plant sprouts from the earth, greens and flowers, and by which the cow gives milk. When you pick a plant with its flower, it does not feel unpleasant for the earth. The earth has its astral body and has feelings there, and when you pick a plant, it feels the same as when a calf sucksleaks, it feels a kind of sense of well-being. When you remove what has grown out of the ground, the earth does not have the individual plant - a sense of well-being. If, on the other hand, you tear out the plant by the roots, it is for the earth as if you were tearing flesh from an animal; it has a kind of feeling of pain.

If we delve into this, not just in the abstract terms of group-I-ness, but in such a way that we transform the empty abstract concepts into feelings and sensations, then we learn to live with the processes of nature; our observation of nature becomes a living sensation. When we walk through the fields in autumn and see the man with the scythe mowing the grain, we get an inkling that, to the same extent as the scythe passes through the stalks and cuts them off, something like spiritual winds is breathing feelings of well-being over the field. And so it is. What the clairvoyant sees in the astral body of the earth is the spiritual source of what has just been described. For the one who sees into these things, the mowing of the grain is not an indifferent process. Just as one can feel and see in a person, through one experience or another, that astral forms of a very specific kind arise, so one can see these astral expressions of the earth's sense of well-being sweeping across the fields in autumn. It is different when the plow cuts furrows through the earth and reworks the roots of the plants. The plowing through with the plow causes pain to the earth; we see feelings of pain emerging. In response to what has just been said, one could easily object that it would be better under certain circumstances to remove plants from the earth by their roots and replant them than to walk across a meadow and tear up all kinds of flowers out of idleness. Such an objection may well be correct from a moral point of view, but here we have a completely different point of view. It could, of course, be better for a person who is just beginning to go gray to pluck out the first gray hairs if he finds this right for aesthetic reasons, but it still hurts him. It is a completely different point of view when we say: plucking the flowers does the earth good, and when we dig up the plant by the roots, it hurts the earth. Life enters the world through pain. The child that is born causes pain to the mother who gives birth to it. This is an example of how we must learn not only to recognize but also to empathize with nature in our environment.

This extends to the mineral kingdom. Minerals also have their I, only the I of minerals lies even higher; it lies in the upper parts of the Devachan plan, which theosophical literature is accustomed to call the Aupa-Devachan. These group 'I's of the minerals are also partially self-contained entities, just as the human 'I's are on the physical plane, as the group 'I's of the plants are on the lower devachan plane, and as the group 'I's of the animals are on the astral plane. On the physical plane, you have only a physical body of minerals, but the minerals also have an astral body and an etheric body. The seer sees the living connections; he knows that when he goes out to a quarry and sees the workers cutting stones there, something is felt there just as when you cut into the flesh of an organism. And while the workers are at work, astral currents flow through the stone realm. What belongs to the mineral as an astral body can be found in the lower parts of the Devachan plan, and the I of the minerals is to be found in the upper parts of the Devachan plan. The group I of the stones feels pain and pleasure. When you break stones, the mineral group I feels pleasure, pleasure. This may seem paradoxical at first, but it is true nonetheless. If you only think in analogies, you might believe that when you smash a stone, it hurts the stone just as much as if you were to wound a living being. But the more you smash the stone, the more pleasure the mineral ego feels. Now you may ask: When does the mineral ego feel pain? You can perceive pain for the mineral ego in the following example. Take a glass of water in which table salt has been dissolved. Now cool the water in the glass until the salt separates out as solid crystals, thereby re-solidifying the mineral substance. Pain arises in this separation of the solid. Similarly, pain would arise if you were to reassemble all the individual pieces into which you had broken a stone. In the group ego of the minerals, pleasure arises whenever the mineral dissolves, and pain arises whenever it solidifies. A feeling of well-being arises when you dissolve salt in heated water, and a feeling of pain arises when the cooling of the water causes the salt to crystallize.

If we imagine this in a larger, cosmic context, we can see how the formation of our earth and our minerals is connected to such a process. If we trace the formation of our Earth far back in time, we come to ever higher temperatures, to ever greater warmth of our Earth; and we encounter a state of our Earth in the Lemurian period when the individual stones had dissolved, when even the minerals that have now crystallized into solid form ran out, as iron runs out today in ironworks when it is liquefied. All our minerals have undergone a process similar to the one you are experiencing on a small scale when the dissolved salt is deposited in a glass when the water cools down. In this way, everything has solidified and contracted on earth. This solidification has taken place in such a way that solid crystals have gradually been embedded in the liquid earth through contraction. Only through this solidification could the earth become the dwelling place for today's physical humanity.

However, this solidification is to be understood in such a way that it reached a peak in a certain period of time. This peak has now been passed in a certain way, and today we can already see a process of dissolution to a greater or lesser extent. When the Earth has reached its goal, when people have purified and spiritualized themselves to the extent that they can no longer draw anything out of the Earth, then the Earth itself will also be spiritualized again. Then all its mineral inclusions will have become fine and ethereal, so that the Earth can pass into an astral state, which it also had before it became physical. The physical process of dissolution is a transitional state to this.

When we look at the earth at the time when it was preparing to become the solid place, the solid ground on which we walk at our present stage of development, we see an ongoing process of suffering for the earth. As it becomes more and more solid, it suffers and “groans in pain”. Our existence has been achieved through its pain. And we find an increase of this pain in the early part of the so-called Atlantean period. From the time when man gradually brought about his own purification, the earth also attained liberation from pain and suffering. This process is not yet far advanced. The greater part of the solid ground that lies under our feet still suffers today, and when we turn our clairvoyant gaze to it, the solid ground is a revelation of the sighs of the earth's being. Whoever studies these facts from the occult and then rediscovers them in the great religious scriptures, will realize from what depth of the spiritual world these scriptures are written. We develop more and more a feeling of reverence for these religious documents. Through our experience, we can thus empirically recognize, by looking at the facts of the outer world, what real foundations underlie St. Paul's saying: “All nature groans in pain, awaiting adoption as a child.” Translate this saying of St. Paul's for yourself: All becoming earth is a becoming under pain, a drawing together into the firm under pain, so that afterwards for their beings the “adoption as children,” the spiritualization, can take place.

In what is really called the Secret School we must begin with such images from our environment, which, when they are looked at, awaken feelings in us. One begins by imparting to the pupil who wishes to undergo a training such images and concepts that enable him to see what is happening in nature not only as an external process, but to feel it as an inner experience with his whole soul, to feel how the becoming of our earth, its solidification, is like pain. This image of pain represents a real spiritual fact. In true occultism, images are not something invented, but are derived from real spiritual facts. No philosophy, no speculation, not the greatest acumen can unravel such an image; only the knowledge of the facts of the higher worlds leads to understanding. In occultism, all images are expressions of spiritual facts.

I just wanted to give you a hint today of how what we acquire in elementary theosophy as ideas, concepts and notions gradually leads to experiences; and every image in occultism is taken only from experiences. If you take, for example, the well-known image of the swastika, you can find the most astute interpretations for this image in the various scriptures. How did it originally come into occultism? This image is nothing other than the reflection of what we call the astral sense organs. Through a certain approach, through training, the human being can develop astral sense organs. These two lines (it is being drawn) are actually movements in the astral body, which are seen by the clairvoyant as fiery wheels or flowers. They are called lotuses.

For these wheels or lotus flowers – of which, for example, the two-petalled one is located in the area of the eyes and the sixteen-petalled one in the area of the larynx – for these astral sense organs, which appear as a luminous phenomenon in the astral world, is the sign, the image, the swastika. Or let us take another symbol, the so-called pentagram. You cannot find the original meaning of the pentagram by speculation or philosophy. The pentagram is a reality; it is a picture of the working of currents, of force currents that are found in the etheric body of the human being. There is a certain flow of forces in a person from the left foot up to a certain point on the head, from there to the right foot, from there to the left hand, from there through the body, through the heart to the right hand, and from there back to the left foot, so that you can draw into the person – into his head, arms, hands, legs, feet – the pentagram.

You have to imagine it as a force effect, not just as a geometric figure. In the etheric body of the human being you have the pentagram. The force effects follow exactly these lines of the pentagram. The lines can take the most varied contortions, but they always remain drawn as a pentagram on the human body. The pentagram is an etheric reality, not a symbol, but a fact.

Thus every symbol in occultism is an image of a fact in the spiritual world. One recognizes its significance only when one can point to the world in which this fact is rooted. Therefore, even the greatest acumen cannot lead to the interpretation of occult signs. The meaning of occult signs and symbols can only be found through experience [of spiritual worlds], and only with the realization of their meaning can man do something with them. It is therefore by no means useless for man to be told and told something that was first found through clairvoyant ability. And from the fact that has been researched, man can in turn be led back to the causes of that fact itself.

The same applies to signs and symbols as to ancient legends and myths. It is a theory based on erudition that legends and myths were invented by folk poetry. The people do not make up stories. All legends and myths are remnants of a time when man was still clairvoyant to a certain extent. What we are told in European legends and myths are records of facts that people saw in the past. Everything in these legends, fairy tales and myths was originally seen clairvoyantly and is the retelling of original clairvoyant experiences. That is what mythology is all about: the retelling of clairvoyant experiences.

Even today we can follow all the events related in mythology on the astral plane. The deeds of Wotan or Odin are real happenings. We must seek realities behind the occult signs, symbols and seals. And the less one allows oneself to be tempted to undertake an interpretation of these signs out of speculation, the better it is.

This lecture series is intended to guide us into the factual sense of occultism. No sign is invented or conceived; it is a picture or reproduction of a real process in the spiritual world. And all the stories we encounter in mythologies are renditions of what people saw when a large proportion of people still had clairvoyant powers.

The whole of the Gospel of St. John culminates in that event in human history which we call the “Mystery of Golgotha.” To comprehend this Mystery of Golgotha esoterically predicates also the ability to decipher the deep significance of this Gospel. If we turn our attention to what exists at the very central point of this Mystery and wish to express it in occult terms, we must contemplate the moment of the Crucifixion when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Saviour, and at the same time we must remember something which has often been said in the course of these lectures, that for one who knows the spiritual worlds, all material, substantial, physical objectivity is only the outer expression, the external manifestation of something spiritual. Now let us permit the physical event to arise before our souls: Christ-Jesus upon the Cross, the blood flowing from His wounds. What does this picture, the content of which is a physical event, express for those who are able to understand the Gospel of St. John?

This physical event—the occurrence on Golgotha—is the expression, the manifestation of a spiritual event which stands at the central point of all earthly happenings. Anyone interpreting these words according to the present materialistic world concept will not be able to make much out of them, for he will not be able to imagine that at that time something occurred in this unique Event of Golgotha which differs from some other like event, or from one perhaps physically similar. There is a very great difference between all the earthly occurrences which preceded this Event of Golgotha and those that succeed it.

If we wish to picture this in the soul in all its detail, we must say that not only has the individual human being, or for that matter any other individual creature, a physical, ether and astral body as we have described it from many aspects in the foregoing lectures, but that cosmic bodies likewise do not consist only of physical substance as they appear to the astronomer and to other physical researchers. A cosmic body has also an ether and an astral body. Our earth has its ether and astral vehicles. If our earth did not possess its own ether body, it would not be able to harbour the plants; if it did not possess its own individual astral body, it would not be able to shelter the animals. If we wish to visualize the earth's ether body, we must imagine its central point exactly at the center of the earth where the physical earth body also has its central point. This entire physical earth body is embedded in its own ether body and these two are again embedded in an astral body. If someone had observed clairvoyantly the astral body of the earth during the course of the earth's evolution, during the course of long epochs of time, he would have seen that, as a matter of fact, this astral body and ether body of the earth have not always remained the same, that they have changed. In order to represent the matter quite pictorially, let us in spirit transplant ourselves outside beyond the earth to some other star, and let us imagine a person with clairvoyant vision looking down upon the earth from this star. He would not only see the earth suspended there as a physical planet, but he would see an aura about it, he would see the earth surrounded by an aura of light, for he would be perceiving the earth's ether and astral bodies. If this clairvoyant person were to remain a long time on this distant star, long enough to have observed the pre-Christian periods of the earth pass by and the Event of Golgotha approaching, the following spectacle would have presented itself to him. Before the Event of Golgotha the aura of the earth, the astral and ether bodies offered a certain aspect of colour and form, but following a particular, definite moment of time, he would have seen the colour of the entire aura changing. What was this particular moment of time? It was the very moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ-Jesus upon Golgotha. All spiritual earthly relationships, as such, changed from this moment.

It has been previously stated that what is called the Logos is the sum total of the six Elohim who, united with the sun, present the earth with their spiritual gifts, while externally the physical sunlight is falling upon the earth. Therefore the light of the sun appears to us like the outer physical body of the spirit and soul of the Elohim or of the Logos. At the moment of the Event of Golgotha, that force, that impulse which formerly could only stream down upon the earth as light began to unite with the earth itself. And because the Logos began to unite with the earth, the earth's aura became changed.

We shall now consider the Event of Golgotha from still another point of view. We have already reviewed the evolution of the human being and of the earth from various standpoints. We know that our Earth, before it became the Earth, passed through the three embodiments of Saturn, Sun and Moon. Therefore the embodiment just preceding that of our Earth was that of the ancient Moon. When a planet has attained the goal of its evolution, something happens to it similar to what happens to a human being who, in a certain incarnation, has attained his life's goal. The planet passes over into a different invisible existence, a state called a “Pralaya” and then after a time it embodies itself anew. Thus between the previous embodiment of our Earth, the Moon Evolution, and the Earth's present embodiment, there existed an intermediate state. Out of a sort of spiritual, self-animated, externally invisible existence, the Earth gleamed forth in its earliest state and out of this state developed those states which we described yesterday. At that time, in that early age when our Earth gleamed forth, it was still united with all that now belongs to our solar system. It was then so large, that it reached to the furthest planets of this solar system. All was unity, for only later individual planets became segregated. The present earth up to a certain point of time was united with our present sun and moon. Thus we see there was a time when sun, moon and earth were a single body. It was as though you were to take the present moon and sun and stir them together with the earth and thus make one large cosmic body. This was our Earth once upon a time when your astral body and your ego were floating about in a vapour-like form. Even earlier than this the sun, moon and earth were joined together. At that time the forces which are now in the sun—the spiritual and physical forces—were bound up with the earth. Then came a time when the sun separated from the earth; but not only did the physical sun with its physical light which can be seen with physical eyes depart, but with it all its spiritual and soul beings at whose head stood the Elohim, the real Spirits of Light, the denizens of the sun. What was left, was a mixture of the present moon and earth. Then for a time the earth, though separated from the sun, was still united with the moon. It was not until the Lemurian period that the moon separated from the earth, when, as a result, there arose that relationship between these three bodies, sun, moon and earth, that exists today. This relationship had to occur. The Elohim had to act from without. It was necessary for one of them to become Lord of the moon and from there reflect the powerful force of the other Elohim. We live at present upon our earth as though dwelling upon an island in cosmic space which has separated from the sun and moon. But the time will come when our earth will once more unite with the sun and again form one body with it. Then human beings will be so spiritualized that they will again be able to bear the stronger forces of the sun, able to receive them and unite them with themselves. They, together with the Elohim, will then occupy the same field of action.

You will ask, what is the force that will bring this about? Had the Event of Golgotha not occurred, the earth and the sun would never be able to reunite. For through the Event of Golgotha, which bound the force of the Elohim in the sun to the earth—in other words the force of the Logos—the impulse was given which will again eventually impel one Logos-force toward the other, and finally once more unite them—sun and earth—in one body. Since the Event of Golgotha, the earth, spiritually observed, is possessed of the force to draw the sun again into a unity with it. Therefore it can be said that through this great Event, the force of the Logos, which formerly radiated down upon the earth from without, was now taken up into its spiritual being. The question may be asked, what existed previously within the body of the earth? It was that force which streamed down upon it from the sun. But since that time, what exists there within the earth? The Logos itself which through Golgotha has become the spirit of the earth.

As truly as your soul and spirit dwell within your physical body, do also the soul and spirit of the earth dwell within the body of the earth—that earthly body which consists of stones, plants and animals and upon which you tread. This soul and spirit, this earth spirit is the Christ. Christ is the spirit of the earth. When the Christ spoke to His most trusted disciples on an occasion which can be numbered among the most intimate of such occasions, what did He say to them? With what mystery had He occasion to entrust them? He was able to say to them: “It is as though you can gaze into your own soul from your physical body. Your soul is within. It is the same when you observe the whole earth-sphere. That spirit which for a time now stands here before you in the flesh is also the spirit of the earth and will always continue as such.” He had occasion to point to the earth as to His real body and ask: “When you behold the cornfield and then eat the bread that nourishes you, what in reality is this bread which you are eating? You are eating My body. And when you drink of the plant sap, it is like the blood in your own body; it is the blood of the earth—My Blood!”—These were the very words that Christ- Jesus spoke to His most intimate disciples and we must take them very literally. Then when He called them together and expounded to them symbolically what we shall call the Christian Initiation, He uttered those extraordinary words which we find in the 18th verse of the 13th Chapter of the Gospel of St. John, where He announced that one among them would betray Him:

“He who eats My bread treads me under foot.”

These words must be taken literally. Men eat the bread of the earth and tread upon the earth with their feet. If the earth is the body of the Earth-Spirit, that is, of the Christ, then men tread with their feet the earth's body, the body whose bread they eat. An immense deepening of the idea of the Last Supper as presented in the Gospel of St. John is granted us, when we learn about the Christ, the Earth-Spirit, and about the bread which is taken from the body of the earth. Christ points to the earth and says: “This is My body!” Just as the muscular human flesh belongs to the human soul, so does bread belong to the body of the earth, that is to the body of the Christ. And the sap that flows through the plants, which pulsates through the vine stalk, is like the blood pulsating through the human body. Pointing to this, the Christ says: “This is my blood!” That this truthful explanation of the Last Supper can cause some of the sanctity to be lost which has always been associated with it can only be imagined by someone possessing no understanding of it or who has neither desire nor capacity for such an understanding. But anyone who wishes to understand will acknowledge that this does not cause it to lose in holiness, but that through it the whole of the earth-planet becomes sanctified. What powerful feelings can be engendered in our souls, if we can behold in the Last Supper the greatest mystery of the earth, the connection between the Event of Golgotha and the entire evolution of the earth; if we can learn to feel that in the Last Supper the flowing of the blood from the wounds of the Saviour had not only a human, but a cosmic significance, that is, it gave to the earth the force to carry forward its evolution.

Anyone who understands the profound meaning of the Gospel of St. John will feel not only united through his physical body with the physical body of the earth, but as a psycho-spiritual being will feel united with the psycho-spiritual being of the earth which is the Christ Himself, and then he will feel how the Christ, as the Spirit of the Earth, flows through his body. When we have this experience, we are able to ask: what illuminated the writer of the Gospel of St. John at that moment when he was able to behold the profound mysteries which have to do with Christ-Jesus? He beheld the forces, the impulses which are present in Christ-Jesus, and he perceived how these impulses must be active in mankind, if only mankind will receive them.

In order to understand this quite clearly, we must once more bring before our souls the way in which human evolution actually takes place. The human being consists of physical, ether and astral bodies and an ego. How does this evolution occur? By the ego gradually working through the other three members, purifying and strengthening them. The ego is called upon gradually to purify the astral body, to cleanse it and to raise it to a higher level. When the entire astral body has been purified and strengthened by the special forces of the ego, it becomes Manas or Spirit-Self. When the ether or life-body has been thoroughly worked over and strengthened by the force of the ego, it becomes Budhi, or Life-Spirit. When the physical body has been fully overcome and conquered by the ego, it becomes Atman or Spirit-Man. Then will the human being have reached the goal which above all lies in store for him. That, however, will be attained only in the far distant future. Moreover, we wish it to be quite clear that the ego acts in full consciousness in what has just been described; namely, that the human being consisting of the four members—physical, ether and astral bodies and ego—works by means of the ego upon the other three members, transforming them into Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. For the most part this is not yet the case with present humanity which, as a matter of fact, is just beginning, fully conscious, to work a little of Manas into its astral body. The human being is doing this now. Through the help of higher beings he has already, although unconsciously, worked upon his three lower members during this Earth evolution. In ancient times he unconsciously worked over the astral body, and this then became permeated by the Sentient Soul. The ego unconsciously worked into the ether body and this unconsciously re-formed ether body is what you will find described in regular sequence in my book Theosophy as the Intellectual Soul, and that part of the physical body, unconsciously worked upon by the ego, you will find described there as the Consciousness Soul. The Consciousness Soul only came into being toward the end of the Atlantean period when the ether body—previously outside the physical body in the head region—gradually drew wholly within it. Through this the human being learned to utter the word “I.” Thus variously-membered, he gradually passed over into the post-Atlantean period. It is the task of our age to work Manas or Spirit-Self by degrees into what had previously been received unconsciously. The human being must, as it were, develop Manas within himself by means of all the forces he has acquired by virtue of possessing a physical, an ether and an astral body, a sentient, an intellectual and a consciousness soul; by means of all the forces which these various members can give him, he must develop Manas and also, although in a very small degree, the germ of a Life-Spirit or Budhi. Therefore our post-Atlantean age has the important task of helping the human being to develop consciously these higher members of his being (Manas or Spirit-Self, Budhi or Life-Spirit and Atman or Spirit-Man) in the distant future when he will at last have reached his goal. He must from now on, by degrees, develop within himself the force to evolve his higher members out of his lower.

Let us now ask: what has been the condition of the human being that has kept him from already developing these higher members, and what will be the difference in the future? How will the humanity of the future differ from that of the present?

When at last the whole of the higher man has been developed, the entire astral body will be so completely purified that it will simultaneously become Manas or Spirit-Self; the ether body so thoroughly purged that it will simultaneously become Life-Spirit or Budhi, and the physical body will be so greatly metamorphosed that it will, at the same time, be as actually a Spirit-Man, Atman, as it is now a physical body. The greatest force will be needed to conquer this lowest body, hence the conquest and transformation of the physical means the greatest victory for the human being. When mankind has fully perfected the physical body, this physical man will then become Spirit-Man or Atman. All this is at present only in germ within the human being, but a time will come when it will live in him in its fulness. And by lifting his gaze to the Christ Personality, to the Christ Impulse, by energizing and strengthening himself through this Christ Impulse, he draws into himself the force that can accomplish this transformation.

Since humanity of the present has not yet perfected this metamorphosis, what is the result? Spiritual Science makes this very clear. Because this katharsis of the astral body has not yet been accomplished, that is, the astral body has not yet transformed itself into Spirit-Self, selfishness or egotism is possible. Because the ether body has not yet been strengthened by the ego, lying and error are possible; and because the physical body has not yet been fortified by the ego, sickness and death are possible. In a once fully developed Spirit-Self, there will be no more selfishness; no sickness and death, but just health and salvation in the fully developed Spirit-Man, that is, in the fully evolved physical body. What does it mean for the human being to take the Christ into himself? It means that he has learned to understand the forces that are in the Christ, which if taken into himself make it possible for him to become master even of his physical body.

Imagine for example that someone could receive the Christ Impulse fully into himself, that it could completely pass over upon him. The Christ Himself might stand directly in the presence of this person and the Christ Impulse be transmitted to him. What does that signify? If the person were blind, he would yet be able to see by means of the direct influence of this Christ Impulse, for the final goal of evolution is the conquest of the forces of sickness and death. When the writer of the Gospel of St. John speaks of the healing of the man born blind, he is then speaking out of the depths of the Mysteries, he is demonstrating, by means of an example, that the force of the Christ is a healing force when it appears in full power. It may be asked: Where is this force? It is in the body of the Christ, in the earth! But this earth must, in truth, be fully permeated by the being of the Christ Spirit or of the Logos. Let us see if the writer of the Gospel recounts the story with this meaning. How does he relate it?

Standing there is the blind man. The Christ takes some earth, insalivates it and lays it upon the blind man's eyes. He lays His body, the earth, permeated with His spirit upon the blind man. In this description, the writer of the Gospel indicates a mystery which he very well understands. Now laying aside all prejudice, let us talk a little more in detail of this sign—one of the greatest performed by the Christ—in order that we may learn to know more exactly the nature of such a thing and not be disturbed because our very clever contemporaries will consider what has just been said to be sheer madness or folly! There are, however, in the world great and mighty mysteries which mankind is not yet entitled to know. Human beings of the present day, even though they may be sufficiently developed, are not yet strong enough to go through the great Mysteries. They can know of them, they can understand them when they are able to experience them spiritually; but our present humanity, so deeply immersed in matter, is not yet capable of converting them into their physical expression.

All life is, in fact, made up of antitheses and extremes. Life and death are just such extremes. For the thought and feelings of the occultist, there is something very extraordinary in seeing, for example, a corpse and a living human being side by side. When we have a living, waking human being before us, we know that a soul and spirit dwell within him. But as far as consciousness is concerned, this soul and spirit are, as it were, cut off from any connection with the spiritual world; they cannot look into it. If we have a corpse before us, we have the feeling that the spirit and soul which once belonged to it are passing over into the spiritual worlds where consciousness, or the light of those worlds is flashing up within them. Thus the corpse becomes a symbol of what is taking place in the spiritual world. But in the physical world also, there are reflections of what is happening in the spiritual world, but they are of an extraordinary character. When a human being descends again into physical birth, his bodily part must be reconstructed; material substance must, so to say, rush together in order that a body be created for him. For the clairvoyant, this rushing together of physical substance represents the death of consciousness in the spirit world. There it dies—here it becomes alive. In the rushing together of substance to form a physical human body can be seen, in a certain sense, the dying of a spiritual consciousness; while on the other hand, at the moment of decomposition or of the burning of the physical body, when the parts disintegrate and dissolve, the opposite actually becomes manifest in the spiritual world, that is, the awakening of a spiritual consciousness occurs. Physical dissolution is spiritual birth. Therefore all processes of decay and dissolution mean something more than just decay and dissolution to the occultist. A churchyard, spiritually observed, where physical bodies are in the process of dissolution, is the scene of remarkable processes, the continuous flashing up and glistening of spiritual birth; (I am now speaking of what is taking place spiritually in the churchyard itself apart from the human beings there).

Let us imagine for example that a person were to give himself up physically to a certain training—naturally no one would recommend this, for the present physical body could not possibly endure it—to a schooling in which he would train his body to breathe in putrified air for a certain prescribed length of time with the conscious intent of taking in the spiritual processes which have just been described. If he does this in the proper way, then in his following incarnations—it cannot be done in one—he can be incarnated with that force which offers restorative and health-giving impulses. Breathing putrid air belongs to a schooling which gradually gives strength to the spittle, when mixed with the ordinary earth, to become the healing substance which the Christ rubbed upon the eyes of the blind man. This mystery through which a person consumes, eats or inhales death, by which he acquires the power to heal, is the mystery to which the writer of the Gospel refers when he describes such signs as the healing of the man born blind. Instead of declaring without cessation that such and such a thing should be interpreted to mean thus and so, it would be much better were people to learn that such a thing as is described in the healing of the blind man is literally true, that it exists, and that it is possible to have respect for such a personality as the writer of the Gospel and be able to say: “There was such a person who was thoroughly initiated into this mystery about which we must try to acquire an understanding.”

It was, moreover, necessary to call attention beforehand to the fact that we are here in an anthroposophical group in which many prejudices have been eliminated, thus making it possible to speak of such real mysteries as the insalivation of the earth's soil for healing purposes, and to say that such an incident has a literal significance.

However, let us now try to comprehend how, by knowing these facts, we unite with the idea that occupies us today namely, that the Christ is the Spirit of the earth and that the earth is His Body. We have seen the Christ spiritualizing the etheric element in one instance and have seen Him giving up something of Himself in order to perform the miracle we arc considering. Now let us consider something else. Besides what has been said today, let us take what the Christ Himself said: “The most profound mystery of My being is the I AM, and the true and eternal might of the I AM or of the Ego which has the force to permeate other bodies must flow into human beings. It dwells within the Earth Spirit.” Let us hold this clearly in mind and take very earnestly, quite seriously, the fact that, because the Christ wishes to bestow the true ego upon every human soul, He will awaken the God in it and gradually enkindle the Spirit of the Lord and King in everyone. What does this signify? We have here nothing more nor less than the fact that the Christ brings to expression, in the highest sense, the idea of Karma, the karmic law. For when anyone fully understands the idea of Karma, he will understand it in this Christian sense. It means that no man should set himself up as a judge of the inner soul of another human being. Unless the idea of Karma has been understood in this way, it has not been grasped in its deepest significance. When one man judges another, the one is always placing the other under the compulsion of his own ego. However, if a person really believes in the “I AM” in the Christian sense, he will not judge. He will say: “I know that Karma is the great adjuster. Whatever you may have done, I do not judge it!”

Let us suppose that a transgressor is brought before a person who really understands the Christ-Word. What will be his attitude toward the transgressor? Let us suppose that all those who would like to be Christians were to accuse him of a terrible sin. The real Christian would say to them: “Whether what you maintain has been done by him or not, makes no difference, the I AM must be respected; it must be left to Karma, to the great law which is the law of the Christ-Spirit Himself. Karma is fulfilled in the course of earthly evolution. We can leave it to this earthly evolution to determine what punishment Karma shall inflict upon a human being.” He would perhaps turn to the earth and say to the accusers:—“Pay heed to yourselves, it is the duty of the earth to inflict the punishment. Let us inscribe it then upon the earth where it has, moreover, been registered as Karma.”

Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives.
And early in the morning He came again into the temple and all the people came unto Him and He sat down and taught them.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto Him a woman taken in adultery; and they placed her in their midst.
They said unto Him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned; but what sayest Thou?
This they said, tempting Him, that they might accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground.
So when they continued asking Him, He lifted Himself up and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.
But when they heard this, being convicted by their own conscience, they went out one by one, beginning at the eldest even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
When Jesus had lifted Himself up and saw none but the woman, He said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?

This He said in order to turn her thoughts away from all idea of outer judgment and point to an inner Karma.

She said, No man, Lord.

She was left to her Karma. Thus the only thing for her was to think no more about “punishment” which Karma fulfills, but to change her life.

And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

Thus we see that the idea of Karma is bound up with the idea of the Christ in its deepest sense, is connected with the very significance of His Being for the earth. “If you have understood my Being, then you have comprehended also Him whose Being I express and know that the I AM brings compensation.” The impulse to independence and an inner completion is what the Christ has given to mankind.

Humanity has not even today attained a very great understanding of true, esoteric Christianity. However, when men learn to understand what is to be found in such a writing as the Gospel of St. John, they will by degrees take into themselves the Impulse present in it. Then in a far distant future, the Christian ideal will be accomplished.

Thus we see that in the post-Atlantean period the first impulse for developing the higher man flows into the earth. Tomorrow we shall become acquainted with the evolution of the human being in his relation to the Christ Impulse here in this post-Atlantean period and then, proceeding further, we shall show what the Christ of the future will be.

We are all the time coming nearer to an understanding of those elements in the lives of individuals that can give us an inkling of the place of karma in their personal existence. In order to reach this goal in the course of these lectures it will be my task to-day to indicate how karma can be investigated by Initiation-science, to begin with through actual experience of karma, and how man—at first without Initiation-science but with a certain intimate capacity for observing life—can develop insight into the potency of karma. Let us remember here what I have said about memory and thoughts which stream up in their multitudes from the depths of the world of soul, some summoned by our own activity, some rising up freely. They are thoughts which give us a picture, shadowy and more or less abstract it is true, but for all that a picture of our earthly life since birth. Attention has recently been drawn to what a man loses if he loses his memory. He is then still able to act quite sensibly and reasonably, but he does not act out of the context of his whole life; he acts as if at the point of time when his action begins he remembers nothing of his life hitherto; he acts, in fact, as if he had come into the world as a skilful, intelligent, rational individual but as if his life hitherto had simply not been spent on this Earth. From this we see how for the ordinary-level consciousness of to-day, the Ego is anchored, grounded, in the memory but in the case referred to can no longer find its bearings along the path of memory leading through this earthly life.

But what does this memory amount to? Let us compare it with the actual experience of the reality from which the memory comes to us. We have our place in life, we go through life with its joys and sorrows, find ourselves interwoven in our experiences with the whole of our being. But just compare the intensity of feeling that accompanies an actual experience with the shadowy remembrance preserved in the soul. We need only take an especially significant event in life, for instance, the death of a friend who was particularly dear to us, or the death of father or mother, at a time when such a happening would be an exceptionally deep experience. Let us compare the full intensity of the event and the moment when it was experienced, with the shadowy memories that come to us ten years later! And yet we must have these shadowy memories in order to be aware of the continuity, the intrinsic value and reality of our Ego in earthly life. But is it not evident from this how the Ego, which can find no bearings in earthly life without memory, really experiences itself in a shadowy way, how it is anchored in what actually sinks down every night into unconsciousness? As a matter of fact we do not experience our ‘I,’ our Ego, with very great intensity in ordinary-level consciousness on Earth. The real Ego of life that is not immediately present grows more and more akin to thought, although we know that it is connected with the Ego of to-day. Experience of the present has intensity but this intensity is absent from experiences that have become remembrance. So that we can say: (a drawing was made) if this is our perceptive soul, our spirit, which are in living intercourse with all that streams in upon us from the outside world, behind this Ego we experience in shadowy recollection what remains to us of it. The characteristic feature of this memory is that feeling and also impulses of will are more and more sifted out of it. However intense our feelings may have been on the occasions referred to, the death of someone extraordinarily dear to us, for instance, yet the memory picture which remains has become dim, more and more devoid of feeling. And even less is there any continuance of what we then undertook out of our will-impulses under the impression of the moment! Feeling and will fade away; the calm memory-picture, a mere shadow of what we actually experience, is all that remains as a rule. And we can exist in the land of Earth only if this shadow of an experience remains with us. Our relation to memory is one thing, to present experience quite another.

But we can approach direct experience in another way, not as we usually do; we can ask new questions about our experiences. It must be admitted that if we look back on life it assumes a remarkable aspect. Let us ask ourselves what we really are at the present moment with our knowledge, with the quality of our feeling, the energy of our will. And if we return to our experiences with these newly asked questions, we shall discover how poor we should be, after having reached a certain age in life, if our previous experiences had not been there! If we look back, more particularly to many experiences of youth and relate the remembrance of them to the present day—how happy they were! If we often look back over our life we can say to ourselves something highly significant for the present moment. We can say: we owe the facility with which we adapt our soul, perhaps even our physical constitution with more or less dexterity to life, to the circumstances that in youth we were able to live happily, not suffering from depression, that we were led to much that gave us joy. These impressions of joy in the soul endow us in later life with a certain happiness, although it is drawn down into deeper regions of our being. Let us now ask how much of what life brings us in the way of inner deepening, how much of this is to be attributed to our sorrows, our sufferings? And let us also ask: what can arise in the soul if we look at our life with these questions in mind? We must give the answer to these questions not with the intellect, but with feeling. And feeling answers: I must be thankful to all that has come into my life because only thereby have I become the being I am and with whom I more or less identify myself. I cannot know whether otherwise I might have been of even less account. I can only be thankful to life, because I have become what I am through its joys and sorrows.

This question must be answered with a feeling of thankfulness to life. And it means a great deal if this thankfulness for earthly existence finds its way into the human soul. If certain deepenings of the soul are achieved and life is judged not out of emotion but out of the soul in its purity, then this thankfulness always arises. Though much of what life has brought us may be deplored, yet in many respects the regret is the expression of a complete error. For if what is regretted had not taken place we should not be what we actually are. The feeling that we can have about life amounts ultimately to this thankfulness. Thankfulness may also be felt even when we are not entirely in agreement with life, when we would like to have had more from our existence. We can also be thankful if we are given a small cake by someone from whom we might have expected the present of a large one. The fact that we had expected a large cake must certainly not weaken our thankfulness. And so it can truly be said that whatever, in our opinion, life has denied us—and this opinion may after all be erroneous—it has at all events brought us something. For what it has brought us we must develop the feeling of thankfulness. But when in all earnestness we develop the feeling of thankfulness—we need only reflect on this and it will be readily understood—there must be thankfulness for something else. Anyone who has developed thankfulness to life will be led, through this thankfulness itself, to recognition of the invisible spiritual Bestowers of life and to the transformation of memory in loving devotion to them.

The most beautiful way for one's personality to be led to the super-sensible is when the path leads through thankfulness to life. Thankfulness is also a way into the super-sensible and finally it becomes veneration and love for the life-bestowing spirit of man. Thankfulness gives birth to love and when love is born from thankfulness to life it opens the heart to the spiritual Powers permeating all existence. And as life began with our birth and we cannot possibly begin to be thankful to life merely from our birth as we then already obviously possessed certain qualities, it is therefore quite certain that thankfulness to life leads out of this life into pre-natal existence. In order to be fully aware of what I am now saying it must in any case be proved in actual life. If thankfulness develops out of unprejudiced observation of life, let us test whether love that quickens insight into the spirit is not actually born from this thankfulness, and we shall find that it is so. The question arising here can indeed only be answered through life itself, but life answers as I have indicated. When, however, through actual experiences we develop thankfulness and love to the life-bestowing spiritual Powers our feeling is quite different from anything associated with memory. We experience vividly, with intensity; in memory our experiences become pale shadows. Memory owes its existence to our experiences; but we now come to something that is mightier than our ordinary Ego.

When we consider the experiences that have come to us we are not concerned merely with our shadowy memories; we are concerned with something mighty, not with the shadow of our Ego flowing through time, but with the creator of this earthly Ego. Outside on every hand are the events to which we owe our existence, and when we consider these events we must acknowledge them to be powerful creators of our earthly Ego. We stand in the middle of them with our momentary, present Ego; behind us, if we look into our soul, are shadowy after-images of our experiences; before us, there is weaving destiny, the successive experiences of destiny which have formed and moulded our Ego. The transition from thinking to feeling belongs in fact to this vivid feeling of the shaping of destiny, for thankfulness and love can be experienced only in the realm of feeling. It is to this thankfulness and love that there comes a presentiment of an irrevocable destiny. When we have divined the existence of this ruling destiny, having experienced thankfulness and love, we begin to feel the power of the events that have made us what we are. Think of someone of forty years of age: he has made his mark. In order to take an extreme example, let us say that he has become a great poet—after all there have been such people! ... I might also say, not to go far afield, a noted physiologist, or physicist, but I will take an imaginary example. This man looks back to his eighteenth year; he goes through the events from his fortieth back to his eighteenth year and finds that at the age of eighteen he failed in his leaving examination. At that time it had been a great grief to him. But he had been obliged to arrange his life differently, for he had not enough money to repeat the year, or to go through the wide world as a student who had failed in his examination. Everything was already prepared! Had he passed the examination he would have become an excellent financial inspector, have done an immense amount of work, but have had no time to develop the facilities and powers lying in the underground of his soul. Of course it can be said that if these powers of phantasy exist they are so strong that in any case they would break through the financial activities! This can be said in the abstract, and is invariably said, but it is not true. Many a poet owes his special temperament and what he has become to the circumstance that something of the nature I have indicated happened to him. He will be grateful—if he sets any value on having become a famous poet—to the examiners who ‘failed’ him and did not hinder the course of his life by giving him ‘excellent’ in each subject. Whatever life has been, when we take it in its reality and not sentimentally we can certainly develop this thankfulness and acknowledge that we have been forged by the destiny that goes with us or against us. But at all events we must undergo this feeling in order to see destiny as it were weaving as living reality before us.

Here I should like to interpolate how the same experiences come to one who possesses Initiation-knowledge, one who can therefore see into the spiritual world. He directs his gaze—which has already been sharpened by the Imaginative and Inspired knowledge he possesses and about which you can read in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—he directs his gaze to some particular experience. One who has intensified and strengthened his knowledge can direct his gaze with particular intensity to any experience he is undergoing at the present moment. If a man has Initiation-knowledge he is affected by the experience not less but more strongly than if he has no such knowledge. From the fact that he apparently undergoes experiences with much greater composure than a man who has not this knowledge it must not be concluded that he is less deeply moved by them. He is much more strongly affected than the other. It is only that he has acquired the power to look with composure and objectively at the hard experiences of life; deep down in his being he feels them more significantly than does the other. So when a man endowed with Imagination and Inspiration has experiences they are intense and strong; and because he has practised the relevant exercises in this and in the preceding life he can transform the experiences into pictures full of content, into actual Imaginations.

In what does this transformation consist? It consists in the fact that not only does what the eyes see of the events and experiences, stand there, but that the deeper spiritual connections become evident and a picture which is also carried about with one when the experience has passed, arises; the experience has passed but the picture is immediately present. The experience is intense and through Imagination the spiritual connections play into it. The soul is strongly stirred and it is then possible to look into the spiritual reality and to retain the experience. If a night goes by, the experience, which has become more intense because the astral body and the Ego go out of the physical body, is carried into the spiritual world. What has been experienced in the physical world with the physical and etheric bodies together can be experienced in the spiritual world only with the Ego and astral body; but then, on waking, it is driven back again into the physical body. But it is not brought back as if by the ordinary consciousness which is restricted to memory which gradually fades away. It is carried back in such a way that one's whole being is permeated as with a phantom; it is carried with one in full objectivity, in all intensity, and it resounds with the reality of another human being standing bodily before one.

And then again two or three days or nights pass. Then, after these two or three days or nights the following happens: what was first carried into the spiritual world by the Ego and astral body and has been brought back so that it is quickened and vibrates in the physical body, yes, even becomes articulate and stands behind the experiences as the ruling destiny. The experiences are not alone; they are now coloured by what produced them in former earthly lives, by the forecast of how they will go on working in the earthly lives to come. Just as we put memory as a shadowy image behind us, one who has Initiation-knowledge puts experiences in front of him so that they are clearly there before him. But they become as transparent as glass and behind them, like a mighty cosmic memory, stands the evolving karma, the objectivised memory. And one becomes aware that man not only has within him the shadowy memories of earthly life but that his karma is engraved around him in the cosmic ether, the Akashic Chronicle. Within is shadowy memory, without is the cosmic memory of our destiny through the lives on Earth even although it remains unknown to the ordinary-level consciousness.

Our passage through the world may be sketched like this (a sketch was made). We walk over the ground of the Earth bearing within us shadowy memories. If we were to picture to ourselves a human being with these shadowy memories in him we should have to picture them as a little cloud in the region of his head—where the head passes over into the body—gradually becoming more and more shadowy towards the body. As a human being moves through the world he is surrounded by an etheric aura in which all his experiences are inscribed but also everything that is inscribed in him from the previous earthly life. We have an inner memory and we have the world's memory outside us. Every human being is surrounded by this aura. Not only is the present life engraved in us by way of memory, but round about us the earthly lives of man are engraved. It is not always easy to decipher this memory, but it is there. The deciphering is difficult and in the instances of which I have spoken to you during the last few days, the deciphering was not easy to convert into knowledge. But everything is there. Man has not only a memory within him but an auric memory around him. It is not possible in a single moment to call up a remembrance of what one has passed through in life. The remembering always requires several days. Here, waking up and going to sleep must also come into play, as I have described. It can never be said that as some experience has been undergone one should necessarily remember how it was affected by earlier lives on Earth. It must be fixed in the mind clearly and imaginatively, permeated with inspiration; and then one must wait until it reveals itself. One must never speculate about the spiritual world in research, never invent anything, but only make the preparations for enabling something to reveal itself from the spiritual world. Anyone who believes he can force the spiritual world to reveal this or that to him will be very greatly mistaken; nothing but errors will come of it. Preparation must be made for what one may hope to receive out of the spiritual world more or less by grace.

Such is the path of knowledge which with Initiation-science can reveal karma. It reveals that each human being bears karma as a kind of aura around him. But through the path of thankfulness in life I have described it is possible to have an inkling of the karma a man carries around him in this way. This inkling of being enclosed in a karmic-auric mantle can come to one. It will take more than a period of a few days as would be possible with Initiation-knowledge, but it will come about gradually in the course of more intimate self-observation—often with respect to experiences lying in the far past, to which we turn our gaze. But if a certain event of our past life is mature enough for us to recognise that the forces of preparation in earlier earthly lives are playing into it, then we certainly have an inkling of the truth. Unfortunately, however, it is rare to-day for a man to penetrate so deeply into his own soul that he achieves this grasp of his own experiences or even comes near to developing the feeling of thankfulness. People to-day take life far too externally. They rush through life without pausing quietly to realise the nature of their various experiences. If one has grown up with a certain perception of the cosmic significance of human life, it may sometimes seem quite remarkable how far individuals are from being what they imagine themselves to be, how often they are simply borne along by life without making any strong individual impression.

Here too I should like to speak of concrete cases. I once came across a history teacher, who was a very clever man and also gave his pupils this impression. It might be said that when he chose to do so he lectured with a certain inner enthusiasm which lent emphasis to his words and when the right moment came, enthusiasm for him as a teacher was aroused in his pupils. There was something remarkable about him. I saw him at the time when he could arouse real enthusiasm among his pupils. But then life got the better of him; he became slack, and the enthusiasm that formerly permeated his lectures was no longer there. He read aloud from books, supposing that the pupils did not know them and would not come across them. But one day a pupil went up to the rostrum and saw the book from which he had been reading, whereupon all the pupils bought it, learnt its contents thoroughly and became excellent scholars. At last he became so superficial that he no longer knew what he was telling the pupils in his class. This transformation came about in a relatively short time, and one could not help being amazed to see how ineffectual he was after having quite recently been able to generate such enthusiasm. A few more years went by and the same teacher of whom I once heard a number of pupils say with the characteristic enthusiasm of youth: ‘There's a man for you! He is really enthusiastic about history ... one can learn something from him!’—this man ended quite remarkably, in a life of stagnation and triviality. In a few years he had degenerated to such an extent that he was obliged to live outside the town where he had been a teacher; he was so little respected that it was impossible for him to live in the town.

Such a change for the worse in destiny seems a great riddle and if life is taken earnestly enough it is through such cases that one begins to ask questions about karma. For very many other human beings seem to jog along in the same old groove, undergoing no such radical changes. To genuine spiritual knowledge such destinies as the one of which I have told you become great problems. Through spiritual knowledge we are led on the one hand to the great problems which in the lecture yesterday, at the end of a series of incarnations, brought us to Woodrow Wilson, but on the other hand, in the life immediately surrounding us we are led in thought to the great questions of human destiny. If we observe an example of this kind quite without prejudice we make the discovery that surely it cannot have its origin in the present life! And there will be countless other, quite different cases, where no such twists of destiny take place. We must therefore set to work with the strong desire to understand such questions of destiny. And other cases arise. I will give another example. These examples always seem to me to have been placed in my own path in order to give my conception of karma the right colouring.

I also came to know another man personally—also a teacher. He was even more revered than the one of whom I have spoken, quite extraordinarily revered by his pupils. They believed him to be the greatest sage at present existing in the world. This was the impression made upon his numerous pupils—not upon all, not, for instance, upon myself, but that is a personal matter and is not characteristic. And now a most remarkable thing happened. One could have believed from the relation of this man to his pupils—he had thrown himself into his teaching with all enthusiasm, with every fibre of his soul—that it apparently satisfied him. Yet one suddenly discovered that he was extremely glad not to be obliged to teach any longer; he had been appointed Director of a much less important school than the one in which he had formerly taught. He was delighted to be able to carry out the business of Director which was much more trivial work than actual teaching. And the most striking and surprising thing of all was that this same man, who could speak inspiringly about Homer and Aeschylus, who presented geography in a wonderful way to his pupils, that this same man ended in trivial party-political circles. It was absolutely incomprehensible!

I am bringing this forward only as an example for I could add any number more to the two cases of which I have spoken. They would be personalities about whom one has the feeling that their Ego has been little affected by life. They stand there as personalities upon whom life has little effect; it has touched them externally only. If it touched them when they were still near their training-college examination or during their University training when they listened with enthusiasm, then they were full of zest. If life has led them to trivialities, then they accommodate themselves to the trivial, and are contented too; nothing touches their souls at all deeply. If it were a matter of cleverness, of intelligence ... well, how many people would be Anthroposophists to-day! Millions of individuals to-day are clever enough to grasp Anthroposophy. What hinders them in our time from coming to Anthroposophy is that in their souls they take life superficially, letting life flow past in its depths, its superficialities, its banalities. They can be unimportant school-reformers for a time and after that sit all day in cafes and play billiards, without a single pause from morning until night. Such things do indeed go on in our modern life.

Here the great question arises as to why this happens. In the case of many souls it becomes apparent in what a remarkable way such circumstances have come about. A whole number of personalities such as those described through the two examples, lead one back into the early Christian centuries, when they had their most important previous incarnations. One is led to those centuries when in the South and also already to some extent in Middle Europe, Christianity had assumed the form which later on it has still in many ways retained. It was a time when, as I have shown in the book Christianity as Mystical Fact, the Mystery-wisdom out of which Christianity had grown, had faded away. The Mystery-wisdom had contained the experience of the Cosmic Christ, the knowledge that the Christ had proceeded from the Sun, which is a spiritual reality in the Cosmos, and had come to the Earth in order to be for the Earth that which He has indeed become. This knowledge which extends from the Earth into realms of cosmic spirituality existed among influential Christians in the first century and faded away in the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh centuries A.D. Then it faded away so thoroughly that to-day it has come to the point—but it began at that time—when the strongest rebuke levelled against the conception of Christ held by Anthroposophy is that Anthroposophy regards Christ as a Cosmic Being, as a Sun Being. Everywhere among our opponents it is accounted to be Anthroposophy's greatest crime that it has a cosmological conception of Christ. It is said that this is a warming-up of what once existed as Gnostic Christianity.—Now people have no idea whatever of what Gnostic Christianity is. For with the exception of a few fragments such as the Pistis Sophia, from which little can be learnt, the Gnosis has become known to posterity only through the writings of its opponents. Hence nothing is really known about it. And now think about this question: if nothing were to remain known of Anthroposophy except the writings of my present opponents, if everything were destroyed except their writings—what would be said about Anthroposophy in times to come? Many critics endeavour to treat the numerous anthroposophical books in existence as the Gnostic writings were treated. If these critics were to succeed, nothing would remain except the writings of opponents. It would be to them that people would turn in the first place—to purely antagonistic literature! That would be extremely interesting! External research into the Gnosis had nothing to go on except the writings of opponents! So it is simply nonsense to talk about the ancient Gnosis having been raked up, for nobody could do such a thing without knowledge of the Gnosis derived from its authentic writings, but these have been lost! It cannot be understood from works mostly written by opponents and nothing else has come down to posterity. But even so, to connect the Christ with the Spirit of the Cosmos is accounted to be the greatest sin. In any real conception of the Gospels, every page, every sentence points to the cosmic nature of Christ. But that conception has gradually been rooted out. And it was at the time when the Gnosis had been most thoroughly exterminated that those individuals who when they come again to-day do not get to grips with life, were for the most part incarnated. In that previous incarnation, when they were already clever and intelligent, the culture of the age prevented them from knowing anything about the Earth's connection with the spiritual life in the Cosmos. It was because they stumbled, as it were, through life, thinking of the Earth as enclosed in itself with nothing but physical stars to be seen outside, that in the next incarnation they can only turn to meet the impacts of real life with stumbling steps.

And so we look into the destiny of men. We discover that the culture of the age exercised this influence upon a very large number of human beings, that it made them superficial and they come to the present incarnation already with the tendency to superficiality as I have described to you. For that is how you experience these men, who once, in an earlier incarnation lost connection with the spirit-powers in the Cosmos; in the incarnation following the decisive one referred to, they cannot find the connection with earthly life. But thoughts about karma must do more than introduce mere reflections into our life, they must bring will, activity. We must therefore bear constantly in mind: How will it be in the future, if to the inability to grasp the Spirit in the Cosmos is added the inability to grasp earthly life, if men's attitude to the trivialities of life is no different from their attitude to the deep realities of life? Then indeed the study of karma becomes a serious matter. It can thrive among us only if pursued with the greatest earnestness.

My wish to-day was to consider karma more from the aspect of feeling.

Philosophy did not arise in the way it is carried on at the present time. Now it is a sum, a group of connecting ideas whose inner, real content is not experienced by the philosophers; instead, they seek theoretical proof for it to show that it relates to reality. So the philosopher is not able to verify his ideas in reference to reality as directly as one always can in the case of any given fact in the real world. Of course, people can certainly harbor some illusions concerning a given fact, but they can easily come to mutual understanding about it when confronting it. In philosophy, the ideas, which despite one's belief to the contrary are actually taken only from tradition, can be related in various ways to reality because this reality is not experienced. In this way the various, diverging systems of philosophy arise. The validity of none of them can be absolutely established because, as reasons for the one or the other system are presented, one can always bring forward opposing reasons to refute them. Since it is only a matter of relative correctness, one can say then that the one who proves something and the one who refutes it are, in most cases, equally in the right. While at the present time a philosophy can be attained that differs from that of one or the other philosopher, it is impossible to arrive at anything that both could be felt directly as real and that also carries conviction because of the directness of observation.

Philosophy has originated out of a state of consciousness differing completely from that of abstract thinking in which it is now produced. Therefore, one must learn once again to live with one's soul in that state of consciousness. But since humanity has in the meantime progressed in its evolution, one cannot just resume the ancient consciousness that gave rise to philosophy. While something similar must be attained if one is to have a philosophy today, it is nevertheless something quite different. The old state of consciousness, which gave birth to philosophy and by means of which a philosopher experienced the activity of his own etheric organism, was partly unconscious.

Compared to modern consciousness in which we think scientifically, that consciousness was dream-like. What we must keep in mind as an ideal for a new philosophy is to be able to experience philosophy in the etheric body, but not in that dream-like way as was the case in olden times. But it must be realized that these dreams of ancient philosophers were not dreams in the same sense as dreams are today. Today's dreams are pictorial conceptions in which, however, the reality factor is nowhere assured by the content of the dream conceptions themselves. These conceptions may consist of all kinds of reminiscences of life; they may relate to processes of the physical organism. In the dream conception itself one never has a convincing indication of any reality. With the consciousness that cultivated philosophy in ancient times it was otherwise. Those conceptions were also pictorial, but they arose in such a way that the picture absolutely guaranteed the presence of a spiritual, an etheric reality, indicated by the picture itself. Today we cannot abandon ourselves to this dreamy, half-conscious soul state. Our scientific manner of forming concepts requires that we think in a fully conscious way, that in all respects we live in full consciousness in our soul life if we want to attain knowledge. Therefore, to achieve a new philosophy we must develop a way of thinking that takes its course in the etheric organism, but at the same time is as fully conscious as the scientific thinking we utilize in mathematics or natural science.

Such fully conscious, pictorial thinking that relates itself to an etheric reality is achieved today in anthroposophical research by means of an inner meditative exercising of the soul. These meditative exercises consist basically in the concentration by the soul on a conceptual content easily visualized at a glance. I shall have to describe details concerning this meditating in the following lectures. You will find it also in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and in my An Outline of Occult Science. Here I shall only mention in principle that it consists in concentrating all the forces of the soul, disregarding everything that makes impressions from outside or from within, so that the soul's forces may rest undisturbed upon an easily surveyable concept. If, with the necessary energy and perseverance, you repeat for months or perhaps for years such a meditative exercise, you arrive one day at the point where you notice that in your soul-spiritual life you are becoming entirely independent of the physical organism so that you can actually come to the realization, “When I think in the physical organism I am making use of it as a tool. To be sure, thinking itself does not run its course in the physical organism, but, because of its finer organization, the latter gives a reflection of the thinking; thereby I become conscious of it. “

Without the physical organism the thinking of ordinary consciousness cannot be carried out; ordinary consciousness, therefore, is bound to the physical organism. Just as we realize clearly that all ordinary thinking takes place only with the help of the physical organism, we also see clearly that in meditation a pictorial thinking activity is brought into play; for by means of meditation, through these ever-recurring periods of the soul's resting on an easily visualized conceptual content, in this inner soul activity we are set free of the physical body. Now, a picture world is experienced that surrounds us, which, in regard to this pictorial quality, resembles the picture world of the ancient thinkers who acquired their philosophy from it. It is experienced, however, with the same clear presence of mind found in any clear concept produced by the observations and experiments of natural science.

In this picture world that he has before him, man now gains an overall view of those forces in his own being that have been active since birth as the forces of growth, and that were responsible for the increase in his bodily size. He also gains a view over the forces active in the metabolism, in nutrition, and in the processes of digestion. In other words, he gains in picture form a complete survey of the life forces that permeate him out of the spiritual etheric world, and build up in him a particular etheric organism, bringing about his form and his life. Again, there arises in man, but in full consciousness, what was present in the earliest philosophers in a dream-like condition, from whom later philosophers have simply taken, in a more abstract form, what is now commonly known as philosophy. In other words, he now rises to the level of supersensible knowledge, which may be designated as imaginative knowledge, the knowledge of imagination. In this imaginative knowledge he surveys the forces of his own growth and life.

But what one perceives here as the etheric or life organism is not as sharply separated from the outer world as, in sense observation, objective things are separated from what is subjective. In sense perception I know: the object is there, I am here. In etheric imaginative perception one's own etheric organism grows together, so to say, with the etheric cosmos. In like manner, one experiences oneself within one's own etheric organism and in the etheric cosmos. What is thus experienced through the confluence of his own etheric nature with the etheric weaving and pulsing in the cosmos, man is now able to bring into sharply outlined picture concepts, and then also to formulate and to express it in human language. In this way man can acquire a philosophy once again.

This philosophy, therefore, can be recovered through the fact that man works himself up to the development of imaginative thinking. But when the imaginative thinker—at the level of exact clairvoyance it may be called imagination—expresses his insights in speech and in thought forms, the matter is formulated in such a way that another person, who cannot perceive imaginatively on his own, can carry over into the full consciousness of ordinary thinking what the philosopher says, and, because it is different, it is also felt and experienced differently. But through the verbal communication and its comprehension, that reality is also experienced in ordinary consciousness. The imaginative thinker can imbue his words with this reality, for he acquires his conceptions out of the real etheric world.

Thus, a philosophy can again be achieved that has been won out of the etheric world, out of the human etheric organism and the etheric cosmos. It affects the listener in such a way that in taking it in with his ordinary, healthy understanding he feels: It has been brought out of the super-sensible—first of all from the etheric—reality. So, when imaginative thinking is attained, a true philosophy will be restored to the world whose authenticity is guaranteed.

For cosmology, the meditative life must be extended. This can take place, if—with the whole range of its forces—the soul accustom itself not only to dwell on a surveyable concept, or complex of concepts, and to dwell on it over and over again in order to enter into an increased intensive activity—which finally is torn loose from the physical organism and continues in the purely etheric—but the soul must also reach the point of being able to eliminate from its consciousness again those concepts on which it has been dwelling. In the same fully willed manner in which it concentrates totally on certain concepts, holding them in its consciousness, so the soul must be able to eliminate them again and to enter a condition of mere wakefulness and full consciousness, devoid of any soul content derived from the senses or from thinking. The soul must be awake but have within itself nothing of all the contents acquired through ordinary consciousness.

When, in full wakefulness, the soul brings about an empty state of consciousness after meditation and attains a certain invigoration with inner strength in maintaining this emptiness of soul while fully awake, then the moment finally comes when a soul-spiritual, cosmic content not previously known flows into this emptiness—a new spiritual world, a spiritual outer world. This, then, is the stage of inspiration, which follows the stage of supersensible perception through imagination.

If one has this capacity for receiving a soul-spiritual cosmic content into the emptied consciousness through inspiration, one is also able to take hold of what I called yesterday man's astral organism. It is that part of him that lived in a soul-spiritual world before it descended to earth and clothed itself in a physical and etheric body. Man becomes acquainted with his own soul-spiritual life before the embryonic life, before birth. He learns to know the astral organism that leaves physical man at death and lives on further in the soul-spiritual world. In inspired cognition he thus learns to know the astral organism that in ordinary consciousness lives itself out in thinking, feeling and willing.

But at the same time, he learns to know the spiritual cosmos. As man has the physical cosmos before him by means of his senses and his sense-bound thinking, he now confronts the spiritual cosmos; only, what within his physical and etheric organism is the work of this spiritual cosmos is much more real than the sense impressions received in ordinary consciousness. One can indeed say that what flows into man through inspiration, whereby he comes to a soul life independent of his body, can be compared with the breathing in of real oxygen. Among other things, through this inspired knowledge one gains a more exact insight into the nature of the human breathing process, and also into the process of blood circulation, which is rhythmically connected with the process of breathing. Through inspired knowledge, one gains an actual view of all the rhythmical processes in man. One attains a view of how the astral organism works in rhythmical man, and further, how this organism, ensheathed by the physical and etheric organisms, is connected with the breathing, with the whole rhythmic system, inserting itself directly in the rhythm of breathing and blood circulation.

Now we are also in a position to comprehend through cognition what is merely hereditary in the physical and etheric organisms and is therefore subject to the laws of heredity that are of the earth, and what man brings with him out of the supersensible, cosmic world, as soul and spirit being. This being enters the earthly world and only clothes itself in the physical and etheric organisms. One can then distinguish between man's inherited characteristics and what he brought with him out of a spiritual world into his physical existence.

In what we now perceive through our astral organism and its reflection in the rhythmic human processes, we have something that can now be integrated into the spiritual cosmos surrounding us, made accessible to us through inspiration. We attain a cosmology that can include man. One gains a cosmic picture of how man's astral organism, with the ego—of which I shall speak shortly—enters the physical organism on the waves of breathing and the other rhythmic processes. We see the cosmos in its fundamental, lawful order as it continues into man through his rhythmic processes. We arrive at a cosmology by which the astral organism is understood; likewise, the rhythmic processes in each individual person.

Thus, inspired knowledge becomes the source of a genuine, modern cosmology that is on a par with that ancient cosmology, which by man's dream-like forces of soul made him similarly a member of the whole cosmos, of a soul-spiritual, cosmic world. The knowledge gained in inspired perception, however, is gained in full consciousness, and can then be seen in its reflection in the etheric body. It is like this: The experiences of inspiration project themselves in pictures upon the etheric body. The insight thus gained in inspiration in the cosmos connects itself with the experiences of fantasy in the activity of the etheric body. What is inspired out of the cosmos is to a certain degree inwardly in motion and cannot at once be brought into sharp outlines. This only happens when it links itself with the experiences of fantasy in the ether body. Then, cosmology also can be brought into sharp outlines. Thereby arises a cosmic philosophy completely appropriate for modern man; a philosophical cosmology, which in this way is formed through a flowing together of inspired knowledge with the imaginations experienced pictorially in the ether body. It is such a cosmology that I have sought to give in my book, An Outline of Occult Science, translated into French as La Science de l'Occulte.

In order to establish the religious life on a basis of knowledge, further development of the meditative life, of soul exercises, is necessary. These exercises must now be extended to the human will. So far, we have chiefly described a form of soul exercises based on a special development of the life of thought. Now the soul's life, insofar as it is revealed in the will, has to be set free from the life of the spiritual researcher's physical and etheric organisms. That happens when the will is employed otherwise than in ordinary consciousness. I will illustrate this method by an example.

The events in the outer world are ordinarily observed as following one upon the other: the earlier one first, subsequently the later one—and thus we trace them also in our thinking. Now, however, we must try to place these events in reverse order, putting the last one first, then the immediately preceding one next, and so on back to the first event. In this way, through an exertion of the will in the soul, we accomplish something not achieved in ordinary consciousness. Normally, you follow the course of outer events with the will that lives in thinking. By means of this thinking in reverse order, thinking differently from the actual course of events in nature, you tear the will free from the physical and etheric organisms. The will that otherwise is merely a reflection of the astral organism is thereby bound to this astral organism. Since the latter is lifted out of the physical and etheric organisms through the other meditations, the will is carried along out of the physical organism into the spiritual world outside. In thus taking the will out of your own organism in the astral body, you also take with it, out of the physical and etheric bodies, what is the real spiritual man, the 'I.' Now, it is possible to live with the ego and the astral organism in the spiritual world together with the spiritual beings. As we live by ourselves in our own body in the physical world, we now learn—through such a training of the soul's life—to live together in the outer spiritual world with all the beings who first revealed themselves in imagination and inspiration. In this way we attain the ability to lead a life in the spiritual world independent of our own physical organism.

Such exercises can be strengthened still more, so that the will puts forth another kind of effort. The more exertion needed for this development of the will, the better it is for experiencing the spiritual world outside the physical and etheric organisms. Man can change his habits by making the deliberate, conscious resolve, “This or that habit you have had for many years; you will now change it into something else by an energetic use of your will so that in four, five or ten years it is so transformed that in regard to it you will appear like a different person.” They may, for example, be small, insignificant habits, of the kind that persist without being given much attention. If you work at them they are the most effective for the sort of supersensible knowledge I am now characterizing. For example, you have a certain form of handwriting. With all your energy, you apply yourself to changing it into a form different from what you are accustomed to and have developed since childhood.

When one devoted oneself for years to such will exercises, the soul finally becomes strong enough to live outside the physical and etheric organisms with the spiritual beings of the outer spiritual world, with human souls either before they are incarnated, or after they go through death and are living in the spiritual world before returning into physical existence and also with those spiritual beings who are only in the spiritual world and dwell there in such a way that, unlike human beings, they never have a physical and etheric body. In this way one arrives at living with one's soul and spirit in that world where the content of religious consciousness is experienced. In full consciousness one enters that world described by the ancient teachers of religion as the divine world; at that time this happened through a more dream-like familiarization with the divine, but now, it is through a fully conscious one, the same fully conscious state of mind as is only developed in mathematics or the exactness of modern natural science. In this way the third level of supersensible knowledge is cultivated, that of true intuition.

Through this true intuition by which we learn to live in the divine-spiritual world, we are able to bring back experiences from that world so as to form them into the content of religious consciousness. Once again, we learn to recognize a basic fact of human nature: how man, with his true 'I' and his astral organism, can live in a purely spiritual world. We now gain a view of man's condition in wakefulness and in sleep; we gain insight into how the ego and astral organism envelop themselves during the waking state in what I have described earlier as the processes of breathing and circulation, the rhythmic processes; but how, as the 'I' creates a reflection of itself in the physical organism, the metabolic processes that live in the circulation of the blood are included in this reflected nature. What man in his ordinary consciousness calls his 'I' is merely a weak reflection of his true 'I.' The true ego is rooted in the divine-spiritual world characterized above. In ordinary consciousness this ego is perceived through the permeation of the circulatory system by the metabolic processes. In these latter, pulsating in the circulation, one senses, feels, what in ordinary consciousness is perceived as the ego. But that is only a weak reflection of the true ego.

In the waking state the reflection of the ego lives in the metabolism that circulates through the rhythmic system of man. That is to say, the true ego exists, but ordinary consciousness only contains its reflection produced in metabolism. When, however, the human physical and etheric organisms use the processes of breathing and circulation, permeated by metabolism, when they use the forces of this rhythmical man themselves, as is the case in the state of sleep, then the true ego, with the astral body, lives in the outer spiritual world. Breathing and circulation, with the pulsating metabolism contained within, then care for the needs of the physical and etheric organisms on their own; the true ego and the astral organism carry on an existence aside from the physical and etheric bodies in the spiritual world. One beholds these alternating conditions by means of true intuition—how the physical and etheric organisms need the breathing and blood circulation, with the metabolism contained in them, to renew their forces. During this time the true ego and the astral organism stay for a while in the spiritual world, carrying on their own existence. When the forces of the physical and etheric bodies are regenerated through rhythmical man to the extent that further rhythmical regenerative processes are not needed, the astral body and ego return and permeate the metabolic process pulsating through the breathing and blood circulation, and man is then awake again.

Thus, one sees how the true ego and astral organisms pulsate in the metabolism. Thus, one learns to know that world designated by the old religions as the divine world in which the ego of man, the true ego, has its innate home. Since what one grasps in this way through intuition is once again reflected in the physical and etheric organisms as in a mirror, one can also express in words, in pictures, in concepts, what one experiences in the purely spiritual world, independent of all human corporeality. This can then be grasped in turn by man's healthy human reason. It can be felt and sensed, it can be experienced in the human heart, and then it forms the content of religious consciousness, which thereby is founded on knowledge.

It is not necessary for every person to find his way into the divine world through intuition. That must be done by one who becomes a researcher of the spirit. But when the spiritual researcher puts what he discovers in the spiritual world into words in the manner characterized above, it then takes on such forms that, through what comes to be revealed in this way, one experiences in the ordinary state of consciousness: “Here, words are spoken that do not relate to this world, but with the power of the reality inherent in them they fully come to life in the human soul.” It is through this power that what is drawn from the spiritual world by spiritual research through an intuitive experience of the divine-spiritual world has its religious influence upon our consciousness.

If men want to acquire once more through their own efforts a religious life based on knowledge, they must accept what the spiritual researcher is able to reveal as his own experiences in the divine-spiritual world gained through true intuition. The religion will return to what it once was. In its inception, every religion was a revelation from the divine-spiritual world: a revelation of those experiences that can be had with those divine beings that earlier reveal themselves to imaginative and inspired perception, but whom one meets on their own level only through intuition.

The kind of thinking that can live in abstractions, that is chiefly employed in scientific research and on which we base our observations and experimentations, has been attained only in the course of human evolution. It did not exist among those people from whom the early philosophers and teachers of religion came—those who founded the old philosophy, cosmology and religious life, of which much has been preserved by way of tradition. In those times, half-conscious dreamily imaginative, inspired and intuitive experiences prevailed. It is from these experiences that men of earlier ages drew their knowledge in every domain of life. Only since the rise of modern natural science do we have what we experience as abstract thinking. One should not believe that only scientists think in this way. Nowadays, it is absorbed through the ordinary schools and by the simplest person living in a rural area far from all urban culture.

No trace of the consciousness that is spread through the civilized world today by this abstract thinking existed in any part of humanity even in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. Everywhere there lived what had been attained by means of the other three states of consciousness. But the fully conscious condition, which we must interpret as the true expression of mankind today, could be achieved only by the fact that abstract thinking, now the pride of scientific life, has integrated itself into the human experience. In other words, the form of thinking that utilizes man's physical organism and needs it in order to think as is the case today—such thinking did not exist in ancient times. Then, man thought only with the etheric and astral elements in his nature and with his ego organization. His thoughts were given him by the revelations of imagination, inspiration and intuition. This is still the case today with people who, through some circumstance that we will mention later, possess a kind of clairvoyance. That is not the modern, exact clairvoyance but something inherited from ancient conditions of dreamlike clairvoyance. Such persons are never able to control their soul experiences, but they can have them, as people in earlier times had them. It is often surprising what clear thoughts are given to such people in their dream-like visions; thoughts based on a far more brilliant logic than even a philosopher can produce. Those are just the thoughts revealed out of the spiritual world. In ancient epochs of human evolution, only such thoughts existed, that is, revealed thoughts.

Abstract thinking, the only kind known today, is obtained by using the physical body as a tool. It is experienced through the instrument of the physical body. This characterizes what modern humanity has achieved in rising to its full consciousness. In regard to the spiritual world, such thinking achieved through the physical body is actually a displaced thinking. For particularly through what I have just characterized, thinking shows that it belongs to the spiritual world. It is now displaced when man employs his physical organization in his thinking. Thereby, thinking lives in an element that is not its very own. But man, nevertheless achieves something in this thinking that he could never attain if thinking would merely result as a revelation out of imagination, inspiration and intuition. Because thinking is obtained through the physical organism it substantially contains nothing from the spiritual world. It is fundamentally an activity taking place solely in the physical body. In other words, this abstract thinking experiences nothing real; it is as if pressed out, filtered out of imagination. What is experienced is illusion. What we experience in abstract thinking is an illusory experience just because we become fully conscious in this thinking.

We can experience two facts in this thinking. First, the illusion in it, which does not itself pretend to express something, becomes a reflection of objective nature. Only thereby has man attained what he is so proud of today, an objective natural science. Outer occurrences in nature could not be objectively presented by a thinking filled with substance of its own. We cannot acknowledge such descriptions of natural processes as were given in olden times as objective natural science. Just because thinking has only a life of semblance, the outer world can reflect itself in this semblance. In a thinking that does not have a substance of its own, the substance of the outer occurrences of nature appears in picture form. So, humanity in its progress is indebted to objective natural science for the fact that it attained full consciousness in an illusory experience of thinking. The epoch in which abstract thinking arose also became the time when objective natural science was attained.

A second fact that man owes to this advance into abstract thinking is his experience of freedom. What man experiences as moral impulses through imagination, inspiration and intuition, even when he experiences it in a dream-like manner as in ancient times—when it was always experienced through dreams, instincts and emotions and thus became an impulse to action—this always puts a constraint on man. An instinct underlying an action in man's organism is something that drives him, forces him here and there. What is brought out of the real etheric world in imagination as moral impulses impels me; I cannot do otherwise than follow it. So it is also with what derives from inspiration and intuition.

Between birth and death man experiences the illusory life of abstract thinking, of pure thinking that is nothing but thinking, yet is carried out through the physical organism. If man now takes moral impulses into this thinking, they then live in the pure thinking that has only an illusory life and cannot force him to do anything, anymore than a mirrored image can compel one to some action. Something that thrusts at me in reality does coerce me. But something that has a mere semblance of life, as, for example, what we experience in pure thinking, cannot compel a person. I myself must decide whether or not I want to follow it. In this way, through the illusory experience of thinking, the possibility of human freedom is given at the same time. Even though a man's thinking is able to experience nothing but semblance, when moral impulses rooted in the spiritual world enter into it and form its content, then they become free impulses.

Man, therefore, owes two things to his advance to illusory experience in thinking: the era of objective natural science, and the attainment of real freedom. Just as I have described the ascent into supersensible worlds in the books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, in An Outline of Occult Science, and in Theosophy, likewise have I sought to present the basis for attaining the consciousness of freedom in the modern age in my Philosophy of Freedom. Thus, we can say that in the epoch in which man has achieved his full consciousness because thinking has streamed down into his physical organism and makes use of it, this thinking has rejected the old dream-like clairvoyance that was once the basis of an old philosophy, an old cosmology and an old religious life. Thereby man has gained the possibility of developing objective natural science in his physical organism between birth and death, and further, the possibility of developing freedom.

Today, however, man is at the point where, retaining his full consciousness, he must again travel the road into the supersensible world in fully conscious imagination, inspiration and intuition. He must do this in order to attain—in addition to what he can experience in objective natural science, and in freedom—a new philosophy, a new cosmology, and a new religious life built upon knowledge of the super-sensible world. These, as revelations from the supersensible world, satisfy modern man in the same way that he is satisfied when by means of his wideawake consciousness in the sense world he attains to an objective science, and to freedom.

Thus, we have now characterized freedom and objective natural science on the one side, and on the other modern spiritual science, and thereby shown how humanity must go forward from the present into the future, so that through attaining supersensible knowledge it can participate in the true human advancement demanded by the world order.

Originally published in Anthroposophical Quarterly, Volume 15, Number 3, Autumn 1970.

In the lectures given here just before the burning of the Goetheanum I spoke to you of man’s connection with the course of the year and of other related subjects.¹ As a continuation of those lectures I want to take your minds back again today to an epoch of history which we have often studied and which must be thoroughly understood if genuine insight into the present phase of the evolution of humanity is to be acquired.

We have heard that certain processes taking place in the human being can be recognised in the ever-repeated happenings of the course of the year. I also said that it was the aim of earlier Mystery-science, Initiation-science, to spread such knowledge among persons able to accept it. By spreading this knowledge the aim was to strengthen man’s thinking, feeling and willing, to strengthen his foothold and position in the world.

We may ask: Why was it that in earlier times human beings were able by their very nature to understand the relation of man the microcosm, to the great world, the macrocosm, as this relation is expressed in the seasonal course of the year? For there was indeed such understanding. This was because in those ancient times man’s inner life, his life of soul, was more closely linked with the etheric or formative forces body than is the case today.

You will remember from the outline which I was able to give in the lectures of the so-called French Course,² that when man has passed through the supersensible life between death and a new birth, when he has sent down to Earth the spirit-seed of his physical body, while he himself, as a being of soul-and-spirit before conception, has not yet descended, he gathers together from the Cosmos the forces of the cosmic ether and with them builds his etheric body which he thus possesses before he unites with his physical body. Thus as man descends from the supersensible worlds as a being of soul-and-spirit, he first envelops himself with an etheric body. Then he unites the physical body given him through the physical stream of inheritance by the father and mother.

In earlier ages of evolution the union into which man could enter with the etheric body before his actual earthly life was far more intimate than it was in later times and is today. And it was because of this more intimate union with the etheric body that it was possible for an earlier humanity to understand what was meant when from the Mysteries it was proclaimed: the physical Sun seen by the bodily eyes is the physical expression of a spiritual reality. Men understood what was meant by the ‘Sun Spirit’. They understood it because when that intimate union between the human soul-and-spirit and the etheric body was still present it would have seemed absurd to expect man to believe that somewhere up in universal space there hovered that physical globe of gas of which modern astrophysics speaks today. To those human beings of an earlier epoch it would have seemed a matter of course that to this physical phenomenon there belongs a spiritual reality and it was this spiritual reality which in all the ancient Mysteries was recognised and revered as the Sun Spirit.

We can point to the fourth century after Christ as the epoch when human beings descending from the supersensible world were no longer united in this intimate way with the etheric body. (These details are only approximately accurate, although in essentials they are correct). There was now a looser union and for this reason the time drew nearer and nearer when in their earthly life too men could use only the physical body when gazing at the Heavens. In earlier times when they looked up to the Heavens they too beheld the Sun but an impulse arose from within them not to see this Sun as a merely physical phenomenon but to recognise soul-and-spirit in the Sun. After the fourth century A.D., however, men could use only the physical body, the physical eyes, when they gazed at the Sun, for their sight was no longer borne and sustained by the power of the etheric body. Hence as time went on they saw merely the physical Sun and to teach of a Sun Spirit was possible only because this had been known by men in earlier epochs and the tradition still survived.

Julian the Apostate was one who learnt from his teachers of the Sun Spirit. But we know that in the Mystery of Golgotha this Sun Spirit came down to the Earth. He transferred the course of His heavenly life to the Earth, changed it into a course of earthly life. For since the Mystery of Golgotha His activity has been concerned with guiding the evolution of mankind in the sphere of the Earth.

You will notice that the two points of time do not coincide. The Mystery of Golgotha tells us, when we look back at it today, that it was then that Christ, the sublime Sun Being, united Himself with Earth-existence. Popularly expressed: since that point of time, Christ has been on the Earth.

Vision of the Sun Spirit was possible to men until the fourth century A.D., because up to then they were still intimately united with the etheric body, as I have already said. And although Christ Himself was already on the Earth, until well into the fourth century the etheric body still enabled men to behold His after-image in the Sun. Just as in the physical world when we gaze at some object and then shut our eyes, the eyes retain an after-image, so in personalities in whom this faculty had remained, the etheric body retained an after-image of the great Sun Spirit when such men looked up into the Heavens. Hence those human beings who were still closely united with their etheric body – and there were many, especially in the regions of Southern Europe, Northern Africa and Asia Minor – realised from actual experience: The Sun Spirit is to be seen when our eyes gaze into the heavenly expanse. And they could not understand what it meant when the teachers and leaders of those other Mysteries of which I spoke during the French Course declared that Christ was on the Earth.

You must remember that nearly four centuries had elapsed since the Mystery of Golgotha, during which time, for the reason I have just given, a large number of sound human beings were unable to make anything of the declaration that Christ had appeared on Earth. What had taken place in Palestine was for them an insignificant event, just as insignificant as it was for the Roman writers who merely mentioned it as an aside. The death of an individual of no importance had taken place under unusual circumstances. The men of whom

I am speaking simply did not understand the depths of the Mystery. It can be said that these men did not need the Christ on Earth for in the old sense He was still there for them in the Heavens. For them He was still the Cosmic Spirit, the Spirit working in the light. For them He was the all-embracing illuminator of mankind. There was still no need for them to look into the human being and seek Him in the ego.

A man who could not grasp why Christ should be sought in a human being on the Earth since He was obviously to be sought in the Heavens, living in the light which from sunrise shines daily upon the Earth and ceases to shine at sunset – such a man was Julian the Apostate. For him, and others of his kind, what had taken place in Palestine was an event on a par with any other historical event, but altogether insignificant. For such men it was an ordinary, actually unimportant event, for the need for Christ was not yet alive in them.

When was it that the need for Christ began to live in men? This is what we shall be thinking about today. When could the need for Christ arise in mankind at all?

Let us now think of the successive epochs of earthly evolution after the great Atlantean catastrophe. The catastrophe took place in the eighth/ninth millennium before Christ and after it we come to the first post-Atlantean civilisation-epoch which in the book Occult Science I called the ancient Indian epoch. In that ancient time man lived paramountly in his etheric body. His union with the etheric body was so close that we can say quite simply: man lived in the etheric body. His life was such that the physical body was really more like a garment for him, something quite external. He looked out into the world far more with his etheric eyes than with his physical eyes.

The second period was the ancient Persian epoch. Man now looked into his environment mainly through the sentient body. In the third, the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, he looked into the world with the help of the Sentient Soul, and at length, in the fourth, the Graeco-Latin epoch, he looked into the world with the powers of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul.

In our own fifth civilisation-epoch since the fifteenth century, which we may call the historic present, man looks into the world with the Spiritual or Consciousness Soul. This brings about the results I have described in their historic sequence in the Natural Science Course.³

But we must now be clear about what this really signifies. The soul makes itself felt to begin with in the etheric body. In the first epoch man is still living altogether in the etheric body. Then he lives in the sentient body. But this, in reality, is still immersed in the etheric body. Only in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch does he begin to live in the soul itself, but even now the soul is still living in the etheric body. In this epoch, when man experiences himself inwardly as a being of soul, he still feels half immersed in the etheric body.

It is in the Graeco-Latin epoch that in his life of soul man grows out of and beyond the etheric body. The etheric body is still within him, of course, until about the year A.D. 333. Then he begins to grow beyond the etheric body in such a way and to such an extent that his soul is only loosely united with it; there is no longer a strong, inner union. In the outer world the soul feels deserted, being obliged to go out into the world without the support of the etheric body. And it is now that the need for Christ arises. Man’s soul is no longer united with the etheric body so he no longer sees the great Sun Spirit, does not even see His afterimage when he looks out into the Heavens.

But world-evolution is a very gradual process, lasting for long, long periods of time. From the fourth century onwards the soul was as it were inwardly emancipated from the etheric body but not yet strengthened in itself; it was still inwardly weak. And if we survey the centuries, the fifth, sixth and seventh, right on into the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, even on into our own time (but we will consider primarily the period until the fifteenth century) we find the human soul inwardly emancipated, it is true, but weak and ineffectual. It feels the need for something but is not strong enough yet to meet this need from its own inner forces, not strong enough yet to seek the Christ, not, as formerly, in the Sun, but now in the Mystery of Golgotha; to seek Him, not in cosmic space but in the course of Time. The soul of man had to grow inwardly strong enough to develop forces within itself. Through all the centuries until the fifteenth, man was not strong enough to develop inner forces whereby he could have acquired understanding of the world through his own soul. Hence he was content to gather knowledge from the writings left by the ancients, from surviving traditions.

This is something we must bear in mind. The soul of man had to grow strong. In the fifteenth century it had reached the point of being able to experience as its own what it was no longer able to experience through the etheric body or through the etheric body out of the physical body, namely, the mathematical domain which it could now experience as abstraction. With this experience mankind has not yet achieved a great deal. But as you will be aware, it is now a totally different kind of experience. It is the impulse, out of the innermost soul itself, to arrive at something which mankind had not been able to reach in ancient times by using the etheric body with which the soul had been so intimately united.

Men had to grow inwardly strong enough to reach the Christ, whereas in earlier times the etheric body had enabled them to behold Him s He appeared in the Sun. We may therefore say that up to the fourth century A.D. it was precisely the most highly cultured men who were unable to make anything of the tidings about the Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha.

It is interesting to be able to say that neither the Emperor Constantine’s adoption of Christ nor the Emperor Julian’s rejection of Him was based on any firm ground. The historian Zozimus even goes so far as to declare that Constantine himself went over to Christianity because he had committed so many crimes against his family that the priests of the old religion refused to pardon him. He therefore broke away from the old Paganism and its priests, the Christian priests having promised him that they would be able to forgive his iniquities. This was hardly a very valid foundation for the adoption of Christianity. Indeed one can truly say that it was by no means out of a deep or intense need for Christ that Constantine turned his allegiance to Him.

In Julian’s case it only required initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries – an initiation which by that time was a very external matter – to fill him with enthusiasm for the Sun Spirit in the form in which that Spirit had been known. In his case too, therefore, the foundation of it was not really profound, although Julian did indeed acquire remarkable insight through his initiation into the Mysteries of Eleusis. But in regard to the Christ question, neither the pros nor the cons were at that time really powerful or profound, for men simply did not know the meaning of the statement that Christ must now be sought for in history, in the body of a man.

And again, from the fourth century onwards, when their souls were inwardly emancipated but not strong enough as yet, men could find no other way to the Christ or indeed to any explanation of the world – for this had to be entirely recast – than through historical tradition, written and oral tradition, largely oral tradition, since few were cognisant of the written traditions and interpreted them to others by word of mouth.

This state of things remained for many centuries, indeed so far as perceptive understanding of Christ is concerned it remains so to this day. But it is of great significance that the soul had become free. Although in history it is true that every change has its preliminaries and its after-effects, nevertheless the year A.D. 333 can be cited as the point of time when the emancipation of the soul became a reality in the more advanced men. But the soul was still too lacking in strength to acquire any inner knowledge by its own efforts. In those times, when a man pondered earnestly and deeply about the surviving traditions and teachings, he could say: ‘Quite a short time ago there were people who still beheld divine-spiritual reality in the Sun. But I see nothing. Those to whom this divine-spiritual reality was revealed drew from it a wealth of other knowledge – mathematical knowledge, for example. My soul does indeed feel itself independent but it cannot yet muster its own forces to acquire such knowledge.’

In the fifteenth/sixteenth century the important symptom was that people began at least to for-mulate mathematical-mechanistic knowledge by using the forces of the soul itself. And Copernicus was the first to apply to the structure of the Heavens what he experienced through an emancipated soul. All earlier cosmologies had been evolved by souls not yet emancipated from the etheric body, who were still using the faculties of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul and who were thus able to apply the powers of the etheric body to look out into the Universe. The Intellectual or Mind-Soul was still active until well into the fifteenth century, but men could make use only of the physical body, the physical eyes, when they gazed upwards to the Heavens. These are the reasons why through all the centuries to this very day, knowledge of Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha could be transmitted only by scripture or oral tradition.

And now – what have we gained as yet through the soul which has become gradually stronger since the fourth/fifth century? External mechanistic knowledge, physical knowledge, of which I spoke in the Course on Natural Science. But now the time has come when the soul must become even stronger; for whereas in earlier days, when gazing up into the Heavens with the help of the etheric body the soul beheld in the physical Sun the Spirit Sun, so now, gazing inwardly into the ego it must feel, behind the ego, the Christ. By physical eyes the physical Sun is seen and by the eyes belonging to the etheric body, the Sun Spirit, the Christ, is seen.

When man looks into himself today he finds the ego. He is aware of the ego, has a feeling of the ego, but it is very shadowy. This feeling of the ego was an experience which first arose in the emancipated soul. Formerly man had looked out into the world; now he must look into his own inner being. Gazing out into the world brought him into touch with the Sun and with the Christ, the Sun Spirit; gazing inward has brought him, so far, into touch only with the ego. He must now reach the stage of finding behind the ego the reality of being which in ancient times the Sun revealed to him. The Christ he once experienced in the light from sunrise to sunset, the illuminator of his life, he must now feel radiating as a light from within himself, from his own ego. In Christ he must find the strong support of his ego.

And so we may say: Formerly man gazed outwards to the Sun and found the Christ-filled light. Now he feels his way into his own being and must learn to recognise and experience the Christ-filled ego. True, we are at the very beginning of this development and we must remember what Anthroposophy tells mankind, namely that the centuries since the fourth century A.D. have been an intermediate period. In the previous centuries men were able to look out into the Heavens and find the Christ as the Sun Spirit in outer space. Now that these intermediate centuries are past a new humanity must arise. Men must find the way into their own inmost being and along this path find the inner Sun, the Christ; for He now appears when the ego is experienced as in former ages He was revealed in the Sun. He who was once the Sun Spirit is now the pillar and support of the ego.

With the fourth century, in that humanity which was gradually evolving out of the Graeco-Latin races, there began the need for Christ which at first could find satisfaction only through written or oral tradition. But today, especially for the more advanced members of humanity, this written and oral tradition has lost its power of conviction. Today, therefore, men must learn to find the Christ inwardly, even as a humanity of olden times found Him outwardly through the Sun and its light. It is important to understand the intermediate centuries during which the soul of man was independent but in a certain sense empty of content. When the soul looked out into the Universe while endowed with the power of the etheric body, it could not possibly perceive in the phenomena of the Heavens that mechanistic-mathematical system which subse-quently became the Copernican system. Everything was perceived in far closer union with the human being. And the result was not some arbitrary cosmic system abstracted entirely from the human being, but the system which then, already decadent, became known as the Ptolemaic.

But when the soul began no longer to be rooted in the cosmic ether with its own etheric body, a new mental attitude in man was gradually being prepared. And this mentality subsequently pro-duced a science of the stars in which it was a matter of indifference whether man is related or is not related to the Heavens. The one and only tribute paid by this transformed mentality to ancient times was that men placed the starting-point of the new system in the Sun. Through Copernicus, the Sun was made the centre of the Universe – not of the spiritual but of the physical Universe. This indicates the existence of a dim feeling that once upon a time the Sun, with the Christ, was felt to be the centre of the Universe. We must not, as has gradually become the custom nowadays, study the external aspect of history only; we must also pay attention to the development of inner feelings, inner perceptiveness, in human beings.

If we really understand how to read Copernicus, in whom this element of feeling was obviously present, we realise that he did not merely calculate. He was aware of an urge to restore to the Sun something of the old glory. This inner impulse led him to the discovery of three laws, the third of which actually makes everything that is said in the first and second, questionable and uncertain. For Copernicus had formulated a third law, which subsequent astronomy, reducing everything to a mechanistic system, simply omitted. This was a law according to which the movement of the Earth around the Sun was by no means described in such absolute terms as it is today. For today, as I have often said, the whole matter is regarded as a simple fact of observation, as if one were to place a gigantic chair far out in cosmic space, view the Sun from there with the Earth circling around it. But the chair would have to be far out in cosmic space and sitting on it the pedant, observing the system from outside. This could not, of course, be regarded as a result of observation at all. Copernicus himself, if I may put it so, had a conscience in these matters not quite as stubborn or hardened as those who later on mechanised the whole structure of the Universe. Moreover he cited phenomena which indicate that this movement of the Earth around the Sun is not, after all, absolute and unconditional. But as I said, this third law was simply ignored and suppressed by later science. The scientists confined themselves to the first two laws – the rotation of the Earth on its own axis and around the Sun – thus obtaining a very simple system which in this form was gradually introduced into the schools. Needless to say, there is no question here of raising opposition to the Copernician system. Its advent was a necessity in the course of evolution. But today the time has come when we must speak of these matters as I tried to do in the Course of lectures on Natural Science and Astronomy, given in Stuttgart.⁴ I showed that we must think about these things quite differently from what is possible in the field of materialistic science today.

In Copernicus himself, in the whole conception of his system, there is still an element of feeling. After all, he did not wish to apply a purely mathematical system of co-ordinates to our solar system with the Sun at the centre. He wanted to give back to the Sun what had been taken away from it because men were no longer able to behold the Christ in the Sun.

Such things as these should show you how necessary it is to observe not only the external facts and the change in men’s thinking in the course of history, but also the change in their feelings. This was especially striking when the mechanistic principle came decisively to the fore. In Copernicus, and notably in Kepler, these elements of feeling are still perceptible and in Newton very emphatically so. A few days ago in the lectures on science I explained how Newton subsequently became rather ill at ease with his mathematical natural philosophy. To begin with he had conceived of space as being permeated with purely mathematical-mechanistic forces, but later on, after reading through what he had written he became uneasy about such an abstract conception, and he thereupon declared that what he had thus posited as abstract space with the three abstract dimensions, was in reality the Sensorium Dei – the Sensorium of God. Newton had grown a little older. These ultra-mathematical ideas pricked his conscience and he now declared space to be the most important realm in the brain of God: the Sensorium.

It was not until later that men of knowledge were judged entirely as thinkers, the element of feeling being ignored altogether. But this ought not to have happened in the case of Newton, above all not in that of Leibnitz and the natural scientists of that time. And anyone who reads a life of Galileo will find on every page how human nature in its fullness was at all times active. Man as a thinking apparatus, feeding himself as such with the results of experiment and observation as any steam-engine is fed with coal, man as a thinking apparatus does not appear on the scene until a later time, and only then becomes the authoritative leader in science which is said to be free of a priori premises. And it is indeed free of a priori premises of true knowledge.

The soul is no longer the empty soul which it became in the fourth century of the Christian era. It is no longer empty for it has filled itself with a multitude of mathematical-mechanistic ideas. But to all this, something must be added: the inner light must be found within the ego, which in order to avoid speaking merely in a figurative or symbolic sense, we should call the Being who is the pillar and support of the soul.

And here we come to something that became more and more apparent in the course of the cen-turies and is strong today but is cast by men who have dulled their senses to sleep into the sub-conscious foundations of their souls. It is: the need for Christ. Only a spiritual knowledge, a knowledge of the spiritual Universe, can satisfy this need for Christ. A characteristic of our own age, the twentieth century, is the need for Christ and with it the inner effort of the soul to muster the power to find the Christ in the ego, or behind the ego, even as in past times He was found in the Sun.

The relation of men to the Sun Spirit in the Graeco-Latin epoch was in the state of evening twilight. For it was in the ancient Indian epoch that men beheld the Sun Spirit with full clarity of vision. We ourselves are living in an age when we should be aware of a dawn – the dawn of the true knowledge of Christ won by man’s own forces. The ancient knowledge of the Sun Spirit which Julian the Apostate still wished to galvanise into new life, can no longer afford any satisfaction to mankind. Even the endeavours of Julian were in vain because of the march of evolution. But the epoch of the first four centuries of our era, when men did not know what to make of Christ and the following epoch when they already felt the need for Him but could satisfy this need only through written or oral tradition – these epochs must be followed by the new age in which there is understanding for words in the Gospel such as these: ‘I have yet many things to say unto you but ye cannot bear them now.’

An age must come which understands what Christ meant when He said: ‘I am with you always, even unto the end of earthly time.’ For verily Christ is not dead; He is alive and He speaks not through the Gospels only. He speaks for the eye of Spirit, when the eye of Spirit opens again to the mysteries of man’s existence. Then He is present at all times, speaks and reveals Himself. Truly it is a feeble humanity that will not strive for the time when men can be told what they could not be told two thousand years ago because they were not then able to bear it. As souls they were still in a condition which made it impossible for them to understand what Christ was offering to humanity. Certainly, those immediately around Him could understand something of it. But the Gospel was given for all beings and the saying just quoted resounds through the whole world.

We must strive to promote a humanity which puts the living Christ in the place of mere tradition. But even without discrediting tradition, nothing could be more unchristian than repeatedly to declare that only what has actually been written down has validity, thus ignoring the revelation of Christ that comes from the spiritual world today, speaking to our thinking as it strives for illumination, to our feeling heart, and to the fullness of manhood in our will.

• 1. English translation published by Anthroposophic Press, Inc. New York, with the title: Man and the World of Stars. The spiritual Communion of Mankind.
• 2. Ten lectures given from 6 to 15 September 1922. A précis of the contents written by Dr. Steiner himself is translated into English and published with the title: Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy.
• 3. A Course of nine lectures given in Dornach during December 1922 and January 1923, entitled: Natural Science in the History of the World. Its moment of origin and subsequent development. A translation by George Adams is contained in Anthroposophical Movement, vols. VI (1929) and VII (1930).
• 4. Eighteen lectures, January 1921, entitled: The Relation of the different Sciences to Astronomy. When the German text is published by the Nachlassverwaltung, the bibliographical number will be 323. A provisional translation is available in typescript only.

Let us consider a few facts connected with man and his relation to the universe in respect of body, soul and spirit. We have seen that in a certain way man’s experiences between death and a new birth, which were connected with the whole universe, enter his inner life during his earthly existence. We have seen that what we experience before birth or conception in the form of outer experiences, is afterwards contained within us, in our inner life. Let us now consider man’s relation to the universe from another aspect, namely that his experiences between birth and death go with him through the portal of death and become experiences of the new existence through which he passes between death and a new birth. In man we must distinguish what he has (I mean, during his earthly life), to begin with, as his inner life, and what separates from this as a kind of external life.

Inner Life: We may first indicate man’s feelings, the inner content of his feelings between birth and death. This constitutes his real inner life. What he feels in regard to the impressions left upon him by the external world, or in regard to his own inner experiences, his feelings of approval or reproach towards his actions, which are the expressions of his will, all this is something which man more or less settles with his own self during his earthly life. He may allow others to look into it, but the essential thing is the way in which man settles all this with his own self. His experiences in connection with perception are, as we already know from our preceding lectures, not real experiences, but they form a world of semblance which surrounds him. In reality, this world is neither inside nor outside; man participates in it and it becomes his inner world only because he develops thoughts and feelings connected with it and because it stimulates him to this or that action. His attitude towards it is essentially the result of capacities he brings along with him through birth. This attitude towards the external world, also his place in the world, the nation he belongs to by birth, etc., all this depends on his preceding earthly and spiritual life. Consequently it points backwards rather than forwards. But something else must be considered that connects us with the external world. What is rooted in our will and passes over into our actions becomes part of the external world. Everything taking place through our actions brings about a change in the external world. The least thing we do transforms the external world.

We may now say: The external world which we ourselves prepare through our actions is rooted in our will. It is related to us in the same way in which the events during sleep are related to us. With our consciousness, with our ordinary consciousness, we are just as unable to look into the depths of our volitional world, as into the conditions which exist during sleep.

All that really takes place in the sphere of the will thus remains inaccessible to our consciousness. I have often explained this as follows: The whole volitional process which takes place when we move an arm or a hand, the forces which develop in these movements, are not accessible to our consciousness. Yet we see the movement of the hand. We see the changes which we bring about; when we simply move something to another place we see this change through our forces of perception. We may therefore say: Our perceptions enable us to know something about the expressions of our will. The human will and the effects which it produces flow, as it were, into man’s sphere of perceptions.

Let us bear in mind our recent lectures. In these we explained that we have, to begin with, man’s physical body, (see drawing) and then his etheric body. In between lies the weaving world of thought, in so far as it is incorporated in the human organism. Between the etheric and the astral bodies lies the world of feeling, and between the astral body and the sheath of the Ego lies the world of the human will.

Our ordinary consciousness is really unable to distinguish the volitional world from the Ego. For the will is united with the Ego. Everything that takes place in the Ego when it wills or does something, does not enter our ordinary consciousness in a direct way. This lives below the surface of our ordinary consciousness, like the events which take place during sleep.

In our physical body we have sense-organs and these are endowed with perception. This also enables us to perceive the manifestations of our will. The physical body has eyes and ears and through these sense-organs we perceive what comes from the Ego and from the sphere of the will. Man’s perceptions, which constitute his most external part, thus become united with what he experiences through his will and his Ego. (See arrow in drawing.)

Consider the following: The will-processes in the depths of the human organism, which arise whenever we walk a few steps, the forces which induce us to move our legs—all this is not accessible to our ordinary consciousness. After a few steps we see a different environment, or at least we see it from a different standpoint. In this changed aspect, sense-perception gives us something which thought transmits during our ordinary state of consciousness; it gives us a picture of what ordinarily lives in the depths of a waking state of sleep. So that whenever our Ego is filled by will-impulses and these become actions, no matter whether brought about by walking or by taking hold of something, or by any kind of activity, this is experienced through perception. Through our will, we really belong to the external world of our perception. By developing what may thus be observed in connection with the manifestations of our will, we do not reach our real inner being. Although our will streams out of the innermost depths of our being, we grow conscious of it by passing through an external process, or rather a sum of external processes connected with the body. But let us now consider man’s inner life. There is, to begin with, his weaving world of thoughts. The way in which thoughts are active outside in the work does not touch the present subject.

Outwardly, the world of thoughts exists in such a way that it brings certain logical, lawful connections into our perceptions. We classify Nature. We see plants which resemble each other and classify them; we see animals which resemble each other and classify them. We also try to discover the laws of Nature. What we thus unfold, does not really belong to our inner life. All this is science, which we share with every other person. It does not form part of our inner life. Yet we cannot simply assert that everything connected with thought does not form part of our inner life. It suffices to bear in mind that when we see a beautiful landscape (through external perception) and develop thoughts about it, we may recall this picture at any time, even if this memory grows pale. The things connected with the external world therefore become part of our inner world. The same may be said of other experiences connected with the external world, which become thoughts forming part of our inner world. To begin with, these thoughts pervade our etheric body, yet they also unite with feeling, which reaches as far as the astral body.

All this takes place inwardly. The inner side of thought-life, and the life of feeling, really constitute man’s inner world. What we experience in connection with the inner aspect of our thoughts and with our feelings cannot really be sought in an outer world. Whenever we want to know something about the outer world, we must look into us, into our inner life. I have already told you that we may speak with other people and indirectly allow them to look into us, but our inner life is the essential thing. It is possible to distinguish clearly what constitutes external life, through the fact that we constantly bring our inner world into the outer world.

When a train brings us at night from the West to the East of Switzerland, we are in an entirely different environment in the morning and it is our perception which makes us aware of this change. We have brought our inner life with us. It was the same in one place and in the other, perhaps modified by what induced us to turn towards our inner being, by the thoughts which induced us to do so; in fact, by what has become our inner life.

If we want to, we may therefore distinguish quite clearly between that which constitutes man’s real inner life, psychically woven out of thought and feeling and based on reciprocal, rhythmical processes of the etheric and astral bodies, and that which constitutes in a certain sense our external world, psychically woven out of the content of our will and the content of our perception, and bodily woven out of the Ego and the physical body. For we take along with us our physical body, we observe it and see that it enters into different relations with the world. As explained just now, we may distinguish inner and outer life.

This distinction is very important if we want to observe the life which man carries through the portal of death. In a compendious way we may describe how the inner and outer life characterised just now, will behave after death, for we may say that the outside becomes inside, and the inside becomes outside.

In fact, this is the great change which takes place when we die. Outer life becomes inner life. Even as we are now able to feel our soul’s inner being—for we can see that our inner soul-life is woven out of thoughts and feelings and we address this inner being with "I"—so after death all our perceptions connected with our actions become our inner life. But what we now experience as our inner being, the contemplation of everything we did here on earth, is concentrated, as it were, in a point, or rather in a sphere. Everything we did, we carry through death as an inner memory, as pictures of our whole earthly existence. Here we therefore have a complete reversal. For what was outside, what could only be perceived by looking upon our actions, becomes our inner life. Even as now we live in our feelings, in the impressions gained from outside, so after death we live in our actions. Our actions then become our inner life.

After death, we ourselves become what we have done to a person, in the form of good or evil deeds. Such things should not be imagined abstractly, we should not think that a vague kind of Ego slips through death and then changes, or undergoes a slight change, but we ourselves become what we have done, right into the very details. After death, we are each one of our actions. We are each one of our experiences and we address them all with "I".

On the other hand, our inner life becomes an outer life. All our thoughts, the whole life of our feelings, become an external world. Even as we are now surrounded either by the shining sun and the clouds, or at night by the starry sky and its movements, so after death we are surrounded by the external world of our thoughts and feelings; that is, everything that now constitutes our innermost being, becomes part of the external world after death, and we see it outside in mighty pictures. The sky which shines down upon us after death, is our present inner life, our inner human essence. If I were to describe this in detail I would have to say: I have explained to you just now that our actions become a sphere, that we experience them as our inner being. We experience again and again all our activities here on earth; we again walk as we have walked. After death we change, as it were, into something that experiences its own actions in an ever growing sphere. We always look back upon the earth. Even as now we look out into the world’s spaces and behold the sun and the stars, so then we look back upon the earth. And we see the earth surrounded by the pictures of our preceding inner world.

We do not only experience the semblance of our inner world, but from the site we abandoned, and sending a reflexion after our own self, we experience all that once constituted our inner world; we experience it in the form of clouds, stars, and so forth, streaming out of this site. We feel ourselves within the former peripheric world, and we experience the earth upon which we once stood, as a centre, but outside. And we always look towards it. We ourselves live in what surrounds it; the earth at the centre is then the object towards which we look, and mighty pictures are unrolled before us, as our whole inner life unrolls. Outer life becomes inner life. Inner life becomes outer life. This takes place right into the very details.

And when we look down towards the earth, from this sphere spreading out more and more, we then behold, streaming back to us from the earth, all the feelings and sensations we had for other people. And all the other feelings we had, besides those in connection with human beings, appear more in form of clouds. But our feelings for others appear like stars. The human beings themselves, whose forms we see during our life between birth and death, these human beings with whom we now come into contact through experiences caused by our deeds, now constitute a world. All the people with whom we were connected, become part of our inner world.

This is of course reciprocal. Even as every person now bears within him his feelings, or his heart and stomach, so between death and a new birth everyone bears within him all that took place outside in space, and also all that occurred between himself and other people. Of two men who were closely connected, A bears within him the picture of B as his inner content, and B the picture of A. What was outside is now inside; our inner life, our feelings, become an external world, they become the content of a cosmos; what we felt for others, what we obtained from others, all this rays out towards us from the earth.

Man thus really becomes almost the creator of the world which surrounds him after death. During our earthly life, matters stand as follows: We always live in a certain place, and by this I do not only mean trivially that we live in Basle, or Dornach, etc., but any point, any standpoint we have in the world, physically as well as morally. We view the world from this standpoint. We may therefore say that we stand at a certain point and see the world perspectively from this point. But this is a subjective view, for every other person has another standpoint.

Things change after death. There, all men already have something in common. This common element is the sphere. Yet each person has had a different inner life, consequently the earth appears to each surrounded by different clouds, by different stars. It is as if we were all standing upon the same point of the earth, yet each one sees another picture. When we die, we discard the physical body. In the lectures I gave during the past weeks, I have already explained that the physical body is dissolved by the earthly kingdom as such. What remains, is the web spun out of our deeds, by what we see when we follow up our deeds, or the manifestations of our will, through perception. Think of all the ways you have gone on earth: As an infant you first crept about, then you began to walk, you made a long journey, and so forth. All this becomes your inner life. Yet this is only its outermost structure.

Every single thing you did is spun together and forms a web. This stretches out and becomes a sphere. This is your inner life and the fact that it becomes inner life is a guarantee for your Ego during your earthly existence. For man obtains his Ego from the earth, or through the earth. Because after death everything is spun together in this picture of perception and memory, we may take our Ego with us through death. But our real inner experiences are lived through again immediately after death, when the etheric body dissolves shortly after we have died.

The etheric body dissolves into the cosmic spaces and this brings about the fact that all the thoughts and feelings woven out of the etheric body, but with an astral influence as well, change into forms of clouds, or—as I have pointed out—into forms of stars which surround the earth. What falls away from us in two directions—towards the earth, and out into the cosmic spaces, into the air, as it were,—constitutes our inner and our outer world, when we pass through the life between death and a new birth.

Imagine quite vividly the world which surrounds you between death and a new birth. There are your actions, in so far as they come from the will, and these constitute your inner life. There is your feeling and thinking life in the form of a cosmos, as an external world. You do not look out into the world’s spaces, but from the cosmic spaces you look towards the earth, and the earth rays back to you your inner thought-aspects.

When we live here on earth, between birth and death, we have on the one hand, the life of the sun. The sun is outside and we stand upon the earth and see the sun. When we die, the sun immediately vanishes. For then we ourselves are the sun and we cannot see what we are. We simply pass over into the life of the sun. And what I have described to you above, is our passage through the life of the sun.

That we ourselves become our actions, is connected with the fact that we pass over into the life of the sun. When we have left the earth, our earthly experiences become something we behold. Here we stand upon the earth and look at the sun and we see the earth below our feet. This is due to the peculiar material structure of the earth. But the sun has no material structure. What physicists say in regard to this, is pure invention. I have often spoken of this. When we ourselves exist, as it were, within the sun and look back, we have the whole spiritual world behind us, the world of the Hierarchies. Even as here on earth we see solid matter when we look down, so between death and a new birth we have behind us the world of the Hierarchies. Thus we ourselves are sun and we behold the real sun, which is spiritual. We may say that the earth is then the sky. But it is a sky which we ourselves prepare through our inner experiences.

This will be the ease in future, this is how the future existence of Jupiter will arise. I have already explained this in detail. Everything we weave around the earth through our feelings and thoughts, will remain. The now existing material earth will vanish, for it will decay. Between death and a new birth, we are able to behold our inner experiences. This will change into reality, when the earth decays, and it will form the new earth, for the old earth will dissolve and all our inner experiences will constitute the future earth.

This is the real process of metamorphosis. When we simply say, the earth will become Jupiter, this is an abstract statement. We can only understand this process by knowing that all earthly, external substance will melt away into the cosmic spaces, it will become dust, whereas the web spun out of our feelings will form the future earth; it will condense more and more and become the planet of Jupiter.

Geologists now dig into the sub-soil of the earth and sometimes discover strata which have arisen in very remote ages; similarly, during the Jupiter existence, it will be possible to investigate the different strata which have thus formed themselves. All kinds of strata formed out of human feelings and thoughts will be discovered, lying one on top of the other. A Jupiter geologist may, for example, discover various strata, and in the same way in which a geologist upon the earth may say, here are the lower strata, the tertiary strata, so a geologist upon Jupiter will one day ascertain: Here is a stratum pointing back to an age which was called upon the earth the 20th century, the early 20th century; this is a stratum formed by the materialists and profiteers, who spread their thoughts and feelings over nearly the whole world. Even as we now speak of a Silurian stratum, so it will in future be possible to speak of a "Profiteer-stratum". Of course, one will also speak of other strata. But these things are realities.

It is not allowed to man to let his inner experiences vanish. They are a developing world; they will one day be a real world. And between death and a new birth, human consciousness may already look upon that which will in future become a world; indeed, this is the only thing man beholds after death.

Among the many different things in our environment, we also observe the Moon when we stand here upon the Earth. But the Moon is there in a very special way. It sends back to us the reflected sunlight. We can only see its surface, as it were, in so far as its garment is woven by the sunlight. So that when the Moon is shining, it is really the Sun that is shining for us; the sun’s rays come to us indirectly. The Moon, the earth’s satellite, is connected with us in a special way.

During the life between death and a new birth we thus have, to begin with, our inner world, the effect of all our actions in so far as these are rooted in the will, and this inner world, this sphere or central kernel, is surrounded by our feelings and thoughts, which ray out into the cosmic spaces. Yet after death there also exists something resembling the Moon. I might say: After death we see the Moon from the other side. Our existence within a sphere is subjected to laws of perspective which differ from those which exist here on Earth and it is, of course, difficult to explain certain things connected with the laws of perspective which exist after death. This is very difficult, because between death and a new birth we are, in a certain sense, inside, not outside the Moon. In a certain way, we are always connected with the Moon’s inner being. We live, as it were, within the Moon. Even as here upon the earth we continually see the reflected sunlight, so between death and a new birth we always see the inside of the Moon.

But as stated, there the perspective changes. Let us assume that here we have the Earth with the Moon circling round it. We must take into consideration the whole sphere, the whole orbit of the Moon if we take the after-death aspect and the conditions which apply to it. We must consider the whole sphere in which the Moon revolves, and this sphere is really perceived from within. To begin with, we go further and further away from the Earth by moving within this sphere. There, we cannot look at the Sun from within. But at the same time we do not see it from outside, because it becomes invisible; we cannot perceive it. The Sun remains as a memory. What we first behold as we move away from the Earth, what becomes, as it were, visible upon the inner wall of the Moon, or the Moon’s sphere, and is retained as a memory, are the effects of a former earthly life in a subsequent one. It is, in fact, the Moon that preserves the events of one earthly life, and these appear in a subsequent earthly life as effects of the former life. For the whole mystery of the Moon in the cosmos is connected with the fact that the content of one earthly life continues and is taken along into the next earthly life.

This is the aspect presenting itself when we stand upon the Earth and look out into the cosmic spaces—the aspect between birth and death. But there is another aspect, the one between death and a new birth, when we live within a sphere and look back upon the central kernel. We then exist in a world which is, in a certain sense, opposed to the one we now live in. Yet we carry through both these worlds that part of our being which has been concentrated, etc. upon the Moon, preserved by the Moon. The Moon is, in a certain sense, highly important to us as a celestial body. The Moon connects our different earthly lives; it is not, of course, that slag shining down upon the Earth; in its whole mysterious cosmic essence it forms a connecting link.

You see, the individual life of men is thus connected with the life of the whole universe. Here, between birth and death, we can see what has been left to us by former worlds, what has remained from the Saturn, Sun and Moon existences and from the past existence of the Earth. We perceive all this when we live here upon the Earth, surrounded by the radiant phenomena above us. This more or less points back to the past.

Everything we bear within us and what we ourselves do upon this Earth points to the future. And we already behold this future during our life between death and a new birth, sending, as it were, a reflexion into the present—we see it, when our inner life becomes outer life and our outer life inner life. If you consider the whole meaning of the descriptions which have just been given to you, if you consider that man carries his after-death life into his earthly life, you will find that this resembles his experiences in connection with the outer world, reaching as far as the stars, the planets; this reappears in his organisation, it rises up again in his inner being. And man’s inner being becomes his outer world. After death, something similar takes place. The external world which man formed for himself, all the actions that went out from him, become his inner world. All his inner experiences, derived either from his surroundings or from his actions, giving rise to feelings of satisfaction or of self-reproach, all this inner world becomes his outer world and it looks towards him like a firmament, but this firmament is now at the centre and it looks towards him, i.e. out into the cosmic spaces.

If we do not misunderstand this, we might also say: Man’s outer life becomes his inner life, his Sun-life, for he becomes an inhabitant of the Sun. Man’s inner being, in so far as he experienced it upon the Earth, becomes his firmament. But he now inhabits the firmament. The Earth becomes sky, the Sun becomes Earth, during the life between death and a new birth.

When true vision adds this other aspect of the world to the intellectual world-conception which modern man gains here on Earth, the only conception which he accepts, only then will a complete picture of the world stand before us. We shall then have entirely different feelings in regard to the world. This other picture of the world is, in reality, the one described in Anthroposophy, it is the picture I have always described to you, in contrast to the world-conception formed through external observation; the picture I have always described to you is the active picture, for we must participate in it actively. Your thoughts must become mobile when you read anthroposophical books. And your thoughts must become mobile whenever you listen to an anthroposophical lecture. But people who are only accustomed to the things offered to them by modern life do not want to be active in their thought, they prefer to obtain everything passively, so that also their thoughts are merely passive pictures of what they obtain, and in doing this they always sleep a little, as it were.

These things arise in this form because during his life between birth and death man has a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an Ego. In regard to earthly life, the Ego is man’s highest part. After death, when he passes over into the Sun-existence, his Ego is the lowest member, and the next one from below is the Spirit-Self, then the Life-Spirit, and then Spirit-Man. Physically, they will exist only in future epochs of evolution, but between death and a new birth they develop spiritually.

The Spirit-Self, in fact, rays out into the cosmic spaces as the image of the Earth. The Ego lives in the Sun, in the life of the Sun, and the Spirit-Self rays back from the earth, as described above. The other members are higher forms, which afterwards come to man from the cosmos, but at first they have nothing to do with his inner being. What rays out towards him appears to him in a new life; through this it becomes "Life Spirit". And man’s deeds are pervaded by a high spiritual substantiality throbbing through them. This will be given to him by the cosmos, he receives it, as it were, outside, in the cosmos. When he comes down to birth, he obtains a physical body and an etheric body, and similarly when he has passed through the portal of death, he obtains a Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man, which are his garments. From man himself comes what constitutes his Ego. And between death and a new birth, all that rays out from the Earth becomes a finely woven planetary existence, something which can only be felt as a trans-formed earth; we look back upon it and we go on weaving it from life to life.

When the Earth will have reached the end of its evolution, man will therefore proceed with the Earth to the Jupiter-stage of existence, and what he has thus woven, will enable him to unfold his Spirit-Self physically upon Jupiter. The foundation for this has been laid during his earthly life, through his inner being.

These are the real processes. This is the true course of development. You see, it is not necessary to combine outer words—Earth-existence, Jupiter-existence, etc.—nor to describe things abstractly from outside, for when we grasp man in his totality it is quite possible to describe the transition from one stage to the other. Our thoughts must only be formed in such a way as to take hold of concepts such as the following: The thoughts and feelings extending within us, ray out from the Earth into the cosmic spaces like planets, like stars, and we ourselves then live with the cosmos; we bear within us the other human beings with whom we were associated.

Human life is complicated. But people who wish to build up a world-conception by setting up a few concepts do not have any real feeling for what is right. We can only build up a world-conception by viewing the totality of life. Life is very complicated even in the smallest bug, and we should not imagine that in the whole universe—and man is connected with it, as a microcosm—life is formed in such a way that we may grasp it by setting up a few thoughts.

Dear attendees! It is often said that there is a deep truth to the statement that the greatest mystery of all is man himself. Although this saying is often uttered, in its depth, in its full meaning, it is not understood. Rather, the full mysteriousness of man is felt and sensed deeply enough only in the rarest of cases. In truth, not only does man face himself as a significant, difficult-to-solve riddle when he looks beyond the most superficial things in life, but also every fellow human being faces us, in a certain, and very deep way, as a riddle in turn. And what should interest us today in particular is that when we talk about the human puzzle, we cannot hope to have solved this human puzzle with a single answer; but if we proceed not theoretically but in accordance with life, we must say: in this human puzzle there are basically as many individual puzzles as there are people in the world.

Within certain limits, each person can be seen as a separate puzzle within the greater puzzle of the human race. And what we are to deal with today is intimately connected with this view of the human being: that peculiar coloring of the human being, that fundamental tone of human individuality, which we encounter in one person in this way, in another differently, and which we describe with the word: the human temperament.

Everything that can enlighten us about the diversity of human nature is encompassed by this word, and we may hope that if we are able to shed some light on the mystery of human temperaments, we may also gain a handle to solve the human puzzle a little in its most diverse forms. Of course, when we approach this human puzzle not in a general, theoretical way, but in a lively, individual way, we must not succumb to the great illusion that an external knowledge of the human being, a mere sensual-physical knowledge of the human being, will somehow lead us to solve the human riddle in its most diverse forms. temperament; if we approach this human puzzle individually and full of life, then we must not succumb to the great illusion that an external knowledge of the human being, a mere sensual-physical knowledge of the human being, could somehow lead us further.

For spiritual scientific or, let us say, theosophical consideration, as we have often been able to mention here, the human being is a very diversely composed being, and we only understand him if we not only look at the outside of himself, at what eyes see and hands touch, what the outer senses can perceive, what the human, brain-bound mind can dissect, but we can only hope to fully understand man little by little if we also consider the supersensible aspects of human nature. And since it has often been said which are the members of human nature, they need only be mentioned briefly today, insofar as we need to do so in order to then enter into the consideration of human temperaments.

That which eyes see, hands grasp, and the physical organs can perceive in a person is, after all, only the outermost link of the human being for spiritual scientific observation, the link of the human being that it shares with the entire seemingly lifeless mineral nature around it. Beyond that, we have the next link of the human being, a link that cannot be perceived by the outer senses, which already belongs to the supersensible, invisible links of human nature. And while we call that which man has in common with inanimate nature the physical body, we call this supersensible first the etheric or life body. We find it in every living being, in plants, which it permeates and organizes just as much as it does in human beings, and in animals. In spiritual science, we do not speak of this etheric or life body in the same way that materialists speak of life, as if life were just something that emerges as an effect from the physical body and the interaction of the forces and substances of the physical body. No, for spiritual science this etheric body is not only something independent, something that the consciousness of the human being, which can see behind the world of the senses with clairvoyance, really sees as reality, just as the physical eyes see the physical body, but this etheric body is actually that which underlies the physical body as the first, as the actual creator. The physical body is not the cause but the consequence of the finer, the etheric or life body. Just as – this image has also been used here often – just as for someone who looks into a container in which there is water, ice can condense out of this water into lumps, so the spiritual is around us, and the physical is the condensation of the spiritual. Thus, within the human etheric body, the physical body, with all its substances and powers, is a condensation of the etheric body. And so it is with all living beings.

A third link in the human being, which he has in common only with animals, is the so-called astral body, the carrier of lust and suffering, joy and pain, desires, urges and passions, ideas and thoughts. The astral body is the carrier of all that surges up and down within the human soul. Just as the physical body is a densification of the etheric body, so the astral body is a densification of the astral body. The objection raised by the materialist is a very cheap one: Can you imagine that somewhere in the world there are passions, thoughts, feelings, desires and suffering flying around freely? Must they not be bound to a physical body? Of course, if someone has a vessel of water in front of them and only begins to see when the water has condensed into ice, then they may deny the water. So the materialist is quite right when he says that only the physical exists for him; but the one who recognizes the higher organs of the human being, which Goethe describes as spiritual eyes, must also recognize that our world is truly only filled with tangible and visible content, but with entities, with processes that only exist in passions and drives and desires that weave through each other and that can condense into the etheric and the physical. In short, we distinguish the third limb in the human being, the so-called astral body, the bearer of lust and suffering, joy and pain, desires and thoughts.

And as a fourth link, we have always recognized in the human being that which encompasses the name of the human being, which can only sound from within if it is to denote what it is applied to; as a fourth link, we denote the bearer of the human ego, of human self-awareness. The I can only name itself; only from within can it give itself the name “I”; the name “I” cannot possibly reach your ears from the outside if it is to mean you.

This is only a rough sketch of how we think of the human being as a four-fold creature. All these aspects interact in the most diverse ways. The I has an effect on the physical, etheric and astral bodies, the astral body on the I, the physical and etheric bodies, and so on, and so on. These four members of human nature are in a perpetual interaction. It is important that, in addition to this interaction, which can always be observed by clairvoyant consciousness during waking, we also consider the changes that can occur in the context of these four members, first of all those changes that take place every day in the alternation of the waking day consciousness and the sleeping consciousness.

When a person falls asleep, his physical and etheric bodies remain in bed. The astral body and the ego leave. In the morning, the ego and the astral body plunge back into the etheric and physical bodies and make use of the organs through which the environment can be seen as physical. The human being also exists at night, even if unconsciousness spreads around him. He just cannot see anything because, in his current state of development, he does not have spiritual ears and eyes in his astral body. He has to use the physical organs, and he can only do that if he submerges into the physical body. That is the change that a person goes through day after day. Human nature undergoes yet another change, the change that is characterized by the meaningful words that basically already encompass a large part of the human mystery: birth and death – or life and death.

Today, once again, we must briefly call ourselves to mind what happens to a person when they pass through the mysterious portal of death. It is not like when a person falls asleep. In death, the physical body remains as a corpse, and the I, the astral body and the etheric body separate from this corpse. What does not occur between birth and death, that the etheric body leaves the physical body, happens in death. We can see from this that throughout life, and indeed both during waking and sleeping states, the etheric body is a fighter against the disintegration of the physical body. Where the etheric body does not fight against disintegration, the physical body follows its own substances and forces and disintegrates, decays. This is the nature of the physical body, which it unfolds as a corpse. That it does not reveal them during life, that it does not follow the chemical-physical forces as it does in death, is due to the etheric body, which is a loyal defender against the disintegration of the physical body between birth and death. And when a person has passed through death, then, having discarded his physical body, he can live on in the spiritual world with the fruits that he has harvested in the life between birth and death, which he has harvested through his experiences. The etheric body, which withdraws from the physical body, contains a true image of all experiences between birth and death, and it is something like an essence, like an extract of the etheric body, which we take with us into the following life after death, into the life in the spirit. We take something like an extract of our etheric body with us, which usually also detaches from us as a second corpse after a few days, and this extract remains with us for all eternity. It contains something like a brief excerpt from the last life; we take this with us into the future life.

Now, however, we still have a task after death. We have to undergo a kind of probationary period, a period of getting out of the habit. You can best imagine this time if you start from a simple consideration, if you say to yourself: the astral body of man is the carrier of pleasure and suffering, of instincts, desires, all pleasures. The physical body is not the carrier of these; it only provides the instruments for enjoyment. The enjoyment itself lies in the astral body. But you take the astral body with you after death. Immediately after death, it is exactly as it was in life. Let us assume that a person was a gourmet. After death, he still has his astral body; it always longs for tasty morsels. But there is no possibility of satisfying this craving. It can only be satisfied if you have a palate. The physical body is discarded, so the astral body craves the pleasures of life after death. It is the same with everything that can only be satisfied by physical tools. All of this must be weaned off within a certain period of time.

This period of disaccustoming, during which man learns to have no more desire for anything that can only be satisfied by the physical organs, is usually called the time of desires, Kamaloka. For when man has gone through this period of disaccustoming, when he no longer desires anything that can only be satisfied by the physical senses, then he discards the third corpse. First he has discarded the physical body, then the etheric body, which dissolves a few days after physical death, and then he discards the unusable part of the astral body. And then man is that purely spiritual being who undergoes a time of purely spiritual life.

The transition from the period of weaning from physical passions makes itself felt in that man first has, as the innermost part of his experience, something that can be described as a feeling of bliss. Now begins the time when he works towards a new existence, when he begins to apply what he has learned in previous lives, what he has received as fruit, and to gradually develop it into a spiritual archetype, of which the next life can become an image. Creation is always connected with a feeling of bliss. And that creation in which we gradually form the archetype for a next existence, that is supreme bliss. I will not even talk about the bliss associated with every spiritual production, but there is bliss when only - forgive the comparison - the hen participates in the production of the new chicken. There is a bliss that permeates a being in all creation. It is therefore also a bliss that a person experiences when he is free from all the limitations of the physical world, when he brings everything together spiritually, which, when it is spiritually developed, leads to a new existence on this earth.

When the human being has fully developed his spiritual core, which takes a long time, then the descent into the physical world begins again, and then it is the case that the human being surrounds himself with three new bodies. Depending on the person's qualities, the substances from the astral world attach themselves, forming his new astral body. We can compare this formation with, say, when we have spread metal filings on a thin plate and pass a magnet underneath; these metal filings then arrange themselves into all kinds of shapes, in which they then shine. In the same way, the astral substance arranges itself around a spiritual core during the descent.

Then the person is led to a pair of parents and, through the connection of this spiritual core of the being, which has incorporated its astral cover, with what takes place between the parents, the further human covers around this core of the person's being are formed. In the interaction of what descends with the parents, a new etheric body and a new physical body are formed around the descending, so that every time we see a person enter into an existence, we have to say to ourselves: This human being receives from two sides what he actually is for this earthly existence. The inner being descends from spiritual heights. Because the human being is spiritual and astral, he descends from higher worlds. Through that which is inherited from generation to generation, from ancestors to descendants, what we see as the outer shell is formed around the human being, but also much of what belongs to the etheric body, to the fighter against the disintegration of the physical body.

And now, having realized that the human being is formed from two sides, let us ask ourselves what would happen if one or the other extreme were to prevail. Let us assume that a person brings with him only a few qualities from the spiritual heights, then his astral body would also have a little richer content, and what is structured around the person as an etheric and physical shell would have an overwhelming effect. That is to say, a person who brings only poor content with him would be in all his ancestors, a repetition, so to speak, within the line of inheritance. The richer the content that a person brings down, the more that which goes from the ancestors to the grandson, that which lies in the line of inheritance in general similarities, the more it is driven into the individual being changed. People who descend into poverty from a spiritual point of view are, so to speak, overwhelmed by the external, which closes around them through race, tribe, family and class. They have the character traits of their people, their family. People who descend with a rich content, with a significant inner development of strength, emerge as sharply defined individuals. They also absorb what passes from ancestors to descendants, but the similarity recedes in the face of the individual traits that are a consequence of the spiritual development of the individuality. We can see this when we look at “primitive” people, or especially when we turn our spiritual gaze back to the primeval times of the earth. The people of a nation resemble one another. Why do they resemble one another? Because the people who incarnated in such primeval times have experienced few past stages of existence, have learned little in earlier stages, and therefore bring little with them from the spiritual. With more developed peoples we have more developed stages; there we find people who have many, many lives behind them, who have absorbed rich, rich fruits from earlier lives and therefore bring down into the spiritual what they have carried up as fruits through many lives, and shape an individual existence for themselves. But every human being in our present period of humanity must, so to speak, make this compromise; he must descend and encase himself in a physical shell, which he must take from the line of inheritance. This duality is present in every human being and forms a whole. On the one hand, the human being is similar to what flows down through the ancestors; on the other hand, he is a being of his own.

Of course, materialistic thinking objects to such things in particular. For example, it is said: Oh, what are you talking about the descending human being; it's all inherited! We can also find the qualities of the greatest genius in our ancestors. There are people who take Goethe or Leibniz or this or that person and research them up to the earliest ancestors, and then find the characteristics that emerge in genius scattered among the ancestors, one characteristic in this person and one in that. And so these people tell us: You can see that genius is based solely on inheritance. Genius is very rarely found at the beginning of a generation, but usually at the end of it, so it has inherited its characteristics from its ancestors. – What a strange logic this is! For anyone who considers this logic will find that it says the opposite of what it claims. This logic wants to prove that genius inherits its characteristics. It would prove it if it could be shown that Here is a genius, the son has inherited his qualities, the grandson again and so on. But that is not the case. That is precisely what is denied. The genius is infertile. It is rare that one can simply inherit genius. If the genius is at the end of a line of succession, this does not mean that this individuality flows down in its entirety in the line. Of course, the physical and etheric bodies, which are the instruments of the human essence, come from the line of inheritance, and it is not surprising that they show the characteristics that can be read together here or there. That is just as clever as telling someone who has fallen into water and been pulled out: This one is wet. That is self-evident. So it is with the characteristics that one inherits. The logic that is usually applied to somehow refute the well-established fact that a person flows together from the two lines, one of which goes from generation to generation and is called race, people, tribe, family, but the other lies within the spiritual world, where a person progresses from life to life and, in long periods between death and a new birth, prepares for that new birth in a purely spiritual world, is wrong. These two lines merge.

How is the agreement created between what comes from the spiritual world and what lies within the line of inheritance and is determined by words like people, family? How is a balance created? This balance can only be created by the fact that the qualities that distinguish people in that they belong to a race, a tribe, a family, that these are countered by others that are similar to them and combine with those that come from below. If we were only the automata that reproduce in the line of inheritance, we would say: This is how we are. We look up the line of ancestors and find the qualities that are in our physical and etheric bodies in our ancestors. We find not only the shape of the nose and forehead, hair color and physiognomy in our ancestors, but also inner qualities, which come close to what can be described by the word “moral”, are inherited. There are concepts, for example about sensations and feelings, that are native to this family or that race or that tribe. How do they reproduce? If reproduction only took place from physical body to physical body, then people would only be similar in relation to this. The fact that they also agree in such qualities, which are character traits of a tribe, stems from the fact that an etheric body belongs to that which also continues through the generations. And just as the physical body reacts from below up onto the etheric body, which properties of the physical body from below up imprint on the etheric body after it is formed, these become the racial peculiarities. Originally, the physical body came into being as if through a kind of condensation of the etheric body. But once it is there, it absorbs impressions from the outside world. These in turn have an effect on the etheric body, and to the extent that they have an effect, they are transmitted within the line of inheritance. Thus, the etheric body of each person is endowed with very specific, typical, stereotyped, even racial characteristics, due to the fact that the latter is, so to speak, a descendant of some ancestor.

The spiritual core of the human being, in which he descends into the physical world, must adapt to what is available to him in this physical world as a cover. This must offer something that is related to the properties of the etheric body. In other words, the descending ego must now be able to imprint such properties into the etheric body that the etheric body, through these properties imprinted on it from above, from the astral body, can form a compromise between what comes from below and what comes from above. When a person enters a new existence, certain qualities flow together in the etheric body, which is connected to the physical body below and other qualities flow through it from above, which are imprinted on it by the descending astral body.

The properties that are imprinted on the etheric body by the descending astral body establish the human temperament. This is where temperament is located. The human being brings this temperament with them. They do not yet have it when they only have the astral body; they have it because this astral body, as it descends, has to connect with the etheric body, which has certain characteristics of the race, of the people. Since it develops certain qualities, so to speak, that correspond to the lower nature, but are also appropriate to the original, core characteristics of the human being, temperament is something that is both individual and that, so to speak, casts its tone over the general characteristics that the human being shares with race, tribe, and family. If we only inherited the peculiarities of race, tribe, and family, we would be average figures; if we came from above with our core nature and now had to drive into it, so to speak, then little would fit. What we bring with us, what we may have developed thousands of years ago, would not match well with what we find. What can adapt as an individual to the stereotyped general from below is temperament.

Thus, through his temperament, the human being escapes from being a completely individual being. For through his temperament, the human being moderates his full obstinacy as an individual being, dulling it. But at the same time, he removes the stereotyped nature. Therefore, we also see that people's temperaments arise from the mixing of basically a few basic temperaments.

You all know these four basic colors of temperament, which are referred to as melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric. Actually, there are not only these four, but seven shades of temperament. Only the choleric temperament is basically separate. The sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic temperaments all have an active and a passive side, so they occur in two ways. This gives seven colors, just as seven colors can be distinguished in the rainbow, seven tones in the musical scale. The eighth is just a repetition of the prime. But that should concern us less. We should realize that we can never ascribe any one of these temperaments to any one person, but that each person is a mixture of all these temperaments; only the predominant one of the four makes him appear melancholic or phlegmatic or sanguine, and depending on that, we describe him as such or such. The melancholic contains the others, only they recede in comparison to the melancholic basic mood. You could easily prove this by looking at someone like Napoleon, for example; he certainly had a choleric temperament. Think about how phlegmatic he was in very specific things that didn't interest him. He could be very phlegmatic in certain fields. A person has one prominent characteristic, but is composed of the four, or rather seven, basic colors of temperament.

Now the question arises: when is a person primarily a melancholic, a phlegmatic, a sanguine, a choleric? It has already been said in the introduction that all aspects of human nature interact with each other. Thus, all higher aspects of human nature interact with the physical body. If the human being had no ego, no individually constituted ego, then his blood and the whole blood circulation would not be as they are. The blood circulation is the expression of the ego. The ego is purely spiritual, but the effect of this spiritual, this ego, is the blood in its whole circulation. How the blood circulates in us is the expression of our ego. The expression of the astral body is the nervous system – at least one expression. The expression of the etheric body is the glandular system. Only that entity can have a glandular system that is permeated by an etheric body; for the etheric body permeates the physical body with the glandular system, which is necessary for all life, for nourishment and reproduction. Only a being that has an astral body can think and feel, because an astral body permeates the physical body with a nervous system. And only a being that is an ego can have a blood circulation, because that is the physical expression of the ego. Thus, every limb that we count among the higher limbs has an effect on the physical body. But conversely, the physical body has an effect back again.

We have seen that the temperaments have their particular expression in the etheric body. Through this balance, which takes place between what is imprinted in the etheric body from above when a person descends and what comes into the etheric body from below in the form of certain qualities, the temperament arises. If, in a particular incarnation, a person has a physical body that makes a stronger impression on the etheric body than the astral body and the ego, then what is called the melancholic temperament develops in that person. Due to the nature of the descending astral body, because it does not, so to speak, fully master the laws of the physical body, this physical body, with all its heaviness, has an effect on the ether body, and this is how the melancholic temperament arises. In particular, in the case of a person, it must be that part of the physical body that is the physical instrument of thought, of the spiritual life in general, which, in the case of the melancholic temperament, has a retroactive effect on the etheric body, on the person's entire life circumstances. Therefore, the person who, through his astral body and ego, cannot, so to speak, master the physical brain, that which is otherwise the physical instrument for thoughts, will be under the control of his thoughts. The physical body forces the etheric body to do this, so that the person is not master of his thoughts, but is ruled by them.

This is the cause of the melancholic person's tendency to brood. They drag themselves along behind their masses of thoughts and feelings, which keep coming back, because the physical body has the predominant influence on the ether body. And wherever the physical body has a predominant, that is, too great an influence on the human being, wherever his life proves to be such that he cannot be fully controlled by the higher limbs, the consequences of this are evident, even when they become pathological. It is only the consequence of the fact that the higher members of human nature cannot exercise their full dominion over the physical body when, for example, epileptic seizures or nervous headaches occur. As soon as the melancholic character tends towards the pathological, such things can occur.

That is why in Greece, where they still had clairvoyant feelings, they called a person a melancholic when the densest part had the most predominant influence. The physical body is what humans have in common with mineral beings, which are grouped together under the concept of the earth. The ancient Greeks still knew what is no longer known today, namely that the human physical body is formed by its various fluids. These were not merely seen as something physical, nor were they merely examined in the chemical retort. Rather, it was known that they underlie everything spiritual. therefore designated this temperament, in which the physical body exercises the predominant influence, as black — melas —, as the melancholic temperament, because one saw the secretion of juices in man, which causes the tenacity of the physical body, whereby the latter withdraws from the normal influences of the higher limbs and thus makes man a dark, introspective being. For through his higher members, man belongs to a much greater totality. Through his etheric and astral bodies and his I, he would feel himself as belonging to the great whole, the great cosmic I, the Godhead. That which is the human being's spiritual being is precisely what makes him personal, in that he is enclosed in the skin of his physical body. This is why the melancholic person finds it so difficult to detach from their physical existence, because this physical aspect exerts the predominant influence.

If the etheric body is not strongly influenced by either the physical body or the astral body and I, if the impulses of the family, the peculiarities of the race, are not strongly pronounced, if there is no strong effect on the etheric body from above and below, if it remains neutral, so to speak, then the phlegmatic temperament arises. The phlegm is the balanced part of the etheric body. In this case, neither the physical nor the astral body and the I have a particularly strong effect. In this case, the person has the balanced phlegm of the forces of his ether body surging through him. You can see this in the physical form of the body, which you can see projected outwards. You can see how, in the phlegmatic person, the etheric body receives no strong influences from above or below, and so what is surplus in life settles in the fat. You can see in every detail the consequences of what we must see in the spiritual; the physical is in every detail an expression of the spiritual. We can only understand the physical if we grasp the spiritual.

When the distribution of the faculties is such that the astral body has a predominant effect on the etheric body, making its impressions particularly strong, and suppressing what comes up from the physical body, then what we call the sanguine temperament arises. Here the astral body is active; the surging feelings and sensations are lively and animated. The person is open to all impressions from the outside world. We will soon hear that it is the ego that contains the images that arise in the astral body and have their physical instrument in the nervous system, and that the blood, the expression of the ego that contains them, is physical. In fact, the blood and nervous systems work together in a very strange way. Imagine that the blood weakens. What happens? Fantastic images, hallucinations, fantasies that do not correspond to reality appear. The right inhibitions for these hallucinative and imaginative powers are formed physically by the blood and spiritually by the ego. There is nothing pathological about the sanguine person, but he is therefore open to all impressions from the outside world because the actual ego does not yet appear strong enough. What appears strong is the astral body and the nervous system. That is why the sanguine person is open to all impressions; that is why the sanguine person is mobile because his astral body is mobile. Look at the sanguine gait of the sanguine child, how it bounces, how it is interested in this and that. If it were not the case that the child is alternately interested in this and that, then the impressions would have to be regulated by the ego and the blood.

This is the case with the choleric person. When the I and its blood are active, predominantly active, and have an effect on the etheric body, then this establishes the choleric temperament, which goes too far in the other direction, which does not rush from image to image, but instead develops forces that contain the change. These forces are there with him.

Thus we see how we learn to understand the different shades of temperament, which are caused by the impact of what comes from above and below. If the influence of the physical body on the etheric body predominates, the result is the melancholic temperament; if the etheric body is neutral, the phlegmatic temperament. If the astral body is particularly active internally, we have the sanguine temperament, and if it is the ego that is primarily given the right of mastery in the human individuality, then the choleric temperament is the result.

Once you have grasped these things in the spiritual, you will also find them distinctly manifested in the physical. Imagine choleric people, people in whom the I is strongly developed. They contain the astral body. And now this is the original creator of the physical body. The astral body has the need, the longing, to make the physical body as slender as possible, to develop it as diversely as possible. In the case of choleric people, the ego works against this, thus curbing growth. Now look around you at choleric people, and you will see the repressed growth of the physical body. I would like to draw your attention to the picture of a spruce that was a choleric person; it had precisely this expression in the physical body; and I only need to mention Napoleon and the expression of the small, stocky figure. Here, too, the restrained growth has been expressed.

In particular, the characteristics of temperament are revealed precisely in what the person can give through his or her individuality, can give in contrast to what generally characterizes him or her. You can see how the human being flows together from these two currents. The human being has firmly established forms in himself; that which is permanent, rigid in facial expression, is inherited. What is mobile becomes an expression of the individual, which comes down from the spiritual. It is into this mobile element that temperament is laid. The facial features can be an expression of rigidity, of what has been inherited; the gaze comes from the person's individuality. The gaze is the expression of temperament: the piercing gaze of the choleric, the restless gaze of the sanguine, the restrained gaze of the melancholic, and the dull gaze of the phlegmatic. As for me, take a look at the shape of the feet. Those who are connoisseurs would be able to say that this breed has this foot shape, another that. But it is different when it comes to walking. In that, we have an individual expression. At most, the basic forms of the gait show the racial character, but otherwise the individual comes into it. Therefore, the gait is something like the mediation between the individual and the general. You can see the sanguine person's bouncing gait, the choleric person's firm gait, the melancholy person's heavy step, which is caused by the heavy physical body with its predominant influence on the etheric body, and you can see the phlegmatic person's casual gait. In all the characteristics where the individual plays a role, what is semi-individual is revealed because it has to balance with what is generally racial in man; temperament plays a role here.

If we now understand this secret of temperament and how it works, then on the one hand we will say to ourselves: Oh, it is precisely in such subtle peculiarities of the human being that we see how we can only understand the human being if we understand not only the physical body but the whole being. And on the other hand, it also shows us how necessary it is to know all this when we work on a person by promoting their development. We know from other lectures that the physical body develops until the age of seven, the etheric body from then until the age of fourteen, and then the astral body and the I. The individual parts are interlinked. We see, therefore, that we can only grasp the right thing if we listen to the peculiar nature of the chemical composition — so to speak — of the temperaments, to hear something of the unique imprint of the developing human being. Only in this way can we, as educators or counselors, cultivate human nature if we understand this unique, almost chemical composition that presents itself to us through the four temperaments. Truly, just as every human being is composed of four elements - the physical, etheric, astral body and the I - so the influences of these four mix and show themselves to us in all possible nuances, which can be traced back to these four or seven temperaments. And now we see - because such a multiple mixture can be - how each individual person can be an enigma, and how only if we grasp the person in a lively way can we understand him. If we perceive each person as an enigma, then we are truly facing him for the first time.

Temperament is not something theoretical, but something that works from person to person. We will not only want to unravel the human being with our minds, but we will accept the whole person and let him perceive us as a riddle. Then we will approach the human being with full respect and love when we perceive his or her individual nature in such a way that he or she ultimately appears to us as a riddle that we marvel at and admire, but that we grasp in our perception, in the way we approach each individual through our respect and love, through our appreciation. Oh, there are also other riddles than just those that are solved with the mind. People are all riddles, and they are not solved merely with the mind, but the way we appreciate, honor and respect them, how we approach them with our feelings and how we act for them, that is also a way of solving riddles, and we will develop this way when we learn to feel how the individual mixes with the general through its intermediate thing, the temperament. Indeed, we see two currents flowing together in the human being when he enters this earthly existence. And we see at the same time that these currents must work together in order to bring forth fruit through this life, to take it with him for a subsequent life, to live out in a new embodiment. There is change and there is eternity in man. The eternal core ascends from spirit world to spirit world; but that which is changing is not unnecessarily experienced. In the balance between temperament and racial character, we create the fruits out of our etheric body, which we take with us through our entire subsequent life.

And so it is absolutely true for this area, too, that freedom exists alongside necessity, that we enter into life through the confluence of the two currents and are shaped by necessary laws, but that nothing is destroyed that we ourselves shape within our individuality and the general.

Freedom and necessity are equally beautiful, one as much as the other, expressed in Goethe's word - if only we fully understand it - which is meant to tell us how the law passes through human nature; when we see how the temperaments interact in their chemical mixture, then we find, especially in this mystery of the human temperament, the truth of what the Symbolum Goethe so beautifully says and with which we want to conclude:

Just as on the day you were born,
The sun greeted the planets,
You immediately thrived and thrived
According to the law by which you came into being.
That is how you must be, you cannot escape it!
So said the Sibyls, so said the prophets,
And no time and no power dismembered

A full insight into those relationships which we are now contacting is not possible unless one looks more closely into the nature of man in the period between going to sleep and waking up that is, the sleeping condition. Of course, diagrammatically, the sleeping condition is well-known to you. That which we call the astral body and ego separate from the physical and etheric bodies. But if we wish to go more deeply into the nature of sleep, we must remember that it is just in the sleeping condition that a man experiences the reality of what we discussed in our last lecture, when we said that St. Augustine sought in his own inner experience to grasp the real true certainty about the world. I told you in yesterday's lecture that in his waking condition, man does not grasp the full reality of his inner being. We must be quite clear that what is described as the astral body and the ego, do not really come to the consciousness of man by day: in his waking condition there only comes to his consciousness a copy, a mirror-picture of his ego and astral body. If man were conscious in the sleeping condition, that is from going to sleep until waking up, or, let us say, if he became conscious through those exercises which you can find described in my various writings—(which are all at your disposal)—if man could thus become conscious through his sleeping condition, he would experience not a mirror-image, as by day, but the true form of his Ego and Astral body. But we must quite clearly realise that the true form of the Astral body and Ego appear in such a way to the soul of man when he develops Imaginative Consciousness, that in the inner experiences during the sleep condition, he experiences in his Ego and Astral body what we call the third Hierarchy, the Hierarchy of the Angels, Archangels and Archai.

Although throughout the whole of man's working life he stands in intimate connection with what we must designate as the Angels, Archangels and Archai, he does not experience this consciously during the making condition; and that constitutes the deception in man's waking condition. He remains aware only of an abstract ego of those shadowy ideas and concepts which fill man's soul, or perhaps of half-dreamy feelings and willings. This is the essential—that throughout the waking condition man does not progress beyond experiencing this shadowy side of his Ego and Astral body; and that he cannot become conscious that all the time there in working into his Ego those Beings of the third Hierarchy to which I have just referred. But if he were really to wake up in his sleep, if I may use that expression, he would not have external nature around him, but would immediately feel in himself the Beings of the Angels, Archangels and the Time-Spirits.

Now because those Beings work in us, my dear friends, we have in the constitution of our soul something which we would not have otherwise have had. For instance, if the Hierarchy of the Angels did not work into our Ego and Astral body, we would never feel ourselves to be individuals. Therefore, just because the Hierarchy of the Angels work into our Spiritual, psychic nature wean feel ourselves to be free persons.

Because the Hierarchy of the Archangels work into us, we can feel ourselves as members of the whole of humanity. We might also say, that because these Arch-Angelic Beings shine into our psychic, Spiritual nature, inspiring it, therefore we rea11y feel ourselves as men.

And because the Beings of the Archai, the Spirits of Time, pulsate in our nature, filling it with their Intuition, therefore we feel ourselves as earthly human beings—that means members not only of the present humanity, but of the whole of earthly humanity, from the very start of earthly evolution to the very end of Earth-life. In that way we can feel ourselves as members of the entire earthly humanity. Of course, we only feel it dimly, because we can only dimly sense the influence of these Time-Spirits within us.

We cannot say that we behold ourselves as personalities; that we can only do when we attain the Imaginative Consciousness. There remains a kind of reflection of this Imaginative Consciousness when we so experience our thinking that, through the free life of thought we feel ourselves as individual beings. Let us once more make quite clear how it is that we feel ourselves as individuals. We feel ourselves as personalities because we can, of our own free will, add one thought to another. You would at once cease to feel yourselves as personal beings if you were compelled to add one thought to another just as in the world of external nature one phenomenon is linked on to another. This experience of inner freedom for the developing of a thought, gives us the certainty of feeling ourselves as personalities. his feeling of inner freedom is what comes clearest of all to man's consciousness by day; and it comes to man by day when he is awake, because, from the moment of sleeping until waking he is permeated by his Angel, that Angelic Being belonging to his own Ego.

In the feeling oneself as a human being as a member of all humanity, we are generally speaking, already far more apathetic, we feel ourselves far less strongly and intensely as members of the whole of mankind; and that is because the Arch-Angela, who bring this about, stand further away from us than do our Angels; and that which inserts itself as Personality into the whole human stream of evolution, (and which comes from the Archai) that remains for most human beings something really quite shadowy. On the basis of Anthroposophy we seek to evoke this very feeling, of belonging to the entire earthly humanity, for it becomes clear to us that in the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch man experiences things in a certain way; in the 4th in a different way; in the 3rd in a still different way. One thus sees how the mood of soul has altered in the various epochs of time, alterations brought about by the various beings of the 3rd Hierarchy, the Archai, the Spirits of Time. It is of this that we seek to create a consciousness on the basis of Spiritual Science. This consciousness can alone give man the possibility of feeling himself an historical Being, of feeling conscious: “I am now living as a Personality, in the 20th Century.” The fact does not enter the consciousness of most human beings, that their personality can only be real as Personality, because it has been placed in a definite point of time. How this permeation of the human soul and spirit-being by the Beings of the third Hierarchy, is something of which men would become aware, if he were intensely enough to attain Imaginative Cognition.

In the ordinary path of human evolution, as you know, Imaginative Cognition is not present. From the moment of going to sleep until waking up, the reality of man's ego and astral body is damped down; and by day, when man is awake, he loses his connection with the Beings of the third Hierarchy. What comes from the fact that especially in our present cycle of time, man, when he is awake, is given over to an illusion. As we have seen, when he is asleep, man is subject to the deception that his Ego and Astral body are not then active; but they are not inactive, They are then in living interchange with the Beings of the third Hierarchy. In the waking condition, the state of affairs at the present cycle of time is, that our physical and etheric bodies, “unjustly,” illegally, as we might say, absorb our Spiritual, Psychic nature. They permeate themselves with our spirit and soul. Normally this should not be the case. It should be normal for a man to-day when awake, to feel himself an Ego and Astral body, and to feel his etheric and physical bodies as a kind of shell into which he crawls, to feel them as something which he carries consciously about with him. But man does not feel that to-day; he feels as if the physical and etheric bodies were himself. But this they are not. We are that Spiritual, psychic being which makes use of the physical and etheric bodies as an instrument; but we cannot raise ourselves above the deception which belongs to the working of our epoch of time. We are, as it were, compelled to identify ourselves with that which in the normal consciousness should be like a hammer which one takes in ones hand and gives blows with it; so should we regard our physical and etheric bodies. But in this epoch we have to identify ourselves with them,—to give ourselves over to the deception that we are these, that it is we ourselves who thus go in a fleshly way through space. But they are not ourselves. That is only because the consciousness of our ego is absorbed unjustly, illegally, by the physica1 and etheric bodies. That simply rests in the fact that in the present cycle of time the Ahrimanic powers are stronger than they should be in the normal evolution of mankind. They draw down the etheric and astral bodies into the physical and etheric bodies, so to speak, and they bring about in man the deception that the head which he carries is himself, that his hands and his whole body is himself. Wrongfully the physical body absorbs that consciousness, so that it appears as if the physical body brought about our personality. Anyone who thinks that his physical body brings about his personality is subject to the same deception us a person would be, who standing before a mirror, believes it produces him, because it radiates his reflection. To say that this fleshly form we carry round with us is ourselves, is no cleverer than to hold your hand before a mirror and believe that the mirror is producing your hand. Yet the whole of modern Science is subject to that deception. All modern Science believes that what we as individual persons
experiences inwardly, is somehow produced by the physical and etheric bodies; whereas all the physical and etheric bodies do, is to radiate back our astral body and ego, forming the mirror-image which, while we are awake, we recognise to be our ego and our thoughts, in other words, our astral body.

That is the Fundamental Truth which we mast realise, With reference to this Fundamental Truth, modern humanity, by reason of the forces working through our present epoch of time, give themselves over to a deception of consciousness which consists, as I have just told you, in the delusion that all that we think, or experience as our thoughts or our feelings, is produced by our body. Mankind is subject naturally to this delusion to-day. With his present consciousness he cannot transcend that deception, just as the Sun when low on the horizon looks bigger than when high up in the heavens. One knows it is a delusion, yet it does seem to be so. At this point of time man [needs] help regarding his flesh and blood as himself. That is a delusion of consciousness, my dear friends; but man was not always subject to this deception of consciousness; it is essentially a characteristic quality of the humanity of post-Christian times, after the Mystery of Golgotha. Before the Mystery of Golgotha this delusion did not exist. Before the Mystery of Golgotha there existed another kind of deception. Before Golgotha man did not believe that his consciousness was united with his physical body. Of course, history tells nothing, of this, but it is so. It would have been sheer nonsense for a man of the second or third millennium of the pre-Christian era to suppose that his soul was produced by his physical body; in olden times no man felt himself bound to his physical body as the modern man does. In those pre-Christian times man really had a living consciousness of the Beings of the third Hierarchy, and because he knew:—“My soul is not identical with my body,” he also knew that his soul was not bound up with the bone and muscles of his body, but that it was bound up with the Beings of the third Hierarchy.

Hw was subject to a different delusion, not in his consciousness but in his life. He believed that his soul was bound up with external nature, together with the Beings of the third Hierarchy, just as modern man believes his soul to be bound up with his physical body. Man to-day gives himself over to a delusion in consciousness, he believes that his soul is united with his body. The reason he cannot see the Beings of the Angels, Archangels and Archai, is because his physical body darkens them for him. The man of old, although he had a consciousness that these Beings were there and that his soul was bound up with them, could not see directly but only dimly into the external, sensible nature. Modern man, in the delusion of his consciousness, believes that his soul is bound up with his body; the man of old believed that the Beings of the third Hierarchy were bound up with the external nature which he perceived with his senses. At that time he confused the Divine Beings of the third Hierarchy with the phenomena of nature, and expressed this in his interpretation of natural phenomena. Man to-day places his soul in his flesh and blood, the man of old placed the Beings of the third Hierarchy in external nature. He had no Natural Science such as we have to-day, but he considered the phenomena of nature as brought about by this or the other demon, more or less Divine Spiritual Beings, concerning whom he gave himself to a life of deception, in that he thought of these Spiritual Beings as operative in the phenomena of nature. It is an important fact, that this change took place in the development of man in pre-Christian times; he gives himself over to a characteristic delusion of life, and after the Mystery of Golgotha to a delusion in his consciousness. The reality, the effective working of Christ Jesus (and of this we shall speak further in the next lecture) should consist in this—of elevating, of raising that delusion in man's consciousness, elevating it, bringing it home to him that he is deceived; and through the “Christus in mir,” “Christ in me,” man should be brought to feel that what lives as astral body and ego, lives in free Spirituality, and is not bound up with his flesh and blood. Of course, this can only be seen on the path of Spiritual Science, but it can already be felt in the words of St Paul: “Nicht ich, aber das Christus in mich,” “Not I, Christ in me.”

From what I have told you, you can already, my dear friends see that there are reasons why men should experience this Duality up to a certain point; experiencing on the one hand the ordering of Nature which consists contains no ideals, which of necessity connects one event with another, an ordering in which merely cause and effect, effect and cause are incorporated, so that one can never think that through what goes on in Nature, any ideal, moral or otherwise, can be realised. On the other hand, man is conscious that he could not develop an existence worthy of man unless he had ideals, unless he could cling to something else than a mere external Ordering of Nature. But with the consciousness accessible to him to-day, he cannot regard his ideals as operative, as effective, in the same way as, let us say, electricity or magnetism or the force of heat,—so, that the ideals are able to enter into Nature, into the ordering of natural phenomena. For that reason the Ordering of Nature and his own ideals appear to him side by side, but he cannot build a bridge from one to the other, He cannot build that bridge my dear friends because he cannot look into the Cosmos both by day and by night, where the bridge has to be built. If only man could have a normal consciousness by day—that means an Ahriman-free consciousness—so that he could feel: “I am an individual person, am not bound to my physical or etheric bodies any more than when I look into a mirror which reflects me, I am bound to the image before me.” If man could have this consciousness about his ego and astral body, he would regard the ego and astral bodies as reality and not as mere reflected images, and then he could also recognise his ideals as real forces, just as real as electricity and magnetism, only they are not working at the present time, they are acquiring reality in the present incarnation for the next; from this earthly existence they pass over into the next earthly existence.

If man in the waking condition could perceive that his ego and astral body are bound up with the Beings of the third Hierarchy, as I have pointed out,—in other words,—if man could but fully see himself and not merely feel himself but realise himself as a free personality not bound up with flesh and blood, he would no longer believe that the external nature outside him as presented to his sense-organs in a strong enough reality to oppose the force of his Ideals, He would know that, that which is the Ordering of Nature to-day, will crumble away with all those substances; that there is no such thing as the conservation of matter, but that which in Nature destroys itself and when that which to-day is Nature no longer exists, then another external sense-reality will appear in its place, and that which to-day constitutes our ideals will become Nature in the next epoch. So we can say, to-day we experience an Ordering of Nature, (see diagram red) we experience an Ordering of our Ideals (yellow). The physicist believes that this nature is maintained by a conservation of force and a conservation of matter, that the Ordering of Nature persists—, that the same atoms, the same forces play into all future.

[diagram is missing]

The physicist, if he is sincere, can say none other than this:—“The ideal Ordering was a dream, it must sink and vanish like dreams. At the end of the earth our dream-ideal will no longer be there, it will have been buried.”

Spiritual science knows that this is a delusion, untrue. We have the Ordering of Nature, red) but in reality there is no conservation of force or of matter, for that which is the Ordering of matter ceases at a certain definite point of time; and that which to-day constitutes our ideal Order, forms the continuation of the Ordering of Nature.

[diagram (if any) is missing]

All that we see round us with our eyes, or that we hear with our ears all that we perceive around us with all our senses, will, when the earth reaches the Venus-condition, be non-existent; but out of that Nothingness the possibility will be given for the Ideals of modern humanity to become the external Ordering of Nature. No conception of the world, my dear friends, which fails to recognise the destruction of what is sensible, can ever have a hope that the Ideal has the power to realise itself, for if what is sensible were eternal, if the conservation of force and matter did exist, then our ideal world would simply be a dream. It is of immense significance that man should at the present time, have this illumination:—that the Ideals of the present constitute the Nature of the future. It is a great delusion to believe that the atoms and forces around us are the eternal. They are not the eternal; they are the temporal. That indeed is the fate of Spiritual Science, it has to contradict and refute a perception held by the present-day universal perception and view of science as an absolute certainty, and which is yet nothing but an Ahrimanic deception.

Now let us go back again to something else, to which I have drawn your attention. Before the Mystery of Golgotha what I have characterised to you as the delusion of man, can be described as a delusion of life; after the Mystery of Golgotha it was a delusion of consciousness. When one knows this, one can understand many things in the development of man. Above all one understands why, before the Mystery of Golgotha, those human beings who had atavistic clairvoyance, could not see things in their true form, but saw the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies as demons. That is why those ancient Mythologies consist essentially in a demonology. The Gods of the ancient Mythologies were seen as Demons, as for the most part they were. And that rests on the fact that a delusion of life was present then. Men had to think of a false Ordering of Nature as a Divine Ordering, just as they have to think to-day of a false Ordering of the body as ordained for mankind.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha; and man had to take the soul-mood which resulted from the Mystery of Golgotha. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, man in his waking condition stood in a more direct relationship to the Beings of the third Hierarchy than to-day. He saw them. And through their delusion of life they `fantasised' these Beings into Zeus, Apollo, and so on. These are the Beings of the third Hierarchy, but they were poetically altered, as seen under the influence of that delusion of life, as we to-day see everything which refers to man under the influence of our delusion of consciousness.

In spite of all that however, a Divine Spiritual order was spread into humanity. Just think how close man of those ancient epochs felt his human world to be to the Divine Ordering of the Cosmos! There was the human Hierarchy, and then came the Divine Hierarchy. Man did not feel so cut off as to-day, for he continued the world straight up to the Gods. How close the Greek felt his world of the Gods to the world of Man.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha, and that was then no longer the case! Not through the Mystery of Golgotha, for that was to give compensation for what has been lost. But time itself brought into human evolution that man was to be cut off from this conscious connection with the Divine-Spiritual world of the third Hierarchy; only a memory, an historical memory remained. Then came the time of the first epoch after the Mystery of Golgotha. Men certainly had to think somewhat differently to what they did before the Mystery of Golgotha; but something of that immediate past still worked in them, when men know that the Divine Spiritual Beings work into the early events and arrange and ordain what man does on the Earth. Therefore man of old was convinced that when he founded a State, (if one wishes to use the word `State,' it is incorrect, but we are accustomed to speak like this to-day)—he knew that those social structures were founded under the influence of the third Hierarchy. Man felt that his arrangements on Earth were Divine arrangements. You need merely study Egyptian history, even without clairvoyance to see how fully convinced the Egyptians were that what man does here in is social life was all arranged by the Beings of the third Hierarchy. That was so before the Mystery of Golgotha. After the Mystery of Golgotha the Church established a kind of grade in the clerical dignitaries. Such gradations were arranged; but behind the arrangement of those degrees there was a quite different thought. This can be seen quite clearly in the early Church writers. In Dionysius the Areopagite, you can see it clearly for yourself. There was to be such an arrangement in the administration of the Church that it should be an image of the Divine Ordering; and the relation of the Deacon to the Archdeacon was to be an image of the relation of the Angel to the Archangel. Again the relation of Archdeacon to the Bishop was a copy of the relationship of the Archangel to the Archai. Thus it was endeavoured to make the social structure of the Church a sort of copy of that Theocracy! Above in the Spiritual world there is a sequence of Hierarchies, and down below, in the physical world, there should also stand as a copy of the Spiritual Hierarchies, a sequence in the clerical dignitaries. In the first epoch after the Mystery of Golgotha, that was not conceived juridistically, but theocratically. It was a copy. The clerical Hierarchy was conceived as a copy of the Third Hierarchy. Thus in the first Christian Centuries it was endeavoured to establish such organisations as should cause the position of man on Earth to each other to be a copy of the Hierarchies in the Spiritual world.

Then gradually men lost the consciousness that they still had in their memories. The historic memory of the old theocracy was lost, in which man still knew that the earthly arrangements were a consequence of a copy of the Deeds of the Gods. The consciousness of this was lost, and in the place of the consciousness of the living world of Divine Beings, which were seen by men in olden times, and of which they still knew, there came abstract concepts. And so came the centuries where, in place of the individual Gods,—the Christians called them Angels—they put abstract ideas, a metaphysic of abstract concepts. The Divine Ordering, which should have its copy in the human ordering, became theocratic; the application of more ideas to man's social arrangements produced something which was simply intended to bring some kind of order into human intercourse. As formerly it was thought to create an image of the Divine Cosmos in the metaphysical age which followed, it was simply striven to maintain some order by punishing evil and not punishing the good, perhaps even rewarding it,—thus creating an ordering in which the social order could exist. And so, as in the place of living Gods there now appeared abstract, metaphysical concepts, a human Ordering appeared which in a sense so stamped itself on man, that one was preferred before another, not because that was a copy so that order should be maintained on earth; one came to command and the other to obey. Abstractions appeared in the place of the living permeation of the social Ordering.

Essentially the epoch of real metaphysic prevailed throughout the middle ages. The Roman consciousness essentially provided the special element for this metaphysical Ordering, which spread everywhere; one finds memories of this in the very words. For instance the word “Prince” (Fürst), is a memory of the Theocratic Ordering. The Prince, (Fürst), was the first, because some one had to be first, just as in the Divine Hierarchies also, one had to be first. A memory of the metaphysical order of administration is given us in the word Count `Graf,' which is connected with `grafe;'—to write. In the metaphysical Ordering, everything is registered; the social order was kept by writing documents, by making compacts.

And then came the modern age. This newer age brought disbelief in the abstract concepts, in metaphysics. Men could now only believe in the external sense-phenomena, even inhuman life. Those traditions which still existed in ancient times of a living consciousness which somehow worked this into the social structure, was lost. First the Gods, later the metaphysical concepts; these things could no longer exist in modern times; but they must again be won on those paths indicated by Spiritual Science. All consciousness of the Spiritual basis, of a Spiritual structure, was radically obliterated by Industrialism. Therefore Auguste Comte and his teacher Saint-Simon, felt themselves so specially united with the epoch of Industrialism, for they allowed positivistic Science alone to have any value. That means, only that which can be related to the external sensible natural ordering, permeated by causal necessity.

Therewith, my dear friends, the concept of truth itself has undergone a complete transformation. People to-day have not the right feeling for these things, they do not as yet realise aright the fact, that the very concept of Truth has undergone a history. These modern human beings who knew themselves to be under a theocratic Ordering, have no such idea of Truth as human beings get to-day under the authority of Natural Science. It is extraordinarily difficult to speak of these things. To-day a man may think that, with reference to the world around him, truth consists in the coinciding of an idea with external reality. He gets that thought from Natural Science. Such a concept of Truth simply did not exist in the First Christian Centuries. There was another idea of Truth then, which was essentially connected with the theocratic social order. The concept of truth which lives in all souls to-day really did not exist then. This extraordinary fact, my dear friends, is not realised now. It is more easy to recognise the concept of Truth which lived then, if one approaches the idea of Divine Judgment. Suppose two people are fighting a duel, (I will not touch upon the question of duels, I am simply giving an instance), it cannot be determined from the very start by some calculation that A, will win and B will not,—if that were so the duel would hardly occur; the truth only emerges in the course of the conflict. We ourselves still have this idea of truth at the present day, in the case of war. We should not wage war if we know from the start, as in an experiment, in a chemical laboratory, how the war was going to end. In this the old concept of truth is rooted even to-day, that truth itself can only be revealed in the course of what actually happens, that one can do nothing but watch how the Divine Judgment will fall. That is the old concept of Truth.

Those who think as Auguste Comte or as the Socialists to-day, have completely broken with this idea of Truth. They only recognise a truth as such, where the event in its course can be foreseen. The cry of Auguste Comte; “Know in order to foresee,” is the radical transformation of the concept of Truth in our modern age. But, my dear friends, with the concept which prevails to-day, one can only grasp external nature. Concerning this point, humanity to-day gives way to a colossal delusion. Men believe, for instance, that they can grasp historical life through this idea of Truth, which Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon taught. But it cannot be done, even with the old concept of Truth as Divine Judgment, for that stood under the influence of the Delusion of Life. Our modern concept of Truth stands under the influence of our Delusion in Consciousness. There must come the concept of Truth of Anthroposophy; a concept gained in a far more widely embracing way than that in which St Augustine got his concept of Truth,—for as I have explained to you, that too was subject to delusion.

This is connected with many things; and a great deal depends on it. It is not enough to speak abstractly on the evolution of the idea of Truth, one must in general, in all its details know how the concept of Truth can lead the soul of man along many different paths according to the nature of his idea of Truth. It is an anachronism to speak to-day in the same sense of Nationalism, as was possible in the pre-Christian age; because in the pre-Christian age it was not only a human view—that a Divine Ordering then permeated the human Ordering, it was actually the case. Now, the Divine Ordering no longer permeates it. Hence, wherever to-day man hangs his consciousness on the Ordering of Nature, on that which is merely produced by a sequence of births, on the Principle of Nationality, for instance, there he is involved in an anachronism. It is laid on man to-day to find quite other structures of social order than those worked from outside. The man of old could look to his nationality, because he saw it determined by the Divine Ordering. But man cannot do this to-day in the same sense without falling into an anachronism, and to-day to honour the Nation itself as something special, is an anachronism, he must consider other social structures. To regard a Nation as something special, would bring about the modern Ahrimanic delusion. “Nations” are relics of the pre-Christian Age, and modern humanity must rise above them through that development which I have indicated. We must see how concretely human beings strive after a special development of the concept of Truth. That is important, even if it is inconvenient to-day, my dear friends. But if we are unprejudiced in trying to grasp reality, we must assimilate many an uncomfortable truth.

You see, man now goes right against what Anthroposophy wills. That world-view which found its special advocate in Auguste Comte, limits itself merely to an external Ordering of Nature. We must press forward again to a spiritual world and a bridge must be found between idealism and realism. That is what I want to emphasise in these lectures. But this cannot be done simply by speaking of these things, but by grasping the concrete impulses working in the world. We must look certain facts full in the face, without prejudice. Now there are very curious facts connected with the things we are now considering. Yesterday I spoke of Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon. Both consider positivistic Science as the only thing valid, positivistic Science which simply relates to the sense-life, to a what is in the causal Ordering of Nature. Nevertheless the extraordinary fact is before us, that Auguste Comte turned away from his teacher and guide, Saint-Simon, because gradually Saint-Simon had become too mystical; and the disciples of Auguste Comte gradually turned from him because he himself became altogether mystical in his old age. We are faced with this extraordinary fact,—that Saint-Simon as well as Auguste Comte, on the one side stand directly on the basis of the most Ahrimanic Science, consciously in the epoch of Industrialism, they stand on the soil of this Ahrimanic Science; and yet they become mystics! Extraordinary! That really is an extraordinary fact.

One has to ask the `why' of such a fact, but this can only be explained if without prejudice, one admits that on the other hand man is living towards Spirituality. Unconsciously human beings are striving towards Spirituality. Even such beings as Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon, who only want to grasp external nature, are also striving after Spirituality.

But now in the modern life of man something very peculiar is to be seen. We will take another fact which, without any national chauvinism (which would not be seemly) we will try to keep in mind. In the views which result as the flower of modern nations, one can find characterised in a certain way what lies under the surface; and, starting from this, I should like to point to another very dominant English philosopher, Bentham, who lived from 1748-1832. Bentham can be taken as characteristic of the thinking of his people, and with a certain justice one must describe the views of Bentham as Utilitarianism even in a deeper sense. A certain basic sentence lies at the bottom of the Ideal World-Ordering according to Bentham. This principle is usually called the “maximum of human happiness.” Human happiness consists in this dogma, which Bentham put forward: “The good (that means what should be striven for as an ideal) consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number of human beings on the Earth.” Let us get that sentence clearly in mind:—“The good consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number of human beings on the Earth.” That sentence, as a matter of fact, of the maximum of happiness on the Earth, is the root-nerve of the Utilitarian philosophy.

Now one must bear in mind that this sentence was regarded, not by Bentham himself nor by his disciples but by those who stand on a Spiritual basis, as absolutely Ahrimanic. The occultists of his own Country say: Bentham put forward this purely devilish sentence—they call it devilish because, to any of these occultists, if it were correct that good consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number, evil must then consist in the greatest happiness of the least number.

I am not now saying anything which I myself wish to bring before as a definition or explanation, but simply quoting what has been said. Thus, on the one hand the English philosophy of Bentham, “The maximum of happiness;” on the other hand that English Spiritualism (Spiritualismus) which says “Bentham's sentence is purely of the devil, because in that case evil would be the greatest happiness of the least number, and from this there would result that evil and happiness could exist side by side,” to which the Spiritualists would not under any condition agree.

I am only bringing before you here a fact of Spiritual life, significant in the most eminent degree, significant as regards the enormous opposition to be found in a certain sphere of the Earth between Spiritualism and external World-view.

And now again to-day, because I want you to realise that we shall solve these oppositions in tomorrows conditions, I want to put once more at the end, an apercus; you can put three things together: Geotheism, Comteism, and Benthamism. These three things stand in a certain sense, in a three fold way to the Spiritual striving of man toward the future. The German Goetheism is so fashioned that out of it Spiritualism (Spiritualismus) can result. The French Comteism is so fashioned that Spiritualism can develop alongside it, for in Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon we find an extraordinary mysticism appearing side by side with their positive philosophy. With the English Utilitarianism, as in Bentham, nothing else is possible than the sharpest opposition from the side of Spiritualism against the national philosophy. That is something which lies in the soil of evolution itself. The French nature must so develop that Idealism, Mysticism and Positivism must develop side by side. Whereas in England within the British nature, things must develop more and more so, that, from the side of their Spiritualists, their own “racial nature” must be combated in the sharpest way possible. (That means, of course, what is put forward as the philosophical blossoms of the nation.)

With Auguste Comte—I am not giving you theories but simply individual facts—there was such a distinct inclination to Mysticism existing, that, in spite of his application to Positivism and rejection of his teacher St Simon, at the end of his life he very clearly assumes a Trinity. Auguste Comte honours three in his trinity:

1st. The great Fetish.
2nd. The great Medium.
3rd. The great Being.

And he says: the great Fetish is the Mother-bosom of humanity in space. Space itself is the great Medium out of which humanity comes. The great Being, the last person in his trinity, is humanity itself in the abstract, spread out over the Earth. Auguste Comte recognises this Trinity,—which is an extraordinary quickening of Positivism with Mysticism.

Now of this we shall speak further tomorrow. [The lecture of 8th September 1918, remains untranslated. – e.Ed]

The topic of this lecture should be a kind of supplement of that about which I spoke here four weeks ago, a supplement on the topic Theosophy and Spiritism. Today I want to explain something more exactly that I could note at that time only indicating. In particular I want to speak about the phenomena of somnambulism which lead into mysterious fields of the human nature and into fields which are interpreted most differently from different sides.

You probably know what somnambulism is. This word should point to certain conditions of the soul which appear in the human being when in his everyday states of consciousness a certain change has happened, above all when the usual everyday consciousness, that consciousness with which we perform our everyday actions with which we get used to nature is not in full activity if it is eliminated, as it were, and the human being still acts emotionally, is still within certain conditions of the soul. We understand as somnambulism any soul activity without full activity of the everyday waking consciousness, as it were from the depths of the soul which are not illuminated by the daytime ego-consciousness. The human soul acts then from this dark depth, and it brings up actions from these depths which differ very substantially from those which the human being accomplishes, otherwise, in the course of his life. We also know that not any person is suited to carry out soul actions with such effacement and elimination of the usual waking consciousness. We know that only those persons whom we call somnambulists who can be transported into a kind of trance or dream state are able to show such phenomena. These persons are in a kind of unconscious condition, while such phenomena arise from their nature, and one has interpreted these conditions in the most different way at different times.

If we transport ourselves once to the ancient Greece, we see which interpretation such actions of somnambulistic persons found in the ancient Greece at that time about which normally the Greek history tells to us. There we meet the priestesses, the so-called oracle priestesses who wanted to make known—from the depth of their souls under effacement of their daytime condition of consciousness—all sorts of things which went beyond the usual human knowledge. Events of the future should got out from such deep souls; whether important state actions whether important legislations are justified or not, these oracle priests should decide about that; briefly, one ascribed that which they made known to a divine inspiration. One believed that the soul when the usual daytime consciousness is extinguished stands under divine influence and conveys the volition of the godhead itself. Not only those human beings enjoyed divine devotion who could be transported into such somnambulistic condition, but above all the revelation the priests made known.

If we go from this time of ancient Greece towards the end of the Middle Ages, we find another view and interpretation of such somnambulistic persons. We see that such persons were understood as being in alliance with all sorts of bad, diabolical, demoniacal powers. We see that that which they made known was considered as something reprehensible, as something that can bring in only damaging, bad influence to the human life. We see that these persons were prosecuted as witches that they were prosecuted because of their devil alliances. Some of the dreadful cruelties towards the end of the Middle Ages are to be attributed to this interpretation of the somnambulistic condition.

In newer time on the other hand when in the outset of the 19th century, in the last third of the 18th century one began to study conditions of the human soul, there were some people who believed that one could gain higher explanations of the human soul studying these conditions; because our usual brain consciousness is eliminated and the senses are not receptive to the outside world, they assumed that the human being is able to find out something about spiritual processes and beings which one cannot perceive with the usual senses. Others looked at these conditions as only pathological ones and understood them merely in such a way that one must eliminate them from everything that can be considered as justified for the normal human being. In the beginning in particular it was science which rejected any interpretation, any explanation of these phenomena in its materialistic confidence and regarded them as symptoms, related to insanity in any way, not at all as anything else than quite abnormal matters. These are some interpretations which one has given of the phenomena.

For us the question must be at first: how can be such phenomena caused?—Because we know that some people get completely by themselves to such a condition where their usual waking consciousness is extinguished where they behave towards the outside world completely as sleeping where they understand nothing of that which takes place in their surroundings with their regular senses where they do not hear if in their nearness a bell sounds where they do not see if in their nearness a light shines where they are receptive, however, in strange way to a particular influence, we say, for example, to the words of a certain person. They see and hear nothing around themselves; they are only receptive to that which a single person says to them or to impressions of certain kind. Yes, they often are even more receptive to the thoughts of a particular person in the room in which they are. These are such phenomena which appear with certain people completely by themselves every now and then. Then we say: such persons are somnambulists; they think, act, feel, perceive in a kind of waking dream, in a kind of sleep which is, however, a particular sleeping state that cannot be compared with the usual sleep to which the human being abandons himself every now and then to get over the tiredness of the day.

We also know that with such somnambulists not only the perception, the sensitivity to certain states can appear, but that such somnambulists can move on particular actions that they carry out actions which they could never carry out in their usual daytime consciousness. We experience that they carry out rationally appearing actions to which, however, more belongs than the sense of direction of the usual daytime consciousness. We see them climbing on roofs, jumping over abysses without anticipating any danger in which they are, over abysses over which they would never jump, otherwise; we see them carrying out actions which they would not be able at all to carry out if they are in their usual waking state. These are only indications of such states at first. Such conditions can appear without any reason, but they can also appear because a person exerts a particular influence on another person; they can appear because the usual daytime consciousness is extinguished in a person with the help of particular manipulations of another person that the concerned person is then transported into an artificial somnambulistic condition. Then such artificial somnambulists show the same phenomena as the natural ones. One calls—we do not consider expressions as especially definite—that person who can transport another person into the somnambulistic condition a mesmerist if the somnambulistic condition is light, and one calls the person magnetised; one says that it is transported into a magnetic sleeping state.

Now the question arises: what do such phenomena mean to the spiritual life, which role do they play in the whole interrelation of the spiritual life, and what can we experience by such phenomena and what do they explain to us about the being and the nature of the human soul and mind? We must ask ourselves: are such phenomena actually such an abnormal matter which does not resemble to the other phenomena of the everyday life? Then, however, the view could take place which simply sees abnormalities in such phenomena; then the view of our doctors could take place, and we would not receive particular information from them.

The dream is often interpreted as something that flits only fantastically through the dream consciousness, as a kind of empty imagination and one is hardly inclined to scrutinise the strange phenomena of the dream world really. But, nevertheless, there were also finer spirits who were inclined to scrutinise these flitting pictures of the dream consciousness, and then one thing appears above all: indeed, it is for the most dreams correct that in the dream an enormous irregularity and arbitrariness prevails that we deal mostly only with snatches of the waking consciousness, of the recollections and pictures which have passed our consciousness during the day, and perhaps of other things which are due to our physical condition during sleep, or also to certain symptoms and the like. This is the lowest kind of dreams, these flitting pictures, subject to complete arbitrariness, which pass through the dream consciousness irregularly.

But the attentive viewer cannot escape that already the most usual personal consciousness, if it is in the sleeping state, also has other dreams beside these irregular and arbitrary dreams, dreams which show a particular regularity. I want to draw your attention only to single examples, which intensely illuminate this regularity which we already find within the usual dream consciousness. You have a watch lying beside yourselves. You do not perceive the ticking of the watch during sleep; you dream of a regiment of soldiers passing outside your window and hear the clatter of the horses exactly. You wake and discover that you have heard the ticking of the watch at this moment; since this continues in your consciousness. You have heard it, however, not as a ticking as your usual ear hears it, but it has transformed itself, has symbolised itself to the scatter of the horses of a passing cavalry regiment.—Or a dream which has really taken place: a farmer's wife dreams that she would go with another woman to the city on Sunday morning. They go to the church and see the priest ascending the pulpit and starting to preach. They listen longer time. There something quite strange soon becomes apparent: the priest transforms himself, he gets wings, he changes into a cock, he crows!—This is a real dream which has happened. The farmer's wife who dreamt this wakes and really hears the cock crowing outside.

You see again what has happened: the ear has heard the crowing cock, but it has not heard the real cockcrow at first, but the dream consciousness has made a symbol of that which it has heard; it has transformed the cockcrow symbolically into this whole story which I have told to you. The dream consciousness spins out such stories quite dramatically. You see that the sensory impressions are not perceived immediately by the dream consciousness, but they are transformed to symbols, and the especially typical is that this dream consciousness really dramatises.

I would like to mention another example—a dream which has really taken place; today I want to mention the right examples only which have been experienced: a student dreams that he is at the door of the auditorium. He is bumped by another. There develops a verbal exchange which leads, in the end, to a duel. The student experiences any preparations of the duel—a long story! The duel really takes place at the arranged place, everything is there, the seconds are there, the first shot is fired, and the dreaming student awakes. He has upset a chair beside his bed; he has heard the chair toppling over, but not in such a way as it is, but this event has transformed itself like lightning into a quite dramatic action. This sleeping dream consciousness is a symbolising one which could be lighted up in its peculiar symbolising activity by countless examples.

Now we ask ourselves: how does this everyday consciousness relate to that which takes action in the human soul, while it dreams? Our everyday consciousness does not immediately take part of these dream actions; for if the consciousness appears in the dream, a kind of another ego appears, a kind of dream-ego; because the dreaming person can see himself, so to speak, he can face himself in the dream. We retain at first that a kind of splitting can happen between the dream-ego and the real ego that really the dreaming person can observe himself quite objectively among the different percepts which he has in the dream. The situations in which this dream appears are determined by the dream consciousness and completely transported to the symbolic-dramatic action that takes place.

A higher level of this dream consciousness happens if we experience conditions of our own physical inner life symbolically in the dream. Again I mention particular examples. Somebody dreams that he is in a musty cellar. Webs are in the ceiling and eerie beasts crawl about. He awakes with headache. Headache has expressed itself symbolically in this cellar. Or another example: somebody is in the dream in an overheated room; he sees a red-hot stove, wakes and has violent palpitations. All these dreams which I tell you are really substantiated. Particular organs of our inside, particular feelings for our inside symbolise themselves in the dream as particular events. Yes, one can say: for the one and same person—who is able to observe on this field knows this—a particular organ takes on a stereotyped appearance which always remains the same. Somebody who suffers from palpitations, has always the same dream, namely the dream which he has had once, let us assume that he saw an overheated stove and the like more. So not only events and facts of the outside world, but also our own physical body express itself allegorically in the dream.

This is only a step to that strange phenomenon where dreamers have illnesses before themselves symbolically by which they are infected or by which they are infected only in a few days. They perceive their own conditions during the dream consciousness. That happens, indeed, only with particular persons who already belong to the somnambulists in a certain respect. From there up to the other phenomenon it is again only a step that a peculiar kind of human instinct points out a remedy or a necessary performance to the full somnambulists. So the dream can really work as a doctor, it can point to the illness and to the remedy at the same time. However, this happens only with particular persons who already have somnambulistic dispositions in a certain respect.

So you see that we deal with a sequence of conditions: from the arbitrary dream up to such quite regular dream perception controlled by particular laws. Everything that I have shown up to now is more or less dream perception; but from there a further step leads to the dream actions.

The most usual dream action is speaking in sleep. We know that it is a very frequent phenomenon that sleepers speak. Yes, we know that they sometimes give striking answers to particular questions, sometimes also answers from which we see that they have not exactly understood what we have spoken to them, or that that is more or less allegorically, symbolically transformed which one has spoken to them, and that is the reason why the dreamer answers that way. One will observe this behaviour if one knows to observe systematically.

A further step leads us then from dream speaking to the dream actions as I already said in my introduction. The dreaming person, in particular if he has a somnambulistic disposition, moves on actions, he rises from his bed, sits down, we say, if he is a student, to his desk and opens his school books. But it also happens that stronger inclined persons sit down and really keep on writing what they have written in the evening or at least copy something and the like more. These matters show us that a transition has taken place from the mere perception to the real action, from the mere feeling to the willing. There are persons who—even though they can be transported into a very strong somnambulistic condition—get to percipience only, and there are those who progress relatively little with regard to perception, but can carry out fearless actions of that kind I have mentioned in the introduction.

Such sleeping actions of somnambulistic persons are carried out with a necessity which has an automatic character. We only need to remember that we often carry out such automatic actions in the everyday life. If any special light impression works on our eye, we automatically close our eye. Our everyday life delivers numerous other actions of this kind about which we do not think further. Everything that we accomplish within our so-called vegetative physical life, our digestion, our breathing, and our heartbeats are actions which we carry out without having a consciousness of them. In similar way we carry out reasonable actions during the somnambulistic state, and such actions result from particular external stimuli with absolute necessity.

Now we must ask ourselves: how have we to understand such phenomena? You know perhaps that there are many people who are really of the opinion that we can eavesdrop on the soul independently of the body in such actions that we have to regard such actions as proofs that the soul can perceive independently of its physical organs like eyes and ears, can act independently of conscious reflection. A lot of people believe that we have to regard such actions as a much more immediate expression of the soul which is detached there as it were from the physical and acts and perceives directly from the spiritual. We want to ask ourselves how we have to consider such phenomena in the light of our theosophical view.

Theosophy shows us that the human being is not this single, isolated being which usually appears to us, but that he is connected by means of countless threads with the universe. Theosophy shows us above all that the human being has various things in common with nature that he has various things in common also with the other worlds which our everyday senses do not perceive, and we can understand the actions, about which we have spoken, best of all if we look at the entity of the human being in the theosophical light. Let me, therefore, briefly indicate what theosophy teaches about the entity of the human being.

Theosophy can consider the physical body with all its organs, including the nervous system, the brain and all senses, according to its observation only as one of the members of which the complete human being consists. This physical body contains substances and forces which the human being has in common with the whole remaining physical world. What takes place in us as chemical and physical processes is nothing else than what also happens outside our body in the physical world. But we have to ask ourselves: why do these physical and chemical processes take place within our body in such a way that they are combined to a physical organism? No physical science can give us information about that. Natural sciences can teach us only of that which takes place in physical and chemical processes in us, and, indeed, it would not be appropriate if the naturalist called the human being, therefore, a strolling corpse because he as an anatomist can discover nothing but physical in the human body. Something must be there that holds together the chemical and physical processes, and arranges them as it were in the form as they take place within the human body. We call this next member of the human being the etheric double body in theosophy. This etheric body is in any human being. Somebody who develops a certain clairvoyant capacity can behold this etheric body; the clairvoyant can behold it the easiest.

If a person stands before you and you are a clairvoyant, you are able to put the usual physical body out of your mind. Just as you can do it in the everyday life with things which are before you and to which you do not direct your attention, you are able as a clairvoyant to not direct your attention to the physical body. Then, however, there remains in the space, which the physical body has filled, still the whole physical appearance in the form of the double body which resembles the external physical body very much. It has a very luminous colour which resembles the colour of peach-blossoms. This etheric double body holds together the physical processes. At death the etheric body leaves the physical body with other higher members which we get to know. The physical body is handed over to the earth and carries out nothing but physical processes. The etheric double body causes that this does not happen during life.

Within this etheric double body, even towering above it at different sides, is the third member of the human being, the so-called astral body. This astral body is a kind of image of our impulses, our desires, our passions, our feelings. In this astral body the human being lives like in a cloud, and he is very well discernible for the clairvoyant, whose spiritual eye is opened for such appearance, as a luminous cloud within which the physical body and the etheric double body are. This astral body is different with a person who always follows his animal-like drives, his sensual propensities; there it shows other colours, other cloud-like formations than with a person who has always lived spiritually; it is different with a person who indulges in egoism, from that of a person who devotes himself in unselfish love to his fellow men. Briefly, the life of the soul finds expression in this astral body. But it also passes on the real sensory perception. You can never look for the sensory perception in the senses themselves. What happens if the light of a flame meets my eye? The so-called etheric waves move from the source of light in my eye, they penetrate into my eye, they cause certain chemical processes in the background of my eyeball, they transform the so-called visual purple, and then these chemical processes spread in my brain. My brain perceives the flame, it gets the light impression. If another could see those processes which happen in my brain, what would he perceive? He would perceive nothing but physical processes; he would perceive something that happens in space and time; however, he could not perceive my light impression in my brain among the physical processes. This light impression is something else than a physical impression which forms the basis of these processes. The light impression, the picture which I only must create to myself to be able to perceive the flame is a process within my astral body. Somebody who has a visual organ to be able to perceive such an astral process sees exactly the physical phenomena within the brain transforming in the astral body into the picture of the flame which we experience.

Within these bodies, which I have mentioned to you, within the physical body, the etheric double body and the astral body, is our real ego; what we call our ego in which we become conscious saying: we are it. This ego has higher parts again about which I do not want to speak today. This ego uses the other members of the human being as its tools.

If we understand this composition of the human being, this can also give us a particular view of the phenomena which we find with somnambulists. What takes action then if we are in our usual waking consciousness? A light impression is caused because oscillations of the ether come to my eye and are transformed by the astral body into a picture of light, and one understands this picture as a mental picture; that is why I realise this picture. Now, however, we assume that my ego is eliminated; in the usual sleep such an elimination of the ego is to be noticed.

Today I do not want to tell where this ego is to be sought for; but if we have a sleeping person before ourselves: what do we have before ourselves? In the true sense of the word only somebody whose spiritual eye is opened can give information about that; he exactly beholds the ego together with the astral body being lifted out of the physical body and the etheric double body. But everybody has this as a phenomenon before himself; everybody knows that during sleep the everyday ego, the ego of reality is eliminated, and that the physical body and the etheric double body, which hold it together, are left to their own resources. During our usual day life our ego, our consciousness is always present when we receive the impressions of the outside world; the daytime ego always controls these impressions of the outside world. If this ego is eliminated, we also receive these impressions of the outside world perpetually. Or do you believe if a bell sounds beside you, while you are sleeping, that then this bell causes no oscillations in the air which penetrate into your ear? Do you believe that your ear is differently constructed at night than during the day? This is not the case. Everything that takes place in the physical body during the day also takes place in the sleeping human being. But what is missing? The ego-consciousness does not penetrate the human being, this is missing.

We can show, so to speak, experimentally in natural way which conditions prevail between the single members of the human being, which I have stated. I would like to give you a simple example which one can make easily with every somnambulist. Imagine that a somnambulist gets up at night, sits down to his desk, kindles a candle and tries to write. Now you do the following: you illuminate the room quite brightly using ten lamps for instance—the experiment was done—and the person concerned keeps on writing calmly. Now you extinguish one flame, the small candle flame which he has put beside himself, and he does not keep on writing, he feels as dark; he takes a match, kindles the candle, then he feels it again as a light and can go on working. The other lighting around him does not exist for him, only the flame is there for him which he has taken up in his dream consciousness. The whole remaining sea of light does not exist for him. You see that it is necessary that the human being penetrates his organs of perception from within in a particular way, infiltrates them, so to speak, so that the external sense-perception can take place. It is not only necessary that we have eyes and ears, but it is necessary that we enliven that from within which eye and ear deliver to us that we oppose something from within that transforms it into pictures, into mental pictures and that is why it exists for us.

In the everyday life it is our ego, our bright, waking consciousness which offers resistance of own accord, as it were, from within to the outside world. We need that to lift out the impressions and to make them our impressions of consciousness. Imagine this consciousness being extinguished. What is then still in activity? Then the physical body, the etheric double body and the astral body are still in activity. Now, indeed, this astral body can transform what it receives from without into pictures but not into mental pictures, is not taken up into the waking consciousness. Thus the astral body of the human being transforms such impressions into pictures which surround him, either in irregular way or in regular way if the ego is present, so to speak, at this whole process.

In such a contact with the outside world is the astral body, the soul of the person who is in a somnambulistic state; yes, in a similar state is already the soul of a dreamer. We have only to make a distinction between both kinds of dreams which I have stated: the irregular dreams which mostly penetrate the dream consciousness of the human beings, and the nice, dramatic, symbolic dreams. With the irregular dreams it will be the etheric double body which is above all active and conveys the contacts with the outside world; with the dreams, however, which run in symbolic, dramatic way, it is the astral body of the person which symbolises the outer impressions, expresses them allegorically and transforms them into a quite dramatic dream. Only because in the present level of development our daytime ego is minded more realistically because we rely in our daytime consciousness above all on our deducing, calculating reason, therefore, any single sensory sensation appears to us to be linked with the others as just this is the case in the waking consciousness. However, we can imagine other states of consciousness; we can imagine that the human being looks deeper into nature. Then this purely rational view also comes to an end. This is just again the case of the higher kinds of soul-life. These should concern us less today; but what must occupy us today above all is the question: how is it possible that the human being shows regular actions, certain psychic phenomena in the somnambulistic state, which is an increase of the usual dream state? One can understand that only if one does not consider the human being as an isolated being, but in connection with the whole remaining world according to the theosophical world view; that one realises above all that outside us in the remaining world not only dead matter exists, but that in the outside world higher forces are active.

The human being normally does not put the question to himself: why do we find the laws, the concepts and ideas in the outside world which we have excogitated in our mind in a lonesome twilight hour? The human being mostly does not get the most significant phenomena clear in his mind, phenomena which throw the brightest light on the nature of the human being. However, think only once about the fact that the mathematician sits in his room, mulls over the question what is a circle, an ellipse that he finds this law of the ellipse, of the circle without observation of anything outside him and illustrates them on paper, and then after he has produced these laws out of himself, he finds these laws in the orbits of the planets and in other phenomena of the outside world. It is that way wherever one goes in our spiritual life. The laws which our mind thinks up in the loneliness are the same laws which also control this outside world. If we call that which the human being thinks up wisdom, so we must say: wisdom becomes apparent in the human ego and outdoors in the world we find that the things are built in the same way in which the human being can recognise them using his thinking. But we find if we more exactly look at the world that this wisdom of the world excels even a lot of that which the human being can think up and concoct.

I give some extreme examples: take the performances of the beavers. The performances of the beavers are of really astonishing kind, not only that their dens are true creations of an instinctive architecture which could not be more perfect if one erected them according to all rules of mechanics and engineering. No, they deliver something else: they protect themselves in their hiding places by means of dams with which they keep the water away, accelerate or slow down it in certain way. These dams are built in such a way against the power of the water that an engineer who has learnt long to get to know the mechanical principles according to which one must make such an arrangement best of all could not make them better. Yes, they are built in such a way that one can calculate from the inclination of these dams and from the angles which speed or power the flowing water has. They are constructed in such a way that the engineer could not calculate them better in his engineering firm using his science which a lot of human thoughts and endeavours has produced.

Now another example: consider a usual human femur. This femur is, if you look at it with the microscope, no compact structure like a piece of mortar, but the bone seems to be fragile, a composition of delicate formations which are built up like a quite delicate frame and scaffolding. A network of fine bone trabeculae is built up; these are interwoven and support each other; and if one study this whole network of bone trabeculae, one perceives a strange wisdom of nature with the construction of such an organism. If one wanted to build, for example, a scaffolding which should support the single parts of a frame in such a way that one achieves the greatest possible effect with the slightest expenditure of energy, one could not make better than nature in its wisdom has constructed such a femur from countless small bone trabeculae which hold and support each other. You find the wisdom that the human being can invent after many mental efforts in any single part of nature.

If we could study nature, we could pour out our mind over nature, so that we could perceive in nature outside, then we would perceive nature not as a product by chance, but as the result of infinite wisdom. Imagine instead that the calculating reason perceives the impressions of the outside world through the gates of the senses and can only think about that which it perceives from without, imagine instead that you would have no senses, but the reason would be poured out as it were over the whole nature. You would not perceive the effects of the things on our senses but the being of the things themselves, then you would stand in the wisdom of nature, then you would be a part of the wise nature. One can attain this really, if our waking consciousness is eliminated. One attains that with somnambulists as I have suggested now. I said that one may imagine that our reason, our consciousness forces its way from our brain and penetrates the wisdom of nature in any of its performances and facts.

Because we have such clear, waking consciousness, we are secluded from the remaining nature; that is why we must receive the impressions of nature through the gates of our senses. Here is the flame, it makes an impression on my eye; the eye is the gate through which the impression gets to my consciousness. My consciousness causes the mental pictures from within. I am secluded from the outside world because I have sensory gates, and this outside world must enter through the sensory gates into my consciousness first. I am in the situation in my consciousness compared with the remaining world like somebody who stands on a meadow and has a view in all directions and then enters a small house and takes note of everything that is on the meadow only through the windows of the small house.

Thus is the wisdom of the whole nature which we perceive in every bone, in every plant which appears from the starry heaven down to the microscopic smallest particle of the body. This wise nature has entered as it were into our consciousness as in a single point and has erected the shell of our organs with their sensory gates round us. Our consciousness is secluded from this being outside and can take up the being outside only through the sensory gates.

However, if you eliminate the consciousness, then you get contact, then you live really again connected with the outside world; because the astral body is not separated from the remaining world like the ego, your immediate consciousness. No, everywhere astral threads run out in all directions, so that you witness the life of the whole outside world and not only that of the physical nature, but also the astral and spiritual processes which are perpetually around us. We perceive them if our consciousness is eliminated. What we remember, think up and deduce appears in the somnambulistic state immediately as a phenomenon which the outside nature leads in. As well as you see no star in the sky during the day with the bright sunshine, while, nevertheless, the whole sky is covered with stars because the bright sunshine outshines the light of the stars, it is the same with our bright waking consciousness. What exists in our physical or astral bodies is a weak light, are weak processes which the bright waking consciousness drowns out. If we extinguish this, it will become visible what takes action in the lower bodies like the stars become visible if the sun does no longer shine. In such circumstances are somnambulistic persons and, therefore, we have to realise that the person is in a closer, more immediate connection with the remaining nature if a somnambulistic state happens. It is in such a way to use a nice expression of the German thinker Stilling who characterised this circumstances wonderfully at the end of 18th and outset of the 19th century: “if the sun of the bright daytime consciousness sets, the stars shine in the somnambulistic consciousness.”

Nevertheless, we have to ask ourselves: can we rely on these phenomena which appear during the somnambulistic state? They are true phenomena, they concern a reality; but this reality approaches us with exclusion of the organ which the human being has developed gradually, so that he can orientate himself in the world, with exclusion of his bright daytime consciousness. A state is really caused in the human being which reveals something to him that remains, otherwise, concealed but which downgrades him from a level which he got once. Because we know as theosophists that the states which the human being reaches this way and which should allegedly be “higher,” are really states which he has gone through before he attained his present full human consciousness.

I cannot explain that to you today; but just as the scientific theory of evolution shows us the purely physical evolutionary processes, theosophy shows us that the human beings gradually got to the level which they have today. This consciousness, through which we orient ourselves in our environment, only appeared after we had gone through other states of consciousness in millions of years of slow development. The human being had a kind of dream consciousness before he developed this bright daytime consciousness in himself. At that time he was really a being which did not perceive the processes round itself in the way as we perceive them with our bright daytime consciousness, but everything round us was symbolised, as well as the dream symbolises even today.

A big number of the legends which are still preserved come from such times in which the human beings were still near this dream consciousness and formed these symbolic legends. About that you can find more precise information in a very interesting book of my deceased friend Ludwig Laistner who collected the different forms of legends of the world and showed how these legends were worked out from a symbolising human consciousness not yet awoken to the daytime consciousness. There some legends are really attributed to such states of the somnambulistic consciousness.

If we go back even farther, we get to lower and lower states which were, however, closer to nature and to the starting point of the physical evolution at the same time. When the human being began as a wish of the divine being at first, he was generally in a kind of deep trance. At that time the whole humankind was in a kind of deep trance, in a similar trance in which today those somnambulists can be who can be transported into the deepest, so-called magnetic sleeping states. The human being has gone through all these states once, and now we are in the period of the bright waking consciousness. This is even a transitional state which leads us to that ability within the waking consciousness that the human being had in former times but without the waking consciousness, because it was not yet developed.

This is the future course of human development: again pouring out the spirit on nature directly to become clairvoyant with full waking consciousness. Some among us who have developed their inner organs using certain methods which theosophy gives are already ahead of the development and able to look really with full waking consciousness into this world of the beings and the spiritual life which surrounds us. Today certain individualities are already among us who are, so to speak, again free of the gates of the senses who are in immediate contact with the spiritual environment. On account of their clairvoyant ability they experience the higher facts with full waking consciousness which are closed to the usual consciousness as we go through between tables and chairs, where they perceive the spiritual world round themselves, which surrounds us at every moment. The theosophical teachings flowed from such views. The somnambulistic consciousness delivers similar teachings in certain respect, and what a somnambulistic person can see after elimination of the bright waking consciousness is often the same that the clairvoyant sees with his bright waking consciousness. But the somnambulist can never control what she/he sees; the somnambulist never is able to control what she/he tells you about spiritual processes in the environment what she/he tells you about percepts which one cannot see by means of the senses. He/she cannot even control whether that which he/she perceives is really true, as she/he perceives it.

The strangest delusions may happen to the somnambulists. You can stand before this somnambulist and can say to her/him that you are a person living at another place. The somnambulist will believe this absolutely, will have the true impression that you are that man as whom you pose. The somnambulist believes it, and this becomes the danger. If the somnambulist informs us not only about such easily controllable matters, but if the somnambulist informs us about the higher world which we cannot perceive with the senses, about the so-called astral world or about the higher spiritual world, then it can happen that the somnambulist says to you that she/he perceives any deceased person. Indeed, the somnambulist perceives a spiritual fact, she/he perceives a being; but it does not need to be right that this being is the deceased person in question. This can be another being, a being which generally has nothing to do at all with a usual earthly being. It may be a being which lives in the astral world and has never entered into an earthly world. Briefly, the somnambulist can never convince her/himself because he/she does not have the controlling consciousness whether the impression which he/she had is the right one.

This is a danger for the somnambulist, above all a danger which the astral world immediately offers if one enters it. This astral world has—I can say this only by way of a hint—quite different concepts, for example, of good and bad, Our earthly world has concepts of good and bad which are adjusted to our sensuous states. The astral world has another good and bad. If now the somnambulistic person perceives in the astral world, his concepts of good and bad are shaken very easily, and this is the reason why somnambulistic media that inform you in the beginning really only about true matters out of this somnambulistic state of consciousness can be ruined thoroughly in time, so that they can impossibly distinguish deception from reality.

It is a matter of course for somebody who knows these higher realms that he does not presuppose that the medium has cheated, even if the facts are not correct. A mediumistic woman may go, for example, to the next best corner shop—this is a case of whose truth I have convinced myself, she is in such a somnambulistic state, that her ego-consciousness, her waking consciousness is extinguished; she buys a small picture of a saint which she puts in her pocket. Then she gets out of this somnambulistic state and has no notion where she got the small picture from. Later she gets—the somnambulistic states are of very intricate kind—again in the trance state and produces the small picture as something that she has brought in from the super-sensible world to this world. The somnambulistic woman, the medium, never has a notion of the fact that she herself bought this small picture or in which way she got it. She is absolutely honest in the usual sense, although the fact is a feigning. Thus the case can happen because of the influence which is exerted on such a somnambulist after the elimination of the waking consciousness that a deception takes place; however, the medium needs not to be a swindler, but she may be completely intact and honest.

This shows you that we can do nothing but to position ourselves on the theosophical point of view if we consider the question of somnambulism Theosophy and the theosophical movement are of the determined view that one should enter the higher spiritual world, which can also be made accessible to us by somnambulists, only in the presence of a clairvoyant with a waking consciousness who knows how to get used to the spiritual world, who knows a lot about the spiritual world like about the physical one.

Therefore, theosophy demands that if experiments with media should be done—and, indeed, conditions may happen where this is recommended—that they take place only in the presence of a perfect expert, of a clairvoyant working with waking consciousness who can have an overview of everything that happens there really, while the medium and normally also those who experiment with the medium are not able to have an overview of this. Such mediumistic phenomena do not involve a danger at any rate; but we have seen that this danger may result because the sense of direction is missing. Every clairvoyant who works with waking consciousness knows at any single moment what takes action and what a somnambulist sees really, even though she/he pretends to see something else; he knows which influence really takes place, even though the somnambulist pretends that this or that influence takes place. This is just the difference between spiritual science and other similar attempts. I would not like to doubt the truth of the other attempts in any way, but its reality also applies, of course, as well as it applies to other attempts. Because such experiences cannot achieved in one go, because it is impossible that a complete ideal is realised at every point in time, therefore, theosophy does not regard as its task to combat other spiritual attempts like the experiments with somnambulists, because one knows that these experiments produce the same result in the end: the conviction of a spiritual world round us.

But the theosophical movement itself tries only to perform under the ideal of the conscious clairvoyance what it has to do in accordance with other spiritual movements. In accordance with other spiritual movements it wants to work, it wants to look at the other spiritual movements as its brother movements. It is ready any time, if it is asked for advice whether this and that is real and true in this or that sense, to give this advice. However, it will let all spiritual attempts be carried out only under the aegis of the expert clairvoyance. This applies to the spiritistic like other spiritual attempts. Occult researches are to be carried out for the purposes of theosophy only under the influence of individualities who can have an exact overview, in conscious way what it concerns. Also one is allowed to heal spiritually only in such a way as one heals physically: with full conscious overseeing the concerning circumstances.

Theosophy looks at the somnambulistic phenomena that way. You see that the theosophical view defers somewhat from the superficial external view which sees in the somnambulistic phenomena nothing else than pathological, abnormal phenomena to be rejected, and it also has somewhat different views of these phenomena than those have who believe only on account of them to get to know the higher spiritual life. Theosophy knows where these phenomena come from. It can inform of these phenomena using its clairvoyance. It considers the other attempts and movements, however, which are related to these phenomena in the sense that they regard them as manifestations of the spiritual life as brother movements, with which it strives for the same goal: to give a spiritual, a really idealistic world view, a true knowledge of the spiritual world to the present materialistic humankind.

This is a deep truth which a German seer about whom one normally does not know that he is a seer, namely Goethe, expressed that we cannot unveil the secrets of nature with the help of our tools, not by mechanical, physical tools, but that the mind has to search for the spirit everywhere

Nature, mysterious in day’s clear light,
Lets none remove her veil,
And what she won’t discover to your understanding
You can’t extort from her with levers and with screws.
Faust I, verses 672-675

But Goethe did not doubt the manifestations of the spirit around us; because he realised clearly what he expressed in his Faust in the nice words from which he said that a sage spoke them:

The spirit world is not sealed off –
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead!
Go, neophyte, and boldly bathe
Your mortal breast in roseate dawn!
Faust I, verses 443-446

In this talk, I have connected two significant riddles of the human soul life with each other not by chance, but I hope to show that the enclosing questions of free will and immortality belong intimately together from the spiritual-scientific viewpoint and are considered together best of all. However, it especially strikes just in case of this consideration that a spiritual-scientific discussion must take ways that are somewhat different from those of a usual scientific consideration, simply because another scientific consideration can point mostly to the results that are there immediately. A spiritual-scientific consideration needs to show more exactly on which way the researcher gets to his results; and how it has to be considered as proof of the matter.

You know that one has also dealt and deals with the questions of free will and immortality from the oldest times of human reflection up to now. In the second half of the nineteenth century, one regarded these two questions almost as arisen from a childish viewpoint of human thinking. One has abandoned from doing this in the last time. One has become more careful, but the central issue has not changed. One can say, the philosophical beholders of these questions do not advance further even if they are careful than to a kind of confession that the human methods of thinking are not sufficient to recognise something certain about these questions. I do not want to go further into it, but I would like to consider my topic from that viewpoint which has been asserted in all these talks here. However, I would like to say in advance that, nevertheless, it strikes that not more results with serious application of all human means of thinking, of any astuteness for the usual philosophy than a kind of doubt mania concerning these questions. This does not surprise you especially if you think that the highest revelations of the human being have to emerge from the innermost core of the human being, and that this innermost core has to be searched in the supersensible. Hence, it is not surprising that, before one enters into the spiritual-scientific consideration, just about these questions little explanation can be given. The researchers always experience that they work with inadequate cognitive means. They feel, without realising it clearly, that in the human being a supersensible life is contained that, however, everything that this human being can consider with the help of the usual organism is directed either upon the sensory world or is abstracted from it. Hence, considering the innermost human core you find yourself in a situation that you can compare with that in which the human eye is.

The eye can perceive the things round itself but not itself. Because the eye is an outer sensory apparatus, an outer object, the eye can observe another human being of course, as far as it is a sensory object. However, one thing is clear: you can observe the human eye if you can take this point of view beyond this eye. In a similar position is the beholder of the human self, of the human core. He would have to be beyond the human soul being if he wanted to observe it. There one cannot say that another human being can observe this human soul life because to the other human being the human corporeality appears. It is not sufficient that another directs his attention upon the soul being; it is necessary that the beholder of his own being could really manage to get out of his own being to observe it.

Maybe another comparison can illustrate that which should be in the object of the today's consideration. There is still a possibility to see the human eye: looking at it in the mirror. Then you have the picture of this eye only before yourself. This comparison matches what I want to explain while you have to put yourself in a position by the spiritual-scientific methods which shows that what you experience as a human being in yourself and at yourself first in a picture, and that you put yourself with your real human nature in a position which changes that into a picture what you have, otherwise, as a living reality before yourself.

To observe the own human being, it is necessary to leave the own being. Since even if you want to have the own being as a picture before yourself, you have to stand beyond the picture. You can do this only with those research methods about which I have spoken with all considerations in this winter as of a fundamental tone: while you apply those inner performances to the soul—one calls them “exercises” or as you want—which cause the soul to be brought out of itself, so that it faces itself objectively. In the last talk, I have explained some of these things that the human soul has to do with itself to get to this life in cognition beyond the body. I have shown all that in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?, in the second part of Occult Science. An Outline and in The Riddle of Man.

It concerns that the everyday soul life is strengthened, is “awoken,” that is to a state which relates to the everyday consciousness as this relates to the vague dream consciousness. As you wake from the dream to the full day life, it is possible to wake to a higher consciousness that I have called the “beholding consciousness.”

If you succeed in strengthening the soul life by concentration of thinking, feeling and willing in such a way that you can enter into this beholding consciousness, then you can refrain from everything that, otherwise, the human being perceives with the senses. You have advanced beyond this sense perception. You live in another inner soul being, in the Imaginative consciousness at first. I call it Imaginative consciousness, not because something unreal should be expressed, but because the soul is fulfilled in this consciousness with pictures that are, however, pictures of a reality. The soul knows that the pictures are not real, but are pictures of a reality, and it knows that it is in the real world context that it does not weave these pictures from nothing, from any inspirations, but from inner necessity. Since the soul has put itself in the real world context and does not create pictures from this in such a way, as for example the mere imagination, but so that the pictures have the character of reality.

It is particularly important to consider this first level of spiritual experience exactly, because an error can arise in two directions. On the one hand, one can confuse this Imaginative world with those pictures that arise from a pathological consciousness. However, from my former explanations you have seen how already the spiritual researcher takes every precaution on his way to the spiritual that strictly reject the uncertain life in all kinds of visionary. The vision enters into the soul so that you do not feel involved in its realisation. It appears as a picture, but you cannot take part in the realisation of the picture. Hence, you do not know its origin. The visionary picture comes always only from the organism, and what emerges from the organism is not anything mental-spiritual, maybe it is a cover of anything spiritual-mental. You have exactly to distinguish the whole unaware life in all kinds of visions from that which the spiritual researcher considers as Imaginative consciousness. This consists in the fact that you are completely involved with your thinking going from thought to thought in everything that appears there as pictures. You can only penetrate into the spiritual world if the activity with which you enter it is as conscious as the most conscious life of thought. There is only the difference that the thoughts are shadowy as those and that they are acquired with outer things or emerge from memory anyhow, while the soul weaves the Imagination when it appears.

You have only to cherish that you must not confuse this Imagination with imagination on the other side. What it weaves is also woven from the subconscious; however, this binds itself often to inner laws of the real life. However, the human being is not in that which he weaves in his imagination in such a way that he is aware of his weaving. While forming the figment of the imagination he is left to an inner real necessity. In the Imaginative experience, however, he is left to an objective world necessity. It is very important to know that that which forms the basis of the work of a spiritual researcher appears as an objective factuality in his consciousness that is neither visionary nor is imagination, but that it has to be distinguished as something midway of these two—I would like to say polar—contrasts. In the Imaginative life you are in a similar position, as if you face your sensory being in a mirror. You know: that who stands there is a reality of flesh and blood, but from this reality, nothing transitions into the mirror. In the mirror is only a picture; but this picture is a likeness, and you know its relation to reality.

Now, however, you are in the spiritual-mental world. But you know at the same time that the first thing that faces you is an imagery, an Imaginative world, and you also know that this Imaginative world has a relation to reality, as well as the reflection is related to the human being of flesh and blood.

This Imaginative knowledge is the first level to enter in the spiritual world. That which the soul experiences in the Imaginative knowledge is a certain increase of the usual soul life, because you know at every moment, because you live in the Imaginative consciousness: if you refrain from own activity if you interrupt the consciousness anyhow, the view of the Imaginative also stops at the same time. This gives a special nuance of the consciousness life that the consciousness feels internally strengthened and feels in an activity perpetually going out from itself from which it must not refrain and towards which the consciousness must not flag at no moment. The imagination of the usual everyday consciousness is supported by the outer impressions, can be left to them, and, hence, does not demand from the soul to work as intensely as it must work in the Imaginative consciousness. The Imaginative consciousness is not found in the usual consciousness. This is the first level that the spiritual researcher reaches if he wants to penetrate into the spiritual world.

On the second level, he must attain the ability to become aware not only of the pictures but also of the just described activity that must be never refrained, while one does research Imaginatively. He must develop an increased self-consciousness. However, something particular thereby appears. You succeed, actually, only in grasping the complete significance of the Imaginative knowledge.

Since you can know if you have prepared your soul sufficiently you attain pictures only with the Imaginative consciousness; you face an imagery, not reality. While you advance somewhat further in your spiritual development, while you divert the attention of the soul somewhat from the pictures and turn it more to the own activity, to the increased self-consciousness, you get to something with which the usual day consciousness is less familiarised than with the Imaginative world. You realise that the pictures disappear gradually. What you have evoked at first disappears gradually. However, reality does not disappear. Instead of the pictures, which you have beheld spiritual-mentally at first something appears that manifests itself from the pictures, that “speaks” from them. The pictures are ensouled as it were; they say such a thing as the colours and tones of the outer objects say. While you have only had pictures first, a spiritual-mental reality appears from the pictures and a second level of supersensible consciousness comes into being, the Inspirative consciousness.

This happens if the activity of Imagination is so maintained that by the forces of maintaining the pictures disappear as it were and that which can speak as reality from them really speaks to the human being. There you notice something exceptionally significant, and it matters with all these things that you accomplish every level of spiritual research completely consciously. You realise that the whole imagery was, actually, only the means to penetrate to reality. The visionary describes his pictures. The Imaginatively recognising human being also has pictures; but he describes them only in such a way that they are the means to penetrate to reality. He will not state, in the pictures reality is given, but at most: something is given in the pictures like senses. The senses are also something that leads to reality, but one does not look at it while one looks at reality. One does not look at reality this way, while one looks at the pictures or describes them, but the pictures have to disappear first. As the eye if it were not completely transparent if it were clouded and were itself perceptible could not see any outer reality, spiritual-mental realities can also not appear to the Imaginative pictures, before these pictures have disappeared, have become spiritual eyes and ears. That of which the pictures are only the means is that which is already behind the pictures. What expresses itself by the pictures is spiritual reality.

It is a particular experience again which the consciousness has on this level of knowledge. In the pictures, the consciousness is tensed up; it has to maintain its activity. Now the consciousness has got to an enclosing loneliness in a way just because it concentrates its attention on this maintaining. With its own activity, it gets gradually to an enclosing loneliness. The pictures disappear, Imagination stops. However, to that which speaks by Imagination, the consciousness relates more passively. It recognises that which it adsorbs now as originating from reality. It is put into a position, as if from all sides effects of reality come, but one does not reach reality itself. One is not in reality; one does not face it.

It is important again that you are aware that you have to deal now with experiences not with effects of reality, with reality. The Intuitive consciousness is necessary to get to reality. This level of Intuitive consciousness is different from the usual intuition. Since the Intuition meant here is an inner process, is not a mere feeling or sensation. There it concerns that you still ascend to the third level of consciousness where you are neither as active as with Imagination, nor are in such a way that from all sides the impressions of Inspiration flow in. After already the liveliness of the pictures is erased, that has to be eliminated from the consciousness which is there as impressions from Inspiration. The consciousness must defend itself with a certain increased inner force against Inspiration. It has to get as it were temporarily—but just temporarily—to a state where it loses itself in that by which it was inspired. It has to put itself in the position to eradicate itself as it were, to submerge in the Inspirative to emerge again in such a way that now it only knows that that which has appeared by Inspiration is spiritual reality. You have to grasp that which you bring up as inner experience different from that which you have brought down when you have submerged in Inspiration. Only that which one has brought up from Inspiration gives the full consciousness of the reality of the Inspirative, and nothing can be considered as spiritual reality that has not entered into the Intuitive consciousness through those three levels. Then only this Intuitive consciousness works after the soul has lost itself in Inspiration. As the human being becomes lost in sleep in the evening to appear again in the morning from sleep, the consciousness becomes lost in the Inspirative, but it keeps the force to ascend again, and brings that with it, which it has experienced, in the Intuition.

In the interaction of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition everything is contained that is experience or knowledge of the spiritual world. Everything that I have developed in these talks here has originated, while I have really applied the methods, which are totally unknown to most people today. Since most people generally know nothing about these methods, by which one really recognises the spiritual that lives in the surroundings of our mind, as the sensory lives in the surroundings of our senses. However, if you can penetrate into this spiritual world with Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition, you find the spiritual being of the human being in it, too. Only then, you find the innermost core, which lives in the human being, which the human being is, and which only manifests itself with the outer physical organisation, if you face yourself if you have left your body. Then you can really recognise your innermost being in such a way that it manifests itself only in pictures, in Imaginations. Now the outer body in which you have been becomes an Imagination of the supersensible. You get to know the human being as we consider him today, while he gives cause to the important questions of free will and immortality.

In 1894, I tried to cope with the riddle of free will in my book The Philosophy of Freedom. At that time, I tried to speak wholly philosophically, so that all those can read this book who regard spiritual science as folly. I tried to answer the question of free will starting from most obvious observations, and I was urged to do what mostly is not done if the free will is considered philosophically: I dedicated the complete first part of the book to an immediate, unbiased consideration of the human thinking itself, not of the thoughts. I intended to ask once, how does it appear if the human being realises, what is active in my soul, while I am thinking? I asked, how does the activity of thinking appear to the human being?

Although I did not take appropriate action in this book, because the matter should be shown truthfully, I was already urged at that time to point to the fact that this experienced thinking is strictly speaking something that is experienced internally and shifts for itself so that it cannot be compared with the remaining soul life that is bound to the human organisation. Since the spiritual scientist is aware absolutely that he completely stands on the ground of the scientific way of thinking. Someone who investigates the human soul life as it is in the usual consciousness between birth and death realises that this soul life is dependent on the human organisation. However, someone who goes to his work conscientiously and unprejudiced finds that, indeed, everything is dependent on the human organisation but not the real thinking. In the thinking, the human being can lift himself out of his organisation. This is based on the fact that the human being does not have that only in his organisation which is progressive evolution. I have explained during the last months that the whole matter is considered unilaterally by such a view and that one has brought in with it all wrong viewpoints to the scientific thinking. One has to look also at a retrograde evolution, at a devolution. The human organism is really a miraculous construction; it is not only in a certain ascending development; rather the human nature takes up a retrograde development in itself, and the strongest retrograde development is in the senses, in the head.

It would be very tempting to point to everything that could be stated by the today's science for the fact that the human organisation shows a progressive development that, however, this development abstains, and that in the head a retrograde development exists. This expresses itself approximately by the fact that the head is the most ossified part of the human being that shows the biggest involution of the sprouting life. The head thereby is just the organ of the usual consciousness because in it the development does not progress but is withdrawn. The nervous activity of the head, generally the whole activity of the head and the senses is based on the fact that the human being is mineralised in this area; he deteriorates, it is a slow dying. Look once at the human being, how he faces you in abounding, progressive life and how he takes up that descending life in his organisation; thus this destruction creates space, and while it creates space, his mental-spiritual can take place. The human being does not think because the forces of growth are active in the head and in the whole mental organisation generally, no, he thinks because these forces disappear and make way for that which replaces that now which causes unconsciousness of the remaining organism in the flowing, surging blood. One realises once that the human being develops his free thinking because he does not straight continue the development in the head, but that the development must become retrograde to unfold thinking. Then one will understand the connection of the human organisation and thinking. One will understand how thinking intervenes in the organisation, that, however, the human organisation must be decomposed first, so that it can intervene.

I know that I have to be contradictory to that what the naturalists say today; but I know that somebody who considers that properly which the naturalists have discovered will find confirmation of that in physiology and biology what I can only indicate now. Because it is in such a way, the human being is in that peculiar relation to his thinking that, indeed, it is observed, but cannot be seen according to its own inner being if one does not consider what I have explained now.

If the human being abandons himself to his mental pictures, you can pursue exactly how a mental picture associates with the another. One can pursue how this is dependent on the organism. The psychologists call it association of mental pictures. One can let this association of mental pictures to the naturalists to investigate them, because it really turns out as that where the organism has a say. However, the human being also knows that often in life moments have to take place where he does not let the association take its course. Since there would never be a logical control of thinking if one had to follow the association blindly. One knows, it is something different how the mental pictures emerge and associate with each other and something different to control them logically, so that they become “right.” You only need to read one of the most popular manuals about this field, then you realise that the human beings are already aware how something intervenes in the natural course of the mental pictures that does not belong to the organism. What intervenes there is that what can only be there in the human being if the organism withdraws with its functions first if it adds the retrograde evolution to the progressive evolution.

I refer there to a chapter that is also taboo today; but it will not last very long, until an inner necessity leads the human beings to this. You need only to remember the important speech that during the seventies of the last century the famous physiologist Du Bois-Reymond held about the “borders of the knowledge of nature” in which he spoke about the “world riddles.” Du Bois-Reymond was inclined in a certain respect to consider carefully not to be completely immersed in materialism. He put up two such limits of knowledge: consciousness and matter. He said rightly, in the material life the same happens which happens in the brain. Atoms of hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon move according to certain principles; however, the soul becomes aware of this, and one cannot derive the simplest sensations that appear in the consciousness from the movements of the atoms, one also cannot derive any coherence of the movements of the atoms and the sensations. Then he says, and this is important: if one knew what is there where matter haunts in space, one would also know maybe how matter thinks. Indeed, he does not know what it is about which he thinks that it “haunts” there in space. In a certain respect, he is right, but he also is right with that what he means for his science as “limits.” Since one develops mental pictures, sensations, thoughts with the usual consciousness. However, all that is, actually, rather far from the processes in the material life. That is why Du Bois-Reymond could just point to the following: one does not know what haunts as matter in space; if one knew this, one could also find out what as spiritual life is associated with a material process. In some sense, he is right, although his way of thinking is quite materialistic: the fact that one is far away with the usual thinking from the processes of the spiritual life. One does not figure them out, these are more shadowy things, and one does not penetrate into the processes.

When you descend into the Imaginative consciousness, you get also closer to the material processes—namely at first to those of the own body. Then you are no longer far from them as, otherwise, with the usual shadowy mental pictures. The usual consciousness has no means to say how mental pictures and thoughts relate to the processes in the brain. Hypotheses about hypotheses have been put up; but nowhere anything appeared that would have really satisfied, apart from certain anatomical-physiological investigations, which, however, are also far away from the true being of the things. However, while you move into another consciousness, you have to get closer to the usual imagining.

There you get to that which sounds paradoxical to many people today, which is only experienced with the Imaginative consciousness. Someone who can experience thinking who can look with the beholding consciousness at that which proceeds, actually, in the thinking gets closer also to the material processes He is forced, actually, to a kind of materialism, but it is only a kind of materialism that finds the spirit in the matter. He learns to recognise that that which underlies the material process in the brain is a sensation of hunger living in the brain, which is not spread out, however, about the whole body. Thereby he discovers the destruction, the retrograde development. This appears as hunger, and the counter-image of hunger in the soul is thinking and imagining.

It concerns that a quite normal process of our organism causes this devolution so that we are always in a partial hunger during our whole awake life, and we owe our consciousness to this hunger. As we become aware of our hunger if the stomach rumbles, we are aware of our thinking by the fact that the head starves.

Something appears there that can be a kind of historic evidence of that which I have just said. You know that certain ascetics who follow no spiritual-scientific path but a wrong one also starve to get to the spiritual life. This abnormal starving induces the people to be more aware of that which goes forward in them. This evokes a stronger self-consciousness and a stronger spiritual experience in abnormal way. This instinct of having spiritual experiences by hunger experiences is based on the exaggeration of the facts that the normal consciousness and its imagining and thinking are based on a sensation of hunger of the head. As said, if one discovers this, one gets on that this retrograde process exists that really destruction forms the basis, and the thinking is not based on a progressive development, but forces back the organic life and replaces it. If one figures this out once if one really penetrates to the self-knowledge and grasps the human being in such a way that one can say: what appears in it, you have to owe to the sensation of hunger in the human organism,—if you penetrate to the concrete this way, you notice—strange to say—that thinking is an unaware Inspiration in the human being.

This thinking with its effects approaches the human being while he can control the mere associations of mental pictures as something outer because an unaware inspiration approaches him. The spiritual researcher penetrates into the activity of thinking that appears when the organism regresses, and he recognises, you are concerned with an Inspiration. If one investigates what forms the basis of this Inspiration, that is one submerges in the Inspiration and emerges again, then this is the way to discover the spiritual-mental being of the human being before birth or conception to discover what has combined with that what descends in the line of heredity from the ancestors. You get to that which embodies itself at conception; which is the spiritual-mental past of the human being compared with his presence in the body. One gets to an immediate view of the everlasting in the human being.

If you penetrate up to Intuition in this area, you even get to the view of that which as a former life on earth forms the basis of the present one. Talking about repeated lives on earth is based not on speculative fiction but on careful research that prepares the soul first to behold what goes forward in the soul phenomena.

If we try to grasp the thinking free of sensuousness in Imaginative knowledge, which disappears, however, because this thinking itself is an Inspiration, we get to know: the human being was, before he has taken the earthly body, in a spiritual world into which he entered from the previous life on earth. One gets to know what is beyond conception and is everlasting. While one is able to behold the thinking as that which destructs what comes just from father and mother what requires just devolution, one gets to know how the life in the body is the result of the everlasting in the human being. Another view is to be added to that view, which was usual even if only in religious ideas, and it will not only ask: what happens with the human being after death? However, it will add the other question: from which state of the spiritual-mental life does the human being come, while he lives here on earth? The question of immortality will be much more important in future because one recognises that life is to be understood here as a continuation of something spiritual-mental. The first that one discovers as an unaware Inspiration is thinking which is based on the retrograde development.

Something else confronts the retrograde evolution in the human organisation. As everything that I have characterised now is based on devolution which withdraws the evolution, everything that is connected with the development of the human limbs—hands and feet and everything that is a continuation of the extremities inwards, it is a lot—, is another extreme in the human being and his organism. Since that which forms the basis of the human extremities suffers no devolution; but it shows the peculiarity that it exceeds the measure of the evolution of the organism—with the exception of the head. The extremities are overdeveloped; they exceed the point up to which the head and the rest of the organism go. As the remaining organism degrades, the extremities develop a kind of inertia; they overshoot the usual measure.

That which is connected physiologically with the evolution of the human extremities represents an over-development. This knowledge results concerning the human organisation that is connected with the wonderful construction of the extremities that one can only cope with it if one ascends to the Imaginative knowledge. Not until one does no longer consider the extremities in such a way as the outer physiology can consider them, but if one gets to the spiritual subsoil of the extremities, one discovers that also there something spiritual is contained. However, as that which is in the thinking already announces itself as a rudimentary Inspiration, it is with the extremities. But here that which causes over-development can be grasped only pictorially; it can be viewed only this way. Of course, one does not need to stop with this knowledge at the picture, but one takes the picture and tries to figure it out. There is the true reality only. One penetrates from the picture to the corresponding Inspiration and Intuition. What do you discover there? You discover what exists as an unaware Imagination in every human soul what, however, represents the essential if you grasp its being with Inspiration and Intuition what goes into the spiritual world if the human being passes the gate of death. There is the spiritual part of our future. These seeds are the breeding ground of that what we need after death. That is why over-development is there because, otherwise, the development would stop at death. This is the reason of over-development that one needs to have a spiritual-mental organisation after death.

The human being is removed, actually, from Imagination. Hence, that appears what I have now described for the human organisation in the usual consciousness in such a way that the Inspirative thinking—and every true thinking is Inspirative—remains a riddle. One can explain it only as I have explained it today. One does not at all investigate that in philosophy but one accepts it. One writes books on logic, which arrange the ascending, not-binding thinking. However, one does not find out where from the soul has it that it unfolds logic. One gets to that only if one recognises that the soul was in the spiritual world and has brought the guideline of thinking from there, and that our logic is not at all developed in the present. All these contents originate from the existence before birth or conception; they have not passed. We live the everlasting life; we have not come off the everlasting life. This inspires us if we soar the thinking exceeding the mere imagining. This is a proof, but one does not figure the facts out. Hence, one gets to riddles in this area but not to answers.

In the Inspiration, the human being gets already somewhat closer to the matter because he approaches it with feeling. Subconsciously he has the Imagination that is shown in relation to the extremities. Hence, the philosophers also talk a little about the antenatal life because it can only recognised in a higher area, which less enters into the usual consciousness. The thinking that is closest to the Imaginative emerges vaguely. Hence, one talks much easier and much more usually about that which remains as immortality, but avoids the forces that inspire in the soul, and also the forces that we find Imaginatively, so that the pictures transition into the spiritual world and from the pictures the preparation of the next life on earth is accomplished. We go into the spiritual world with the pictures. That which we bring in there shows our future in a way.

The kind of knowledge about which I have spoken which ascends through Imagination and Inspiration to Intuition makes it possible to survey the human life vividly, to penetrate thereby, however, into the reality of this life. However, something strange appears if you experience everything that belongs to the antenatal and the postmortal life: while you come off the own corporeality, while the own corporeality becomes pictorial, the self-experience of the ego scatters. It is a dangerous moment for the knowledge where the usual ego scatters. You are scattered to the four winds as it were, you feel being without consciousness.

This feeling is a significant knowledge. One notices that that which one has left behind was the basis of the usual ego. The physical organisation is the basis of the ego, which the human being calls his “ego” in the usual life. This ego begins with conception, with birth; later the consciousness of it begins. This ego is bound to the organism; one cannot find it if one leaves the organism. However, one experiences this ego as self-contained. It would be dreadful if the human being experienced that as his ego, which the spiritual researcher experiences as the scattering ego when he has left his body. How does one experience this ego? One experiences that it just has submerged; since if it has not submerged in the physical body, the human being sleeps; then the ego has left the body and he does not experience it. One experiences it in the body, namely in that part of the human organisation which is not the deteriorating head organisation and not the organisation of limbs exceeding the normal development; but it is stimulated in the remaining part of the human organisation by the activities of lungs and heart. It is stimulated by the fact that the human being is in his organism.

What is this ego that scatters, otherwise? This ego becomes conscious because it submerges in the organism. The spiritual researcher recognises it as an unaware Intuition. This is the Intuition which is attained, while the true ego which does not at all appear submerges in the organisation, namely in the middle organisation of the human being. The consciousness of the ego is based on unaware Intuition. Hence, you can often hear speaking of “intuition,” but much less of Imagination and Inspiration. However, just of this highest which appears as a process of spiritual research taking place except the body a vague consciousness exists. This self-consciousness ascends from the organisation. Unconscious Imaginations go from the thinking that is free of sensuousness to that part of the human being, which is embedded in the part of extremities, and go from there to the future. That which lives in the present self-consciousness scatters. It gets free from scattering in future. One realises this just if one pursues the matter further. Since now one has something threefold in the human nature, namely the three members of the human everlasting nature: the past, being before the earth embodiment, which settles in the unaware Inspiration of the organism; then that which is experienced during the life on earth in the unaware Intuition; and thirdly that which is anticipated as nature of the human being in the Imagination after death. These are three members of the human being, and they always co-operate in him. In truth, the human being is not the simple monad-like being, but three egos co-operate in the human being: the Inspirative one that lives in our thinking that is carried over from the spiritual world and from the preceding life on earth; the Intuitive ego that lives in the present corporeality; and the Imaginative one that is carried over to the spiritual world after death.

Now that action, the act of volition, can appear which is connected internally with the organisation of the limbs. It can appear in such a way that it follows from the organisation. Ascribing free will to the trivial life, to the instinctual life would be nonsense. Hence, I made a point asking in the Philosophy of Freedom: which actions are free? Since one discovers that those actions originating from the associations of mental pictures are not yet free. The human being is free concerning some actions, but not concerning other actions. The free element of the action develops only from the human being, that is only those actions are free which originate from the thinking, which is free of sensuousness, from the Intuitive thinking. There the human being has to develop something to launch such actions, which lead him out of himself. Since the thinking that is free of sensuousness does not originate from the organisation of the organism, but it is based on destruction. What originates from the desires and instincts comes from the organisation. The human being has to leave himself, even if unconsciously.

However, in what way does he leave himself already in the usual consciousness? If he does actions, in which he is less involved with his desires and instincts while he has the free thought: “it must happen,” and, nevertheless, only feels as tool of the events. Someone who can really check the human life finds that such actions position themselves in life as we face a person whom we love. If we love him really, we take him as he is, we look at him, exceed ourselves. Actions that have love as the innermost impulse are free actions if this love is carried by the insight that is based on the Intuitive thinking. Twenty-five years ago, I have shown this in the Philosophy of Freedom from observations, today I show it from the spiritual-scientific standpoint. Therefore, we have the triad of a free action: free Intuitive thinking, love, and action. However, it must emerge in the usual consciousness. That which I have described now has to form its basis as it were.

However, the human being who acts freely is not yet a clairvoyant; he has not yet attained the beholding consciousness. As the spiritual life enters in poets and artists, it enters in him by the moral imagination as I have called it in my book. If you beheld the spiritual counter-image of the moral imagination in the spiritual world, you would have Imaginations. Since the moral impulses do not live in us. You feel the reflection of it in your conscience; the reflection of it in the consciousness is the moral imagination that has the moral impulses. Spiritual-scientifically, one says, the moral impulses not only are in us, but they are taken from the spiritual world; but they come into our consciousness as moral imagination. That forms the basis of the free will.

We look once again at that which is expressed in the higher organisation of the limbs. This is not for the life, which leads to death; it contains the impulses that become significant after death. They exist, live in the human being, do something that is significant after the usual life; they are not founded in the organism. Since the organism must exceed its measure of organisation, while it wants to produce this. There it causes something in the human being that has nothing to do with an only scientific necessity, because this scientific necessity looks at the human being only between birth and death. However, if that appears which works, indeed, here, but receives its full reality only after death, and then it is the “future ego” if I may so express myself. What does this future ego grasp? I said: the free thinking. The past ego that the human being brings in at his incarnation, which inspires his soul life, accomplishes that we have free thinking which is free from mere imagining which also provides the impulses of moral actions.

However, this would remain passive. Nevertheless, this must be seized by lively impulses. They are from the future ego. In every free action, the immortal nature of the human being acts out. Since into the present ego, which lives by the body, which receives its significance in future, only by that which prepares itself by the spiritual-mental the future ego works with all impulses, all active forces which seize the free thinking of the past ego. In the present human being, the immortal human being works in harmony with the future human being. That is why the human being is a free being.

One has only to find out that the immortal nature of the human being is in the free action to realise that natural sciences are completely right if they do not speak about free actions; since they do not consider—it is not their task—the immortal nature of the human being. However, before one does not realise this immortal being, one cannot penetrate to that which emerges from the subconscious depths and manifests itself in moral actions.

The human will is not free in its desires, but the development of freedom is contained in it. The human being is a being that gets free more and more. The more that unfolds in him which lives as an everlasting essence in him, the more he gains freedom. We are free with that part of our being with which we are immortal.

This is the way how this can be found what concerns free will and immortality and what natural sciences can never find; they will remain the more good natural sciences, the less they arrogate to intervene in these areas. However, that remains science, which intervenes in the spirit and in the spiritual life this way.

The humanity of former centuries and millennia that had another soul life did not yet need this science. However, today we approach the time more and more where full awareness of that must arise what forms the basis of the human life. The human being needs that more and more what the science of the supersensible life can give him. I have often explained: only the spiritual researcher is able to penetrate into the supersensible life; but check what he says with your usual consciousness, and you can accept it even if you yourself are no spiritual researcher, although everybody can become one today. If the spiritual researcher presents his results to the usual consciousness, you can understand them with the usual consciousness. Indeed, many things lead away from spiritual research, and someone who possibly believes that the spiritual researcher is allowed to have the slightest predisposition of speculative fiction is very wrong. Someone who thinks there that it is easy to penetrate into the spiritual world and that against it the usual research is difficult in medical centres and laboratories has no idea of the real relations. Strictly speaking, all efforts of the outer science are minor compared to that which forms the basis of the research in the areas described today.

However, it is also necessary that you notice that that people often believe to be unbiased, and, nevertheless, are biased. I have to remember if I see repeatedly that philosophers treat the questions discussed today in such a way that they say, the human being consists of body and soul. You know that one does not manage with the consideration of the human being if one does not divide him in body, soul, and mind. Only spiritual science does this today. Where from does it result that the philosophers do not speak of body, soul, and mind today? They believe to do research without presuppositions, but they follow the Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869 (Fourth Council of Constantinople). They do not know that it corresponds to the dogma put up at that time that the human being must be considered not as tripartite, but that one is allowed only to talk of body and soul while the latter may have some spiritual qualities. What was through the whole Middle Ages a true horror has continued into modern times; and if today Wundt speaks about body and soul, he believes to be unbiased, in truth he obeys the guideline of the Eighth Ecumenical Council only. Thus, the human beings are under the impressions of the unconscious. However, the today's humanity is not “trusting in authority,” and, therefore, it does not mind whether these authorities attain their assertions from such subsoil, or do unbiased science. That is one point that the observer realises.

The other point is that inner power is necessary to ascend to Imagination to keep the reinforced consciousness in such a way that it does not get perpetually lost. You must not believe that you come to speculative fiction straight away if you do not progress in the apron strings of the outer reality with your experience if one dares from an inner necessity to stand in the new experience. People lack this inner courage, but spiritual research could easier penetrate. Faintheartedness and the fear of loneliness are in the subconsciousness. Those who have this faintheartedness and this fear call spiritual research a pipe dream and believe that they could disprove spiritual research with their reasons.

If you check their reasons, you find unaware faintheartedness, unaware fear, and timidity, which are blind to themselves and want to daze themselves about the reasons they bring forward against spiritual research. However, every spiritual researcher knows that that who settles in spiritual science can get to an understanding of the things. Truth finds its way—as a spirited German thinker said—through the human development even through the narrowest scratches and rock crevices; it finds the way to humanity. Humanity will recognise that it is a supersensible being and needs supersensible knowledge more and more to the true self-knowledge, but also to the real practical life. That is why one is allowed to call attention to that prevailing power of truth and to this always-living impulse if one brings forward such paradoxical ideas of spiritual science if one does not regard the misunderstandings. This induces me to say, not as a phrase, but as a deadly serious conviction: May details be still imperfect, as they are investigated today; the impulse of truth lives in that which should flow from spiritual-scientific research. Someone who is in it feels that. Therefore, he says it, not as a phrase, but as an expression of a life connected with the spirit: in spite of it all—truth will also be victorious in this field.